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(10/29/20 9:59am)
This election season, the stakes are higher than ever before. Four years ago, the horrors of a Trump presidency were yet to be realized. Now, we are living them. Public trust in government is rapidly eroding while peoples’ fundamental liberties are being — or have been — taken away from them. Our democracy is on the line. While the outcome of the upcoming election is uncertain, we have been inspired time and time again by this community’s political engagement, solidarity and resilience in the face of adversity. This is why we’re publishing an election issue.
The U.S. has suffered in the hands of an incompetent, intentionally negligent and often malicious administration. More than 200,000 Americans have died of Covid-19 — a disproportionate number being Black and Latinx. Poor management of the pandemic spelled economic devastation for communities across the nation, as workers are plunged into financial instability and businesses shutter their doors. An unprecedented number of environmental protection regulations have been undone and climate change science disregarded. And as protests against police brutality and racial injustice have unfolded across the country, Trump has refused to denounce white supremacist organizations. The ripples of these national tragedies are also felt in Middlebury.
Politics has permeated every part of our world — and every part of our newspaper. Our election issue spans all five of our sections, from sports coverage of athlete voter registration and the surprising relationship between college football and the election, to coverage of local Vermont races, to opinions about the role of politics in dating and making Nov. 3 a school holiday. You’ll find news about how the mail center handles absentee ballots, how some professors choose to (or choose not to) bring activism into their classrooms and how students who are not eligible to vote in U.S. elections are making a difference. We have an elections forecast, a podcast about the intersection of athletics and politics and a dozen more stories that endeavor to capture the momentous and far-reaching impact of this election on each and every student, state and community.
Unlike in past elections, the majority of you have likely already voted by absentee ballot. For those of you who didn’t or couldn’t vote elsewhere, make use of our guide for in-person voting in Middlebury, which is an option for all students who can vote in the U.S., or use MiddVote’s resources for voting in Vermont. Even if you are someone who cannot vote in this election, we encourage you to vocalize your concerns and mobilize those around you to participate.
Thank you to everyone who wrote and edited for, contributed to and was interviewed for this issue — we hope that through these stories, you see the ways that this election has touched every part of life and fundamentally reshaped our relationships to politics. Thank you for reading, and thank you for caring. So much is at stake.
Bochu Ding ’21, Hattie LeFavour ’21 and Riley Board ’22 comprise The Campus’ executive team. Nora Peachin ’21 is the Senior Local Editor. LeFavour and Peachin oversaw the creation and coverage of the issue.
(10/29/20 9:59am)
Every state has its niche elected positions. Michigan votes for a drain commissioner, who oversees water drainage systems. Texas elects a statewide railroad commission. Some states even vote for their county coroner — the official responsible for determining causes of death.
Vermont has the high bailiff.
Mentioned just once in the state’s constitution and written into the state’s statutes in a sparse line, the high bailiff has one defined role: to arrest the sheriff, if ever necessary. Notorious for its limitations (the high bailiff has no pay, no office and hardly any responsibility), the position is often held by individuals linked to law enforcement, like lieutenants or retired officers.
Dave Silberman has a new idea — one that he says is actually rooted in the core values written into the position when it was established by the Vermont Constitution.
“The framers of the Vermont Constitution decided wisely to have a check on the sherrif’s power and make sure they were held accountable to the law,” he said.
Silberman sees the high bailiff position as an opportunity for civilian oversight over law enforcement. After the events this summer that brought police brutality, abuses of power and systemic flaws into the national spotlight, Silberman says that the importance of law enforcement oversight is clearer than ever.
“My ‘re-imagining’ of this office is not so much a re-imagining as a hearkening back to why this office was created in the first place,” Silberman said. “To put the sheriff under an independent civilian oversight. And that’s exactly what I’m running to do.”
However, the biggest opposition to a high bailiff candidate is often apathy or ignorance.
In 2016, two Democrats ran in the Addison County high bailiff primary. Ron Holmes came out on top with 1,904 votes. In second place, with 1,620 votes, was “blank.” Competitor Peter Newton came next with 1,505 votes.
So, Silberman’s campaign strategy?
“To get those blank votes,” he said. “To make sure people know there’s a position called high bailiff, know what the heck it is and think about why it is that you would want to elect a civilian and not a member of the law enforcement establishment.”
Both of those 2016 high bailiff primary candidates are members of the local law enforcement community: Peter Newton is the Addison County Sheriff, elected in 2019, and Ron Holmes, a former high bailiff, is a 25-year part-time deputy in the Addison County Sheriff's Department (ACSD). Holmes also made a run for sheriff in 2018. He lost to Silberman in this year’s democratic primary for high bailiff.
Now, Holmes is running against Silberman again in the general election, this time as a Republican — he won the republican primary with 186 write in votes. Silberman will also face independent candidate Mike Elmore, a sergeant in the ACSD.
This is Silberman’s first contested campaign, but he knows that it’s unorthodox. His biggest plan for the past few months — to knock on doors throughout Addison County — became impossible during the pandemic. Instead, he focused energy on fundraising, mailing fliers and disseminating yard signs, which have been visible throughout the county.
Silberman is an attorney, lives in Middlebury and has spent the last five years focused on efforts to legalize cannabis in Vermont and increase access to expungement of drug-related criminal history. He decided to run for high bailiff because two years ago, no Democrat ran for the position.
“This office seemed like a good fit for somebody to come in on a platform of criminal justice reform and elevate those issues,” he said.
Silberman sees many failings in the American policing system. He is focused on decriminalizing drug possession and shifting the solution to drug addiction to health and social services rather than “jails and prosecutors and police.”
Silberman also sees expanding social services, housing and transportation as alternatives to policing in addressing the outflows of poverty that affect people in Addison County: homelessness, drug dependency, domestic violence and more.
“We fail to fund these other solutions because we’ve already overfunded the police,” he said.
And, of course, he wants to see police be held accountable for excessive uses of force, changes to how police are recruited and “a change in what we think about appropriate police involvement in our community.”
This summer brought sustained national visibility to systemic issues of policing, particularly after the death of George Floyd and other Black Americans at the hands of police. “But George Floyd was not the first person to be murdered in the streets by police for no reason,” Silberman said. “And he also has not been the last person.”
“It’s not one police department, and it’s not one state — it’s all over the nation. We see, over and over again, whenever there is police misconduct, it does not go punished because we don’t have systems of oversight that work,” he said.
Silberman knows that the powers of the high bailiff are limited, but his distinctive platform is part of a small wave of civilian, criminal justice and police oversight-focused candidates across the state for a position that has largely gone unnoticed for much of its history.
“I’m not going to tell you that electing a citizen as High Bailiff of Addison County is going to fix these problems,” he said. “But electing me will ensure that we continue to shine a very bright light on these problems, and, by keeping the focus on the issue of police accountability, we’re going to be able to move systemic change forward. I refuse to let this issue go.”
(10/08/20 4:52pm)
This is a developing story and will be updated accordingly.
Middlebury plans to welcome all students back to campus for the spring semester. Students will arrive on Feb. 24 and 25 after a two-week home quarantine period. Classes will begin on March 1 and will be conducted remotely for the first week.
J-Term will be conducted remotely and will take place from Jan. 19 to Feb. 12, followed by a two week break before spring classes begin.
After classes begin in the spring, they will continue through May 21 with finals week beginning on May 23. Spring break and senior week have been cancelled.
Feb graduation may occur at the end of the fall 2020 semester. Spring 2021 commencement will be held on May 30 either in person or remotely, depending on conditions.
The college has committed to wage continuity for all employees through the spring semester.
Middlebury plans to reopen its campus to all students for the spring 2020 semester with delayed arrival on Feb. 24 and 25. J-Term classes will be held remotely from Jan. 19 to Feb. 12, with flexibility for internships and limited on-campus research. Spring classes will run from March 1 to May 21 and will be held online for the first week, after which they will be offered either in person, remotely or through a hybrid model.
Students received the announcement in an all-campus email on Oct. 8 from President Laurie Patton and other senior administrators.
Although most students will take winter classes remotely, a small number of students will be approved to conduct research on campus during J-term. These students will arrive on Jan. 21 to begin their research on Feb. 1. Students will be able to complete J-Term internships either in person or remotely, and internship dates will not have to align with the altered dates of the term if students acquire prior approval. Students will have until Nov. 10 to formally declare their intentions for J-Term and the spring semester.
Middlebury followed guidance from the state of Vermont to forgo on campus winter terms “to decrease instances of Covid-19 exposure due to travel from parts of the United States that have a higher prevalence of the virus.”
No outline was provided regarding off-campus travel within Addison County or beyond, nor about restrictions for dining, visitors, events, gathering sizes or students living off campus. The announcement also did not mention a “phased” approach to the on-campus restrictions that have characterized life on campus this semester.
The college plans to provide an updated version of the health pledge and a Return to Campus guide for the spring semester in December.
Like the fall 2020 semester, students will be expected to complete a two-week home quarantine before arriving on campus. Upon arrival, students will undergo Day Zero and Day Seven testing as well as a period of on-campus quarantine that will extend at least until the end of the testing and results period.
“One of biggest challenges for the coming months is the availability of indoor spaces for classrooms, dining and other activities,” the announcement read. No further detail was provided regarding these concerns, leaving unanswered questions about dining areas during mud season.
Once classes begin, they will continue through May 21. Finals week will begin on May 23 and Commencement is planned for May 30. There will be no traditional spring break or other significant time off, nor will there be a Senior Week break between the end of classes and graduation. However, the college has committed to “special activities to celebrate the Class of 2021.”
In the coming weeks, the college plans to send students a form asking them to indicate whether they plan to study in person or remotely in the spring.
Plans for an in-person commencement for the already-graduated class of 2020 are still unknown, despite an announcement from President Patton last spring that there would eventually be an in-person event.
In addition to committing to staff wage continuity, the college will also close for the entire week of Thanksgiving, which will add three paid holidays for eligible staff. Any hourly staff who work during Thanksgiving week because of operational needs will be compensated with “holiday premium pay.”
Middlebury is planning an Oct. 30 announcement regarding spring operations for its schools abroad. Pending travel restrictions and conditions in host countries, the college expects to be able to operate some of its 37 locations in 16 countries, with more details about specific programs expected closer to their program start dates. The college said it is hoping to host in-person summer programs such as Language Schools and the Bread Loaf Writers Conference, although information is not available yet.
