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(11/21/19 11:05am)
Tim Parsons, the college’s horticulturist, wants you to imagine a campus without any trees: no shade in the summer, nothing to block the wind and snow in winter, no brilliant color change in the fall. While this grim future is not a real risk, the college has already seen $2,000 worth of damages to campus trees this fall.
Tree vandalism on campus, a costly and destructive practice that was common about 10 years ago, has picked up again this fall, concurrent with increases in residential property damage, according to Parsons.
In 2009, Parsons began noticing broken branches around campus, often near Battell Hall. Over the next four years, the damages picked up and became increasingly drastic: Trees were often rocked back and forth and ripped clean out of the ground.
“This wasn’t just a random ‘Let’s grab a branch and break it as we walk by,’” Parsons wrote on his blog, The Middlebury Landscape, in 2010, about the destruction of a small red maple outside of Davis Library. “This was intentionally standing in front of a tree, breaking as many branches as you can reach. Cruel, senseless, disheartening, and more than a little bewildering. What can we do as a community?”
During senior week in 2013, several tree damages occured. Then suddenly, according to Parsons, at the end of the year, it effectively stopped. Only a broken branch or two for six years, with a few exceptions.
And then, this fall, it picked up again. An entire, recently-planted white spruce tree was ripped out of the ground, roots and all, near the new building at 75 Shannon St., dragged around to the front of the building and dumped among trash cans there. A small flowering dogwood tree between Mead Chapel and Hepburn Hall was destroyed, effectively broken in half. Most recently, a dogwood between Battell and Atwater was torn apart.
Between 2009 and 2013, when tree damage occurred frequently, Parsons would take a trip around campus every Monday morning to assess the trees and document new vandalism.
“And it’s starting to feel again like I should do that,” he said of this fall.
“Horticulturally, it’s been a good year to be a tree,” Parsons wrote on his blog in 2010, noting a good growing season, lack of pests and a mild winter. “Being a tree on campus, though, has been stressful. The amount and severity of incidents against the landscape is rising, and I’m at a loss as to what to do.”
This appears once again to be the case. When a tree is damaged, especially at the level of severity of the incidents this fall, remedying the situation is not a simple process.
“If it’s split in half like the [tree outside of Mead Chapel], we’re going to cut it down and replant it in the Spring. But it’s more complicated than that, it takes a full year to replant a tree because it has to be reestablished and watered and pruned,” Parsons said. “It’s not just ‘They broke a tree, let’s slam a new one in there.’”
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Trees, Parsons says, are a big part of community: “There’s no better example of community than our shared trees. What would this place be without its trees?”
He added, “Trees do all sorts of things we don’t think about. They’re not just there. Just think about trees as a common, shared resource here that takes a long time to replace.”
According to facilities staff, no student will see the costs of the arboreal damage on their bill — unlike residential hall damage, which is sent to the respective commons office, tree damage is absorbed by the facilities budget.
Alcohol, aggression and the social honor code
In 2015, Parsons wrote on his blog that felt the tree damage moved beyond vandalism.
“Don’t think of it as vandalism,” he wrote. “Think of what is happening as aggression and violence. Vandalism is breaking off random branches here and there; violence is taking a well-established tree with a three inch trunk and rocking it back and forth for probably ten minutes until it snaps and breaks at the base.”
Over Winter term, Parsons teaches a course titled “Trees and the Urban Forest.” In a paper for that class, Brian Marland ’13 wrote about the relationship between alcohol and aggression toward trees. Most tree vandalism on campus appears directly linked to alcohol consumption, as it appears almost exclusively on weekend nights and frequently occurs in areas that are hotbeds of weekend activity, or on the routes to those locations. Marland argues in his essay that the nature of alcohol consumption and drinking culture on campus contributes to deliberate destruction.
Parsons believes that a solution to vandalism in shared spaces might be a social honor code, a companion to the academic honor code that would compel students to hold others accountable for bad public behavior. A social confrontation philosophy exists at Haverford College, and was debated by the Middlebury Community Council in 2014. The proposal never came to fruition, however, and was at the time criticized for its ambiguity, difficulty to enforce and lack of accountability.
Parsons notes these concerns as well.
“An honor code is only as good as its enforcement,” he said, acknowledging that it is hard for a younger student to approach, say, a senior who is rocking a four-foot tall tree out of the ground, and tell them to stop.
In a blog post from 2015, Parsons says himself, “I’d certainly be nervous to confront someone in the act, and I carry chainsaws around for a living.”
Current Community Council Co-Chair Roni Lezama ’22 noted similarities in the privileged behavior at the root of tree vandalism, residential hall damage and the treatment of dining hall dishes. Still, the social honor code has not been a point of discussion within the council in years.
“The vandalism that has occurred at the school recently is more than just ‘college kids being college kids.’ It’s about privilege. It always has been,” Lezama told The Campus.
(11/14/19 11:00am)
More than four weeks have passed since Atwater Commons Residence Director Esther Thomas called Atwater suites residents into a meeting about consistent damage in their buildings, including urination in elevators and sign theft. And, while all of the signs stolen in October have since been returned and inappropriate urination across campus seems to have come to a halt, destruction of and disrespect for property at Middlebury is nowhere near over.
Masted signs — the large blue-metal placards on posts outside many buildings on campus — were knocked down by students in the past several weeks, most notably outside of the Robert A. Jones ’59 House and Carr Hall, according to facilities staff. Repairs for these signs will collectively cost between $400 and $600, as the bases of the posts must be re-welded. Students also tore down recycling and custodial signs in Atwater Hall B.
Wayne Hall, a facilities supervisor, has worked at the college for 25 years, and has seen the levels of damage over the years ebb and flow based on the populations of different campus buildings.
“I get youthful exuberance and accidents, but the malicious vandalism and disrespect, I don’t get how people can feel okay about that,” Hall said.
On Monday, Oct. 14, shortly after the Atwater community meeting and only five weeks into this year, the total residential damage cost for the year came out to about $2,500. This suggests a higher rate of damage this year in comparison with others, given that during 2018–19 school year there were $4,200 in damages for the whole year. During the 2017–18 school year there were only $2,700 in damages.
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If destruction continues at this rate for the remainder of the school year, there could be an unprecedented $16,000 in residential hall damages. And, according to reporting from 2015, damages tend to pick up in the spring.
Hall and Custodial Supervisor Dan Celik spoke about the burden that deliberate damage places upon the custodial team, especially in a time of staff shortages.
“In the long run, [damages] are costing the college money. And with our staff reduction, I’d rather be fixing things that need to be fixed than fixing things that didn’t need to be broken,” Hall said.
Facilities has been suffering from staff shortages for years, but vacancies have peaked recently.
“I’ve been here for a long time and this is the first time that I remember having as many openings as we do,” an anonymous custodial staff member told The Campus last month.
When conducting fire safety checks, residential life and facilities will often find signs that have been stolen hanging on the walls of rooms and suites, like “trophies” according to Celik. The act of taking signs from the buildings in which people live for their own decor is particularly troubling to him.
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“You’re taking from your own community. You’re disfiguring your own building,” Celik said. “We pride ourselves on having a world class facility: not every place looks like this. And when it gets defaced it’s super frustrating. We do our best to make the bad places look good, keeping them clean.”
However, Celik noted, it’s not the so-called “bad places” — older buildings like Battell — where the damages primarily occur. It’s newer, nicer facilities like the Atwater suites.
Whodunnit?
Conversations about damage by students have often hinged on laying blame: if someone gets away with destruction without being caught — which is often the case — who should have to be responsible for the cost of repairs?
At the recent Atwater Community Meeting, students debated who should be charged for the $2,300 in damages that were originally to be divided among Atwater residents. Many argued that destruction in common spaces should not be charged to all residents, most of whom were not present at the time of damage or hosting the parties that brought in guests.
Thomas responded by imploring residents to set a tone in the building, and noting that they are broadly responsible for the space, even the communal spaces outside of their suites.
Celik and Hall echoed this sentiment. “We consider where you are now to be your home,” Hall said, referencing the way that students would likely behave in their own houses. He believes people are responsible for the buildings they live in and the behaviors of people who visit those spaces.
To students who have caused damage, either deliberately or accidentally, and want to avoid high fees for their entire building, facilities staff have a solution: fess up.
When a student comes forward about causing damage, the labor rate per hour is reduced from $59 to $39. When a specific student is not found to be responsible for damage, an entire hall or building will be charged the higher rate, but when responsible parties admit to destruction, they are individually charged at the lower rate.
While materials costs remain the same, facilities hopes to incentivize student honesty by reducing the labor fee in situations where students confess.
“I think if someone is honest enough to come forward and return the sign, we’re going to just fix the sign. We see that as an adult reaction. We’re not out to screw over the students, we just need to fix things,” Hall said.
(11/07/19 11:04am)
Middlebury’s student body has more people of color and more students from Southern states this year than ever before. The 2019 Fall Student Body Profile points to small but distinct trends toward greater racial, ethnic and geographic diversity among students, making this the least-white student body in Middlebury history. At the same time, however, the college’s population is still primarily drawn from the same states it historically has been.
This year, Middlebury’s domestic student population is comprised of 26% students of color, the highest in the school’s history. The report also reports that the student body is currently 53.1% female and 46.9% male.
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Dean of Admissions Nicole Curvin is happy about how the admissions team has “made progress in bringing students from many backgrounds, geographies and lived experiences” to the college.
“The admissions team has worked intentionally to broaden our reach to more diverse student populations in the U.S. and I believe we have made good strides,” Curvin said.
Curvin cited over 50 community organizations in the country that the college works with — these groups provide support, such as application prep, internships and admissions counseling for college applicants from groups that are traditionally underrepresented in higher education, with the hopes of building bridges between students from these groups and the college.
Massachusetts is now the most represented state in the student body, taking the lead over New York, which held the top spot in 2018. California and Connecticut hold the next two spots, as they did last year.
However, the profile also points to increases in the populations of students in many traditionally underrepresented Southeastern states. North Carolina has seen a 37% increase among the student population, while Georgia has seen a 21% increase. Texas is now the 10th most represented state, while Virginia and Florida take the 11th and 12th spots respectively.
Natalie Figueroa, the admissions counselor for several Southeastern states including Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North and South Carolina and Tennessee, pointed to an evolution in the way that admissions counselors reach out to students in these states. This can include group travel with other liberal arts colleges such as Bates, Harvey Mudd, Wellesley and Wesleyan to high school visits, college fairs and counselor breakfasts.
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“What has been especially important for me is to listen to the needs of students and high school counselors in those areas and to understand what best helps them through this process,” Figueroa said. “This can include elaborating on what a ‘liberal arts education’ entails, what winter is like, or how the transition has been for students coming to the Northeast for school.”
Visits from an admissions counselor can make the difference in a decision for some students from the South.
In addition to learning about the college from upperclassmen and being attracted to the language programs, Sophie Mueller ’23, a student from a private school in Atlanta, Georgia, met with a Middlebury counselor at a college fair during all four years of high school.
“These interactions encouraged me to apply and helped me learn more about Midd,” she said.
Curvin estimates that the high schools the admissions office visits are 60% private schools and 40% public.
Other students from the South have found their way to Middlebury through personal research, postings on sites like College Point, and through friends and peers who had gone to the Northeast for college themselves.
Ryan Kirby ’22 is from Lorena, Texas and applied to Middlebury at the recommendation of a friend up north. “I had never heard about Middlebury. New England was never even a thought to anybody at my school, and I am fairly certain I’m the only person in my class that came up north. Most did not leave the state.”
Kirby’s experience is not rare: Curvin pointed to lack of name recognition, as well as weather and financial challenges, as major factors that discourage students in the South from considering or attending Middlebury.
In a Newsroom article from last March, Curvin discussed a several-year effort to expand recruitment in Florida and other Southern states. Florida had the fifth highest rate of admitted students for the class of 2023, with 63 admitted, but ultimately had a lower yield than Northeastern states. Florida remains outside of the top-ten-most represented states on campus.
“There are a lot of conversations about affordability — coming to an institution like Middlebury over a state institution with merit money or funding for students is challenging, and those are conversations that we’re having,” Curvin said. “Florida is a beautiful lovely place with beaches and warm weather, and so talking to students about coming to New England can be a challenge, but I think we’ve seen a growth in students wanting to have this kind of college experience.”
“It was difficult to look at the price of Middlebury versus the University of Florida and Florida State and reason it,” said Kate Talano ’21.5 of Naples, Florida. “New England is a different way of life and if you’re not familiar with it, that can prevent you from wanting to go up north.”
“When you’re looking schools, you know the places that you know,” Talano said. “And in Florida, Middlebury is not one of those places.”
