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(05/09/19 9:53am)
When the 266 graduates of the Monterey Institute for International Studies (MIIS) walk at commencement this year, they will be walking at the nation’s most sustainable graduation yet. The school will make history as the first institute of higher education to hold a 100% vegan graduation ceremony, featuring plant-based foods from around the globe — and not a meat or dairy product in sight.
MIIS already operates on a 50/50 policy, which mandates that at least half of the fare offered at school events must be vegan. But the new plan takes that policy a step further by excluding animal products from the ceremony altogether. The commencement menu will feature vegan cuisine including hummus and falafel, potato samosas, vegetarian sushi, cashew-based cheeses donated by Miyoko and platters of vegan desserts.
Jason Scorse, who chairs the institute’s International Environmental Policy program, is among those leading the initiative. He sees meat and dairy reduction at MIIS events as an invaluable practice of sustainability, one that works in tandem with Middlebury’s commitment to divestment from fossil fuels and its other environmental projects.
“I don’t think most people realize how absolutely devastating the meat and dairy industry is to the ecology of the planet, and also to human health,” he said in an interview with the Campus. “Major reductions of meat and dairy as key food industries in the future is really key for sustainability.”
Scorse hopes the menu’s international focus will expose graduates and their families to the wide variety of vegan food, and will encourage them to incorporate plant-based products into their everyday lives.
“I think a lot of people are actually going to find out that they really like the stuff and that they might want to go and pursue some of this on their own,” he said. “No matter what you eat, even if you’re a hardcore meat eater, you should be celebrating this, because this is going to be an interesting, fun opportunity to learn more and to see how to incorporate these kind of products into your lifestyle.”
Not everyone at MIIS is excited about the plan. There’s a small contingent of students that is outspokenly opposed to the initiative, and has been circulating a petition against it. But Scorse isn’t fazed.
“As an institution of higher learning, we’re trying to be innovative and trying to promote policies and behaviors that are going to hep build a sustainable planet,” he said. “And that’s really core to Middlebury’s ethics and values.
“This isn’t about vegans descending on campus and taking over,” he added. “It’s about putting sustainability into practice and leading by example. It should be exciting and fun.”
(05/01/19 9:56am)
The Charles P. Scott Center for Spiritual and Religious Life held a vigil in Mead Chapel last week following the Easter Sunday suicide bombings in Sri Lanka. The vigil was part of the weekly Wisdom Wednesday program, a half-hour midweek gathering meant for silent meditation and prayer.
“A significant part of our gathering is a time of silence,” said Mark Orten, dean and director of the Scott Center, at the vigil. “We are not pushing things away, but letting the business and the activity of our days settle so we can see clearly the world as it actually is, and ourselves as we actually are. To be, for a moment, human beings as opposed to human doings.”
(04/24/19 12:06am)
At least nine Student Government Association senators have threatened to resign en masse if college officials do not meet a list of 13 demands, a decision that would effectively dissolve the elected body for the remainder of the academic year.
The demands were outlined in a letter emailed Tuesday morning to senior college administrators, including President Laurie L. Patton, with all students copied. Demands in the letter are wide-ranging, and include: “structural changes” to college policy aimed at increasing administrative transparency; “improvements to existing programs” like Green Dot and bringing all buildings into Americans with Disabilities Act compliance; and “new initiatives,” including the creation of an LGBTQ+ Center and a Black Studies department.
In the letter, senators also asked Patton to appear before students at a town hall on Tuesday, April 30 in Mead Chapel. Senior Senator Travis Sanderson ’19 told The Campus that the resignations would occur sometime after then, depending on how and if administrators respond to their demands.
“We just received the SGA communication and are reviewing it. Many of the concerns are already being addressed,” Patton told The Campus Tuesday afternoon. “For others, we believe we can find a way forward to work together. We welcome an opportunity for engagement with SGA and have already reached out to its leaders. We will be providing a response, which we hope we can work on collaboratively, next week.”
While not every member of the SGA Senate has promised to resign, all members approved sending the letter to administration, Sanderson said. The resignation of at least nine of the 18 senators would mean the absence of a quorum at all future meetings, and thus the effective dissolution of the elected body for the remainder of the academic year. With the threat of resignation, senators hope to send a message about inadequate student representation in administrative decision-making.
“It has become evident that the connection between the administration and students has been reduced to a one-way street,” they wrote. “The administration has failed time and again to listen to the desires of its students.”
Their demands, titled “Thirteen Proposals for Community Healing,” are aimed to improve student representation and promote community healing on campus, including several proposals that had previously been brought to the administration but were either tabled or overlooked.
“There is a long history of SGA recommendations being ignored,” Sanderson said.
As it stands now, SGA resolutions are mostly symbolic recommendations to college officials — no real student check exists on administrative authority. But in the letter, the senators claim a right to participate in administrative decisions.
“Our tuition funds the college, and the college’s purpose is our education,” senators wrote. “Middlebury College is first and foremost a school, not a corporation. Why is it that decisions are often made with little to no consent or involvement from us in our own school?”
In an op-ed published by The Campus Tuesday afternoon, SGA President Nia Robinson ’19 supported the actions of senators regardless of where they stand and promised to keep advocating for students in her role.
“For the final weeks, I will continue to support those who come to me and offer advice to any students who will listen. I will continue to advocate for them whether in trustee or SLG meetings when I am the only student in the room,” Robinson wrote. “My sole goal is, and has always been, to help leave this campus in a better state than I found it.”
Reaching a Breaking Point
The letter enumerates instances of administrative neglect of student proposals, from the failure to make Middlebury a sanctuary campus in 2016 to the recent cancellation and fallout from the the controversial scholar and Polish politician Ryszard Legutko’s scheduled lecture, which also resulted in the cancellation of a peaceful, non-disruptive student protest scheduled to take place outside. In the letter, senators condemn the administration for waiting until Friday, April 19 to unequivocally say that the student protesters were not the security concern. That delay, they write, caused misinformation about the protest to spread in the national media.
Senior Senator Alexis Levato ’19 said that the SGA saw the period following the lecture cancellation as an opportune moment to act.
“I think we cared about these issues as individuals, and cared about them as SGA, but didn’t feel there was a possibility of actually doing anything until this happened,” she said. “Which I think speaks to the way the administration is structured, that it only really allows students to be activists in moments in which it’s blowing up in their faces.”