The email also announced that there will be no NESCAC winter sports competition this year, as decided by the conference presidents today. The NESCAC has not yet determined what spring sports will look like, though the announcement stated that “Spring athletes should be aware that current conditions would not allow us to engage in competition.”
The college maintains that details about on-campus life during the spring semester depend on how the pandemic develops in Vermont and elsewhere. “As always, our decisions are and will be guided by the latest scientific research and advice from federal, state, and local health officials,” the email read.
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(10/05/20 8:51pm)
UPDATE: Oct. 7
An additional Champlain Orchards employee has tested positive for Covid-19, bringing the total up to 27.
On the afternoon of Oct. 5, College Physician Mark Peluso told students in an all-campus email announcement that, "initial safety assessments indicate that the risk to the College community on campus is low at this time." He stressed continued vigilance and adherence to Covid-19 safety protocols.
——
Twenty-six new Covid-19 cases were reported today in Addison County by the Vermont Department of Health, a striking number in a state that consistently reports just a handful of cases per day. The 26 cases are related to an outbreak among migrant farmworkers at Champlain Orchards in Shoreham, about 20 minutes from the college. Currently, one of those workers is hospitalized, and many are not showing symptoms.
The Health Department officials say the public and college aren’t at risk. The college has yet to make a public statement about the outbreak.
At an Oct. 5 press conference, the state’s Health Commissioner Mark Levine said that the outbreak is being contained.
“At this time there is no known risk to the public. If you’ve been apple picking in the past couple of weeks or visited the farmstand, you are not at risk,” Levine said.
State Epidemiologist Patsy Kelso explained that they are confident that no member of the public who picked their own apples at Champlain Orchards is at risk, because of a thorough contact tracing process and a review of the processes at the orchard.
Levine says that after one worker at the farm tested positive, the state set up a testing site at Champlain Orchards. Contract tracing is underway, and the owner of the orchard is collaborating with the state.
All of the individuals who tested positive were migrant farm workers, many of them H-2A visa holders from Jamaica. The H-2A program brings seasonal migrant workers, primarily from the Caribbean, for temporary agricultural work in the United States. Deputy Secretary of Agriculture Alyson Eastman said that the orchard is at peak season, and has around 90 employees. Fifty-five of them are H-2A workers.
The workers had just completed their 14-day mandated quarantine after arriving in the state. They arrived on Sept. 14 and their quarantine ended on Sept. 28.
Champlain Orchards closed to the public over the weekend.
Ben Truman, the spokesperson for the Vermont Health Department, told The Campus that the event is not linked to the college in any way and is not a risk to the public in regard to food consumption.
College Physician Mark Peluso did not return requests for comment on advisories for students by publication time.
Middlebury is currently in its second phase of reopening, which allows students to travel within Addison County. The college has had no active student cases for weeks, and announced one employee case on Sept. 28, which they say posed a low risk to students due to the ‘situational circumstances’.
Addison County only reported six cases in the entire month of September, and a cumulative 15 cases in the summer months of June, July and August. This outbreak marks the single greatest number of cases in a day that the county has seen throughout the pandemic by a wide margin.
The state of Vermont reported 33 total new cases today, the highest increase reported in a single day since June.
(09/16/20 3:51am)
The next period in the college’s “phased approach” to a safe reopening will be pushed back to Thursday, Sept. 17, two days after it was originally planned to begin. Phase Two allows for greater freedoms, including leaving campus for other locations in Addison County and relaxing physical distancing with a small number of close contacts.
The announcement was made in an all-school email in the afternoon of Tuesday, Sept. 14, and came just one day before the widely anticipated start date of Sept. 15, which was described in the Return to Campus Guide as the optimal Phase Two start date, and shared in the mandatory pre-arrival SafeColleges training.
Dean of Students Derek Doucet said that the transition to Phase Two was delayed because remote students and students taking leaves of absence who are living in the area and only recently arrived in town had not yet completed their arrival quarantine phase mandated by the state of Vermont.
“We were concerned that an immediate move to Phase Two would open the possibility that students on campus who had been through multiple rounds of testing might be inadvertently interacting with these recent arrivals, which would pose an exposure risk,” he told The Campus.
Doucet said that, additionally, observations of other colleges and “evolving public health guidelines” led the college to push the start date. He also clarified that Sept. 15 was the earliest possible start date for Phase One, as opposed to a set date.
Only two individuals have tested positive for Covid-19 on campus, both of which were detected during the two rounds of arrival testing. Both of those cases are now listed as recovered, and there are zero active cases on campus after 5,362 tests. A few students have been asked to leave campus for violations of Covid safety rules.
Some of the freedoms that come with a move to Phase Two will include local recreational travel within Addison County and the use of student vehicles. The college will also begin phasing in limited indoor dining hall seating, limited use of indoor athletic facilities and student use of outdoor athletic spaces such as the golf course, Snow Bowl and TAM.
When using personal vehicles, students will be required to wear face coverings, keep the windows open at least two inches for ventilation and maintain physical distancing as much as possible.
Phase Two will also allow students to define a small social circle of individuals with whom they relax physical distancing. The announcement email notes that students will be allowed to have no more than four individuals with whom they are “close contacts”.
A guide called Sex in the Time of Covid-19, published by the Health and Wellness office in August, noted that they “anticipate that any dating/sex partners would be part of this circle.”
Students will need to complete another online training before being released from campus quarantine. Engaging in Phase Two activities without completing the training will be considered a violation.
(06/22/20 8:22pm)
This is a developing story and will be updated accordingly.
Middlebury expects to invite most students back for an on campus fall semester; September 8 will be the first day of class and the first batch of returning students will arrive on August 18
Students will be required to quarantine before their return and the college will test all students upon arrival
Professors can decide to offer their courses in an in-person, remote or hybrid capacity, and the college expects approximately one-third of classes to be conducted online
Student access cards will only open the residence that they live in, and the academic buildings they need to access
Staff who can work from home will likely continue to do so, while those who work closely with students must receive approval to return to campus
Parties and gatherings must not exceed a 25-person limit and must take place where physical distancing is possible
Middlebury will reopen its campus to students, faculty and staff in the fall with certain precautions, according to a copy of the college announcement shared with The Campus. The College plans to welcome students back, with classes beginning on September 8 for a 12-week semester, which will continue without interruption until Thanksgiving Break, before a transition to remote learning. The cost of attendance remains unchanged.
With the removal of October Break, November 20 will be the last day of in-person classes. Students will not be allowed to return to campus, with classes and exams following Thanksgiving break held in a remote capacity. The statuses of J-term and the spring semester remain unclear.
Students will be required to quarantine before and after they return to campus, and will be tested for Covid-19 upon their arrival in Middlebury. Students will return at staggered start times, and will have to begin quarantining 14 days prior to their planned arrival date; they will be expected to maintain safe practices during their travel to campus.
There will be three start times: First@Midd peer leaders, ISSS PALS and other student leaders will arrive August 18; new students, transfers, international students and fall athletes (if athletics are approved) will arrive August 26; the remaining students will be permitted to return on August 28.
While many classes will be offered in-person, others will be offered remotely or in a hybrid capacity, even as students live on campus. The college expects roughly a third of classes — approximately 175 of 530 courses — to be taught remotely. Professors will have the opportunity to choose whether they teach online, in-person or using a combination of the two. Students will be informed of which courses are offered in which format before course registration.
Students will be tested for Covid-19 upon their arrival on campus, and again after seven days. They will have to remain in isolation in their rooms for roughly 24 hours until results are available — and will only be allowed to leave to use the bathroom, to collect meals from a delivery point and in the case of medical emergencies.
If students test negative, they will then be ‘quarantined’ to campus, and can move about while following safety protocols. Off-campus students will quarantine in their off-campus housing.
Students who test positive will be isolated in Munford House and be monitored by health professionals.
Students and staff will have to adhere to a variety of health protocols throughout the semester as well, including undergoing Covid-19 symptom pre-screening each day and wearing face coverings whenever possible. The college is planning to provide cloth face coverings for all students.
The announcement mentions that students will live in singles and doubles, but that the school, “will share more information with students about room draw and housing accommodations in a separate communication.” Student access cards will only open the residence that students live in, and the academic buildings they need access. Students who live in off-campus residences must adhere to the same guidelines as those who live on campus.
Middlebury plans to increase its capacity for mental health services including counseling as well as nutritional, medical and psychiatric services by contracting with a telehealth company which will aid students both on and off campus.
Dining will progress in three phases, the first of which requires that each student be assigned to one dining hall and provided with to-go meals only. While indoor seating will be prohibited, there will be limited outdoor tent space in some areas. Each dining hall will have the same menu and abide by a one-way traffic format, and all meals will be prepared by dining staff.
The announcement includes initial restrictions and monitoring of off-campus travel, for which guidelines are being developed and will vary depending on the travel destination. On-campus speakers and visitors will also be severely limited — if they are permitted at all — and required to abide by both college and state health guidelines. Students will not be allowed to have any personal guests, except for a single person who will be allowed to assist them at move-in.
The announcement notes that the college, “will not be able to organize large-scale events in person,” although more specific announcements about dining, fitness and other activities and events will be released later in the summer. The school will also continue to make announcements about the status of sports and extracurricular activities through the summer.
As for parties, “At present … group gatherings of up to 25 people are permitted, though this could change at any time. Any such gatherings must be scheduled in spaces large enough to allow adequate physical distancing.”
Off-campus travel to the town of Middlebury, trails, lakes and other destinations will be prohibited until all students have completed the first two rounds of testing, after which restrictions may be relaxed depending on student behavior.
While staff who are able to work from home will continue to do so, those whose work is better completed on campus will undergo an approval process to work in modified, socially distant office spaces.
Bowdoin, one of Middlebury’s peers, announced earlier today that the college will open its doors in the fall, but only to certain students — first-years, transfer students, residential life staff and senior honors students who require Bowdoin’s facilities to complete their projects. Almost all classes will be taught in a remote capacity. Students who take a voluntary leave of absence will need to seek readmission to continue their studies at Bowdoin.
Although Middlebury does not expect to have to evacuate students mid-semester, Vermont health guidelines maintain that all students should be prepared to evacuate or go into lockdown at any time.
Students, both returning and newly admitted, will now have until July 6, two weeks from today, to make a decision about whether they want to take a leave of absence. While Middlebury maintains that those who choose to do so will be welcomed back, their return date may be restricted by housing limitations. Students will receive a full refund as long as they withdraw before the semester begins.