(10/31/19 10:02am)
In its first meeting of the academic year, the College Board of Trustees and its various committees discussed changes to the commons system, student-faculty relationships, future funding campaigns and enrollment at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey (MIIS).
When they visited campus, the more than 30 current trustees who serve on the board mingled with staff and students and discussed the board’s agenda. The board votes on proposals for budgetary changes that fall “outside of the normal process,” according to President Laurie Patton.
Patton recently wrote an installment for the SLG (Senior Leadership Group) Corner column that elaborated on the responsibilities and goals of trustees. Although board meetings are not open to the public and their content is confidential, Patton and Board Chair George Lee ’88 spoke to The Campus about the focus and structure of the most recent meeting.
“We meet in Wilson Hall, the boardroom, the library and while walking with each other through campus,” Patton and Lee said in a joint email to The Campus. “Board members met with students, faculty, and staff as well.” They noted that after the meetings, many board members attend athletic games or spend time in town.
For their October retreat, the board had four days of meetings, stretching from Wednesday to Saturday. Their two other yearly meetings, in the winter and spring, are each a day shorter.
A focus of the most recent meeting was BLUEprint, the residential life model developed in response to the How Will We Live Together report. This includes shifts in the structure of the commons system, like removing five separate commons in favor of two first-year “clusters,” establishing Hepburn Hall as first-year housing and the Ross complex as sophomore housing, as well as preliminary talks on a new student center.
Trustees did not vote on the changes to the commons system because, budgetarily, it is an evolution of the current system; however, they did hear presentations from Residential Life staff and ask questions about the changes.
In this case, Patton and Lee said, it was the Trustees’ job to “ask us challenging questions and hear updates on our progress.”
“The trustees were very positive and endorsed our directions,” Patton and Lee said of the conversations about BLUEprint, which was subsequently announced to students in an all-campus email. “They gave us an overall endorsement of our directions and we are excited about moving forward.”
Student Government Association (SGA) President Varsha Vijayakumar serves as the student constituent overseer to the College Board of Overseers, which functions like a committee within the Board of Trustees. This past weekend was her first time serving formally in this role, although she attended last spring’s meeting because of her position on the SGA.
“It’s refreshing to attend these meetings because you realize very quickly that they really do care — they care about how to make Middlebury feel more like a home for all students,” Vijayakumar said. “They care about the biggest issues facing our campus community, and most importantly, they care about developing tangible solutions to these problems.”
Vijayakumar cannot vote in meetings, but she expresses student voices and opinions through her position.
The CBO also discussed adding a second student constituent at last weekend’s meeting, according to Vijayakumar. The SGA first introduced a bill to do just that in April 2018, although the suggestion was ultimately not upheld. Vijayakumar noted that her presence at the meeting allowed a student perspective in an otherwise hypothetical conversation.
“Being there allowed me to ground some of the arguments in favor of the initiative in ways that wouldn’t necessarily have been possible had I not been present,” she said.
In addition to the student constituent, a faculty constituent and staff constituent also attended the CBO meeting and made recommendations. These roles are filled by History Professor Bill Hart and Associate Vice President for Advancement Operations Jami Black, respectively.
“My role is to listen carefully and to offer faculty perspectives, plural, on any given issue, such as curricular matters, or student internships, or faculty mentoring, or student financial aid, or on inclusivity and diversity, two key touch stones at the core of the College’s mission,” Hart said. “I and most of the faculty find these issues critically important for the full educational experience of Middlebury College students.”
Other topics discussed at the meeting included the faculty-student relationship and a fundraising initiative called the “Comprehensive Campaign,” which involves raising money for the college through campaigns focused on “themes that are part of Middlebury’s future,” according to Patton and Lee.
“We are particularly excited about themes of data literacy, increasing our global network, and creating a more cohesive student experience,” they said.
Within the Board of Trustees are several committees, like the Resources Committee, which deals with the college budget. Resources does a deep dive into the college’s finances at every meeting, according to Patton and Lee. After the workforce planning efforts of last year, the college has managed to reduce its deficit without formally laying off any employees, although the process has left many feeling “voiceless and overworked,” according to The Campus’ coverage of unionization efforts.
Last January, the board unanimously voted to divest from fossil fuels, and to create the broader Energy 2028 initiative, in response to years of student activism.
Correction: A previous version of this article conflated the College Board of Trustees and the College Board of Overseers, a committee within that board.
(10/10/19 10:01am)
Urination in elevators, broken beer bottles in stairwells and ripped-off door signs in Atwater A and B, totaling more than $2,000 in damages, have prompted conversations about community respect, culture and responsibility among suite residents and staff.
[pullquote speaker="Daniel Celik, Custodial Supervisor" photo="" align="center" background="on" border="all" shadow="off"]We need folks to realize that Atwater is our house, that elevator is part of our house. How would you like it if someone peed in your room and left it there?[/pullquote]
Facilities Supervisor Wayne Hall began noticing consistent and severe damages in the two upperclassman residence halls, well-known on campus as popular weekend-night social spots, during the first three weekends of the school year. Hall and Custodial Supervisor Daniel Celik, who oversees the buildings’ custodial staff, brought the damages to the attention of Atwater Commons Residence Director (CRD) Esther Thomas.
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“This is our house,” Celik told The Campus. “This is our life. We’re here every day. We need folks to realize that Atwater is our house, that elevator is part of our house. How would you like it if someone peed in your room and left it there?”
All seven of the signs stolen from Atwater A and B were anonymously returned early this week, some to public safety and some to the Atwater Commons office. Although emails sent to residents early last week suggested that all Atwater B residents would be charged for a portion of the estimated $2,300 in damages, the returning of the signs should reduce some of the costs, according to Facilities.
Thomas said that her office is “holding off on charges as we are still investigating.”
To address the impacts of the damages on residents and staff, Thomas and public safety hosted a mandatory community meeting Thursday, Oct. 3. Only one resident of each of the 43 suites and singles was required to attend, but the room, which fits more than 60, was filled to capacity, with additional students standing in the back.
“My goal is to put everyone in one room to talk about our community, and how the things that are happening affect others, and how we can hold each other accountable,” Thomas said.
At the meeting, Thomas called upon Atwater residents, as upperclassmen, to set the tone for the building and the Middlebury social scene more generally.
“Atwater is becoming known as the space where you can come and mess things up with no consequences,” she said. “When upperclassmen set a tone, usually that tone sticks. Will this conversation eliminate all of the issues? No. But I don’t think damage like this will be repeated.”
Two days after the meeting, Atwater B residents noticed phallic images drawn in marker in an elevator and on a suite door. A resident tried to scrub the drawing from the door, but was unable to fully remove the image.
Weekend damages are not unique to Atwater. Although no destruction occurred in buildings A and B this weekend, other locations on campus sustained damages. In the stairwells of Starr Hall, vandals ripped down emergency lights that will now need to be replaced. In Allen Hall, a first-year dorm, they ripped four bathroom signs off the walls, totaling over $800 in damages for the costs of the signs, repairs and reinstallation.
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The same weekend the most serious damages were made in Atwater, custodial staff also found urine in an elevator in first-year dorm Hadley Hall.
At the meeting, Thomas encouraged students to be bolder in calling out peers they see engaging in destructive behavior. If they don’t feel comfortable doing so themselves, she said, they should call public safety.
Public Safety Officer Bryan LeFave and Sergeant Robert Patten recounted at the meeting previous incidents of damage and violence in Atwater. Last year, a student dropped a fire extinguisher five stories down the center of an Atwater stairwell, an incident that would have caused a “certain fatality” had a student been struck, Patten said. Several years ago, a bottle was smashed over a student’s head during an Atwater party.
“The reason we’re talking about getting [destruction] under control at this level is so that we can prevent things from escalating to a level that is tragic,” Patten said.
The public safety officers suggested residents limit their parties to those over 21, to prevent open events from escalating.
Thomas also talked to students about the burden these damages place on custodial staff. Custodial Supervisor Celik said his staff wants students to understand that someone has to clean up after their messes, and that students should be more respectful.
“It detracts from our morale over time,” he said.
“If you’re home and your parents are gone and you’re having a party, you’re responsible for the space,” he added.
Celik also emphasized the impact that defacing property has on other residents.
“It’s not just disrespectful to our staff, but it’s also disrespectful to your fellow students,” he said. “People get in the elevator to use it and they have to stand in pee and touch the buttons. Nobody wants to do that.”
Cleaning urine out of an elevator is not a simple or easy task: Custodial staff have to throw away the mops they use to clean urine because of sanitary issues; urine can seep beneath linoleum; the necessary cleaning products can eat away at the finish of the floor to cause general degradation; and the elevator will often smell of urine for days after being cleaned.
“I feel that sometimes students forget that actual human beings clean up after them,” Emma Schoblocher ’20, an Atwater resident who was at the community meeting, told The Campus. “The amount of times that I have heard people on this campus say things like, ‘Ew, I don’t want to clean that vomit, the custodians will do it, it’s their job,’ is appalling. We need to show more gratitude for our custodial staff.”
In a question and answer portion of the meeting, students also discussed whether specific suites might be responsible for bringing in the guests that cause property damage. Jules Struzyna ’19.5 suggested that athletic suites habitually throw events that result in destruction.
“Male sports teams take up a certain space on this campus and create a specific culture — our building is colloquially known as ‘fratwater’ for a reason,” Struzyna said in an email to The Campus. “Fellow current residents have the responsibility to change that culture, otherwise they are tacitly approving of it, and the behaviors it deems appropriate.”
Cross country team member Jack Litowitz ’20 responded to the accusation and Struzyna’s use of the phrase "dumb bro" at the meeting, noting that he knows many athletes who are respectful of their spaces and care about where they live and the people they live with.
“I don’t think it is either productive or fair to make the sweeping generalization that somehow all athletes on campus are ‘dumb bros’,” he said. “While it is true that many teams do hold large social functions, so too do many other groups that live in Atwater, like clubs and even groups of friends.”
In an email to The Campus, Litowitz commented that the issues “will not be solved through blind accusations, unfair stereotyping and hurtful language. Progress will only be achieved through calm and collected dialogue and an open mind.”
Facilities Supervisor Wayne Hall and Custodial Supervisor Roger Norton said that when they’ve had issues with sports suites in the past, they have reached out to the athletic coaches, who then discuss behavior with the teams.
“It’s about how it reflects back on the team,” Norton said.
Property damage on campus is not a new phenomenon. According to a recent search of The Campus’ archives, a record-breaking $16,000 in damages was incurred in the fall of 2011. While a substantial portion of that cost was attributed to a fire in a Gifford Hall suite, college administrators also called for increased respect for staff and residential halls in the aftermath.
Managing Editor James Finn ’20.5 contributed reporting for this article.
(09/26/19 10:00am)
Preliminary discussions about a new student center and a new residential building to replace Battell Hall have begun, according to Dean of Students Baishakhi Taylor. Although the project is in its early stages, the college is in talks with Boston-based architecture firm Goody Clancy and has met with the Student Government Association (SGA) to discuss new developments.
At the moment, the college is looking into the financial feasibility of the new student center and residential building, but won’t be breaking ground for some time, said David Provost, the college’s treasurer. The Advancement Office is determining how much money will need to be raised, and what exactly the money will be raised for.
As early as October, the administration will host a forum for students to voice their opinions on and goals for the prospective student center.
“We don’t have a place on campus that everyone feels they’re a part of and that everyone feels accepted,” Taylor said, adding that Middlebury’s increasing diversity warrants a communal space that unifies students, as well as addresses widespread social concerns. Provost said that McCullough, the school’s current student center, is not sufficiently student-centric.
Discussions about the student center have so far touched upon the potential for new food court-style dining options, a shared space where a variety of clubs and student activities can meet and store their supplies, places for students to gather, event spaces for shows or parties, and indoor-outdoor space. At this point, none of those possibilites, or any others, are set in stone.
Provost and Taylor envision the student center as the social hub of the college, a building that could be active 20 hours a day. They want to combine the socialization and eating that occurs in dining halls with the activity of the athletic center, the academic energy of BiHall and the social aspect of The Grille.
“We want that vibrancy, we want it to be the hub, where students always are,” Taylor said.
No location has been decided upon, but Provost has considered altering McCullough — tearing down the newer components of the building, renovating it or adding to it — or repurposing Proctor. There is also the potential for an entirely new building.
In response to the “How We Will Live Together” housing plan that was submitted to the office of the Dean of Students last spring, the college is also considering ways to rebuild Battell Hall.