Varsha Vijayakumar ’20, a junior senator and the SGA president-elect, also saw the moment as a culmination of SGA and student activists’ frustrations.
“I personally reached a point where I feel like the administration has been taking advantage of our empathy, and I think that’s unfair to put a disproportionate burden on students to work hard to make this place more like a home for students,” she said. “We’re at a point where it’s not just the SGA, but also a lot of student activism and mobilization that is pushing for change. And we want to support that.”
The letter alleges that it was only when administrators heard that senators were discussing dissolution that they said, in an email sent by Provost Jeff Cason and Dean of the Faculty Andi Lloyd, and forwarded to students by Dean of Student Baishakhi Taylor, that “our assessment of the potential safety risks of Wednesday’s planned lecture did not reflect concerns about threats from student protesters or students attending the event. Rather, we were concerned about the safety of those participants.”
“We are extremely disappointed that only after hearing threat of SGA’s dissolution did an administrator publicly clear organizers of blame as the unnamed security threat that led to cancellation of the Ryszard Legutko event,” the letter reads.
No member of the SGA reached by The Campus would comment on the record about the alleged interaction with an administrator.
Vetting Speakers
After The Campus posted the letter online Tuesday, debate ensued over the senators’ third proposal, which calls for the creation of a due diligence form that includes questions aimed to determine whether a speaker’s views align with Middlebury’s community standards, “removing the burden of researching speakers from the student body.”
The proposal also asked for each academic department to create a student advisory board that would have access to a list of invited speakers one month in advance in order to provide feedback when necessary.
“This is absurd. Students should relish the chance to research speakers, to interact with speakers, to debate with speakers,” Rich Cochran ’91 wrote on The Campus Facebook page. “I am shocked that the SGA would publish this list of unilateral demands.”
Sanderson clarified to The Campus that the proposal would not bar speakers from campus. Instead, the answers to the form would be made public to inform the community in advance of the speaker’s arrival.
“If anything, this ensures a greater degree of informed free speech and assembly,” he said. “Critics are arguing that we want to keep speakers from campus, which is incorrect.”
The Process
Senators first began to discuss what would eventually become the letter on Wednesday afternoon in the wake of the Legutko cancellation. Over the weekend, they began to gather feedback from student leaders, including the heads of cultural organizations and leaders of the Legutko protest. Some senators spent most of Friday drafting the letter, which they then shared with all senators.
Vijayakumar was one of the students who spent the better part of the day working on the letter. She was also notified around midday that she had won the SGA presidency.
“I celebrated for maybe 20 minutes, but that was not my focus,” she said. “It’s the last thing I’m thinking about. Even on Friday, the entire day, I was working on these demands.”
On Sunday, April 21, senators went into executive session during and following their regularly scheduled meeting to discuss the draft. The session lasted one hour.
The following night, senators hosted a student-only town hall in Mead Chapel to gather feedback on the letter and demands. Robinson opened the forum by reading the demands and introduced the senators’ proposed plan to resign. Then, attendees divided into focus groups to discuss further. Each group parsed the drafted demands and suggested modifications to senators, who led the groups. Senators then met later that evening to finalize the letter based on student feedback. According to Vijayakumar, they discussed the suggestions made on every point, and identified major trends in feedback in an attempt to incorporate as many as possible.
In an interview with The Campus, Sanderson stressed the senators’ desire to involve other members of the community in the draft. He said the SGA is only one forum in which students have tried and failed to work with administrators to address the concerns of the student body. Specifically, he cited the title of the letter, which was recommended by members of the community. They also received emails with suggestions and ideas from students who could not attend the town hall.
When asked about the college’s recent work with students to divest from fossil fuels by 2028, Sanderson said that the administration did not adequately credit student activists in their announcement.
“In the case of divestment, it was a massive student campaign for a long time, but it was co-opted by the administration in the end,” he said. The letter addresses this concern: “Students who work on these initiatives alongside faculty must receive credit for their work, and will not be excluded from these initiatives once faculty begin working on them.”
When reached for comment, Community Council Co-Chair John Gosselin ’20 said he supported some of the senators’ demands and disagreed with others.
“I disagree with the general strategy of demands and dissolution because it has forced the student government to express opinions too quickly and without any nuance, reflection, or evidence of serious discussion, despite the best efforts of the SGA meeting on Sunday and the poorly attended student town hall on Monday,” he said.
History Repeats Itself
In 1967, members of the Student Association, then equivalent to the SGA, took a similar approach to addressing feelings of powerlessness vis-à-vis the administration. Members saw the body as a mouthpiece for administrative decisions and doubted its own ability to advocate for students, and voted to hold hold a campus-wide referendum on the body’s dissolution. The proposal passed overwhelmingly among students, who voted 407-70 in favor. Two years later, the current iteration of the SGA, newly-endowed with more representative and legislative capacities, formed.
Today’s SGA is drawing inspiration from its predecessors’ decision.
“When circumstances mirror those faced by student leaders half a century ago, we must consider options similar to the ones they faced,” senators wrote. “In the words of Brian Maier, the equivalent of an SGA senator at the time, ‘we must take power rather than ask for it.’”
But senators are also wary of the unintended consequences their predecessors’ actions had on the student body. Last time, dissolution of the Student Association left student organizations without funding. This time, the resignation of senators would leave the other components of the SGA intact, including the SGA President’s Cabinet and the SGA Finance Committee, which allocates the student activities budget.
“We don’t want to hurt students and nullify all the projects they’ve spent a full semester working on. That’s definitely not our intent,” Levato said. “I think we’re learning from that decision in order to make sure that students are only positively affected by this.”
Senators still think, though, that the threat is substantial enough to warrant a serious response from the administration. Vijayakumar believes the student body is on board.
“We do feel like this is the most productive way to enact change right now on this campus,” she said. “We wouldn’t be doing it if we didn’t think so.”
(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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(03/21/19 9:59am)
UPDATE: Thursday, March 21, 6:12 p.m.
Despite initial speculation that his proposals would not amount to action, President Trump signed an executive order Thursday instructing government agencies to ensure that universities uphold principles of “free inquiry.”
On Thursday and in his announcement earlier this month, Trump claimed the order would protect students with right-leaning views on college campuses, generating fears among experts about federal overreach in matters of speech. But the order seems much less intrusive than was originally anticipated, and remains vague about if and how it will monitor the protection of free speech on college campuses.