(06/18/20 6:53pm)
Even if Middlebury students return to campus in the fall, it will be to a college transformed in many ways by safety measures and changes related to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Administrators plan to announce a blueprint for next year on Monday, June 22, following colleges across the nation that have made transformative decisions about the fall semesters of their schools. On June 8, President Laurie Patton and Middlebury College Director of Health Services Mark Peluso published a letter in the Addison County Independent addressing the local community about their efforts and intentions regarding the return of students.
This week, screenshots of an email supposedly outlining a plan for fall were widely shared among students, although Sarah Ray, director of media relations, said that the plans detailed in that email cannot be confirmed and that the college will not make any official announcement until next Monday.
Meanwhile, it is clear that no matter what that announcement contains, Middlebury students will see a drastically different fall semester. “There is no scenario in which Fall 2020 will look like Fall 2019,” Provost Jeff Cason said in an email to The Campus.
At a Staff Council meeting on May 20, Patton shared that if a return to campus does occur, she is committed to bringing back as many students as possible. However, she noted, “In Vermont, that will probably not be the number of students we normally have because of a combination of things: summer melt in students depositing, those who are immunocompromised [and] international students because of visa challenges.”
Many of the Schools Abroad, including Germany, France, Brazil, Chile, India and Italy, have already officially been canceled for the fall. Spain will be in operation, while many others are still pending decisions.
Before the college officially reveals whether the Vermont campus will operate remotely or in-person next fall, here’s a look at how life at Middlebury could be different in a coronavirus-altered world.
Health Guidelines
One condition of the campus reopening this fall is the college’s ability to test every single student when they arrive at Middlebury, according to an announcement made by Patton at the May 20 Staff Council town hall.
The college will also need to be capable of isolating and quarantining students who test positive and of continuing testing throughout the semester.
“We have every expectation of being able to test every student upon their return to campus,” Cason said. “The cost is still to be determined.”
In their Addison Independent article, Patton and Peluso state that mandated contract tracing will also be a part of the health plan. They also mention that testing will occur in multiple rounds and that students will need to quarantine before and after traveling to campus.
Other health measures like daily temperature checks, a health pledge and a social distancing commitment may be required of students. The health communications and student life teams are currently designing the health pledge.
Students will also need to agree to sign a personal assumption of risk document, according to Patton.
“To date, in order to be equipped in advance, we have secured a high-volume testing supplier, are close to securing a [personal protective equipment] (PPE) contract, and have excellent options for contact tracing involving the Vermont Department of Health as well as other possible online solutions, which we are vetting now to ensure that they are effective while also maintaining privacy,” Patton and Peluso wrote.
Classroom procedures
“It’s likely that a percentage of our classes will be remote,” Patton said at the town hall. Many of the offices that students may regularly visit, she noted, may continue to operate remotely.
According to Cason, all students will “have courses that will be in person and remote.”
“In person classes will be very different because we will have to have social distancing protocols in place, so classes will need to have fewer students in them,” he said.
“Some [faculty] will teach remotely because of their own health risk factors. Other faculty will teach remotely, or in a hybrid fashion, because it will make sense for them to do that pedagogically,” Cason said.
In the case that students return to campus in the fall, he said, students will be informed of which classes will be in-person and which ones will still be remote. He noted that students who do not return to campus but are enrolled will have priority access to remote-only courses.
Residential life
A safe return to campus will likely involve a rethinking of residential spaces.
“We need to house students in ways that maximize social distancing and minimize spread,” Patton said at the town hall. “We will probably need to provide additional housing that may spread us out farther.”
Patton mentioned that, if Middlebury does reopen, the college would likely have fewer students on campus overall this fall.
“Many of our students will probably be living in singles,” Patton said. She also mentioned “eating in a socially distanced way” and that the college would need to reconcile the communal dining hall system and Vermont health guidelines regarding congregation.
A Campus analysis of currently available residential spaces suggests that, in Spring 2020, there were roughly 2,000 total residential rooms on campus open to students — including singles, doubles and triples. This does not account for rooms like lounges that could potentially be converted to housing.
This means that there were about 2,000 single-occupancy options on campus. In Spring, there were roughly 2,324 students living on campus.
In April of this year, the college addressed its plans to house an increased volume of students — a response to a presumed decrease in students studying abroad — by allowing students to live in properties owned by the college but not currently occupied by students and allowing more students to live off campus.
“We’re still working through use of communal spaces, but enhanced cleaning and sanitation regimens will certainly be in place, as will clear and specific instructions and expectations for how to share such spaces appropriately,” Doucet said. “In all cases, we’ll be guided by the latest public health information.”
Travel, visitors and events
According to Cason, visiting campus next fall would be limited.
“We are likely to have a dramatically reduced number of visitors to campus,” Cason said. “We are also going to need to rely on guidance from the State of Vermont when it comes to restrictions on the number of people who can be in the room at a time.”
It is unclear how exactly this will affect events like concerts, performances and guest lectures, although the current Vermont health guidelines allow a maximum gathering size of 25 people.
Patton and Peluso’s article states that part of a safe return will include “restrictions on travel and visitors, limiting gatherings according to Vermont guidance, social distancing protocols and other preventive measures to reduce the risk of infection, and an evacuation plan.”
The leaked email
An email disseminated among students and community members throughout this week appeared to outline certain protocols for next semester and seemed to suggest a return to campus. Screenshots of the email listed a fully-remote J-Term, a contract that would not allow students to leave campus and a plan to finish the in-person semester before Thanksgiving break as facets of a safe fall semester plan.
Sarah Ray says that the college considers these screenshots to contain “inaccurate information.”
“As we have stated before, Middlebury will release its plans on Monday, June 22. These official plans will be the result of exhaustive research and continual consultation with authorities and expert advisers, including the Vermont Department of Health, Governor Scott’s office, the CDC, and others,” Ray said in an email to The Campus. “Our plans are being informed by perspectives of Middlebury stakeholders through an inclusive process.”
Leaves of absence and enrollment
Uncertainty about next year has brought about an increase in student interest in taking a semester off, according to Doucet. A May 27 email from the Dean of Students revealed that those hoping to take a leave of absence will have to make that decision by July 6, two weeks after the college’s scheduled announcement of a roadmap for the fall semester.
“It’s pretty clear students and families just want to understand their options, so a proactive communication seemed like the best approach,” Doucet said of the decision to announce the option to students.
“The policy on leaves of absence hasn’t changed,” Doucet said. “The only difference from typical years is that we’re asking students to notify us of their intent to take a leave by July 6 to allow us some time to plan accordingly.”
“Inquiries about taking a gap year or deferring to enter with the Feb class have been slightly higher this year, although our official number of approved requests is in line with previous years as of this week,” Nicole Curvin, dean of admissions, said.
Curvin said that the target for incoming students is 640 for Regs and 110 for Febs — “As of today, our incoming deposits are above these targets to hopefully account for any melt that we experience through the summer.”
She cited Covid-19 and concerns about policing and race relations as topics that have been on the minds of incoming international students. Economic hardship as a result of the pandemic, she said, is a major consideration of incoming domestic students.
Incoming students also have until the July 6 deadline to defer for a semester or year.
Digital Director Benjy Renton contributed reporting.
(06/03/20 8:26pm)
The death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police officers and the other acts of cruelty and merciless killing we have seen are but a sliver of the full scope of the systemic and constant violence that Black Americans face — and have faced throughout history. Black Americans continue to be the target of a carnage characterized by impunity, which includes the recent death of Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia and the still-unprosecuted death of Breonna Taylor in Kentucky, among countless others.
Before anything else, we are all forced to ask ourselves what role we play in perpetuating a system that leaves room for such injustices. These reflections are not meant to be comfortable. They are not meant to be stagnant. To be anti-racist is not an achieved state of being, but rather a commitment to fighting complacency in your every motion.
As a media outlet dedicated to informing the Middlebury community and uplifting its voices, we have a responsibility to engage in this fight with everything we publish. We recognize dissatisfaction with national media coverage of the ongoing protests and cases of violence against Black communities, and we have our own frustrations about which protests and events are covered — and how.
Peaceful protests aren’t sensational, but they matter. And when news outlets gratuitously cover violence, looting and rioting while neglecting to thoroughly document peaceful demonstrations and the messages behind current movements, they lose deeply important context about what is happening in America right now. Even worse, they contribute to an inherently negative framing of protestors and obfuscate the intentions of protest movements. To meet our standards of reporting, we commit to coverage of protests that is multifaceted and message-focused.
We have a commitment to the truth, but truthful narratives hinge upon those who get to speak them. This involves actively seeking the sources that matter most when it comes to telling those stories. Right now, it requires amplifying the voices of the Black community in our coverage, especially when it comes to Black-led national and campus initiatives, activism and protests.
Furthermore, the violence against protestors calls for a reevaluation of the conventional standards of journalism. While the purpose of photos is to document events, we recognize that they can be weaponized by police forces — and that Black and Brown protestors are particularly vulnerable. Thus, going forward, we plan to prioritize the safety of protestors by omitting photos of Black Lives Matter and related protests that can be used to identify individuals easily.
But police brutality only scratches the surface of the institutional racism deeply entrenched in American society — one underpinned by political and economic structures that disenfranchise Black Americans and other people of color. These structures of marginalization are pervasive — and their existence at Middlebury is no exception. More importantly, they will persist long after protests leave the news cycle and Instagram stories sharing anti-racism resources expire.
Not long ago, The Campus had also been an institution that played a role in perpetuating these inequalities at Middlebury. Only four years ago — in 2016 — a group of cultural organizations sent an email to the entire student body condemning The Campus for failing Middlebury’s marginalized communities.
Organizations have a responsibility to address internal racism and bias — and The Campus is no different. We recognize that we as an organization, and as a platform, can do more to uplift the voices that often go unheard. As we begin our summer coverage, we invite you to point us in the right direction, inform us of the gaps in our coverage and share your perspectives with us.
The burden of making our coverage more inclusive also shouldn’t lie solely with underrepresented communities. In the coming weeks, we plan to reach out to the leaders of cultural organizations in an effort to begin dialogues that we hope will continue throughout the school year — and beyond. We also welcome you to share with us other proactive measures we can take.
The Campus is meant to serve as a forum for all voices — and not just in the Opinion section. While we encourage op-ed submissions from the student body at all times, there is space for your voice on every page. The Campus invites new writers and reporters to join any section, whether in News, Local, Arts & Culture or Sports. But we also welcome you to submit a letter to the editor, where we hope you will speak out against anything you feel we did wrong, missed or need to improve upon.