“We have determined we need to build a new first year housing solution,” Provost said. “We are exploring what to do with Battell once we open a new first year housing unit, and are considering a renovation and a repurposed use or taking it down”.
“Battell renovation is not a myth anymore,” Taylor said. “We are seriously looking into it. Everyone talks about it — it’s time.”
The new residential building, like the student center, would include ample student gathering spaces that are currently not available in Battell.
Taylor and Provost said they have found pushback from alumni, who view living in Battell as a Middlebury “rite of passage.”
Like the new student center, this project is four or five years down the road — renovating a residential building is especially difficult because alternate housing needs to be supplied during the construction.
Other long-term construction projects include the renovation of the Middlebury College Museum of Art, which currently suffers from condensation issues, putting the artwork there at risk.
Although none of these projects will begin soon, Provost and Taylor said that they are all being seriously considered.
“Do we have funding? No. Do we have a timeline? No. Do we have a specific plan? No. But are we talking about it? Yes,” Provost said.
(09/19/19 10:04am)
For Vermont residents under 21, the use, possession and purchase of tobacco products and nicotine delivery systems is no longer legal in the state. The college’s newly-expanded Health and Wellness Education office will oversee efforts to support students seeking to quit smoking, and will spearhead campaigns to inform the community about the risks of tobacco and nicotine.
The “Tobacco 21” law went into effect Sept. 1 and applies to all tobacco products, substitutes, paraphernalia and nicotine delivery systems, including e-cigarettes like JUULs. Vermont is the 14th state to change the age for tobacco purchase from 18 to 21. In an all-campus email, Dean of Students Baishakhi Taylor announced that the college is supportive of this legislation because the relationship between young adults and nicotine can have drastic long-term consequences.
“The younger people are, the more likely they are to become addicted to nicotine,” she wrote.
Kevin Kareckas, who started as the college’s first alcohol and other drug education specialist this fall, said his work focuses on studying and changing the culture around substance use at Middlebury, especially in social settings. With the new Tobacco 21 legislation, a large part of his job has centered around the relationship between students and tobacco products.
There is ample evidence that smoking and vaping has long-term negative consequences. Ninety-nine percent of tobacco users start smoking before the age of 26, according to the U.S. Surgeon General, and nine out of 10 e-cigarette users switch to traditional cigarettes eventually. Smokers who began the habit before the age of 18 are much more likely to continue as adults.
“From a systemic point of view, this law is a big deal, but it’s also going to be a long uphill battle,” Kareckas said.
Middlebury is not a smoke-free or tobacco-free campus, although smoking is prohibited in all buildings, building structures like porches and balconies, and within 25 feet of any building. However, in the coming weeks, Taylor said that the Community Council will begin discussing “the scope of making our Vermont campus smoke-free.”
The school will offer resources through both the Health and Wellness Education office and the Parton Health Center to support all students, especially those disproportionately affected by the legislation change. Various institutions on campus will be adapting in different ways to accommodate the new laws.
Associate Director of Public Safety Keith Ellery said that the department is already adapting to the new laws.
“When members of our staff encounter an individual whom they believe to be under 21 and that individual is either smoking or in possession of tobacco products, they will be informed of the law and provided an informational card, which was developed by Middlebury College’s Office of Health and Wellness Education,” Ellery said. The card will describe the health impacts of nicotine use, resources for quitting and the legal guidelines.
Then, beginning in January or February, students under 21 who are found by Public Safety to have violated the policies of underage tobacco and nicotine use or possession will be subject to mandatory educational interventions similar to the educational interventions mandated by other drug or alcohol infractions. Additionally, a report with the names of students in violation of the policy will be sent to the Office of Community Standards.
Members of the Health and Wellness Education office are prepared to support students affected by the new legislation through several programs. Students who have a Public Safety encounter will begin a compulsory Tobacco Education program with Health and Wellness. This could include opt-in cessation programs like Freshstart, which gathers groups of students looking to quit tobacco for four hour-long meetings a semester. More information about this program will become available in October.
“We have no punitive approaches, it’s just us meeting people where they’re at,” Kareckas said. “I’m not a substance use counselor, so nothing I’m doing is going to change future behavior — I can’t make a decision for you and tell you that’s going to make a difference later. It’s really about providing the opportunity to reflect and use those strategies.”
Karekas himself hopes to become a resource to students struggling with tobacco and nicotine usage. To schedule appointments with him, students can go to go/meetwithkevin.
“People can also meet with me in person, one-on-one in an environment of their choosing, even if they’re just concerned about a friend,” he said.
The Parton Health Center will continue playing the same role it has in the past when it comes to student tobacco use, according to Managing Nurse Practitioner Sandy Robinson.
Parton has “historically counseled any student who discloses that they use tobacco of the dangers and advised that they quit,” Robinson said. Nurses refer students to 802quits.org, an online state resource for quitting tobacco. They have also referred students to cessation counselors as Porter Medical Center.
Robinson also described the unique threat of vaping and e-cigarette usage.
“We have recently become more concerned about the potential for an acute lung injury that has been attributed to vaping. It is our intention to screen students, when they present to the Health Center, for use of tobacco products, vape pens and e-cigarettes,” she said.
Parton’s nurse hotline, 802-443-3290, can be utilized during open hours for questions regarding tobacco and nicotine use.
Parton has always advised cessation, and their tobacco education and wellness related efforts will not change specifically as a result of Tobacco 21.
Students looking to learn more about campus resources can visit go/talktobacco.
(09/12/19 10:00am)
Varsha Vijayakumar ’20 knows that being the president of the Student Government Association (SGA) isn’t what her family expected her to do in college. Her parents, immigrants from India who settled in the northern New Jersey town of Harrington Park where she was born and raised, saw college as a place to study, excel in classes and secure a good job. But Vijayakumar saw it as so much more; a place where she could learn from her peers and use that knowledge to give back to them through student government.
While she also thinks classes are important, she explained that she has often found the real value of college has been the personal relationships she’s built with her peers through extra-curricular activities.
“I think that I’ve learned so much more from those activities during my time here than I ever have in a classroom,” she said.
Vijayakumar brought this mentality to her run to office last spring. Her platform, which helped win her 60% of the vote, was generated from direct student input. She created a Facebook event called “Let’s Run for President” and set up shop in the back room of Crossroads for hours as students filtered through, throwing down ideas in conversation and onto a collaborative document. Vijayakumar organized the ideas, categorized them and made them her entire platform.
“If the president is supposed to be representing the entire student body, then the platforms and initiatives that I develop shouldn’t be coming from me, they should be coming from the student body,” she said.
Vijayakumar sees the SGA not as a body with authority, but rather the link between student concerns and sustainable change enacted by the student government and administrators.
“I can’t get every student’s input, but I’m going to get as many as I can and develop my platform around that. My platform is our platform,” she said.
Her parents have long since come around as well — Vijayakumar said her dad wasted no time bragging about her ascent to the SGA presidency when she won the election last spring.
In a welcome email to the student body this week, Vijayakumar listed some initiatives that SGA began working on over the summer, including improving the course review site MiddCourses, expanding the relationship between the college and the local community, discontinuing Panther Day in favor of the arts festival Nocturne and making it easier for international students to complete summer internships in the U.S.
On the eve of her year-long term as SGA president, Vijayakumar sat down with the Campus to talk about her path through student government, her goals for the year and her hope for significant and lasting change. The interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
MIDDLEBURY CAMPUS: How did you end up at Middlebury?
VARSHA VIJAYAKUMAR: I knew that I didn’t want to end up as a number, and I felt that if I went to a big university I wouldn’t be able to have the same relationships with my peers and I wouldn’t be able to know my professors in the same way. Something that has guided my entire life is building relationships with people, and I couldn’t imagine letting go of that in college, or ever letting go of that. This is going to sound ridiculous but I got on campus, parked in front of Old Chapel, looked toward Mead Chapel and I felt it in my bones.
My time here has had its ups and downs, but being abroad last fall has really made me appreciate it here. At one point I was missing the salad bar in Ross. This is a place that I’ve invested so much of myself into. So many people do that, and I’ve met so many brilliant individuals here that have shaped so much of it, and it’s odd being a senior because I’m doing all of it for the last time.
MC: Why did you first decide to become involved in SGA?
VV: I didn’t know about elections the first year until after the deadline, but honestly I don’t think I would have had the courage to run. However, I was on the Institutional Diversity and Inequity committee my first year and experienced the committee side of things. As sophomore year rolled around, I realized that a perspective like mine was not in SGA. But I still didn’t want to run, and I remember asking so many people if they would run for sophomore senator, but nobody wanted to do it. Then there was this moment where I said, “I guess I’ll do it.” I don’t think, at that point, I’d gotten farther than, “We need certain voices in Senate.” I didn’t know what was going on there in that body, but nobody wanted to do it. Then I joined, and realized that it was an important body with the ability to make lasting sustainable change if we utilize it correctly, and that was my motivation to stay in it. Then, I became hooked by the scope of opportunities.
MC: When did you know you wanted to run for president?
VV: Last semester, I was of the opinion that if someone could do the job better than me, I didn’t need to do the job, but then I realized I was the best person for it. Running was a chaotic process, but also a very rewarding one. The day I announced that I was running, there were at least three people a day coming up to me telling me about things they care about. I started thinking: How can we actually channel this energy into accomplishing things that people care about? And that’s how I developed my platform.
MC: What are your first goals in office?
VV: My main vision is to figure out how we can unify: unify the SGA in terms of getting Senate and Cabinet to have conversations with each other and work hand in hand, but also unify students, and get student opinions in a way that we can streamline effectively so that we can harness student interest in a positive way. How can we then build a better relationship with the administration? How can we unify faculty and staff with students?
We’re all important stakeholders in this community, and a lot of the time we don’t really talk to each other. My vision is: How do we find common ground, and how do we work positively from that? My personal goal is to make sure that I can guarantee, come elections in the spring, that I’ve made a lasting positive impact on this campus.
MC: Do you think that the tension with administration at the end of the last semester has affected the way that SGA functions? Has it affected your perspective on the presidency?
VV: If anything, the mobilization of the 13 Proposals has taught me that, bottom line, regardless of how people felt about the situation, people really cared. Immensely. I’ve thought much more intensively about this since that situation at the end of the spring, and I want to know how can we channel that energy so that it’s not something that bubbles up and is tense and overwhelming, but so that students can express what’s bothering them when it comes up.
We all just want to make this a better place. I don’t think that anybody is trying to harm this community. I think keeping that in mind is key, so that we can make the change that students want.
MC: What are some things that you hope have happened by May?
VV: One of my biggest goals is following through on the initiatives that we’ve already developed and committed ourselves to and institutionalizing them better. When senators and directors come up with initiatives, I want them to be tangible, and something that we can accomplish. Everyone wants change but nobody is willing to do the work.The dream is that we can be this body that identifies and fills the gaps.
We don’t claim to be an authority in any way. But there are faculty and staff and administrators who dedicate their entire lives to solving issues. We want to be a body that supports everyone’s growth and grows along with them. I don’t see the work I’m doing as something confined to a year, especially because I see a lot of what we’re doing as maintaining continuity through the years, so it shouldn’t matter that my tenure is up in a year. My work should be continued by the future SGA president.
(05/02/19 10:00am)
More than 200 students answered the question: “What makes you feel othered at Middlebury?” Responses addressed socio-economic status, race and ethnicity, athletics, sexuality and other subjects, shedding light on the ways in which cultures and demographics at the college impact students’ sense of belonging.
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Roughly one in three students feel othered at Middlebury.
Highlighting certain demographics paints a clearer picture of who feels othered at the college. Students of color, recipients of financial aid, members of the LGBT community, those who feel their political views diverge from the norm and others whose identities do not match the dominant demographics of the college were more likely to report sentiments of otherness.
Money was the most commonly cited cause of feeling othered at Middlebury. Respondents who indicated feeling othered expressed frustrations with the high level of wealth on campus, the challenges faced by first-generation students and other financial factors. 45% of respondents indicated receiving need-based financial aid. 30% of the written responses explaining why students feel othered at Middlebury attribute these feelings to socioeconomic status.
The influence of wealth on campus culture is not surprising; data from 2017 showed that Middlebury had a greater proportion of students from the top one percent than most other schools in the country. 76% of students came from families with household incomes in the top 20%, according to the 2017 study.
“The tremendous wealth of the students here makes it easy to feel like an outsider,” one respondent wrote.
Another student wrote that their feeling of otherness stems from the fact that they did not come from a privileged background like many of their peers. “I have to work twice as hard to get half of what is given to these people.”