The seven-page order, obtained by The Chronicle of Higher Education, is entitled “Improving Free Inquiry, Transparency, and Accountability at Colleges and Universities.” The portion of the order regarding free speech states that its purpose is to encourage “free and open debate” and to avoid stifling competing perspectives on campuses.
“Free inquiry is an essential feature of our Nation’s democracy, and it promotes learning, scientific discovery, and economic prosperity,” it reads. “We must encourage institutions to appropriately account for this bedrock principle in their administration of student life.”
While the order is slightly more specific than Trump’s original proposal, it remains vague about logistics. The only details it provides regarding the order’s implementation is that agencies involved in distributing federal research funds to colleges, along with the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, will “take appropriate steps” to ensure that recipient institutions of federal research funds “promote free inquiry.” It also clarifies that the order will apply to federal research grants and certain education grants, but will not apply to federal financial aid used for student tuition.
An unnamed senior administration official told Politico Thursday that the order just reinstates what colleges are already supposed to do.
“While many schools — or all schools — are frankly supposed to follow this currently, it will ensure that grant dollars are associated through the grant-making process, and schools will have to certify that they’re following this condition," they said.
Trump described the order as "a clear message to the professors and power structures trying to suppress dissent and keep young Americans — and all Americans, not just young Americans … from challenging rigid, far-left ideology.
"If the university doesn't allow you to speak, we will not give them money — it's very simple," Trump said.
The other part of the order addresses university transparency with students and their families, and seeks to make information about alumni’s average earnings and loan repayment rates available to the public through College Scorecard so that prospective students can make more informed decisions about where they will attend. It also directs the Education Department to create a report examining policy options for risk sharing on student-loan debt.
In response to Thursday’s news, Vice President of Communications Bill Burger did not comment on the specifics of the order but reaffirmed the college’s commitment to free speech.
"Middlebury, as always, is committed to fostering a robust and inclusive public sphere in which diverse points of view can be heard, and where members of our community can participate fully,” he said.
------
March 14, 2019
Middlebury and other private universities could be targeted by an executive order that President Donald J. Trump proposed earlier this month, which would withhold federal funding from any institutions that do not uphold “free speech.”
The proposal serves as a response to longstanding complaints on the right that students at liberal universities are vilifying and stifling conservative viewpoints. But university administrators and educators around the country fear the ramifications of an attempt by the president to regulate campus speech.
In his address on the last day of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) a four-day gathering of prominent right-wing thinkers, politicians and students in National Harbor, Md., the president avoided specifics but announced that he would sign the order “very soon.” The crowd responded with uproarious applause and chants of “USA! USA!”
Trump was joined onstage by Hayden Williams, a 26-year-old conservative activist who was punched last month while recruiting for a conservative organization and holding a pro-Trump sign at the University of California, Berkeley.
[pullquote speaker="Hayden Williams" photo="" align="center" background="on" border="all" shadow="on"]If these socialist progressives had their way, they would put our Constitution through the paper shredder in a heartbeat.[/pullquote]
“There are so many conservative students around the country who are facing discrimination, harassment and worse if they dare to speak up on campus,” Williams said. “If these socialist progressives had their way, they would put our Constitution through the paper shredder in a heartbeat.”
Trump’s announcement comes two years after the Charles Murray protests at Middlebury, which conservative critics lampooned as an example of suppression of free speech and right-wing views. That same year, students at Claremont McKenna College, a private liberal arts school in California, blocked the door of an auditorium during a conservative writer’s speech. Students involved in both protests were disciplined in the aftermath.
Although Trump named neither college in his speech, both schools have figured into his administration’s recent crusade against suppression of right-wing views on college campuses. In the last two years, congressional Republicans held multiple hearings on campus free speech, and in recent months the Justice Department has filed statements in support of students who have sued their universities for violating their speech rights. Last March, the White House held a panel called “Crisis on College Campus” that identified suppression of free speech as one of the two gravest college dilemmas, alongside opioid addiction. One of the panelists referenced Middlebury as an example of protests turned violent.
Now, Trump’s order seeks to link its defense of free speech with the federal dollars that private colleges collect from the government for research projects. Middlebury received $4,987,440 in federally sponsored research funds in the 2018 fiscal year, more than $3 million of which went to the Institute of International Studies at Monterey. Even more may be at stake for the private research universities which receive billions annually, like John Hopkins University in Maryland, which led all universities with $2.6 billion spent on research during the 2017 Fiscal Year.
Higher Ed Braces Itself
In an email to The Campus, President Laurie L. Patton expressed opposition to Trump’s proposal, saying it “raises many legal and policy questions and would be deeply problematic for the country’s 4,000 institutions of higher education.
“Middlebury believes freedom of expression is essential in higher education and that it allows people who have less power in society to have an equal voice in the public square,” Patton wrote. “While I think the federal government could do many things to help higher education in this country, saddling colleges and universities with an obligation this vague, easily abused, and impossible to administer is not among them.”
[pullquote speaker="President Laurie L. Patton" photo="" align="center" background="on" border="all" shadow="on"]Middlebury believes freedom of expression is essential in higher education and that it allows people who have less power in society to have an equal voice in the public square.[/pullquote]
Higher education experts and administrators appear united in their opposition to the proposal. Even those who have staunchly encouraged universities to protect free speech on their campuses, like University of Chicago President Robert Zimmer, have vocalized concerns about the motion.
Middlebury Professor of Political Science Murray Dry, who studies constitutional law and freedom of speech, thinks Trump should reconsider his statement and leave the decision making to the schools in question.
“The colleges and universities, such as Berkeley and Middlebury, are well aware of the problems and have taken steps to assure freedom of speech and to maintain security,” he said.
Private universities already comply with certain requirements to receive federal funding, such as ethical guidelines on research involving human subjects, but have typically enjoyed more leeway on matters of speech. Public universities, on the other hand, must follow certain rules regarding speech set forth by the government. For example, they must apply the same rules about inviting guest speakers to all student organizations, regardless of content, unless it can be proven that a speaker may incite or produce violence.
Trump’s order would most likely hold private universities to similar standards. What this means exactly is unclear, given the ambiguity of his speech. For now, experts can only speculate.
Dry and Matthew Dickinson, also a Political Science professor, both think that if it were implemented, the order would be overseen and implemented by the Department of Education, which would develop rules and procedures for holding universities accountable. But Dickinson wondered if the order will even get that far, suggesting it may be on shaky legal footing.