As a publication, we must continue to recognize that anti-racism is not a status that is conferred. Rather, it’s a series of deliberate decisions that we must make every day and consider with each issue we publish. We hope you’ll hold us accountable.
Bochu Ding ’21, Hattie LeFavour ’21 and Riley Board ’22 comprise The Campus’ executive team.
(05/31/20 3:32am)
A new charitable campaign — a collaboration between the Board of Trustees and the Office of Advancement — will see trustees donate $100 to the college for any other donation through June 30. Introduced at the May 8–9 trustee meeting, the initiative is a response to the economic hardships arising from the unfolding pandemic and has the added goal of inspiring charitable giving to the college.
“Trustees understand how precious the flexible dollars are for President Patton and Middlebury’s leaders, particularly at times of unexpected economic distress,” Trustee Board Chair George Lee ’88 and Vice Chair Ted Truscott ’83 said in an email to The Campus. “The trustees want to emphasize, through their example, their trust in Middlebury’s administrative leadership to use their gifts to advance Middlebury’s mission.”
Every time that a donation of any size is made to the college, trustees will match that with $100. The Office of Advancement offers many funds to which potential donors can choose to donate, including the Student Emergency Fund, the Fund for Staff Support, and the Financial Aid Fund, among others. Donations will be matched in any area of giving, according to Vice President for Advancement Colleen Fitzpatrick, although the college encourages students to prioritize donations to the Annual Giving, Financial Aid and Student Emergency Fund.
The 30 trustees will provide the matching funds with personal donations.
The average donation to the college in unrestricted funds from individual donors is $456, although the median donation is lower, at $100.
Fitzpatrick says that Advancement is hoping to see 2,000 unique donations of any size given during this campaign — this would mean a $200,000 match on behalf of trustees, on top of donations made by individuals.
This type of all-trustee challenge initiative has not occured in several years, although individual trustees or groups of trustees have served in recent years as challengers to specific funds: trustees who are also Middlebury parents have matched funds to the Parents Fund in the past, and last June, two anonymous trustees matched donations one-to-one for the end-of-year campaign.
“This initiative is borne out of a desire to be front-footed in expressing support for the College at this challenging moment, and to use that support as a catalyst to inspire others in the community to engage,” Lee and Truscott said.
At the most recent trustee meeting, according to Lee and Truscott, trustees also committed to a challenge initiative for the next fiscal year.
(05/07/20 9:48am)
While only an average of 15 to 20 students transfer out of Middlebury in a given year, Zeitgeist data from this fall shows that 43% percent of survey respondents, or 451 students, have considered transferring during their time at the college. However, the desire to transfer isn’t evenly distributed across the student body: students on financial aid and first generation students are more likely to think about transferring, and the answer to the question also depends on how long respondents have been at Midd.
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The number of students who have actually submitted an application to transfer is substantially lower, at just 6%.
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Students who receive financial aid are more likely to have considered transferring from Middlebury: nearly 50% of those on financial aid have considered it, while only 40% of those who do not receive financial aid have.
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First generation students are another group that is significantly more likely to consider transferring — 50% more likely to consider it, in fact. Nearly 60% of first generation Middlebury students say that they’ve thought about transferring from the college.
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Thoughts of transferring appear to increase over time at Middlebury, peaking among sophomores — the last year most students say they feel free to transfer before they’re too old to find a new fit. While only 34% of the class of 2023 has considered transferring, that jumps to 51% for the class of 2022, 43% for the class of 2021 and 43% for 2020. Febs are slightly more likely than Regs to consider transferring, with 47% of Febs saying yes to considering transferring, versus only 43% of Regs.
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By hometown, students who hail from New England are the least likely to have thought about transferring, while students from the Mid Atlantic — including New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania — are most likely to have considered it.
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The type of high school that one went to also influences whether or not transferring has been a consideration. The group most likely to think about transferring is those that went to charter or magnet schools, at 53%, followed by boarding schools at 48%, then public schools at 44%, then private or parochial day schools at 41%.
(05/07/20 9:47am)
The Middlebury academic experience is marked by a vast range of classes, a set of distribution requirements that push students to explore courses outside of their academic comfort zones, a strong honor code and small class sizes that allow students to develop relationships with their professors and peers.
But these college brochure bullet points don’t capture the full picture. This year, our Zeitgeist data answered more inconspicuous questions about those experiences, from why students skip class to what distribution requirements are hardest to fulfill, to how many students break the honor code and in what ways.
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Overall, students overwhelmingly feel intellectually stimulated at Middlebury, by their professors, their classes, their peers within their major and their friends. In fact, only 4% combined — 40 students — indicated that they either somewhat disagree or strongly disagree with the statement “I feel intellectually stimulated at Middlebury.” Sixty-five percent of students indicated that they strongly agree with the statement, while another 30% said that they somewhat agree.
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The vast majority of students indicated that they are most intellectually stimulated in the classroom, pointing to professors (39%), class material (35%) and classmates (8%). For some, the most prominent source of intellectual stimulation is outside the classroom: 10% of students indicated friends, followed by talks and student organizations, both at 3%.
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Students report consistent levels of intellectual stimulation across all majors. The concentrations with the fewest majors saying they felt intellectually stimulated were arts majors, with 57% of the 40 total arts majors choosing that option. Language majors — 32 total students — reported the highest rate of intellectual stimulation, at 72%. Arts and language majors were also less represented in the survey than most other majors.
Those 4% of students who strongly disagree about feeling intellectually stimulated are evenly distributed across major groups.
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Do students find that their peers within their major are intellectually stimulating? Almost two-thirds — 64% or 792 students — said yes. 18% said neither yes nor no, and 14% marked themselves as undeclared. Only 5%, or 63 students, indicated that they did not.
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Those who indicated that they are strongly stimulated by the other students in their major are most likely to be humanities, literature or natural sciences majors, and least likely to be arts, language or social sciences majors.
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And as for Middlebury’s Honor Code, which, “[r]equires of every student complete intellectual honesty” and which all students sign at the start of their time at the college, 46% of students wrote that they had broken the honor code, while the other 54% said that they had not. Last year, 35% wrote that they had broken the honor code, 57% said they hadn’t and another 8% chose ‘prefer not to answer’, an option which was not available on this year’s Zeitgeist.
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More than half of all honor code violations were with the use of unauthorized aid, such as translators, calculators, SparkNotes and friends’ edits. Cheating on a test comprised 29% of honor code violations while plagiarism, reusing papers and assignments and falsifying data made up the remaining 17% percent.
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Distribution requirements oblige students to take courses in seven of eight academic areas, in addition to four courses pertaining to certain civilizations areas out of six total regions. Students must also complete one comparative civilization course, and two College Writing courses. When asked which of these requirements is hardest to fill, the largest number of students, 24%, said that they did not have any trouble fulfilling any distribution requirements.
Students struggled most with the civilization requirement, with 20% indicating that this was the hardest to fulfill. Of the eight core requirements, students report having the most trouble fulfilling the physical and life sciences (SCI) requirement, at 12%. This is followed by deductive reasoning (DED) at 9% and then a foreign language (LNG) at 7%.
The social analysis (SOC) requirement is the easiest to fulfill, with less than 1% of respondents choosing this option.
There are many factors that may make some requirements easier or harder to fulfill than others. One of these is the sheer number of classes available within a given tag: SOC, for example, was a requirement met by 150 classes offered this fall, compared to only 61 for Literature (LIT) or 26 for Philosophical and Religious Studies (PHL). Additionally, some tags are more interdisciplinary than others: SCI, for example, was tagged only to classes offered in the Biology, Chemistry, Environmental Studies (although only one class), Geography, Geology, Linguistics (also only one course), Neuroscience, Physics and Psychology departments, while the SOC requirement is offered in 30 departments, including in First-Year Seminars.
Additionally, the Foreign Language (LNG) requirement sometimes requires completion of two or three semesters of a language, such as in the case of intro-level language courses, compared to the single-semester required for almost all other categories.
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Middlebury appears to have a solid attendance record: only 7% of students reported skipping class at least once a week, with 37% skipping “a couple times a semester” and 23% skipping just once per semester. Another 33% reported that they never skip class.
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Students cited mental health as the most common reason for skipping class, with mental health being the cause of 23% of missed classes, followed by feeling overwhelmed by assignments, 21% of the time.
Physical health accounts for another 18% of missed classes, while 13% is the result of oversleeping. 11% of the time, students say that they skip because their class time does not feel productive.
Respondents said they miss just 3% of classes because peers are also skipping, while only 2% of skipping happens because students feel intimidated or uncomfortable because of the class or the people in it. Of the 60 respondents who noted skipping class for other reasons, 19 mentioned travel and five cited skiing. Other responses mentioned job interviews, having friends or family visiting or studying for exams in other classes.
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More than half of students reported spending between four and six hours on academic work outside of class per day, with 28% spending less time and 19% spending more. A total of 6% reported spending 10 or more hours a day on schoolwork outside of class.
(04/22/20 9:58am)
Each May, graduating seniors plaster the bulletin boards at the entrance of Proctor Dining Hall with so-called “Proc Crush Lists” — posters ranging from simple printed lists to elaborate craft projects, emblazoned with names of the creators’ crushes from their years at Middlebury.
Proc Crush Lists originated in 2005, when the tradition was brought to campus by then-senior Jason Lockhart ’05. Crush lists, originally intended to be written lists of romantic interests students had developed from their first year onward, have evolved to include lists of platonic love and appreciation.
A tradition Lockhart experienced as a student at Stuyvesant High School in New York inspired his desire to create the first crush lists. During his final year at Middlebury, he joined the Senior Committee, and while his peers planned the classic 100 Days party and Senior Week, Lockhart had one main goal: bringing crush lists to Midd.
Armed with the emails of every senior, Lockhart introduced the idea to his classmates, and then hung a long, large sheet of paper between two columns in Ross Dining Hall — yes, Ross — where students could post their lists. He started by hanging lists solicited from friends, around 30 or 40, and provided paper and pens so that students could create their own on the spot.
Initially, the display was intended to last only one day. But Lockhart’s friends encouraged him to leave the lists up indefinitely, and the collection eventually grew to around 100.
“It was a minor success,” Lockhart said.
The first year of crush lists elicited some drama: a friend of Lockhart’s put 200 people on his crush list, prompting the creation of the Facebook group, “I’m on John Parker’s* Crush List and I Don’t Feel Special,” and later the follow-up group, “I’m not on John Parker’s Crush List So What Does That Say About Me?”.