65% of respondents who chose to write about feeling othered indicated receiving financial aid. This is disproportionately large compared to the 45 % of total respondents who said they received financial aid. Many students cited not graduating from private high schools as the reason they feel isolated by wealth culture. Dozens more described not being able to take part in the same activities as wealthier students, which has led to feelings of social exclusion.
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Roughly half of those who receive need-based financial aid feel othered at Middlebury, while only 20% of those who do not receive aid feel the same way.
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Equally striking is the relationship between race and otherness at Middlebury. Of all racial groups, white students were the only group in which respondents did not overwhelmingly report feelings of otherness.
A campus climate assessment released last week by the Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion revealed that only nine percent of students of color believe Middlebury is inclusive to members of their race.
Of the 78 respondents who cited race or ethnicity as an othering factor, more than half described not fitting into the white majority as the primary cause. The other students who mentioned race listed it alongside additional reasons, most commonly socioeconomic status, gender and the many challenges posed by the college’s social and academic environment.
“Middlebury’s whiteness and affluence makes me feel othered,” one student wrote. “De facto segregation everywhere I go,” another said.
“Sometimes I become a token in class. When I speak, I feel I have to do so in a way that validates my intelligence,” a third student said.
A student identifying as Latino wrote, “Sometimes I feel dumb when I forget to code switch to the white man's vernacular and they look at me as if I am speaking a foreign language.”
Another student, who specified being a white-skinned Latino, said, “I fear that my skin will make people identify me solely as a white person … I have had negative comments addressed to me based off my skin color, or people laughing at me because of the way I pronounce my name.”
“I am white but I am international,” one student said. “I don’t fit in with the American majority at all but am often labelled that way because I am white.”
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Sexual orientation also factored into feelings of otherness.
“Middlebury is a very heteronormative space,” one respondent who identifies as lesbian said.
Others mentioned feeling isolated from the queer community on campus: one student attributed feelings of otherness to “not fitting stereotypes of the LGBTQ+ community.”
The SGA’s Thirteen Proposals for Community Healing, developed by the student body and sent to the administration following the cancellation of Legutko’s lecture, aim to enhance students’ say in administrative decisions and expand inclusive spaces on campus.
Students who do not identify as cisgender overwhelmingly report feeling othered on campus. “Middlebury fosters a sometimes hostile environment for non-binary individuals,” one student said “I feel pressure to “dress straight” and accommodate the outdoorsy — and hyper masculine — campus culture.”
Students on both ends of the political spectrum described Middlebury as hostile and unforgiving toward people whose views do not align with the norm.
“If you express an opinion that does not align with the majority,” one wrote, “then somehow, they will come after you.”
Another respondent said that the same students who “pride themselves on being liberal and open … are often the most judgmental.”
Many students indicated that Middlebury lacked spaces for discourse where dissenting opinions could be shared and respected.
“I don't like to ignore another person's opinion just because I don't agree with it,” said another. “I prefer to address it and find out where we differ in opinion and why. Many students here don't seem used to that. They are very scared of having a different view and stating their reasons.”
As one student put it, “I’m too woke for some and not woke enough for others.”
While several religious students said they feel alienated because of their religious beliefs, most said they felt othered for being religious, rather than their religion itself.
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More than 70% of respondents reported feeling lonely at least once a week. Almost 20 percent said they feel lonely every day.
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Students who feel othered also report higher occurrences of loneliness: 28% are lonely every day — almost twice as likely as the 16% of students who do not feel othered. Among the less than 7%of students who said they never felt lonely, three-quarters said they did not feel othered at Middlebury.
Loneliness appears frequently in written responses, too, often alongside mentions of cliquiness, frustration about not being outdoorsy or “crunchy” enough and dissimilarity of interests compared to peers, especially regarding weekend activities such as campus drinking and hookup culture.
One student described feeling pressure to never feel lonely. Another said that when they chose not to express traditional femininity or engage with the party scene, they were treated like an outsider.
“I don't hang out with friends or party often,” wrote another. “This is fine literally anywhere else in the world, but I feel lonely and abnormal at Midd.”
A student who does not drink said the decision “makes it challenging to find friends and meet new people, so I spend most of my weekends alone.”
19 comments reported feelings of cliquiness in relation to the divide between athletes and non-athletes.
One former athlete said that their otherness stemmed from not being a varsity athlete anymore. A non-athlete said student athlete culture left them feeling ostracized by varsity teams.
Another student said being involved in athletics is incompatible with being a minority. “These two identities cannot be expressed at the same time,” they wrote.
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Though mental health only appears in a handful of written responses, knowledge about on-campus mental health support systems corresponds to feelings of otherness. Nearly all respondents said they would know where to go for mental health services. But almost half of the respondents who disagreed, and the majority of those who strongly disagreed, said they felt othered at Middlebury.
Mental health was not named by any students as their sole cause of othering, but was listed in several responses, including one that said the issue was with their “decision to prioritize mental health over academic success.”
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Nearly all students feel like they deserve to be at Middlebury — despite the prevalence of feeling othered, roughly 90% of students agree that they have earned their place at the college.
According to respondents, Middlebury’s culture and demographics contribute significantly to the sense of otherness felt by minority groups on campus.
“There are very few spaces at Middlebury where students of color feel welcome,” one student wrote. “Yes, the [Anderson Freeman Center] exists, but if that is the only space dedicated to diversity at Midd, then we need to do better.”
A few students wrote that “everything” about the college culture and community makes them feel othered. “My identity in all spectrums,” one of these students wrote.
“This world wasn’t made for me,” said another.
(05/02/19 9:57am)
A week after a lecture by Polish politician Ryszard Legutko was canceled by administrators, Quinn Boyle ’21 asked those gathered in Dana Auditorium for the “Moving Forward” panel discussion to turn to their neighbors and answer a question: What was at stake for you last week?
The question was meant to inspire students, faculty, staff and community members in the audience to reflect on the events of the previous week, which generated campus controversy and national news coverage that many decried as misrepresentative. Both the question and ensuing conversation preceded a panel discussion featuring five distinct student voices, which was advertised as “a conversation on how we challenge ideas with which we disagree, and how we engage with challenging ideas.” Boyle served as the panel’s moderator.
Each panelist was connected to the Legutko controversy in a unique way. Joey Lyons ’21 is a member of the Alexander Hamilton Forum, which brought Legutko to campus. Grace Vedock ’20 described herself as a “would-be protest organizer” and self-identified visibly gay student. Rebecca Duras ’19 offered her perspective on conservatism in Poland as a Croatian student, and as someone involved in the planned protest. Akhila Roy Chowdhury ’20 is a Political Science major who had been planning to attend the pre-planned dinner with Legutko following his lecture, and Ethan Cohen ’19 is another member of Dickinson’s seminar who voted to allow Legutko to speak in the class and who said he was hoping to attend the original lecture to ask challenging questions.
The panelists began by reflecting on the relationship between faculty and students during the Legutko controversy and aftermath. Vedock and Duras expressed disappointment with faculty accusations that quotes posted around campus prior to Legutko’s visit, which were drawn from the politician’s book “The Demon in Democracy” and highlighted his views on homosexuality and gay marriage, were “doctored.”
“That was one of the ways that faculty behaved that directly impacted students, and I found that deeply troubling,” Vedock said.
They also noted frustration about the false assertions by some faculty members that the protest was intended to be disruptive. However, Duras also acknowledged that many faculty members have been supportive of all students, including those associated with the protest.
Roy Chowdhury said that some faculty members called for Dickinson to be fired in light of his decision to bring Legutko into his seminar, which she found disappointing. She defended the idea that the classroom should expose students to a variety of views.
“I feel like I grow most academically when I am exposed to ideas that challenge mine and not just when I’m debating subtleties within one side of an argument we all agree with,” she said.
Because of her familiarity with Eastern European politics, Duras discussed how right-wing politicians from that area of the world utilize the platform of American college lectures to legitimize their views. “They come back to Eastern Europe and use [the lectures] as proof to say “See, I am legitimate in the eyes of the world, these views are legitimate even in America,” Duras explained.
“It may seem like Middlebury is really far away from the rest of the world, but how our actions can affect people really far away,” she explained.
“It seems disingenuous to invite Legutko to talk about the demon in democracy when his party is the demon in Polish democracy. It’s like inviting a wolf to talk about the problems with the death of sheep.”
Roy Chowdhury offered a counterpoint, and expressed disbelief that Middlebury offers a larger platform than what Legutko already has as a prominent politician. “Assuming that a school of 2,600 hundred is a bigger platform than the European Parliament is over-inflating our value,” she argued.
Political Science professor Keegan Callanan, director of the Hamilton Forum, has already invited Legutko to return next year. In light of their discussion and the atmosphere surrounding Legutko’s first visit to campus, Boyle asked the panelists if they see academic value in Legutko’s return, or if they view it as an attempt to prove some sort of point.
“There is something valuable in a speaker being controversial because you see a campus get mobilized,” Lyons said of the invitation. “Most of us would have learned very little about this subject area on our own.”
He went on to talk about how infrequently he thinks Middlebury students encounter homophobia, particularly in academic contexts, and how the events of the past few weeks have contributed to his knowledge of gender politics in Eastern Europe. “My defense of gay marriage was not as well-founded last week as it is this week. I’ve developed it more because I’ve seen a countervailing force.”
Vedock pushed back against the suggestion that homophobia is not prevalent at Middlebury. She addressed the cost of mobilization, including threats against protesters and unwanted attention from right-wing media. She also mentioned personally experiencing homophobia and knowing of others who had, and disagreed with Lyons’ claim that academic spaces lack critical engagement with homophobia.
“I think there are a lot of classroom environments where homophobia is engaged and critiqued and talked about as a social phenomenon — I’m thinking of the entire Gender, Sexuality and Feminist studies department,” Vedock said.
Duras agreed, and called attention to the experiences of marginalized groups at Middlebury. “Just because you have not been present in these conversations up until now doesn’t mean they haven’t been happening,” she said. “People seem very secure in their view that Middlebury is a pleasant liberal bubble, but that is untrue for a lot of people on this campus.”
The format of the panel was modeled after the Engaged Listening Project, and panelists used techniques to engage in respectful debate across ideological differences. In an editorial in The Campus, director of the Project Sarah Stroup praised Boyle and the panelists. “Thanks for showing us how we can confront our differences while treating each other with respect,” she said.
Gary Winslett, an assistant professor of political science, was in the audience of the panel, and was impressed by the students and their discussion.
“I thought the students on the panel were thoughtful, articulate and gracious. They reflected well on themselves and on Middlebury College,” he observed.
“There are some external media sources that seem to want to caricature Middlebury students as aggressively intolerant and uninterested in engaging with diverse viewpoints; I wish they had seen this panel,” he added. “If they had, they would have seen Middlebury College students engaging in the exact kind of vigorous but respectful disagreement that is one of the hallmarks of higher education.”
(04/18/19 5:00pm)
The college canceled a lecture by Ryszard Legutko, a controversial scholar and far right member of the European Parliament from Poland, on Wednesday, April 17. The email announcing the decision was signed by Dean of Students Baishakhi Taylor and Provost Jeff Cason three hours before the event.
"This decision was not taken lightly," they wrote. "It was based on an assessment of our ability to respond effectively to potential security and safety risks for both the lecture and the event students had planned in response."
In an email to The Campus on Thursday, April 18, Head of Media Relations Sarah Ray clarified the “safety risk” that prompted the cancellation was an inability to crowd-manage the escalating number of people planning to attend the event.
“We canceled the event because we simply did not believe we could respond effectively to potential security and safety risks given the large number of people planning the two events – the lecture and the event the students had planned in response,” Ray wrote.
The planned student protest, a celebration of queer identity, was intended to be peaceful and non-disruptive, and the students planned to allow Legutko’s talk to play out uninterrupted. In a second email on Thursday, Ray clarified that, "The fact that there were students who were planning to hold an event near the lecture was not an issue."
"The safety concerns stemmed from the rapidly growing number of people who had expressed an interest in attending the two events," she reiterated. "We simply did not have adequate staffing to ensure the safety of all the attendees."
When asked whether other students were threatening the protesters, Ray responded that she could not confirm this.
In an email sent on Wednesday evening, Cason and Taylor recognized the protesters' intention to be non-disruptive.
"We recognize that students worked hard and transparently to plan a non-disruptive event that would remain within the bounds of our protest policy," they wrote. "We also recognize that students, staff, and faculty planning to attend and critically engage with Ryszard Legutko's lecture lost the opportunity to do so."
Legutko's talk was scheduled to take place at 4:30 in Kirk Alumni Center on Wednesday, which is housed at the college golf course. The event was moved there from Bicentennial Hall as interest in Legutko's visit grew, and to reduce potential security risks.