“It’s not clear to me that (the president) does have the authority to define free speech via an executive order,” Dickinson said. “If he does, and asks his administration to enforce it via withholding of funds, it almost certainly will be litigated in the courts.”
Deciding what is and what is not free speech historically has fallen outside the president’s purview. The courts usually set regulations on speech, and have previously upheld laws restricting what they deemed harmful or violent speech on campuses. Usually, the executive branch has only been involved in such matters during times of war to limit speech posing a “clear and present” danger to society.
In any case, the order has the potential to affect Middlebury and its peers negatively, Dickinson fears.
[pullquote speaker="Matthew Dickinson" photo="" align="center" background="on" border="all" shadow="on"]Historically, whenever people in positions of authority try to regulate speech, they typically do so in ways that disproportionately affect politically marginalized groups.[/pullquote]
“Historically, whenever people in positions of authority try to regulate speech, they typically do so in ways that disproportionately affect politically marginalized groups,” he said. “We saw this in the fallout from the Charles Murray protest. The college reacted by clarifying their protest policies. Without passing judgment on the college’s effort, I will say that it is the predictable reaction by those in authority to the damage inflicted on free speech by that incident.
“I would worry that in their effort to protect free speech, the Trump administration may inadvertently weaken protections that are so vital if a liberal arts college is to engage in the free and unfettered exchange of ideas,” he added. “ It is far better, I think, to err on the side of protecting speech from regulation than to rely on the government to define it for us.”
Contradictions & Ambiguities
Others see the proposal as largely symbolic. Lata Nott, executive director of the First Amendment Center at the nonprofit Freedom Forum, told The Campus that she supports the idea of conservative and controversial figures speaking at universities, but sees Trump’s attempt to meddle in the affairs of private universities as an overreach.
Nott finds the proposal strange for a number of reasons. For one, the incident at UC Berkeley, which seemed to precipitate the announcement, involved two adults who were not affiliated with the university in question, which makes Nott wonder where the administration will draw the line.
“Would that mean that anyone who does anything on the university is held accountable?” Nott said. “At what point does the free speech penalty kick in?”
In his speech, Trump told Williams he should sue UC Berkeley for the incident. The public university was already the target of a 2018 lawsuit that alleged it discriminated against conservative speakers, which it settled. Part of the settlement required the school to adopt policies that would make it harder for students to shout down conservative speakers.
Nott also noted that sometimes, government efforts like this one end up injuring the very doctrines they aim to protect. Most recently, states with Republican-led legislatures, including Arizona, Wisconsin, North Carolina, and Georgia, have passed laws that would require universities to punish students for protesting on public college and university campuses, and other states are following suit.
But Nott argued that these laws are self-defeating because they they limit another manifestation of freedom of speech — the right to protest.
“I’m in support of speakers coming to campus, regardless of what their political stripe is or if they’re offensive,” Nott said. “But protest is also a First Amendment right. You can’t really pick and choose what you want.”
(02/14/19 11:00am)
The Middlebury Board of Trustees unanimously voted to divest last weekend, the culmination of a more than six-year effort by student-activists to rid the institution's endowment of investments in fossil fuels.
Divestment is one of four components of the institution’s new 10-year Energy2028 plan, which also includes a framework for committing to 100 percent renewable energy, reducing energy consumption on campus by 25 percent and expanding environmental education initiatives. President Laurie L. Patton publicly announced the plan yesterday before an energized crowd in Wilson Hall.
"I feel like everything I've learned in all of my classes at Middlebury has led up to this moment,” said Alec Fleischer ’20.5. Fleischer is a member of the student-run Sunday Night Environmental Group (SNEG) and works with Divest Middlebury, an SNEG campaign formed in 2012.
“This process has taught me how to be an activist, how to push this institution, and how to create sound environmental policy,” he said. “I'm glad to see this institution implementing the lessons it's teaching its students.”Energy2028, Patton said, is a natural progression in the college’s long history of environmental leadership, dating back to the founding of the nation’s first Environmental Studies program in 1965. Today’s announcement makes Middlebury one of the most prominent institutions to pledge full divestment from fossil fuels, and marks a new chapter in its mission to combat climate change.
The decision does not come without risk, with trustees acknowledging that divestment may pose a small cost to the endowment over time. But the potential loss was a significant part of the trustees’ debate, and Patton described their ultimate decision as the most responsible choice the board could make.
“This plan is true to Middlebury’s culture and values,” Patton said. “It acknowledges that we do not have all the solutions at our disposal at this moment to meet these goals, but it commits us to make every effort to do so. I could not be prouder or more inspired by our institution than I am today.”
DIVESTMENT’S DEEP ROOTS
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(01/24/19 11:00am)
The monthslong effort by Middlebury to shrink staff costs and reevaluate the way the institution does work is entering its most critical stage, and staff members report varying levels of satisfaction with the process as they wait for buyout offers to arrive in February.
The workforce planning process, announced by President Laurie L. Patton in a June email to college employees, began with the goal of shrinking staff compensation costs by 10 percent — about $8 million — by the end of the academic year. Now, administrators have reviewed proposals to reshape departments across the institution, and buyout offers will be sent to staff in early February. Involuntary layoffs remain a last resort, if not enough employees take buyouts by the end of the academic year.
Faculty, meanwhile, are undergoing a separate process of buyouts and retirement plans, as part of the same effort to reduce the college’s deficit.
LEARNING FROM THE PAST
For several years, college officials have been open about the financial challenges that the institution is facing, with yearly operating expenses exceeding revenues since the 2013 fiscal year. Causes of the deficit include rising financial aid commitments, a flawed policy that capped annual tuition increases and an aborted venture into online language instruction.
The college has since lowered its deficit faster than initially projected, hoping to balance its budget by fiscal year 2021. But faculty and staff pay remains the institution’s biggest expense, often making up about two-thirds of its annual spending.
This is not the first time that budgetary issues have prompted the college to rein in staff costs, and administrators are taking lessons from past mistakes. In 1991, college officials, led by then-President Timothy Light, abruptly fired 17 staff members, causing an uproar that made national news and brought about Light’s resignation. And following the 2008-09 financial crisis, the college offered voluntary buyouts to any employee interested in taking one — an unstructured process that led to excessive loss of crucial staff positions, some of which needed to be restaffed shortly afterwards.
So when administrators realized a new wave of deficit reductions were needed, they took a more deliberate approach. “To do it in a really thoughtful way we needed to think about the work we do, and how we could staff ourselves for a sustainable future,” said Bill Burger, vice president of communications and chief marketing officer.