Lockhart graduated, and had nearly forgotten the lists until the following spring, when a friend who hadn’t yet graduated sent him a message: “You’d never believe it, the crush lists are back!” along with a picture of a new set of lists.
The lists have been a fixture at Middlebury ever since, although their location, content and style have all evolved over the past 15 years. Some of the lists have been archived by Special Collections, although they are not publicly available due to privacy concerns.
Initially located in Ross, crush lists have moved locations a few times over the years, sometimes split between Ross and Proctor; sometimes in Atwater, according to Lockhart; and now at their current home on the Proctor bulletin boards.
Seniors over the years have certainly raised the bar when it comes to crush list creativity. Now, they come in the form of Spotify playlists (with names as song titles), QR codes, athletics rosters, maps and more. They also exhibit a mix of intentions. While some students lean into the “crush” aspect, sometimes even including their phone numbers, others use the forum to list friends, professors, organizations or peers for whom they want to express appreciation. Most end up creating a hybrid of the two.
Others jump further outside the box, like Taite Shomo ’20.5, who posted a list this spring titled “List of Places I’ve Cried at Middlebury College: 2017–Present.”
This spring, as students were informed that they had just three days to evacuate the college due to Covid-19 concerns, the tradition appeared to be at risk. As seniors and senior Febs rushed to create their lists before a premature departure, a miscommunication about where lists could hang resulted in their removal from the Proctor bulletin boards. However, a March 11 email from SGA president Varsha Vijayakumar ’20 clarified the situation. Even in the complicated hurry to leave campus, the crush lists persisted.
Not every student is an advocate for the lists. Last year, our Sex Panther columnist addressed some of the concerns with the practice, like the power dynamics of seniors listing mostly younger students and the publicness of the lists that some may find uncomfortable. In 2016, a student tore down many of the lists and posted a manifesto in their place, denouncing the practice as predatory, according to one student who graduated that year.
The lists seem to invite a short fling or hook-up (or series of hook-ups) during the final days of college. But can crush lists help find long-lasting love? The fact that they crop up only in the final moments of a senior’s time at Middlebury means, probably not. But for some, like Harry Cramer ’16.5 and Masami Cookson ’17, the lists were the catalyst of a long-term relationship.
Cramer had seen Cookson at a couple of parties and they had some brief conversations, but they traveled in different circles: Cramer was involved in a cappella and was a Local editor on The Campus; Cookson was on the swim team.
“I decided, What the hell, I’ll add her to my list,” Cramer said. A mutual friend saw the list, asked if she could put the two of them in touch, and they went on a date shortly after.
“We got lunch outside of Proc,” Cramer said, “I remember that I had just come from frisbee practice, so I was all sweaty.” They went on a couple more dates after that and when they returned in the fall (Cramer was only a senior Feb when he hung up his list) began dating.
When they first formally met, having hardly talked before, things were a little awkward. But Cramer appreciated how a crush lists had pushed him to get to know somebody outside of his social circle.
“People at Midd tend to get stuck in their social bubbles too much, and it was nice to interact with Masami because the fact that we didn’t have a lot in common was refreshing,” Cramer said. “A lot of people get to their senior year and fall into the same routines, always talk to the same people: Proc Crush Lists can be a good way to meet people you wouldn’t otherwise interact with.”
The couple have been together for nearly four years, and now live together in Washington, D.C.
As for Lockhart, love wasn’t in the cards in the inaugural crush lists season. However, today he is engaged, and had planned to get married in May, although social distancing and restrictions on gatherings have put off the wedding for a bit. Lockhart still keeps up with the crush lists, looks forward to seeing them at reunions and appreciates that the tradition appears to be a permanent fixture at the college.
* Denotes pseudonym
Editor in chief Sabine Poux ’20 contributed reporting.
(04/16/20 10:03am)
The college is anticipating housing more students than usual on campus this fall, citing uncertainties about study abroad enrollment. As a result, the Office of Residential Life will be opening new housing that was not previously open to students and releasing more students than usual to live off-campus.
Middlebury is expecting “a higher number of students on campus in the fall than in previous years,” according to an email sent to all students on Monday, April 13. In an email to The Campus, Senior Associate Dean of Students Derek Doucet wrote that the college is not anticipating over-enrollment in its first-year class despite this year’s higher-than-normal acceptance rate. Rather, the anticipated boost in on-campus students is primarily due to a decline in the number of students who will be able to study abroad, amidst Covid-19-related restrictions.
If no students are able to go abroad this fall, which would be the worst-case scenario, the college would have to house roughly 200 more students on campus than during a typical semester, Doucet said.
According to the all-student email, Residential Life will be identifying new housing spaces on campus that were not previously available to students. They will also be releasing more students from the waitlist to live off-campus for the fall semester. A list of newly available residential spaces will be released to students prior to the room draw process, which has been delayed indefinitely.
“We’re brainstorming at this stage, and looking at a wide variety of options,” Doucet said. “In the process, we need to explore and balance considerations such as cost, present use, town zoning rules, etc. It’s too soon to share a list, as some options quickly prove unfeasible when explored, and new ideas are frequently being put forward.”
The school is looking into converting college-owned houses located on the periphery of campus into student residential spaces, according to Doucet. The college owns a number of properties like this, he said, but making them suitable for student housing is a complicated process.
One complication is that student residential spaces are required to have certain safety features, such as industrial fire safety sprinkler systems, which these houses currently don’t have.
Additionally, town zoning laws prohibit the college from housing more than three unrelated people together in a house that is not already designated as a college residential space. Residential Life will have to collaborate with the town to re-designate these new living spaces to make them available to students.
However, despite these restrictions, Doucet is confident that if the school needs to find housing for as many as 200 extra students, they can.
“We’ve been charged with finding quality housing for all of those students, so we will,” he said.
One way to ensure quality housing options is by increasing the number of students allowed to live off-campus, although Residential Life is wary of this option. The college hopes to keep off-campus approvals as low as it can. “We’re a residential college, and the present situation notwithstanding, see tremendous value in the community living experience here on campus,” Doucet said.
Doucet stressed that these adjustments will be temporary. “We’re trying to address short term crisis-related challenges, not fundamentally alter the housing inventory at the college,” he said. “I do not anticipate any long term increase in off-campus housing.”
Students have expressed anxieties about housing since the re-assignment of some small houses as superblocks, and since the announcement of an 8% increase in the admission rate brought up fears of over-enrollment. However, the college maintains that it is not anticipating an unprecedentedly large incoming class.
Despite rumors about the return of the modular complex (or “mods”), which were constructed in the late ’90s and were only meant to last 10 years, Doucet says that they are not planning to bring back this housing option at the moment. “We’re not going to take anything off the table, but none of us want to see the mods come back, and we haven’t gotten there yet,” he said.
Having more students on campus will also inevitably impact the college’s course offerings this fall. As such, the college has postponed course registration until mid-summer, per an April 15 email from Dean of Curriculum Suzanne Gurland.
(04/16/20 10:01am)
In a normal year, over half of Middlebury’s junior class studies abroad. Next year will likely be different. As students look to the fall semester, many who had planned to study abroad are reconsidering due to Covid-19-related travel and safety concerns, with questions over whether the Middlebury Summer Language Schools will run, and disappointment about the loss of the current semester on-campus.
The decline in students studying abroad will affect housing and course registration in the upcoming semester, and will have academic implications for students whose majors require a semester abroad — such as International and Global Studies (IGS) and International Politics and Economics (IP&E).
“We have seen a higher percentage of students than usual withdrawing their study abroad applications between the application deadline and now,” said Liz Ross, associate dean for international programs and off-campus study. Students who applied to study abroad this fall have until June 15 to seek readmission to the college.
At this time, it is uncertain how many juniors will choose to remain on the Vermont campus, or will ultimately be forced to stay as a result of cancellation of programs abroad. Some schools, like Binghamton University, have already canceled their study abroad programs for fall 2020. Ross said that all Middlebury programs are proceeding as planned at the moment, but said that her office is paying “especially close attention” to what’s going on in areas like the southern hemisphere and India, where programs have early start dates in July and August.
In a worst-case scenario, in which no students are able to go abroad this fall, the college anticipates having roughly 200 more students on campus than during a typical semester, according to Senior Associate Dean of Students Derek Doucet.
Many students attend Language Schools the summer before studying abroad in a non-English-speaking country to attain the necessary level of proficiency to meet Middlebury’s requirements for studying abroad. Uncertainty about the fate of these programs has also contributed to doubts and anxieties for students in this situation.
The college has not yet announced a decision about summer programming, which includes Language Schools. The announcement is set to come sometime in mid-April. Other northeast colleges, such as Harvard and Wesleyan, have already canceled on-campus summer programming or moved programs online.
The Registrar’s Office announced on April 15 that course registration for the fall semester would be pushed to mid-summer, as the office is currently unable to estimate how many students will be on campus next semester. The office also requested that students planning to study abroad register for classes as a fall back option.
Opting for a semester in Vermont
Many students pin study abroad as a cornerstone of the Middlebury experience. Choosing not to go, on the eve of that semester, has been a challenging decision. Some have reconsidered pursuing their travels because of the disappointment associated with the premature departure from campus this spring.
“My primary motivation to reconsider study abroad was because I felt like I, like all other students, was ripped away from my life at Midd too early and abruptly,” said Massimo Sassi ’22, who was planning to study in Florence, Italy in the fall.
Maia Sauer ’22 was planning to study in Paris, France, but has changed her mind since the college’s transition to remote learning.
“I think the study abroad decision is difficult, because I have to weigh both the short- and long-term consequences. Do I prioritize what could be the experience of a lifetime, and miss out on a semester at Midd with people to whom I’ve already had to say premature goodbyes?” Sauer said. “Or, do I forgo study abroad and regret my decision later, when it becomes harder and harder to plan a similar experience?”
Sauer also expressed that being away from campus prompted her to reconsider her priorities for the upcoming semester, and helped her realize that she is not interested in the lonely adjustment to life abroad, especially now.
Anna Wood ’22 had planned to study in Buenos Aires, Argentina in the fall — one of those programs with an early July start date — and is not confident that her program will happen.
“I figure that the program will most likely be canceled,” Wood said. “I also don’t want to spend more than one semester away from the campus and community that make Midd so special.”
Caroline Ritter ’22 was planning to study in Germany, but if Language Schools do not occur, she won’t be able to.