The administrators said the college had worked with both events and protest organizers to find a new location.
"However, it became clear with the increased number of participants that we didn’t have the staff capacity to adequately ensure everyone’s safety," they wrote. "We appreciate the thoughtful work of faculty and student organizers, their contributions to the planning process, and their desire to prevent disruption." They said they made their decision based on Middlebury's event policy. The college will meet with organizers of both events in the future.
According to Grace Vedock '20, a protest organizer, the decision to cancel the event was made by the college's senior leadership.
"It was never our intent to prevent the event from happening; we have reiterated at every step of the process that we did not want to impede his right to speak," she said.
Vedock said the protest, which was to incorporate a celebration of queer identity, will be rescheduled once safety concerns are addressed. The protest group's statement can be found here.
Legutko was invited by the Alexander Hamilton Forum, a speaker series founded last year that “aims to foster thoughtful engagement with the ideas that have informed the creation and development of the American polity.” The director of the program is Assistant Political Science Professor Keegan Callanan. When reached for comment on the administration's decision, Callanan said he had already invited Legutko to speak on campus next year.
"The principle of freedom of inquiry must be held inviolable, " he said. "I have asked Professor Legutko to speak at Middlebury College during the 2019-2020 academic year. I have proposed that he speak on totalitarian temptations in free societies. Hundreds of students now wish to hear him speak; their right to open inquiry must be vindicated."
This story will continue to be updated.
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(04/18/19 1:51am)
Despite the cancellation of his public lecture earlier today amid what college administrators described as “safety concerns,” the right-wing Polish politician Ryszard Legutko still spoke on campus this afternoon to a private classroom audience. A peaceful protest originally scheduled to take place outside of the lecture did not occur.
In an email to The Campus on Thursday, April 18, Head of Media Relations Sarah Ray clarified the “safety risk” that prompted the cancellation was an inability to crowd-manage the escalating number of people planning to attend the event.
"The fact that there were students who were planning to hold an event near the lecture was not an issue," she said in a subsequent email. “The safety concerns stemmed from the rapidly growing number of people who had expressed an interest in attending the two events. We simply did not have adequate staffing to ensure the safety of all the attendees.”
When asked whether other students were threatening the protesters, Ray responded that she could not confirm this.
Rather than speak before an audience at the Kirk Alumni Center as planned, Legutko delivered his lecture to Political Science Professor Matthew Dickinson’s “American Presidency” seminar. The talk, initially intended for the nine students in Dickinson’s class, became a pseudo-public event as students arrived over the course of the talk, which continued about 15 minutes after the class period ended. Student protesters, who had originally planned to peacefully and non-disruptively protest Legutko’s talk with a queer celebration, were not present at the event today.
A student in Dickinson’s class who was involved in the Hamilton Forum — the speaker series that brought Legutko to campus, headed by Political Science professor Keegan Callanan — asked if he could invite Legutko to the 1:30 p.m. class in the Robert A. Jones ’59 (RAJ) House. According to Dickinson, the event was entirely impromptu.
“I asked the students, as part of the classroom experience, do you want to invite him in here to critique his argument,” Dickinson told The Campus. When students expressed interest, Dickinson administered a secret ballot. He said that he would not invite the speaker unless there was a unanimous decision to invite him, which there was.
Before Legutko arrived, Dickinson had students research the politician’s views and formulate questions. “We spent the first hour of class conducting our own research to gather questions for discussion,” said Owen Marsh ’20, a student in the class. According to Marsh, Legutko came in to the class about halfway through, at 3 p.m.
Dickinson did not invite students from outside his class because he did not originally intend for the event to be public, but students sporadically filtered into the RAJ conference room throughout the talk. Political Science Professor John Harpham and the students in his “Rousseau” seminar joined the crowd after hearing about the lecture from a student in the class and cutting class short. Some of Harpham’s students, who had planned on protesting the lecture, chose not to attend.
Legutko delivered the lecture he was originally planning to give at the now-canceled event, though it was abbreviated for lack of time. He then took questions from Dickinson and the audience, which was by then comprised of students from his class, students from Harpham’s class and other visitors. A portion of the question and answer period was recorded on live stream by The Campus.
Provost Jeff Cason, who sent the school-wide email earlier about the cancelation of the lecture, told The Campus in an email that the college did not know about Dickinson’s decision to invite Legutko to his class in advance of it happening. Cason clarified that if the college had received a request, they would have advised Dickinson not to host Legutko “given our safety concerns.”
“If we had been approached asking if there were safety concerns, we would have said yes, most definitely,” he said. “We don’t have any policy to shut down a speaker invited to a class; faculty have speakers come to their classes regularly without any centralized approval.”
INSIDE THE CLASSROOM
Dickinson asked Legutko if reinterpretations of marriage over time to include same-sex marriage are a social intrusion. Many of the concerns student activists initially voiced about Legutko’s visit centered around controversial statements he made regarding same-sex marriage and gay rights.
“I am very reluctant to tamper with the meaning of words,” Legutko responded. “Once you change the meaning, you are in for trouble. Marriage as we understood was between a man and a woman. What has happened recently is a radical change. I don’t think that we should be allowed to go as far as changing one of the most fundamental institutions of the world.”
Legutko took more questions about liberal democracy and his views on tradition. One student asked how Legutko felt about the controversy surrounding his visit, and invoked the Charles Murray incident.
“Charles Murray was the first thing on my mind when I was invited ... It was unpleasant information, but it proves what I wrote in my book ... How can these things happen?” Legutko responded. “Why is there this spirit of ideological crusade?"
Dickinson stepped in to inform Legutko that student protesters had no intention of stopping him from speaking. Callanan, sitting in the audience, argued that there were some students who wanted the invitation revoked, claiming it was “not a majority, but definitely some.” Dickinson responded that he respectfully disagreed with Callanan, and that no protesters had an interest in stopping the event.
GOING FORWARD
After the talk, Dickinson expressed concern to The Campus about the administration’s decision to cancel the event. He heard about the decision as he was arriving to his class, and though he emphasized that he did not know the details of any alleged safety concerns, felt that the choice to cancel the talk “validates our fears coming out of the Murray talk.”
He added that the administration’s cancellation of the event denied students the right to protest, another manifestation of free speech.
“In my conversations with the protesters they made it quite clear they were going to voice their concerns about inviting this guy to campus, but they were not going to try to shut him down, which is precisely which should happen,” said Dickinson.
“They lost that opportunity to express that feeling of being violated in their own home, and that’s their right here as students,” he added.
Dickinson also fears that media coverage of the events will reflect poorly on Middlebury.
“[The media] is going to portray this as, once again, Middlebury College not being able to tolerate controversial views, and that’s not the case. The students did not shut this down, they did not prevent him from speaking,” he said.
Callanan told The Campus that he already invited Legutko back to Middlebury next year. Dickinson said he hopes that Legutko will return.
“I would hope students have the opportunity to protest and engage in response to him appearing on campus in a way they weren’t able to this time because of the administration’s decisions,” Dickinson said.
Although the whole college community did not have the chance to listen to and/or protest Legutko’s talk, Dickinson was pleased with how the students in his class engaged with the speaker.
“I was very proud of Middlebury students today, very proud of them,” he said.
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(04/17/19 3:06am)
UPDATE — Wednesday, April 17: The college has canceled Legutko's lecture, citing security risks. Professor Keegan Callanan said he has already invited Legutko to speak again on campus next year. Click here for full coverage.
——
Tuesday, April 16
An upcoming lecture by a far-right scholar and member of the European Parliament has renewed the college’s ongoing debate over the difference between free speech and hate speech, and whether those accused of the latter should be allowed to speak on campus.
Ryszard Legutko, a scholar and far right member of the European Parliament from Poland, has made incendiary remarks about LGBTQ activists, tolerance and multiculturalism, and is a critic of liberal democracy. Legutko was invited to speak by the Alexander Hamilton Forum, a series founded last year that “aims to foster thoughtful engagement with the ideas that have informed the creation and development of the American polity.” The talk, which is co-sponsored by the Political Science Department and the Rohatyn Center for Global Affairs, will be held tomorrow, Wednesday, April 17 at 4:30 p.m. in Kirk Alumni Center.
“I don't understand why anyone should want to be proud of being a homosexual,” Legutko said in 2011. “Be proud of what you do, not of being a homosexual.”
Student activists have planned a performance protest in response. The protest will take place outside of the lecture and is, in part, intended to be a celebration of queer identity. Protesters plan to hold signs, play music, and throw a dance party. They will also hand out pamphlets informing attendees of Legutko’s views. Protest organizers will be shuttling protest participants to the center from Adirondack Circle, starting at 3:45 p.m.
“It is absolutely, unequivocally not the intent of this protest and those participating in this protest to prevent Legutko from speaking. Disruptive behavior of this nature will not be tolerated,” wrote Taite Shomo ’20.5, an organizer of the protest, in the official Facebook event.
After the Facebook event for the protest went live, the director of the Hamilton Forum, Assistant Political Science Professor Keegan Callanan, wrote an open letter in defense of the lecture.
“At Middlebury, some would prefer that we not have the chance to hear and to question Prof. Legutko and other heterodox scholars. The Hamilton Forum takes a different view,” Callanan wrote. “In short, the Hamilton Forum has no ideological litmus tests.”
Responding indirectly to Legutko’s comments on gay rights, Callanan claimed in his letter that some of Legutko’s comments had been altered or taken out of context, and compared Legutko’s views to the “position on same-sex marriage once held by President Obama, President Clinton, and Secretary Clinton.”
When a Campus reporter reached out for an interview, Callanan replied only with a copy of the letter. Callanan did not respond to additional questions asking how speakers for the Hamilton Forum are selected and whether the forum’s organizers were aware of Legutko’s history of controversial views prior to inviting him to campus. He also did not answer inquiries about the Hamilton Forum’s source of funding, which has not been made public.
The subject of Legutko’s lecture is not his views on gay rights. His talk is entitled “The Demon in Democracy: Totalitarian Temptations in Free Societies,” and will examine the way “that western democracy has over time crept towards the same goals as communism, albeit without Soviet-style brutality.”
LEARNING ABOUT LEGUTKO
Russian Professor Kevin Moss, who studies gender in Eastern Europe, first encountered Legutko’s position on tolerance and the LGBT community last week when he saw that Legutko had made incendiary comments about homosexuality on a Polish news channel.
“Through my colleagues in Poland I became aware of what else he had said, and what his views were, and it turned out that the ‘demon’ in democracy that he is referring to is tolerance,” Moss told The Campus.
Legutko’s views are shared throughout his right-wing, populist Law and Justice Party, which holds the most seats in Poland’s legislature. The party was responsible for a now-reversed law that instituted jail time for suggesting that Poland was complicit in the Holocaust, and recently came under fire from the European Union (EU) for attempting to amend Poland’s courts in ways that threatened the state’s separation of powers. Legutko and his party also oppose expanding rights for gay Poles.
After discovering Legutko’s controversial views, Moss shared his findings with members of the Gender, Sexuality and Feminist Studies Department, inclusivity groups and Political Science professors.
The information spread and several student initiatives opposing Legutko’s visit materialized over the last few days, the most prominent among them a queer-focused protest of the lecture.
Word about the protest has spread by way of a Facebook event page, entitled “Ryszard Legutko is a f*cking homophobe (and racist and sexist).” The page’s go-link, go/homophobe, has been advertised on chalkboards and posters across campus. Some have written the go-link on the official lecture posters.
THE PROTEST
“As someone who cares about making this campus a better, more thoughtful place, I think it would be irresponsible not to protest against such a person's presence,” Shomo said. “I intend on exercising my own right to free speech and protest by refusing to allow Legutko to speak here without informing the community of his harmful ideas.”
Protesters are mindful of the discipline that student protesters faced following the Charles Murray protest. “We decided that it would be better for the safety of students who want to be involved in this protest if we did not try to stop Legutko from speaking,” Shomo said.
“Outside of the event, we will be celebrating queer identity — something that we feel this institution is implicitly undermining by giving Legutko a platform to speak,” said Grace Vedock ’20, another protest organizer. “Students are encouraged to come to the lecture in rainbow colors and carrying pride flags.”
THE COMMUNITY RESPONDS
In the lead up to the protests, activists also drafted an open letter urging the Political Science Department and Rohatyn Center to rescind their sponsorship of the lecture. The letter quotes Legutko’s past statements, and has been signed by hundreds of students, dozens of student organizations, and several faculty members.
Erik Bleich, chair of the Political Science Department, responded to the open letter with a letter of his own.