Beginning in the early fall, staff vice presidents across the institution were tasked with leading discussions within their departments about how their work could be redesigned, and done more efficiently. In December, each department submitted two different proposals to senior leadership, containing alternate plans that would cut compensation by 10 and 15 percent, respectively.
Now, staff across Middlebury can only wait. As of last week, Burger said, senior leadership was almost done reviewing the proposals and finalizing a list of positions to be cut. Before decisions are finalized, Human Resources is required by law to review the proposals to make sure they do not disproportionately affect certain demographics.
In early February, staff working in areas where the college plans to cut positions will get letters giving them the option to apply for buyouts. The college will send more applications than necessary, anticipating that many will decline to apply. By early March, the applications will be due and administrators will know whether enough staff have volunteered to take the buyouts, or whether they will need to resort to layoffs. On the other hand, if more staff than necessary apply, the most senior staff will be offered buyouts first.
The staff cuts in some areas will be partially offset by the creation of about 40 new staff positions in other areas — the result of new needs identified through the planning process. Applications for these positions will first be made available in early February to all staff members who are offered buyouts.
WAITING FOR WORD
Workforce planning will have uneven effects across Middlebury, leaving some staff departments largely intact while transforming others. Likewise, staff contacted by The Campus report uneven feelings about the process. Many said they have been pleased with the level of transparency thus far, while some complain that the drawn-out process has left them on edge for too long. Others say they simply haven’t paid much attention to it all.
“For our area, the communication’s been really great,” said David Kloepfer, the assistant director of Student Activities. “We haven’t heard exactly what the full plan is as of yet. We’re still waiting to hear the final outcome.”
Missey Thompson, box office coordinator at the Mahaney Center for the Arts and a representative of the staff council, said workforce planning has been a major point of conversation at the council’s meetings for some time. The staff council advocates for good working conditions for college employees and has held forums and posted information about workforce planning on its blog since the process was announced.
“We knew that something was coming a while ago — we didn’t know what it all entailed until they were ready to tell us,” she said, adding that some anxiety remains about the potential job cuts. “Whenever people have to leave, it can cause a lot of tension, but I think it depends on the day and how people feel so we’re just kind of going with the flow. That’s all we can do right now.”
[pullquote speaker="" photo="" align="center" background="on" border="all" shadow="on"]You might lose the 40 percent of your job that you like.[/pullquote]
But some staff who feel most at risk of losing their jobs say that the long process has been a source of deep stress. Academic coordinators, who handle the logistics of academic departments and support faculty and student work, fear that some of their positions may be cut, while the coordinators who stay employed will need to deal with new responsibilities.
“Morale is terrible,” said Judy Olinick, coordinator for the Russian, German and Japanese Departments. “Everybody is worried about it, it’s just been going on so long.”
While Olinick, like other staff, participated in the initial planning conversations this fall, she reported feeling helpless as the final say was left to senior leadership.
“We had all these meetings where we discussed it at great lengths, breaking up into little groups — ‘What can you change, and how would you change it?’” she said. “But it doesn’t mean anything unless you have some idea of what is really going to be changed.”
Even staff who expect to keep their jobs face uncertainty about how much their job descriptions will be changed, according to Tim Parsons, landscape horticulturist and president of staff council. An employee who gets to keep 60 percent of their job tasks, for example, may still be disappointed by the results of workforce planning.
“You might lose the 40 percent of your job that you like,” Parsons said.
Still, some staff look forward to the impending changes to their departments.
“I’m looking forward to some changes, to stir things up,” said Christina Richmond, an Atwater Dining Hall I.D. checker and servery worker. “Change is always good. I’m not afraid of it.”
GROWING PAINS
Multiple staff members reported frustration about the way workforce planning has become intermingled with the goals of Envisioning Middlebury, the college’s long-term strategic framework. Patton herself connected the two processes in her June message, saying that they both entail “responsible stewardship of our resources.”
Dan Frostman, manager of the Davis Family Library circulation desk, said that the alignment of the two processes made decision-making difficult.
“We were trying to envision the next five to 10 years while also trying to figure out what it would look like if we got rid of 10 percent of the staff,” he said, noting that he reached out to his circulation staff to get input on both the changes they wanted to see and the cuts that had to be made. “So that was challenging and, personally, a little bit frustrating, to try to do those two sort of opposed things at the same time. There wasn’t a lot of reconciling that could be done between the two.”
Olinick said that she and her colleagues struggled to focus on the future, since workforce planning presented a more immediate issue.
“How can you make recommendations about that if you’re worried about keeping your job?” she said.
BEYOND WORKFORCE PLANNING
Workforce planning is not the only source of staff discontent at Middlebury. Low salaries in certain staff positions have prompted some employees to seek work elsewhere, and a 2017 staff survey showed low confidence in senior leadership and dissatisfaction with the way administrative decisions are communicated.
But Burger said that those concerns have informed this process, prompting administrators to focus on communication and consider changing the compensation structure once the planning is complete.
Though administrators expect to resolve the institution’s budget shortfalls within the next few years, the college remains heavily staffed, with a growing student body. With the newly-completed Envisioning Middlebury project serving as a likely precursor to a major fundraising campaign, this may not be the last time the college has to reconcile its long-term goals with its short-term needs.
For full staff issue coverage, click here.
Correction: An earlier version of this article said that the new positions created by the planning process will first be made available to staff members who took buyouts, when they will actually first be available to all staff members who were offered buyouts.
(01/17/19 10:59am)
An external review committee has released a report evaluating the commons system and delineating areas of potential improvement as a continuation of the college’s “How Will We Live Together” residential life assessment. The committee, which published the report earlier this month, included staff from Connecticut College, Kenyon College, Rice University and Carleton College, and based its analysis on observations from a visit to campus last October.
The committee’s suggestions address the shortcomings of the commons system, many of which were noted in the “How Will We Live Together” self-study report last September. The September report outlined data collected by an internal steering committee of students, staff and faculty from the college and was later shared with the external review committee.
In their analysis, the external committee attributed many of the programs’ failings to financial constraints that severely limited the implementation of certain “Cornerstones” of the commons system in the late nineties. “The consequences of these compromises have played out over the past two decades,” the committee reported. “Leading to the conclusions of the Self-Study, the Terhune report, and those set forth in this report that question the value of continuing the program as it is currently designed.”