“Even if I could, though, losing the last half of our spring semester has made going abroad seem much less desirable,” she said. “I think it is probably a short-sighted decision to stay just because I miss my friends, but ultimately that is kind of the way I am leaning.”
All of the students interviewed noted having conversations with friends, peers and teammates who were also preemptively reconsidering studying abroad.
Academic implications
Several majors at Middlebury, including International and Global Studies (IGS), International Politics and Economics (IP&E) and some language majors, have a study abroad requirement. Although department-by-department decisions have not been made yet, these programs are aware that they may need to adapt to the crisis situation.
“Given the fact that we are dealing with a global pandemic and travel will certainly not be possible for a while, IGS will amend the requirements as needed,” said Tamar Mayer, the director of IGS.
Mayer says that after the programs in China were canceled before they even began this January, the IGS program amended their requirements and replaced the abroad experience with more language courses for those students. A similar process may occur in future situations, as language proficiency is also a requirement for the major.
Associate Political Science Professor Amy Yuen, the director of IP&E, reached out to students on April 7 to let them know that the department would make accommodations for the situation.
“If the college begins canceling study abroad programs, then the IP&E program will consult with administrators and faculty on how to accommodate students who have not fulfilled study abroad,” Yuen said. “There are many options to consider if this becomes an issue, but we will not leave students in the lurch. We will make some kind of accommodation.”
But for some students, the situation has caused a total reconsideration of academic priority.
“As I grappled with [study abroad], I began to think about if the IGS major was really something I wanted to do,” said Sassi, the student who was scheduled to study in Florence. With time at home to step back from academics and think about his trajectory at Middlebury, Sassi began to rethink his plans. “I started thinking about life after college, and to be honest, I didn’t really see a future for myself in the IGS field.”
Sassi has since taken steps toward becoming a joint music and anthropology major.
Correction: A previous version of this article said that Boston University, not Binghamton University, had canceled its programs abroad. The error has since been corrected.
(04/16/20 9:57am)
UPDATE: Wednesday, April 22
The Senior Committee is still hoping to hold an in-person Senior Week-style celebration in August, despite Monday's news that all Middlebury Summer Programs have been cancelled or will be held remotely.
“The cancellations of in-person summer programs have not affected our discussions about when to hold the in-person celebration," Vanessa Young, one of the committee's members, wrote in an email to The Campus on Monday. "We are still hoping to bring everyone back to campus in late August, but are, of course, keeping our options open if that becomes unfeasible."
The committee is prepared to re-evaulate as needed, though. In her email, Young wrote that since the Senior Week event would occur after many summer programs would have ended their on-campus stay, it’s "hard to say how those cancellations will impact the scheduling of the celebration."
——
Middlebury’s senior celebration this year will be unorthodox, but the members of the Senior Committee are making efforts to ensure that the event will be both as celebratory and accessible as possible.
President Laurie Patton announced two weeks ago that the college will be conducting two commencement ceremonies for the class of 2020: one virtual ceremony on May 24, the original graduation date, and one in-person ceremony at an undetermined date accompanied by a Senior Week-style celebration.
The Senior Committee hopes that the latter celebration — ideally a three-to-five-day long event — will replicate a typical Senior Week and will occur in mid-to-late August, CDC guidelines permitting. They are also working with the SGA and administration to provide seniors with financial assistance for potential travel and lodging costs.
“This senior class wants — and deserves — to be celebrated,” members of the Senior Committee wrote in an email to The Campus. Committee members include Olivia Reed, Sandhya Sewnauth, Jack Litowitz, Vanessa Young, Emily Kerstein, Steph Miller, Julia Sinton and Catherine Blayze, all members of the classes of 2020 and 2020.5.
The committee normally plays no role in the planning of commencement, and is only responsible for Senior Week and other senior traditions, but the administration reached out to ask their opinion on a dual ceremony.
“The virtual ceremony is really important to hold as well,” they said in support of the proposal. “Some of our classmates may be unable to join for an in-person ceremony, so it is important to have both closure and a celebration that benefits 100% of the class.”
The committee surveyed seniors about their preferences regarding both the virtual and in-person ceremonies. Results showed that most seniors would prefer for the in-person event to take place late this summer or during the 2020–2021 academic year.
One student proposed a virtual tour of Laurie Patton’s house as a fun component of the online commencement in May, which the committee says they’re working on. Members are meeting with Director of Events Management Jen Erwin on Friday to make some decisions about what the virtual ceremony will look like.
The committee says that, if the event happens this summer, they are hoping to house students in the rooms they lived in this past semester.
Holding the in-person event will also be an important way for the college to support local businesses in Middlebury, which have been hit hard by Covid-19 restrictions. “It’s the right thing to do for the class of 2020, but we’re going to need to do this for our own community,” said David Provost, the executive vice president for finance and administration. “For the restaurants, the inns: anything we can do to bring people back to the town, that’s really important.”
“Luckily, the vendors and companies we were working with — all of them being local — were extremely understanding of our situation and ensured they would continue to work with us, whatever that would end up meaning,” the committee said. “It’s important to us that we maintain this relationship with local businesses and support them as much as we can during this time.”
The committee and the administration are committed to bringing seniors back for this event, and making that financially possible. The process for financial assistance has not been finalized yet, but the budget will potentially be drawn from the Senior Committee’s budget, additional funding from SGA and the administration’s Student Emergency Fund. They are also considering redirecting the funds for the Senior Class Gift, which was intended to go towrad Energy2028, although fundraising numbers for that project were already low.
Kenshin Cho ’20, Director of the SGA Finance Committee, said that they can, “comfortably commit at least $30,000, which is approximately what [the Senior Committee] has in unused funds for this year.”
The Finance Committee has not been able to calculate the full potential contribution yet because they are still in the process of pooling unused student organization funds from the year. They will make an assessment after hearing a proposal from the Senior Committee.
Peer institutions and other Vermont colleges have taken similar steps to address remote commencements. Bates College and Trinity College have both scheduled virtual ceremonies, and promised to hold in-person ceremonies after the 2020–21 academic year. Tufts University originally scheduled a virtual ceremony, but after student push back announced that they would hold an in-person ceremony when it is safe to do so.
(03/15/20 2:20pm)
Faced with the sudden reality that their semesters would likely be ending, many Middlebury students spent their nights before the mandatory Covid-19-related evacuation partying, drinking and vandalizing the campus and town in abundance. Damage has included broken glass, stolen signs, strewn garbage, smashed furniture and windows, and items thrown into trees. Facilities staff are spending the weekend cleaning up messes across campus.
Normally, two employees must walk the campus twice a week for two hours to clear the campus of trash and hazards outside, explained College Landscape Horticulturist and Staff Council President Tim Parsons. On Thursday and Friday, it took teams of five entire days.
“There are seniors seeing people maybe for the last time ever, I get it,” Parsons said. “But why take it out on other people here? You’re part of a community.”
On Friday morning, as a group of five landscapers prepared to secure buildings that will be closed to students in the coming weeks, they reflected on spending the last two days walking around the campus picking up broken glass and demolished items.
One worker said he has seen items like fans and microwaves thrown out of windows, and that at least 10 to 15 soap dispensers have been ripped off the walls in residential halls and smashed.
Others expressed concern for dogs and students walking across the campus who might be injured by the shards of glass strewn in the grass and on sidewalks.
Some landscapers had to wrestle bikes, bike racks and other large items down from trees. Government traffic signs, weighing several hundred pounds and buried three feet into the ground, were torn out of the earth and discarded, or are missing entirely.
The sign that designates President Laurie Patton’s parking space was ripped from the ground — it is still missing.
According to Custodial Supervisor Dan Celik, other residential hall damages have included smashed windows in Forrest Hall and Battell Hall, a shattered glass door in the Tavern Social House, smashed scaffolding outside Atwater Hall B, broken lights and windows in Chateau, ripped-down hall lights in the Ross complex, a hole smashed into the wall at 48 South Street (KDR House), discharged fire extinguishers in Allen Hall and other ripped signs and bulletin boards around campus.
The college has not yet assessed the total cost of the destruction. Damages in residential halls are charged to students based on their location. Damages outside are absorbed by the facilities budget.
Parsons said that the damage in the past few days has been worse than that of a typical Senior Week. He theorizes that Senior Week usually has a series of planned activities that keep students off campus or otherwise busy, which can prevent chaos like that which occurred this week.
“[Landscaping staff] would have loved to help students and their families pack up their cars,” Parsons said. “But instead, they spent their time picking up broken glass.”
Damage also extended into the town of Middlebury. Two Brothers Tavern, a restaurant and bar located a short walk from campus, was hosting its weekly Thursday College Night when its sign was partially pulled off and its American flag torn down.
https://www.facebook.com/twobros/posts/3072215259456274
“Small businesses like ours have razor thin profit margins and even less time to pay for and fix such things as those caused by last night's destructive behavior,” Two Brothers wrote in a Facebook post. “Have a little respect when you are here, at home and everywhere you go in the world.”
According to the Facebook post, Two Brothers is now reevaluating the continuation of College Night come fall.
(02/13/20 10:54am)
Lucia Evans ’05 applied early decision to Middlebury. When she was a student here, she lived in Hepburn, Stew and Voter. She acted in plays, ate in the dining halls and took literature classes.
She is also one of more than 100 women who have accused famed Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein of sexual assault, for an alleged incident that occured the summer before her senior year at Middlebury. She was part of some of the first criminal charges brought against Weinstein and an integral part of the dissemination of the #MeToo movement.
Evans, then Lucia Stoller, now runs a marketing consulting company, but was an aspiring actress in the summer of 2004 when she met Weinstein at a club in SoHo, New York. She agreed to a meeting at his office at a later date to talk about two scripts, where she alleges he assaulted her, forcing her to perform oral sex.
In 2017, Evans opened up about her experience to Ronan Farrow for his groundbreaking story in The New Yorker about allegations against Weinstein. The article prompted the New York police to contact Evans about pressing charges against Weinstein — they said she was “a highly credible witness” and repeatedly told her that she was “the only one who could put him in jail.” After months of deliberation, she agreed to join the criminal case.
Despite insistence from NYPD detectives about the viability of her case, Evans’ suit was dropped the following year when it was discovered that the lead detective on the case had failed to inform prosecutors about a witness with a conflicting testimony. Still, her decision to press charges helped jumpstart the legal process against Weinstein.