“I will also support your right to protest this speaker or any speaker and to state your views as fully as possible,” he wrote. “My fundamental goal is to uphold the key values of academic freedom and inclusivity, even during moments when these core values are not fully or easily compatible.”
Tamar Mayer, director of the Rohatyn Center, explained her decision to sponsor the lecture. “We get hundreds of requests a year and we base our decision on the limited information provided by the organizer,” she explained. “Nothing whatsoever that could have raised a flag.”
All seven members of the Rohatyn student advisory board denounced the center’s endorsement in a letter to The Campus.
“While we were neither informed of nor involved in the decision to sponsor the event, we are acting in our fullest capacity to advise the Rohatyn Center leadership, imploring them to withdraw support and co-sponsorship,” the members wrote. “We stand in solidarity with the rest of the student leadership listed on the open letter to the RCGA and Political Science Department.”
The Hamilton Forum also has a student fellows program. The Campus reached out to Linda Booska, the Political Science Department coordinator and listed contact for the Hamilton Forum, and inquired about the names of the fellows, which are not listed on the website. She did not respond. The Campus asked both Booska and Callanan whether students were involved in the selection of speakers. They did not respond. In the course of reporting, The Campus also learned that one of the forum's main student coordinators advised other students involved in the forum not to speak with Campus reporters in order to keep “out of any potential public battle,” though they said the decision to do so was ultimately theirs.
The forum also has a three-member steering committee: Political Science professors Murray Dry and Allison Stanger and former Vermont Governor Jim Douglas ’72.
PANEL DISCUSSION
On Tuesday afternoon, the Rohatyn Center and Political Science Department hosted a panel discussion in Dana Auditorium as a prelude to tomorrow’s lecture.
“The department is taking a ‘more speech’ approach by co-sponsoring an additional panel discussion,” Bleich wrote in an email announcing the panel. “The goal is to provide context for the Legutko talk and to address some of the key concerns raised about his positions.”
The panel brought Political Science professors Gary Winslett, Katherine Aha and Russian Professor Kevin Moss together to discuss their respective expertise on liberal democracy, the rise of the Law and Justice Party in Poland and the anti-gender movement in Eastern Europe. Bleich moderated the event.
In the question and answer period after the panel, students grilled Bleich about the Political Science Department’s decision to sponsor the lecture. Students also raised questions about extra credit being offered for attending the lecture, criticized Bleich’s decision to approve Callanan’s request to sponsor the lecture, and drew connections to the protests associated with Charles Murray’s lecture over two years ago.
The tradition has been that sponsorship requests submitted by a member of the department are automatically approved. Bleich responded that he was open to discussing the way that speakers are approved by the department, but said he would be hesitant to implement a system in which faculty members vet their colleagues’ requests.
Despite divisions, students and faculty appear united in their common goal of not stopping the lecture. Moss, in particular, is looking forward to asking Legutko tough questions.
“If gay people are controlling the world and destroying families and destroying religion as well, please give me examples,” Moss said he will ask Legutko. “How many people have died in this struggle? Because gay people have died; there are suicides among gay people. How many Christians have committed suicide because of gay tyranny? Please tell me. I am waiting for your statistics.”
A Campus reporter will be on hand to cover tomorrow’s lecture.
Correction: A previous version of this article stated that Callanan had advised students in the Hamilton Forum not to respond to requests for comment from Campus reporters. This directive actually came from a student coordinator. We regret the error.
(04/11/19 9:58am)
Following the departure of its only full-time professor, next year, the college’s Hebrew program will no longer offer upper-level Hebrew classes on campus and will instead require students to video conference into Middlebury-devised courses at other colleges. These changes have raised concerns about the program’s future among students who see it is as an invaluable focal point of both academic learning and Jewish life on campus.
The program’s current professor, Oz Aloni, will leave the college when his contract expires after this semester. In the last year, Hebrew Program Head Tamar Mayer — who teaches only geography at Middlebury — requested twice that a new Hebrew professor be hired. Mayer’s requests were denied both times.
According to Vice President for Academic Affairs Andrea Lloyd, the college denied Mayer’s request because the Hebrew program continually sustains a very low level of enrollment in its classes. Since 2013-14, there has been an average of three students per semester enrolled in one of the introductory Hebrew courses, which are offered in a three-course sequence.
Additionally, the college must maintain an equilibrium of 248 full-time equivalent (FTE) professors across departments at all times, and must decide each semester which new hire requests to approve to keep that number constant. Enrollment level is one of the factors that the Educational Affairs Committee considers when approving new hire requests.
Board members from Hillel, the college’s Jewish student life organization, voiced fear in a March 21 op-ed in The Campus that reductions in the program will ultimately result in the end of the Hebrew program entirely. The op-ed, entitled “We Need the Hebrew Department,” encouraged the college to hire more Hebrew professors and advocated the importance of Hebrew studies, both linguistically and culturally, for Jewish students on campus.
“Middlebury is an academic institution; this title implies a commitment to academic excellence above all else and a responsibility to make the campus inclusive to all students,” the board wrote. “Refusing to fill this position in the Hebrew Department would be a failure on both counts.”
But although the op-ed said the reductions would “effectively end the Hebrew Department on this campus,” the college insists that the program will continue through its beginner-level Hebrew course offerings taught by a teaching fellow, who is scheduled to leave after next year, and through indeterminate alternative advanced language studies and video conference classes.
The Hebrew program has always had one FTE with a three-year appointment, meaning that the sole Hebrew professor changes every three years. The other professors are fellows, not FTEs. Mayer believes that this lack of continuity has hurt the program.
Each semester, the Hebrew program offers one 100-level introductory Hebrew language course, taught by the teaching fellow, and one or two intermediate and advanced Hebrew language courses at the 300, 400 and 500 levels, taught by Aloni. It also offers cross-listed courses about Hebrew culture and history, taught in English by Israel Institute Teaching Fellow Zohar Gazit.
The teaching fellow will continue teaching the introductory courses next Fall. The higher-level Hebrew language courses are listed in the Fall 2019 catalogue, but the professors teaching the courses remain unlisted. As it currently stands, these classes will be taught online through the video conferencing software Zoom, through which students will video conference with professors at other colleges.
300 and 500-level courses will no longer be available.
“People wishing to take advanced Hebrew will need to be in the one 400 level course,” Mayer explained. “This means that some students will simply have to stop their Hebrew education.”
Currently, students can minor in Classical or Modern Hebrew, as well as Jewish Studies. They can also make Hebrew their primary or secondary language in an International and Global Studies (IGS) Middle East major, or can integrate the language into a Comparative Literature or Religion major.
The new cutbacks will make these courses of study more difficult. The Hillel op-ed expressed concern for students currently planning to minor in or study Hebrew and highlighted the importance of maintaining Hebrew as a language option in the IGS Middle East major. In the absence of Hebrew, the major will now require the study of Arabic, which Mayer believes limits the Middle Eastern perspective that the study of Hebrew offers. When IGS Middle Eastern Studies was created in 2004, it was conceived of as a track that would include both Arabic and Hebrew.
“It is difficult to think of Middle Eastern conflicts while exposing students to one language only, providing a limited opportunity, at best, for those who would like to get the Israeli perspective,” Mayer said. “A loss of Hebrew at the undergraduate college means a loss of perspective and a narrower education for our students.”
Earlier this year, the Middlebury study abroad school in Beer-Sheva, Israel was suspended, again for reasons related to low enrollment.
Advocates of the Hebrew program’s continuation argue that low enrollment in Hebrew classes is not enough of a reason for its shrinking, and emphasize the cultural and academic significance of the program.
“Our argument is that you can’t base the value of a class on the number of people enrolled, and that Hebrew is really important on this campus, not despite low numbers but separate from them,” said Rachel Horowitz-Benoit ’21, one of the authors of the op-ed and a Comparative Literature major with a focus in Hebrew Literature. Horowitz-Benoit and Mayer both argue that Hebrew is a uniquely valuable program because of its connection to Jewish cultural and religious life on campus.
Horowitz-Benoit also does not see lack of interest as the sole reason for the program’s low enrollment.
“The size of the program inhibits many people who want and plan to take Hebrew from doing so,” she said. “It’s not necessarily a lack of interest but a lack of availability.”
Since only one Hebrew class at any given level is offered in a semester and all of the upper-level classes are taught by one professor, students with an interest in taking Hebrew may not be able to because the single class time conflicts with another course. Additionally, students might not click with the teaching style of the single Hebrew professor teaching those courses.
Horowitz-Benoit and other Hillel Board members formed a committee to advocate for the program. They are collecting signatures in support of increased Hebrew programming and used the op-ed to publicize the situation. Over four weeks ago, the committee sent suggestions to President Laurie Patton, Dean of Faculty Andi Lloyd and Provost Jeff Cason. These suggestions included hiring a student employee to promote enrollment in Hebrew classes and creating a committee of students to assist in the hiring of a new faculty member so that the professor is well-suited to the students in the program. This week the committee received a response from administrators and, as of press time Tuesday, are planning to meet with Dean of Curriculum Suzanne Gurland soon to discuss their concerns.
In the meantime, administrators have suggested creative solutions to learning Hebrew at an advanced level without a professor: in addition to the integration of video conference classes, they have proposed that students attend the summer Hebrew language school.
Mayer takes issue with both of these propositions, especially the language school, which she sees as an insufficient replacement for courses, and a resource only accessible to the wealthy.
“The language schools are expensive and even if students are able to secure a full ride, they are unable to spend the summer making money that they need for the upcoming year,” she pointed out. “I see this as an opportunity only for rich kids and that is not okay.”
Mayer also finds the new virtual class plan problematic.
“Students do not want to pay such high tuition to just sit in front of their computers,” she said. During this past Winter Term, Aloni was ill for a week and students in his class video conferenced with a professor at another university. Some students reported to Mayer that they were not satisfied with the experience, and that video conferencing does not replicate the classroom language-learning environment that Middlebury is known for.
Molly Babbin ’22 was a student in the intro winter term Hebrew class. “I understood the importance of filling Professor Aloni’s brief absence with the video calls, but I probably would not be satisfied with it as a long-term solution. I found that I was less engaged, as I was not sitting in a classroom and was not speaking as much Hebrew to the other students,” Babbin said. “The class therefore lacked the social aspect that I have enjoyed in my in-person Hebrew classes. I understand that online classes can be effective, but it felt more difficult in a language class where I would prefer to have an immersive classroom experience.”
It is unclear precisely what will happen to students who are already pursuing Hebrew studies. In an email to The Campus, Lloyd said that these students “will be working with their advisors to address any issues that arise with respect to course offerings.”
According to Horowitz-Benoit, there are five students hoping to take above-300-level Hebrew next year, and several first-years who were planning to minor in the language.
For these students, the future is uncertain.
“I’d probably have to switch my major to English,” Horowitz-Benoit said. “I’ll graduate, but I’m in the Comparative Literature major, I’ve done the prerequisites for that, and this is really out of left field.”
(04/11/19 9:51am)
It’s 3 p.m. on a Friday afternoon and seniors Grace Stimson and Hannah Seabury are hard at work in the kitchen. They’ve been here all week, prepping and planning a dinner entitled “Guilty Pleasures” — the menu boasts truffle mac ‘n’ cheese, steak and potatoes, and chocolate cake — for 40 lucky Middlebury students and their guests.
This isn’t a gourmet restaurant (although, in a way, it is). The student chefs are actually in the kitchen of Atwater Dining Hall, working with a staff of students and Atwater employees to bring Middlebury a night of fine dining for free, right on campus.
Dolci, a student-run restaurant based out of Atwater Dining Hall, has been operating at Middlebury for over 20 years, beginning in 1998. The organization, funded by Middlebury Dining Services and by the Student Activities Board, allows students to plan multi-course meals, order ingredients, prep, cook, make stylistic decisions, plate and serve for a randomly selected group of 40 students and their guests on five Fridays a semester and two Fridays in winter term.
Each dinner follows a distinctive theme and is arranged and directed by a student head chef, or a group of head chefs, who apply at the start of the semester to design a dinner. The wait staff and prep cooks are all students employed temporarily and directed by the Dolci Board.
On the Wednesday before a Dolci meal, students can submit their interest in attending, and are then randomly chosen to be treated to a free gourmet meal, to which they can bring one guest. Most weeks, the board receives over 100 applications in the first 10 or 20 minutes that the sign-up link goes live.
Dolci is managed by a team of board members, which currently includes president Sarah Yang ’19.5, kitchen managers Nora Peachin ’21 and Charlie DiPrinzio ’21, and head of wait staff Van Lundsgaard ’21. Each week that a dinner is hosted, they oversee several hired prep cooks — a mix of new workers, previously hired cooks and friends of the chefs — as well as a wait staff of three to five students and the head chefs of the meal. All of the students are assisted by Atwater dining staff.