After laying out these concerns, the report identified the strengths of the commons system as it exists today, namely the presence of commons deans, First-Year Seminars, commons residence directors (CRDs), faculty heads and regular commons “family” dinners. It pinpointed the commons deans in particular as “one of the greatest strengths of the commons.” The deans, according to the report, have become a “central locus of support for students over their four years at Middlebury.”
[pullquote speaker="" photo="" align="center" background="on" border="all" shadow="on"]Instead [of commons dinners], [the report] recommended using the heads to host more community events and foster out-of-classroom discussions through events, teach-ins and gatherings.[/pullquote]
The report then notably recommended that the commons be redefined as a first-year program. “Creating a dedicated first-year experience program focused on high-touch and high-impact practices should increase students’ sense of belonging at Middlebury, and reduce some of the tensions related to diversity and inclusion that we heard about during our visit to campus,” the committee said. It noted that students feel connected to their commons during their first years at the college but not in the years following, and suggested redistributing first-year housing to be more centralized, among other changes.
The report also suggested enhancing faculty engagement in the programs, and proposed separating the commons heads from their commons. “The current connection confines the role,” the report said, “Limiting its impact while resulting in large expenses for many dinners with first-year seminars that students do not perceive to be connected to their commons experience and produces minimal sustained faculty-student connection.” Instead, it recommended using the heads to host more community events and foster out-of-classroom discussions through events, teach-ins and gatherings.
The main part of the report ended with seven suggestions for improving the programs more generally, including co-locating Febs into one shared residential space and revising the commons dean structure.
In the conclusion, the committee restated its recommendation for the commons to be a first-year program.
“Middlebury has a tremendous opportunity in the coming years to adapt key aspects of the commons system to develop a signature first-year program that best supports student and distinguishes the college from its peers,” the committee reported. “The proposed changes also maximize the impact of the financial and human resources dedicated to supporting students’ experiences outside of the classroom.”
According to co-chair of the How Will We Live Together Steering Committee and Senior Associate Dean of Students Derek Doucet, the initiative’s Steering and Advisory committees will draft a list of possible recommendations informed by the external review, their own self-study, and feedback on the external review from the Community Council, Student Government Association (SGA) and commons staff and faculty teams. Discussions have already begun, and Doucet hopes the draft will be completed by the end of the winter term.
[pullquote speaker="How Will We Live Together Steering Committee" photo="" align="center" background="on" border="all" shadow="on"]Middlebury has a tremendous opportunity in the coming years to adapt key aspects of the commons system to develop a signature first-year program that best supports student and distinguishes the college from its peers.[/pullquote]
Doucet also stressed that the final product will rely heavily on feedback from the community.
“When we have what feels like a solid draft of possible recommendations, we plan, in collaboration with the Community Council and SGA, to make them broadly available to the community for comment,” he said. “This final opportunity for community input feels critical, and is consistent with the approach we’ve taken all along in this process.”
The committees are already soliciting feedback for the other parts of the process on the How Will We Live Together webpage, which students can find at go.middlebury.edu/commonsreview.
Ultimately, the committee will refine the list of recommendations and submit them to Vice President for Student Affairs and Dean of Students Baishakhi Taylor, which Doucet hopes will occur early in the spring term. According to Doucet, Taylor and the rest of the Senior Leadership Group will decide which, if any, of the recommendations to implement.
While the reassessment process is only partly underway, there seems to be a sense of optimism and excitement about the road ahead.
“There’s a lot of work ahead before any decisions can be made and it’s too early to predict what the future direction might be,” said Bill Burger, vice president for communications. “But I’m confident these questions will get a lot of attention this spring as Dean of Students Baishakhi Taylor and others in the administration focus on the How We Live Together initiative that started last year.”
*Editor’s Note: News Editor Bochu Ding is a member of the How Will We Live Together steering committee. Ding played no role in the reporting. Any questions may be directed to campus@middlebury.edu.
(09/13/18 9:50am)
SABINE POUX
Editor’s Note: This is the first installment in a weekly column, Foreign Correspondents, that will chronicle Middlebury students’ experiences studying abroad.
About seven weeks into my study abroad program, I received a WhatsApp message from my tutora, an Argentine girl from my university who had been assigned to help me and another exchange student get adjusted to life in Buenos Aires. Usually she texted in the group to invite us out to eat or to answer our questions about matters lost in translation. Today’s message was more serious.
“Well ladies,” she said. “You are witnessing the fall of Argentina.”
She was referencing the massive economic crisis that has hit Argentina, resulting from the country’s potential inability to pay its IMF debts and causing the Argentine peso to devalue at a staggering rate. Though my tutora’s tone may sound dramatic, the Argentine people are all too aware of what can happen in the face of fiscal disaster. During the 1970s and ’80s, in one of the most horrible periods of Latin American history, dictatorships in Argentina and its neighboring countries repressed, terrorized and assassinated thousands of civilians who opposed their neo-liberal economic policies. More recently, during the 2001 crisis, the entire government quit in one day, the country had five presidents in the span of one week and 36 people died.
Argentina’s history of turmoil remains fresh in the minds of most, and the mistakes and consequences of that past serve as constant warnings of what could transpire in the near future. The country regularly cycles through economic and political crisis and prosperity, and citizens fear a return to the nefarious governments of old. Some believe the current administration is headed in an authoritarian direction, and there are rumors that the president, Mauricio Macri, will resign, in which case the country would hold a special election to find a new head of state.
From a political science standpoint, this is an incredibly exciting time to be here. From any other angle, this is a quilombo of epic proportions. (I can’t tell you what quilombo means here, but a quick Urban-Dictionary search can.)
At Universidad Torcuato Di Tella, where I’m taking classes, it can be easy to forget about the crisis. Di Tella is a private institution, and though its tuition is considerably lower than tuition at any US university – roughly equivalent to about $3,000 a semester – public college here is free (and very reputable). Most students at Di Tella come from higher-than-average income brackets, and the wealth on campus is anything but subtle. Back in July, when I first entered the glossy, modern building that houses the school’s classrooms, three (!) restaurants and panoramic rooftop terrace, I was stunned by the sea of chic black turtlenecks, cool leather boots and iPhone X’s that assembled in the main lobby between classes, chatting over yerba mate and espresso from the French-themed café next door. Many of the students I have talked to live in gated communities in the provincia right outside the city and have traveled to more states than I have, an emblem of wealth considering the steep peso-dollar exchange rate.