Now, Weinstein is on trial for five felony counts, including rape and predatory sexual assault, and six women are expected to testify against him. Weinstein and his lawyers maintain that all encounters were consensual.
The Campus spoke with Evans about her time at Middlebury, the process of prosecuting Harvey Weinstein and how the events of the summer before her senior year affected the rest of her life.
Editor’s note: This conversation contains references to sexual assault, rape and suicide. It has been lightly edited for clarity and length.
RILEY BOARD: When we first contacted you, you said that you’d be happy to speak with us because Middlebury had a special place in your heart. Can you talk about that? What did you do and study at Middlebury?
LUCIA EVANS: I was a Literary Studies and Theater double major. It was just a really special place for me. All of my best friends, my close friends now, are my friends from my junior and senior years there. Something about the place is so special.
I think the only thing that kind of soured it for me was, obviously, my sexual assault, which occurred the summer after junior year — so my senior year was a bit of a nightmare. But I think the people who go there just really want to make a difference in whatever field they’re in or whatever they’re doing, they always have multifaceted interests outside of class and really are the smartest people I’ve ever met. They continue to be the people that challenge me to this day.
RB: You mentioned in your most recent interview with Ronan Farrow that you had had a “magically good” life before [the alleged] assault happened, and that you had to reconcile how this affected and changed you, the before and after. It happened before your last year at Middlebury — then you came back to campus for another year. What was that like? What was it like in the immediate aftermath, the return to school?
LE: It’s so crazy, because that year was such a happy year for me a lot of the time. It was honestly the year where I had my closest friends and kind of my best group and took fantastic classes and had a really great social life. I was really active and — and yet at the same time, I felt like I was living this other life.
After I came back to school, I told my close group of friends, my roommates. We lived in Voter at the time, it was awesome. Voter was always a place I wanted to live, and I just never thought I would and I was so happy with this group of girls, with our space and our life that we shared. I really felt like I needed to tell them the honest truth. I didn’t tell anyone else the scope of what happened. Emotionally, it was a period of very high highs and very low lows.
I had the opportunity to play this role in the play “Necessary Targets,” which is a play by Eve Ensler [’75]. My character was on stage the entire play but she doesn’t speak except for one long monologue kind of toward the end where it is revealed — and she’s been holding a baby the whole time — and it’s revealed that the baby has passed away, and in her hands are just a bunch of rags, and she has been raped. And so she tells her whole story. And it’s heart wrenching. And I remember the director, when I was auditioning, saying, “You can just channel this character so well, it’s amazing.” And I remember thinking, “If only you knew why I could do this so easily.” And it was because it had literally just happened to me.
I kind of felt that in playing that role, that I had told my parents, which is ridiculous, but it actually really calmed me down and helped me deal with it for a few years, because I felt like in my own way that I had told them what happened to me. And then I could be at peace, which was, of course, not true. But it did give me some semblance of normalcy.
RB: Did you seek out help at Middlebury after that summer? From where did you draw support?
LE: When the cops came to my house two years ago and told me I could put him in jail, they were like, “Why didn’t you come to us right away?” And I said, “Why would I have come to you?” I mean, he was so powerful at that time — and he was the biggest producer in Hollywood. I couldn’t watch the Oscars or anything after it happened to me because I would see him everywhere. Every film, I still see his name everywhere.
I try to not beat myself up for what I didn’t do but obviously do wish I had gotten help. And I would advise anyone going through something similar to absolutely seek help, because it just compounds over the years and it becomes worse and worse and you’ll end up hurting yourself like I did for many years. And I don’t wish that on anybody else.
RB: We’re obviously in a very specific cultural moment, that of the #MeToo movement, in which survivors are coming forward in unprecedented numbers and college campuses are offering more institutional support for victims than ever before. What was the culture around consent and sexual assault when you were a student here? Was it possible to talk to your friends and peers about what you’d endured?
LE: If the #MeToo movement had happened then, there’s no question I would have said something right away. There was such a stigma around it then, and little did I know that 100 plus women were going through the same thing as me at the same exact time. And then obviously, women all over the world are dealing with much, much worse, and they have zero support.
It was hard for me to even say what happened to me and identify myself as a victim — or as a survivor, because now we’re meant to use the word survivor. Sometimes you feel like a victim, sometimes you feel like a survivor. You can be both, right? But I do remember at Middlebury, when I was feeling suicidal, my boyfriend at the time reached out to campus security — they were really fantastic. They were very supportive, even then. But the [#MeToo] movement didn’t exist. And there wasn’t yet that tipping point of cultural change where it became OK to talk about this, where people want you to tell the truth. Everyone I had met at Midd was great, I just was not ready. And the world probably wasn’t ready either.
RB: In the episode of “The Catch and Kill Podcast” on which you appeared, you spoke about how [the alleged] assault affected your confidence with acting and your career. Can you talk about that? How did that ordeal change your plans for the future?
LE: It completely changed it, for two reasons. One of them was that in my entire time as an actor, I’d always been of the school of thought that acting should come from a place of real emotion and raw energy — and you translate that into the character. Acting post-college was a struggle, because I was at a Meisner acting school that was all about coming from that place of real truth. So first of all, I couldn’t find my real truth because I was absolutely not ready to talk about anything. Whenever I tried to tap into any real emotion, I would just shut down. There was only one time when I was able to kind of let loose and then I knew after that I couldn’t do it anymore, it was just too painful. Even though everyone said, “Wow, that was amazing.” I was like, I can’t do it. I couldn’t act when I was hiding something that big.
The other reason was just because I had seen the worst of the industry, very quickly, and I thought that was what the industry was like. And I thought, I don’t want to do that. I have no interest. Now the whole narrative that they’re spinning is that people did it for roles. But I never got a role. And I never wanted a role after that, because I didn’t want to get a role like that. I just was not interested in being part of a system that just chewed up and spat out woman and didn’t respect them and forced them to perform sexual acts against their will.
RB: Now that your case has been dropped, what has it been like for you to experience Weinstein’s trial?
LE: I would have a lot more trouble experiencing it if it hadn’t been for this photo shoot [“100 Women vs. Harvey Weinstein”] that me and my fellow Silence Breakers participated in for New York Mag. It was so amazing meeting these people — we have an email chain that we’ve been on for years, but it was just me and a bunch of actresses. It’s so surreal for me. I’m the only non-actress on this email chain. It was like Rose McGowan and the other Silence Breakers, and I’m one of them, but I’d never met them. And meeting them was so meaningful and wonderful — and I just felt like I had all these sisters. And so thank God that happened before the trial, because now I have this amazing network of women who’ve been through some of the same things that I have and have been hurt by this horrible person but now we’re empowered and we’re a collective.
[pullquote speaker="Lucia Evans ’05" photo="" align="center" background="on" border="all" shadow="on"] Now the whole narrative that they’re spinning is that people did it for roles. But I never got a role. And I never wanted a role after that, because I didn’t want to get a role like that.[/pullquote]
RB: I wanted to talk a bit about an interview with Donna Rotunno, Harvey Weinstein’s lawyer, that was aired in an episode of “The Daily” last Friday. Have you listened to the interview?
LE: No, I couldn’t listen to it. And I think that’s also an important point. Just because I think it’s important to realize that you do not have to do everything, because media consumption is so damaging sometimes. And I would just encourage people to take a step back and just not feel like they have to consume everything. Because your health is more important than browsing Instagram, you know what I mean? Or reading or listening to the podcast that you think might be triggering for you.
Tell me what I missed.
RB: Do you mind if I read you a quote from Rotunno from the interview?
LE: OK, sure.
RB: “So when I make comments and say ‘if you go to the hotel room,’ doesn’t mean you deserve to have something bad happen to you. But if you go to the hotel room, you continue to perpetrate a culture that allows that to be acceptable. And so if women take the power and women say, none of us are going to a hotel room, then that culture must change.” This was in reference to the circumstances under which many of the alleged assaults by Weinstein occured. How would you respond to that quote?
LE: I knew that he was a really dangerous person, and that put me on extra guard — I wasn’t going to go and meet with him late at night because I was nervous about him. I wasn’t as nervous as I should have been. But I went to his office in the middle of the day, when there would be people, because how could something bad happen to me, surrounded by people?
Also, why would somebody want to put themselves through this hell? I mean, it’s not like we’re getting anything out of this. None of us have gotten a thing out of this. This is not a fame-seeking thing. In fact, we’ve only lost jobs, we’ve only lost like careers and opportunities because of this.
We just really want to help and that’s the only reason why we’re doing it. I hope people continue to want to help because it’s the only way that any changes are ever going to happen.
RB: What advice would you give to someone who has just graduated and is beginning to navigate industries, like the movie industry, that can be fraught with certain injustices and circumstances like the ones that you have experienced?
LE: I would just encourage people to talk to someone as quickly as you can, because I wasted far too much time not being open and honest. Even though you can have some great times — it wasn’t like I just wiped 13 years off of my life. I got married, I have a wonderful career, I’ve had great things happen to me. But there’s still something in the back of my mind that wouldn’t leave me alone. And this thing that I hadn’t told anyone was like eating me up. So I would encourage people to talk about it with someone they trust and trust that person that they’re talking to.
I remember thinking in college, during my senior year, I just wish that my parents would tell me that I was still a good person, that it was okay that this happened to me. I just needed some type of validation, that I was okay and that I was still a good person, because I still thought it was my fault, which obviously it was not.
Also, I would not be afraid of the criminal justice system, even though I’ve had a really horrible experience with it. Because honestly, if you don’t try to make a difference and change the law, there’s no way that anything is ever going to change around here. And we all know that things have to change. So I would just say if there is ever an opportunity that anyone has to try to make a difference in that way, don’t be afraid of it. I’ve had the experience I’ve had and I would do it again, even though it was painful. The more you revisit these horrible things actually really helps you heal, even though you don’t want to go back to these places. And I hope no one ever has to go through what I did. And some have gone through far worse than I have. But it really is amazing how much it can help you heal by talking about it.
(01/23/20 11:04am)
[gallery ids="47983,47981,47982"]
Following a fall semester wrought with student-caused residential building damages, especially among the buildings of Atwater Commons, students living in many of these residential halls have been charged for the common space damages that were not attributable to specific perpetrators.
“Prior to the Holiday break, all damages were totaled by building. Any damage to which a responsible student(s) had been identified was billed accordingly,” Atwater Commons Coordinator MariAnn Osborne wrote in an email to residents of Allen Hall, the Chateau, Coffrin Hall and Atwater buildings A and B. “Any remaining damage was totaled and shared equally among the residents of the area or building. These costs were added to student accounts and labelled as ‘damage’.”