So far this semester, Dolci dinners have included a New Orleans-themed meal, the Tastes of Spain, and last Friday’s dinner, an indulgent exploration of rich American foods and flavors.
Guilty Pleasures
The journey to Guilty Pleasures began three months ago when the chefs, both seniors, decided to “indulge in food” for their Dolci lineup.
“We tossed around a couple of ideas, starting with ‘Seven Deadly Sins,’ which lead to gluttony, which lead to the guilty pleasure idea,” Stimson explained. “We talked to friends about what food they think of when they think guilty pleasure.”
Rather than simply preparing rich foods, the chefs wanted to introduce combinations of uncommon flavors, like macaroni and cheese prepared with truffle oil. For the past month, Stimson and Seabury have focused on planning: figuring out their menu, finding recipes, deciding on ingredients and creating options for students with dietary restrictions. They met with the Atwater Commons chef manager Ian Martin to discuss the feasibility of their meal and decide on ingredients. As Seabury noted, “this is kind of our dream meal.”
Over the course of last week, a lot of Stimson and Seabury’s preparation for their Friday dinner was informed by their experiences hosting a fall favorites-themed Dolci last semester, which ended up being a hectic and stressful affair. Learning from that dinner, the chefs chose foods that could be prepared over the course of the week and simply had to cook and plate on Friday night, instead of ones that require extensive last-minute work.
“We had to plan our time really carefully,” Stimson said. “This time we had a low-key Friday, and we got to enjoy it.”
In order to accomplish the “low-key Friday,” they did a lot of prep work earlier in the week.
“We worked Wednesday and Thursday from 3 to 7 p.m. chopping and peeling potatoes, making the mousse and the cake and the brownies ahead of time, pre-cooking the pasta. Seasoning the steaks. Grating cheese,” Seabury explained. “It’s not that glamorous, but we get all of that out of the way.”
Dolci is by no means a singular effort by the meal’s head chefs. Seabury and Stimson collaborated extensively with the Dolci board, the Atwater staff and even the wait staff on developing their meal. Initially, they had planned to bake the macaroni in ramekins but changed their minds after wait staff suggested baking the pasta separately and then transferring it to the dishes so that they would not be too hot to serve.
Throughout the week, the Atwater staff juggles their regular dining hall duties with helping the Dolci team prep their meal.
“On Friday, they will be working on other meals but if we have a question they’ll completely stop their work and help us. They’re wonderful,” Stimson said.
For those who have never made it to a Dolci dinner before, the atmosphere is absolutely nothing like a dining hall. Rather than an array of napkin dispensers and empty salt shakers, Atwater tables are home to flickering candles, wooden-handled knives and water goblets. Guests are brought to their tables by wait staff, and attendees sit while the entire meal is served to them: drink orders are taken (dining hall, soda-fountain options, but out of a stemmed goblet, the experience just feels different) and courses are delivered, one after another, in a diversity of never-before-seen dishware.
I am seated with a group of six other lucky ticket winners, and we gorge on a cheese board with cheddar, goat cheese and bleu cheese, among other varieties, along with flavorful crackers, dried apricots and olives. Next, a grilled Caesar salad, served as an entire head of charred lettuce topped with shaved parmesan, vibrant dressing and bacon (sans bacon in the vegetarian option and sans parmesan in the vegan).
Then, the dishes start to get heavier and the pleasures guiltier. Truffle oil macaroni and cheese, served in ramekins and topped with a cracker crumble. Steak and potatoes — the vegetarian/vegan variety comes instead with grilled cauliflower, seasoned with the same flavorful rub as the steak. Finally, chocolate cake, chocolate mousse and strawberries dusted with cocoa powder. It’s a lot, but that’s the point.
As we enjoy our meal, we listen to a playlist of “guilty pleasure songs” submitted by the attendees: there’s lots of Justin Bieber, Jonas Brothers and other early 2000s tracks.
My tablemates are, for the most part, repeat Dolci diners. As we eat, they reflect on past meals, recalling specific dishes and evenings that have lingered in their minds. It seems, in these discussions, that among certain friends, groups and sports teams, Dolci is well-known and highly anticipated, but to much of the campus, it’s a bit of a secret.
Behind the Scenes with the Board
The students on Dolci’s board are the gatekeepers of these Friday evening meals. They are involved in the preparation of every meal, and occasionally head chef meals of their own.
Every semester, the board receives between nine and 15 meal applications, a number that far exceeds the Dolci nights in a semester.
“We get quite a few applications that are cultural meals, things that people cook at home or associate with home countries, or people who have gone abroad and want to bring that cuisine back,” Peachin explained. “Sometimes people will focus on a specific ingredient.”
Ingredient-focused meals from the past include goat cheese, egg and salt.
In order to make their decisions about which meals get made, the board often considers creativity and environmental impact. “We’ve started to be stricter about choosing. Environmental impact is very important,” Lundsgaard said. “We try to be mindful of our impact, and if a meal is centered around a less eco-friendly ingredient we try to think about that.”
When the board chefs its own dinners, it tries to consider what foods are in season in Vermont at the time. Often, it will receive applications for meals that are variations on the same basic concepts, and the board tries to choose dinners that diverge from these norms.
“It’s a restaurant, and it’s our project,” Lundsgaard explained. “We want to make sure that there is a certain level of ingenuity that cannot be found in the dining hall, and we’re trying to push people to be more adventurous.”
The board members are involved in each of the Dolci dinners. They help the chefs plan and revise their meals, make sure they accomplish all of the necessary preparation and help with cooking and cleaning on the Friday of the meal. But they take a back seat and allow the chefs to lead their own dinners.
As Lundsgaard puts it: “Ultimately our job is to execute what the chefs want for their meals and to serve the people who come in; that’s what we’re here for.”
“We try to give the head chefs this experience that is, in my opinion, like nothing else you’ll ever do at Middlebury, while at the same time making a community and a space where anyone can feel welcome,” Peachin said. “We’re always really focused on making sure both of those things happen.”
The board does its best to develop a community through food. Head chefs are allowed to employ their friends to help prep, which creates a comfortable atmosphere in the kitchen.
“I could get a job at a restaurant in town and probably make a lot more money, but working here is something different,” Lundsgaard said of his experience. “It’s more communal, something that we’re doing for the community, not just serving people food. At the end of the night you feel a sense of accomplishment.”
Stimson and Seabury also noted this phenomenon. “You get paid to cook: if you like cooking it’s the best job on campus, you can get paid to cook during the week and then enjoy the meal on Friday. It’s the best of both worlds,” Stimson said.
“This was one of the best experiences that I had here at Middlebury,” Seabury explained. “Both of us are graduating and we’re really sad to leave Dolci. It’s a really cool experience that not many people get to have.”
The board members believe that the experience of sharing a meal, both eating and cooking, is a unique and invaluable way to build community, and is in so many ways different from the dining hall meals that students have every day.
“It’s much less anonymous,” Peachin said. “It feels like something shared.”
Dolci’s New Direction
My impression of Dolci as a bit of a secret has not gone unnoticed by the board. Yang, the Dolci president, is making strides to get more people involved, both in eating and working. To do this, she has created a new website (go/dolci, or eatdolci.com), where she is trying to make Dolci more accessible through photos and blog posts. She is also increasing the organization’s social media presence (@dolci.midd on Instagram) and plans to hire a social media director in the future.
“Even if you can’t attend a dinner, or you don’t know anything about Dolci, there’s a place for you to find out,” Yang said of the new efforts.
Dolci is changing in other ways, too. When Yang first became involved with the organization, far fewer people were employed or involved as head chefs. In her tenure, Yang has done her best to take the club away from this behavior, and has greatly expanded the web of students who participate in dinners.
“Now we run Dolci so that we don’t focus on doing the minimum. We try to do the most, especially in employing people,” she said.
There are many ways to get involved in Dolci: You can be a head chef, a prep cook, part of the wait staff or you can dine. Chefs must apply at the start of a semester, but to work with the kitchen or wait staff, students can go to go/workdolci on the Sunday before a dinner to sign up.
To eat, visiting go/dolcitix on the Wednesday nights prior to the dinner at 8 p.m. will bring you to the signup sheet. Tickets aren’t guaranteed, as spots are limited to 40 people, but you can show up to the dinner at 6p.m. to be added to a waitlist.
(03/07/19 11:00am)
Have you ever wondered what it’s like to win an Oscar?“You feel like you’re playing a role; it doesn’t feel real,” Rodney Rothman ’95, the writer and director of “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” and a first-time Oscar winner, explained. Rothman, who credits his creative start to the Otter Nonsense Players improv comedy group at Middlebury, talked to The Campus two days after taking home gold at the 91st Academy Awards, discussing the surreal experience of winning the highest honor in the film industry.Rothman described the atmosphere at the Dolby Theater in Los Angeles, where the awards were hosted, as hectic and exciting. “It felt like what I’d imagine the Super Bowl feels like,” he described, noting that the streets around the theater were all closed and helicopters circled overhead as nominees arrived.In the weeks leading up to the awards, nominees are coached about limiting their acceptance speech lengths. Rothman explained, “They say to you, ‘“Everybody thinks they’re going to be able to say what they planned but as soon as you’re up there, you’re going to panic. Don’t plan to say too much.”’ During this period before the event, Rothman was calm; however, once he reached the theater nervousness set in.“You’re obviously seeing a lot of famous people all around, people you recognize, and there’s the chance that you’re going to have to get up live in front of millions of people and say something, which is really cool but also daunting,” he said.As his category, Best Animated Feature Film, approached, Rothman’s mind was full of questions and possibilities: “Was I going to be able to get up there? Was I going to be able to squeeze past the people to the side of me? Are we going to be able to get through what we planned to say fast enough? Am I going to do something embarrassing? Will I fall on the steps? Am I not going to win? What do I do then? Do I go to parties? Do I go home?”Rothman stressed that, although the excitement and grandeur of the Oscars may suggest the opposite, it’s hard to forget about anxieties and extraneous thoughts, even in one of the best moments of your life: “You’re not really in the moment. Your brain doesn’t stop working.”And then, of course, “Spider-Verse” won, and Rothman’s adrenaline “multiplied by 10.” He described the moments walking up to the stage as a series of flashes, a non-stop shaking of hands, and then suddenly he was on stage, looking out onto a crowd of Hollywood elite but trying not to look into the audience, lest he be distracted by a famous person and forget his speech.Rothman took to the mic, in a moment that appears on screen to be full of emotion and excitement and that he describes as a blur. “On behalf of everyone who made this movie, we want to thank our families who stayed with us for four years on this,” he said. “This is for you. We love you all.”Backstage, Rothman and his co-directors were ushered into an elevator — when they got out, they were greeted by a group of other people who worked on the film, many of them sobbing, all incredibly excited. “And that was the first moment that it hit me,” he said. “All of sudden your body just discharges a lot of the emotion and energy that you’ve spent months, if not years, building up to. We worked really hard on the movie, and we were really proud of it, and we didn’t expect to be there.” While backstage, Rothman encountered several celebrities, all of whom congratulated him and his co-directors on their big win: comedian John Mulaney, an old friend of Rothman’s and also a voice actor in “Spider-Verse,” hugged him, as did actor Paul Rudd. After being interviewed by hundreds of journalists — an experience which Rothman explained felt like “talking but not really knowing what you’re saying” — the directors were treated to endless trays of champagne and then hung out with other Oscar winners like Mahershala Ali, who won for Best Supporting Actor and was also a cast member of “Spider-Verse.”After four glasses of champagne, Rothman and his co-directors were sent back out to watch the rest of the show. They took an elevator back down to the theater, and when the doors opened, they were greeted by actors Sam Rockwell and Frances McDormand.“She did this really cool thing where she pointed at, like nine points really quickly, with a smile,” Rothman spoke fondly of his encounter with McDormand. “None of us knew her so that was really cool.”And with that, Rothman returned to watch the rest of the Academy Awards, and ended the night at various Oscar parties around the city. Monday morning, the reality of the situation finally sank in.“It really wasn’t until the next morning in some ways that I could even begin to get my head around the fact that something I’d been working really hard toward for a long time had happened,” Rothman reflected on the evening and the win. “Something that I never really expected was going to happen for me.”
(02/28/19 11:00am)
Two Middlebury alumni took the stage last Sunday — at the Dolby Theater in Los Angeles, for their Oscars acceptance speeches. Rodney Rothman ’95 won the award for best animated feature as the co-writer and co-director of “Into the Spider-Verse”; Brian Currie ’83 accepted two awards for “Green Book”, best original screenplay and best picture.