Which is not to say that people at Di Tella are not talking about the crisis or that it is not going to affect them, because they are and it will. But everywhere else, it’s all people talk about. It’s all over the newspapers, and it’s the topic of most conversations I overhear on the subway. It’s the subject of every news program at the radio station where I’m interning, a community-based and politically-minded operation located in the back of a bar. Their slogan: “Sin aire no hay fuego.” Without air there is no fire.
My host mom, Sofi, thinks there are more homeless people on the street now than there have been in a long time. We’ve talked a lot about the crisis at home. Sofi is fortunate enough to have her own apartment and the means to get by, but the crisis sends shockwaves through her life just the same. She’s an artist, and in the last week has been working in her workshop day and night while blasting notícias (news) and Luis Miguel songs to create small hand-painted resin figurines that will be presented as awards for the winners of an upcoming film festival. Sofi signed onto the job months ago, and with the devaluation of the peso, the compensation she will receive is now worth almost nothing. It is as though she is working for free, she laments.
Sofi, like most others, is also worried about how the crisis will affect the cost of food and other necessities. She expects that the hefty inflation that menacingly lurks around the corner will cause prices to raise as salaries remain the same. A few days ago she stocked up on months’ worth of cat food, just in case. I did the same with bread and milk.
For now, prices remain relatively low, stirring up a confusing mix of emotions for us exchange students. I feel guilty for feeling any excitement about the relative ascendance of the dollar, but it’s hard not to be at least a little delighted by the new exchange rates – a month ago I converted Argentine prices to their dollar equivalents by dividing by 27, whereas now I divide by nearly 40. A $3 coffee becomes a $2 coffee. An already incredibly-cheap subway ride now costs only a quarter.
But of course, to solely rejoice in the economic turmoil of the country is myopic and apathetic toward the thousands who are suffering and mobilizing, the latter of which Argentinians do exceptionally well. As Sofi would say, there are many temas picantes – loosely translating to “hot topics” – that have the Argentines fired up. One of my first days in Buenos Aires, Sofi – a self-described “anarquista” who preferred the previous, more populist government and openly detests the conservative Macri – attended a march against the current administration’s increasingly militarized presence in the city. About three weeks later, we marched together among thousands of our fellow porteños in favor of a bill that would have legalized abortion, under certain conditions, throughout the country. We stood in front of the capital building in the pouring rain, waving the green pañuelo, symbol of the movement, and chanted with fervor about our hopes for a more feminist Latin America. Though senators voted narrowly to keep abortion illegal in the majority-Catholic country, abortion advocates speculate that the bill will pass next year.
Teachers from Argentina’s public universities are also mobilizing in protest of the low salary hikes the government has promised them in the face of severe inflation. As a result, many students are yet to begin classes at the University of Buenos Aires and other public institutions, though the semester technically began in early August. Teachers have reportedly come to an agreement on the issue, but in this political climate, nothing is certain.
The increasing number of protests and strikes are testament to the country’s great political divide. And with people from each side of the ideological spectrum espousing flagrant things about the other, it can be difficult to orient myself politically. My current strategy has been to listen to anyone who has something to say, and I’ve found no shortage of conversational partners – some of my most animated political chats have been in taxis or with cashiers at street kiosks. The people of Buenos Aires are passionate and open and kind, and they are invigorated rather than dejected by the need for change. The city buzzes with an electrifying energy. It is truly thrilling, and somewhat unnerving.
It is also a lot to digest. On one of the first days I was here, our academic programs coordinator told us that we don’t need to come to any conclusions now. Conclusions come later, he said. For now, just soak everything in.
Sabine Poux is a member of the Middlebury College class of 2020 and is studing in Buenos Aires this semester. She will be a news editor for the Campus in the spring of 2019.
(04/18/18 4:38pm)
The U.S. Department of Justice is investigating Middlebury and at least nine other elite colleges and universities for potentially violating antitrust laws in early decision (ED) admissions practices.
In an April 6 letter sent to these colleges, the DOJ said it had “opened an investigation into a potential agreement between colleges” involving the exchange of information about accepted ED applicants.
Inside Higher Ed first obtained and reported on the letter, which informed the recipient institutions that they must safeguard documents and correspondences pertaining to such an agreement, as well as documents indicating the sharing of applicants’ information between colleges.
Hannah Ross, Middlebury’s general counsel, confirmed that the college received the notice.
“Middlebury is one of the institutions contacted by the Department of Justice,” Ross said. “We will, of course, comply fully with all of the requests the department has made.”
The other identified schools under investigation include Amherst, Bates, Pomona and Williams. Other schools have also released statements confirming that they have received notices from the DOJ and are complying with the DOJ’s requests.
The DOJ’s letter did not specifically identify the nature of the actions in question, but appears to be referencing some colleges’ practice of sharing names of students who had been admitted in the early-decision round. The information sharing could be used to ensure that applicants are complying with ED policies and that colleges do not accept students who have made binding ED commitments to other institutions.
When asked if Middlebury is a member of this alleged network, Greg Buckles, dean of admissions, directed a Campus reporter to Ross, who declined to comment specifically on this matter.
While Middlebury has not confirmed whether it is part of such an arrangement, there is evidence that the arrangement exists. The Amherst admissions dean referenced the college’s participation in a group of around 30 colleges in a U.S. News & World Report article in 2016. According to the Amherst dean, the group would share names of students admitted to the college ED, as well as the names of students who had been admitted ED but were not attending the school.
Melissa Korn, a Wall Street Journal reporter, also spoke to an admissions dean from one of the institutions that received the letter. The dean said their school is part of a network of about 20 other schools that exchanges ED applicant information. Among the shared pieces of information are the applicant’s name, application-identification number and home state.
A school might share ED applicant information with other institutions because ED decisions are not actually legally binding. According to a description of Middlebury’s ED policies on the college’s website, “Early Decision candidates may not apply to other colleges for an Early Decision and must agree to enroll to Middlebury and withdraw applications to other colleges if admitted. Middlebury will withdraw an offer of admission if a student fails to comply with these stipulations.”
Early decision is becoming an increasingly popular option for college applicants, partly due to the higher acceptance rates during ED admission cycles than the regular decision (RD) admissions rounds. For example, the college’s ED acceptance rate was just over 50 percent for the class of 2022, while the RD rate was about 17.2 percent. Middlebury typically releases its ED I decisions in mid-December, its ED II decisions in mid-February and its RD decisions in late-March/early-April. The other schools implicated in the probe offer similar admissions options for applicants.