Damages across all Atwater dorms for the fall semester totaled $5,953.16. Charges across all campus residential buildings were roughly $4,200, $2,700, $3,500 and $6,010 for the 2017–18, 2016–17, 2015–16 and 2014–15 academic years, respectively.
Individual students incurred charges as little as $3 and as much as $40 for these “remaining damages.” Some charges were distributed to whole residential buildings, while others were allocated to specific hallways or towers.
Damages in Atwater A and B included the removal of signs and urination in elevators; Allen had several signs torn from the walls; the Chateau sustained broken lounge furniture, urine and scorch marks in elevators, and destruction in bathrooms.
Last fall, a community meeting hosted by Atwater Commons Residence Director Esther Thomas included discussions of financial responsibility for damages in common areas or halls with no identified perpetrator. Students at the meeting expressed disappointment with shared charges like the ones distributed for the Fall semester.
Damage and charges are not limited to Atwater Commons: other halls and buildings on campus are charged accordingly for the cost of destruction maintenance.
(01/23/20 11:01am)
UPDATE — Friday, January 24: In an all-school email this afternoon, Director of Public Safety Lisa Burchard announced that several new stickers, advertising the same white supremacy organization as those found two weeks ago, were found on street signs and lamp posts on Old Chapel Road and South Main Street, and on an outdoor sculpture near the Axinn Center. At least one other sticker was found on the handicap accessibility button outside of Wright Theater. The Department of Public Safety is currently investigating these incidents.
——
Thursday, January 23
Three stickers promoting a white supremacist organization appeared on campus and in the town of Middlebury during the first week of Winter Term. Some stickers linked to a white supremacist website through QR codes. All stickers have since been removed, and the Department of Public Safety (DPS) began an investigation into the dissemination of the stickers.
The stickers were found on a sign on the outside of the McCullough Student Center, on the outside of the Center for Community Engagement building, and at a Jewish organization in town that asked not to be identified by name.
The stickers came to the attention of the Community Bias Response Team (CBRT) through a submission in their online reporting system (go/bias) and through the observations of staff and faculty members.
The CBRT announced the incidents through a student-wide email on Jan. 10. “The views of hate groups, even in the absence of direct action, still cause harm and foster an environment where members of our campus community feel unwelcome or unsafe, especially given ongoing efforts to promote hate and violence within our larger culture,” the email read.
The stickers include a QR code that links to the website of an organization identified by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a white nationalist hate group, as well as the group’s logo. This group has organized campaigns to disseminate their stickers and other promotional materials across the country.
In the all-campus email, the CBRT chose not to identify the group. “We recognize that one of the goals of such organizations is to provoke a reaction and thereby increase the attention the organization receives,” the email reads.
“One of the main goals of these organizations is to provoke outrage, which leads to different kinds of situations,” said Renee Wells, the college’s director of education for equity and inclusion and a member of the CBRT. “They often provoke institutional statements about those incidents, which then get more widely circulated and are used for publicity by the organization.”
This is not the first time that Middlebury’s campus has been the target of campaigns by white supremacist oragnizations. In the spring of 2018, fliers with pictures of the confederate flag and Bible verses, also advertising white supremacist organizations, appeared in the Davis Family Library, as well as in several other Vermont public and university libraries.
“There’s a pretty intentional and sustained effort by these kinds of organizations to target college campuses, so I think we’re always going to be one of the potential targets that exists,” Wells said.
Paul Flores Clavel ’22 witnessed one of the stickers. “It’s disappointing but not surprising,” he said. “I think we forget Middlebury isn’t immune to white supremacists.”
Wells notes that while the stickers mark a small incident, their connection to an organization whose ideologies have been tied to acts of hate and violence is impossible to ignore.
“It’s important to know that things like this happen all over the place and they’re not reflections of the institution, the place where it happens, but rather a part of larger cultural tensions and movements,” Wells said.
In response to the incident, the CBRT hosted a Restorative Circle on the night of Tuesday, Jan. 14. Typically, circles allow spaces for those who have been harmed and those who have caused harm to meet and communicate, although in this case, because the poster of the stickers has not been identified, the circle was simply a space for those impacted to discuss the situation.
“There’s not much that you can do in terms of prevention, but we can certainly condemn them, whether it’s someone from campus or someone external,” Wells said of the decision to host the circle. “We can condemn it, we can be mindful of the impact.”
DPS has opened an investigation into the posting of the stickers, because their nature and location violate the college’s policy on decency and vandalism.
“Stickers placed in this manner are an act of disrespect of college property as well as unlawful mischief, commonly known as vandalism,” Lisa Burchard, director of public safety, said.
At this time, DPS has interviewed the staff members who found the stickers, but has not been able to identify a responsible person. They believe that the stickers were placed over December break.
Plans to roll out security cameras in locations across campus by the end of this academic year could increase the likelihood of identifying people responsible for events like this.
“In the future, there may be a camera near an entrance, and it may contain video footage of an incident such as this one,” Burchard said. “Posting hate material that is designed and intended to intimidate members of our community is a violation of our college policies.”
Administrators are reviewing a security camera policy right now. Burchard says that the policy has been drafted in a way that will allow DPS to review footage when it related to situations of safety, security, violations of law and violations of college policy.
(12/11/19 4:24am)
Middlebury professor and visiting scholar Stanley Sloan should have been in Copenhagen, Denmark today, speaking at the NATO 70th Anniversary Seminar about the subject he has studied for 50 years: European security issues and the NATO alliance. Instead, he is at home in Vermont, watching as the world reacts to the cancellation of that conference.
The cancellation followed Sloan’s disinvitation to the event, which came at the request of the U.S. Ambassador to Denmark Carla Sands. Until its cancellation, the seminar was to be hosted jointly by the Danish Atlantic Council (DAC) and the U.S. Embassy in Denmark, and was set to include 12 keynote speakers. Sloan was asked to fill in for one after a last-minute withdrawal on Dec. 1. He immediately accepted and booked flights to Copenhagen.
“On behalf of the Embassy of the United States of America and the Danish Atlantic Council, we take great pleasure in requesting your company as Keynote Speaker at the Conference,” read a letter sent to Sloan on Dec. 1, signed by Ambassador Sands and the Secretary-General of the DAC, Lars Bangert Struwe.
However, on the morning of Saturday, Dec. 7, a follow-up letter from the DAC struck a different tone.
“The Danish Atlantic Council via the official channels became instructed that Ambassador Carla Sands does not want [your] presence at the Conference,” Struwe wrote in the letter, followed by an affirmation that the council still supported Sloan’s attendance.
“It must be made perfectly clear that this is in total disharmony with the way the Danish Atlantic Council want to act,” Struwe wrote. “Thus, knowing that you do criticise the President of the United States, we believe that Freedom of Speech is paramount in every democracy, and we do not see a conflict between the Freedom of Speech and participating as a Speaker at an international conference.”
However, Struwe wrote, the embassy is a “major financial founder” of the conference, and the Council did not have the power to disagree with the embassy’s decision to disinvite Sloan.
On Twitter, the U.S. Embassy in Denmark has written that the choice to disinvite Sloan was related to his last-minute appointment to the speaking roster, and the lack of collaborative decision making in the invitation process. Sloan has not had any direct communication with the embassy or the state department.
Despite the embassy’s claims that Sloan was disinvited over procedural concerns, Sloan is confident that it is related to his recent critiques of President Donald Trump over Twitter, especially ones related to the NATO Leaders Meeting in London two weekends ago. The DAC’s comments seem to echo a similar sentiment.
“I was just continuing my critique of his approach to NATO, which has been disastrous,” Sloan said. Sloan has been publicly critical of Trump through social media, public appearances and his books for years.
On Dec. 8, the DAC decided to cancel the entire NATO 70th Anniversary Seminar because the planning of the conference had become “too problematic” and it would be unfair to ask the invited speakers to involve themselves, which Struwe said in a letter published by the DAC.
The U.S. Embassy critiqued the DAC’s decision to cancel the Seminar in a series of Dec. 8 tweets.
Sloan thought that the order to cancel his lecture could have been enacted by either Ambassador Sands or by a direction from Washington, according to personal sources in Denmark.
“This is a consequence of Trumpism,” Sloan said. “Whether the order came from Washington or the ambassador, if it was her and she canceled it because she knew the president would not want someone critical of him on the program ... they’re all the same thing to me.”
If his public criticism is in fact the reason for the cancellation, Sloan said, then he is fearful for American democracy. He has been giving lectures through the State Department Public Diplomacy program since 1983, and says that he has always had the ability to critique policy of any administration, Republican or Democrat.
When his appearance was canceled, Sloan took to social media and posted a written copy of the speech he had planned to give, which received support from Danes and Americans on Twitter and Facebook, as well as from the DAC.
In his speech, Sloan intended to talk about the external threats to NATO — Russia, terrorism and China — as well as internal threats, which he said include Trump. He also concluded the speech by imagining the “negative” future of the alliance, one in which Trump is re-elected.
Sloan noted the irony of the embassy’s decision: “Frankly, if I had given that talk at the conference, it would have produced some debate at the meeting, might have gotten a little bit of press in Denmark,” he said. “Now, I’m sure that the embassy and state department aren’t happy because they created a whole new reality, and they’ve gotten slammed by Danish press, and this continues to be a topic of discussion in Denmark and the U.S.”
Travis Sanderson ’19 is one of several Middlebury students who worked as a research assistant under Sloan at the college. Sanderson helped Sloan conduct research into advocating for strengthening of the political center.
Sanderson expressed worry about the administration's reaction to a speaker as centrist as Sloan.
“He is a mainline voice in defense of Western institutions,” Sanderson wrote in an email to The Campus. “If the Trump administration is now pressuring think tanks to not welcome the voice of someone who advocates for ‘radical centrist populism,’ a middle-of-the-road viewpoint, then we have already moved beyond partisan attacks and into the realm of silencing any voices that do not belong to the far right politics of the administration.”
Sloan agreed.
“[The Trump administration] won’t allow all variety of perspectives. It is a weakness of democracy under this president, and something that everyone should be concerned about,” he said.
Sloan is teaching “American Power: Soft, Hard, or Smart” this January. He has been teaching courses during Middlebury’s Winter Term since 2005.
A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that Sloan is a fellow at the Danish Atlantic Council. He is a non-resident Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council of the United States.