For Rothman, the Oscars ceremony was a culmination of three years working on “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse”, and 25 years working in the industry. The animated film, which focuses on a teenager named Miles Morales who becomes the new Spider-Man, was produced by Sony Pictures Animation, and is the first non-Disney or Pixar film to win in eight years. The award was surreal for Rothman, who was unable to wrap his mind around the achievement on the night of the Oscars.
“It really wasn’t until the next morning in some ways that I could even begin to get my head around the fact that something I’d been working really hard toward for a long time had happened,” he said. “Something that I never really expect was going to happen for me.”
Rothman described the process of creating “Spider-Verse” and of tackling an ambitious project outside of the comfort zones of its creators.
“We weren’t working for Pixar or Disney, we were just making a movie that we thought was really cool and that we were psyched about, and we were trying to do things in a movie that we had never done before,” Rothman explained.
However, that ambition paid off, and “Spider-Verse”, as Rothman put it, “took on a life of its own.” Through the support and enthusiasm of fans, the film saw massive success; it’s quality was noted by Middlebury professor of Film Jason Mittell.
“Spider-Verse was certainly the best animated film I've seen in years, and arguably the most effective superhero film — including live-action — ever made in capturing the essence of the comics genre,” praised Mittel. “The animation style was groundbreaking in a way that supported its storytelling and tone, using visuals to make a very complex story both comprehensible and emotionally engaging.”
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After “Spider-Verse” landed well with audiences, it was only a matter of time before Rothman confronted the possibility of winning an Academy Award. “At a certain point we realized we had a shot at winning an Oscar. It was a shock, but it was also plainly happening in front of us,” he explained.
Rothman credits the foundations of his career in TV and film to his time in the Otter Nonsense Players improv group while at Middlebury. The school community was incredibly supportive of the Otters, treating performers to crowded audiences at every performance, and the environment allowed the group, and Rothman, to develop new forms of comedy that merged with storytelling — a space that he “likes to play in as a writer and filmmaker today.”
He also noted that the culture at Middlebury was ideal for growing as a performer and writer: “People appreciated what I was doing and that pushed me to try new things. Ideas I had at Middlebury are concepts that I’ve continued to develop for years, and decades.”
Otters have gone on to see great success in Hollywood — Jason Mantzoukas, with whom Rothman lead the improv group 25 years ago, is a successful comedic actor, as is Jessica St. Clair, who was also a part of the Players. “We all see each other all the time,” Rothman noted, and then joked, “There must be something going on in the fruit punch in Proctor.”
Rothman was also a columnist and editor with The Campus, and wrote several Saturday Night Live jokes used on air during Weekend Update, as well as his application for The Late Show with David Letterman (a position he was hired for) from our Hepburn basement offices.
Brian Currie ’83 received his Oscars this Sunday after several awards for “Green Book” accumulated over the last several months. The film, which tells the story of a black pianist, his white driver, and a friendship they developed on a tour through the South in 1962, has faced criticism for promoting the “white savior” concept. Additionally, it faced backlash after the surviving family of Donald Shirley, on whom the main character is based, accused the filmmakers of historical inaccuracy and exaggerating the friendship between the two men.
Film professor Jason Mittell compared the two films that won awards for Middlebury alumni and their various successes, and addressed the controversies of “Greenbook”: “The character of Miles Morales created a sophisticated mixed-race protagonist in ways that many have said is more grounded and impactful than almost all live-action films. Certainly it's notable that an animated film seemed to represent a more nuanced and realistic relationship between black and white characters than the official Best Picture did.”
(02/28/19 10:58am)
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What do Hinduism, accents, deafness, antibiotics, poverty and identity have in common? They were all topics addressed by the six finalists for the first-year Spencer Prize for Oratory who competed for the Grand Prize last Tuesday, Feb. 19 in the Robison Concert Hall at the Mahaney Arts Center.
Contestants Roni Lezama, Sophie Hochman, Regina Fontanelli, Jack Rudnick, Justin Celebi and Ellie Thomson are all members of the Class of 2022. They were tasked with connecting a concept they learned in a Middlebury class to something they cared about. Lezama secured the trophy for his speech about his father, who emigrated from Mexico, the English language and power.
The Spencer Prize process began in the fall, when faculty members nominated students they felt had exceptional public speaking skills to be a part of the Oratory Now-sponsored event. Students competed at the Commons level first, and the five champions — as well as one “wild card” winner — competed for the Grand Prize last Tuesday. Lezama was the wild card champion, Hochman represented Wonnacott, Fontanelli from Brainerd, Rudnick from Cook, Celebi from Ross and Thomson from Atwater.
The topics covered a diverse array of subjects, all united by the passion the speakers had for their particular issues.
“The sheer variety of people nominated, and of topics covered, meant that we had a cool dynamic going; there was a real sense of mutual respect among us,” said Hochman, who spoke about the connection between the principles of Hinduism and reform of the prison system.
Other speeches included Thomson’s about adoption and identity, Fontanelli’s discussion of privilege and poverty in bootstrap America, Rudnick’s speech about antibiotics and over-prescription, and Celebi’s about deafness and the border between disabled and able-bodied people.
“The best part for me was the process of writing that first speech, of connecting something I learned in class to something I care about, and realizing that I actually had ideas I wanted to express,” Hochman said.
Lezama dedicated his speech to his father and focused on languages, accents, perception and power in the United States. It was inspired by conversations in his first-year seminar, Language and Social Justice.
With the content of his speech in mind, it’s not surprising that Lezama was appreciative of the freedom afforded to the speakers throughout the process.
“There wasn’t a point when they wanted to change our speaking styles or points,” he said. “They heavily believed in us being our authentic selves, and I personally really appreciated that.”
(02/21/19 11:00am)
Allow me to begin talking about “Cold War”, a 2018 Polish film shown as part of the Hirschfield International Film Series, by addressing its final sentiment: “Let’s go to the other side, the view will be better over there.”
For the film’s brief hour and 28 minutes, the two leads, one a pianist and composer and the other a singer with a dark past, try over and over again, heartbreakingly, to find something better in the next chapter of their lives and just nearly fail each time. However, it’s this perpetual discontentment and continuous heartache that keeps audiences torturously invested and part of what has made “Cold War” a very promising contender for three Oscars.
Beginning in 1950s Soviet Poland and continuing over 20 years and four countries, director Pawel Pawlikowski’s black and white masterpiece begins with Wiktor (Tomasz Kot) and his collegue Irena (Agata Kulesza) traveling the Polish countryside, recording the music of rural communities. They use these recordings as the foundation for a performance troupe comprised of singer and dancers from the same rural communities. One of the girls to audition, Zula (Joanna Kulig), catches Wiktor’s eye, and she makes it into the group even after a good-but-not-great performance and the realization to Wiktor that she murdered her father and is on probation.
Over the next few years, Wiktor and Zula fall in love against the backdrop of the group’s international success, although their relationship is haunted by the prying eyes of Kaczmarek (Borys Szyc), the Soviet emissary tasked with observing the project and to whom Zula reports private information about Wiktor. The troupe travels to Paris for a performance and the lovers make a plan to defect to France permanently, but Wiktor is left alone in an alleyway while Zula returns to Poland.
For decades, the pair interacts fleetingly: one night in Paris, a few moments of eye contact in Yugoslavia, a conversation in a heavily-guarded checkpoint at the Polish border. Their lives undergo drastic changes — relationships, marriages, imprisonment, careers, children — but the audience only sees this broad span of time through their moments together and through, as the film eventually notes, the search for a better ‘view’ just slightly ahead.
The strength of the film is certainly, as myself and The Academy’s nominations both noted, in its cinematography. Pawlikowski’s directing makes creative and haunting use of empty space and empty scenes that make the rather short film not feel remotely crowded. He also makes stunning use of mirrors, in shots that had audience members faintly gasping. The black and white had both a haunting quality, which was not out of place in the film, but also gave it a simplicity that allowed the expressions of its actors and subtleties of emotion take the forefront in the necessary scenes.
For all that I enjoyed of the film, I was not initially convinced. The initial depictions of Zula and Wiktor’s relationship felt fragmented and deceiving. For the first 30 minutes of the film, we see what feels like an unimportant part of their relationship, and although the film certainly leans away from being predominantly romantic, it perhaps leans too far — so far that it was difficult to care or appreciate the future significance of Wiktor and Zula’s time-and-boundary-crossing romance.
However, the middle of the films offers a handle on their relationship, and it becomes hard to look away as the ill-fated lovers struggle and find comfort within the most stunning cinematographic shots of 2018.
(02/14/19 10:57am)
The life of French impressionist Georges Seurat, and that of his great-great-grandson George, served as the backdrop for a cast of 22 Middlebury College students and members of the Middlebury community to showcase their talents on the stage and behind it in the J-term musical “Sunday in the Park with George,” which ran Friday, Jan. 25 through Monday, Jan. 28.
Now in its fourteenth year, the collaborative production between college students and the Town Hall Theater put on a unique and impressive performance showcasing talented singers and actors enhanced by compelling technological elements.
Playwright James Lapine and composer Stephen Sondheim’s “Sunday in the Park with George” tells a fictionalized story of Seurat, his love interest Dot, their daughter Marie and their great-great-grandson George, an artist who works with light and video rather than canvas. The story shines a light on how a devotion to art can isolate the people who create it and depicts men deciding how much they are willing to sacrifice for their work.
“The core of the show is about finding beauty in the most ordinary things and being reminded why we create art,” said Zach Varricchione ’21, who played George.
The J-term musical had its first run in 2004, when Doug Anderson of the Town Hall Theater and Carol Christensen, an affiliate artist with the college, collaborated to allow students to perform musical theater with faculty guidance. In order to involve as many students as possible, Anderson and Christensen choose musicals with large casts and choral numbers.
The musical poses a challenge because of the limited rehearsal time frame — students began rehearsing music with Christensen at the end of the fall semester and staged the show in J-term, giving the performers, directors and stage managers only three weeks to successfully produce a full musical. The particular difficulty of Sondheim musicals made this year’s musical uniquely tricky, but they managed to accomplish it regardless.
“You’re working from the first day as hard as you can. There’s no sitting back; it requires an amazing amount of professionalism from the cast, and we’ve really seen it with this company,” Anderson said. “This is one of the most challenging musicals to do in any situation; to do it in J-term is a challenge that they really rose to.”
The J-term musical provides a unique opportunity for the town and college to come together: in fact, most members of the sold-out audiences at “Sunday in the Park” were community members, not students.
“I feel like we connect with the town through the shows,” said Ashley Fink ’19, who played the role of Dot in half of the performances.
The community responded positively when the musical was first introduced over a decade ago and has continued to show support.
“Students and audiences responded enthusiastically — it’s a great town and gown opportunity — and Doug and I have been committed to doing a musical with historical significance, or which has a strong message, ever since,” Christensen said.
“Sunday in the Park” provided a musical hurdle for the cast to overcome.
“The music is really hard, this show is so unexpected, it’s gorgeous, but it’s really hard work and it takes a lot of diligence and practice,” said Olivia Christie ’19, who also played Dot.
Several other cast members remarked that the music was difficult to learn and required time-consuming effort to master. However, on the stage, the “disjunct melodic lines,” as Christensen put it, didn’t appear to be a challenge to the performers at all. Although the music may have been, as she also noted, difficult to hum on the way out of the theater, audiences were left instead to ponder on the themes of the show and the beautiful, skillful voices of its cast.
“[Sondheim is] a very tricky and even controversial composer because some of his music is so out there and difficult to learn,” said Will Koch ’21, who played Jules, a fellow artist and a condescending critic of Seurat’s work. “That being said, when you do learn it and really get it down, the end result is wonderful, particularly the ensemble numbers.”
This year’s J-term musical also made liberal use of technology to augment the performances, from a visual digital representation of Seurat’s dotted painting and drawing style to a massive projection of “A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte” before which the characters stood completing the scene, to the “Chromolume” animation created by Kyle Meredith ’19.
The “Chromolume,” an art piece by great-great-grandson George, combined the principles of color from Seurat’s work with modern technology and science about color theory — the animation, Christensen mentioned that Anderson said, was “alone worth the price of admission.”
Over a decade of producing impressive musicals in an even more impressive time span have made Douglas and Christensen spectacular curators of talented performers, evocative shows and community revelry. “Sunday in the Park” proved no different.
And their performers feel the same significance; as Koch noted, “Putting on a show of this caliber is a great feeling, and performing it in front of a sold-out house for every show is really spectacular.”