The investigation will be led by the DOJ’s Antitrust Division, which aims to protect consumers by promoting market competition. One way it does so is by preventing companies from making agreements that may limit competition between them. The DOJ may be concerned that the alleged agreement in question is restricting competition between colleges by preventing colleges from competing over students that have already been accepted elsewhere through ED.
Although there are not specific laws in place to deal with antitrust violations committed by educational institutions, most cases are examined as they pertain to the 1890 Sherman Antitrust Act, explained Adam Biegel, a Washington D.C.-based lawyer who co-chairs the antitrust practice group Alston & Bird LLP.
“The Justice Department likely is considering whether to issue formal civil investigative demands, similar to subpoenas, requiring the schools to produce documents related to the subject matter of the investigation,” he said.
Biegel noted that the DOJ is most likely trying to gauge where the exchanges of information between colleges “fall on the spectrum from legitimate to illegitimate.”
“On one end of that you could see collaboration ancillary to a procompetitive national ED program being necessary (i.e. to ensure there is no free riding/rule breaking on a program designed to spur early and robust competition for students),” he said. “Moving toward the other end, might colleges have exchanged information about ED applicants before decisions were made to give each other a heads up? Agreed on who to admit or what types of applicants should be accepted ED? Passed on? How to punish violators by not admitting them?”
He added that “information exchanges have been fodder for conspiratorial conduct in other antitrust cases involving trade association pricing, wage setting” and other matters.
Some admissions officials have expressed confusion about the alleged illegality of the practices in question, as students applying ED to colleges via the Common Application sign a waiver acknowledging that the institutions that accept them may share their information.
“The schools say that the applicants know what they’re getting into when they’re signing up for early decision so there really isn’t any legality issue there,” said Korn, the Wall Street Journal reporter.
The DOJ’s current probe into colleges’ ED practices is not the first of its kind to involve Middlebury. In 1991, the DOJ investigated a group of elite colleges, collectively known as the Overlap Group, on their use of financial aid package standardization during admissions talks. Middlebury and the eight Ivy League institutions were among the group’s 23 member institutions, who met for 40 years to share information about and standardize the financial aid packages they were doling out to applicants. The DOJ mandated that these schools refrain from the practice, which violated antitrust policies because it restricted price competition among universities.
In January, the DOJ investigated the National Association for College Admissions Counseling (NACAC), of which Middlebury is a member, for potentially violating antitrust laws with its ethics code. NACAC released a statement last Monday saying they did not think the two investigations are related.
(04/12/18 12:21am)
MIDDLEBURY — Middlebury’s “Free & For Sale” Facebook group boasts a cacophony of ride requests and offers. Before and after school breaks, the group is inundated with posts by people hoping to connect with fellow commuters to travel in and out of an area where far-reaching public transport can seem scarce.
The volume of posts and disorganized nature of the group make it difficult for students to find the rides they need. A young startup, called Wheeli, hopes to streamline this ridesharing process by allowing students to request, solicit and find rides with other students through its mobile-accessible online interface. The app, which launched at Middlebury last fall, allows its users, endearingly dubbed “Wheelsters,” to connect with other students from both theirs and other universities to find rides.
Wheeli’s three co-founders, Jean-Pierre Adéchi, Steve Delor and Alexandre Ayache, brought the startup to the University of Vermont (UVM) in 2015 when it was just a website. Since then, it has expanded into both iOS and Android apps, with 38% of the UVM campus participating.
Since launching at Middlebury, the Wheeli team has signed up 100 students. The first rides from Middlebury took place in February.
CEO and co-founder Adéchi says he realized there was a place for Wheeli at Middlebury when he saw that Midd students were already carpooling with students from UVM.
“It was an indication for us that there was a need for us to invite Middlebury to join our community of students carpooling on Wheeli,” he said.
The app is also currently expanding to the schools in the Five College Consortium in Amherst, Massachusetts, as well as to colleges in Connecticut and Rhode Island. As of now, it is operating as a free platform.
According to Dylan Philbrick, a senior at the UVM Grossman School of Business who works on the company’s development and marketing team, Wheeli enhances students’ travel experiences by creating social connections, decreasing their collective carbon emissions and making travel cheaper for everyone involved.
“Wheeli is the carpooling app for college students and we try to hit three areas: social, environmental and economic,” he said. “So we’re trying to make carpooling cool again, hitchhiking cool again.”
As hitchhiking is often associated with a plethora of safety risks, Wheeli exclusively allows students with school emails ending in “.edu” to sign up for the app. Students also must verify their student status by entering a confirmation code sent to their email and creating a short profile on the website.
[pullquote speaker="Dylan Philbrick" photo="" align="center" background="on" border="all" shadow="on"]So we’re trying to make carpooling cool again, hitchhiking cool again.[/pullquote]
Following registration, students can post about upcoming road trips or search for/request rides from other Wheelsters. The app also generates a seat price for each passenger based on gas costs and other expenses, like tolls, using information about the fuel efficiency of the driver’s car and the mileage of the trip. This price is just a suggestion, and the driver may choose to raise or lower it. Passengers can complete all transactions through the app.
Students looking for rides can filter through options posted on the Wheeli site and app to find the best options for them. As with driver-for-hire apps like Uber, the app also allows drivers and passengers to rate each other using a five-star system. Female-identifying students have the additional option of only riding with other women.
Adéchi came up with the idea for the app while carpooling during a trip to Europe. He enjoyed the social aspect of ridesharing most, and wanted to bring his experience back to the states.
The Wheeli team also found inspiration in the college ridesharing model of the pre-Facebook generations, when students would post flyers advertising and requesting rides on bulletin boards around campus.
“Wheeli really originates to that pushpin board, that’s really the grassroots of it,” Philbrick said.
He added that Wheeli is unique because it allows any student to participate on either the driver or passenger end of a carpool.
“When we started, there was no one really out there doing what we’re doing,” he said. “There are other ridesharing apps and driver-for-hire apps, but in this case, everyone can be a driver and everyone can be a rider if they have a license and they’re a student.”
Though rider data is private, Philbrick said the app has received positive feedback at Middlebury.
The Wheeli team sought to bring the app to UVM and Middlebury in part because of Vermonters’ proclivity for environmentalism. What’s more, Vermont’s rural setting can make it difficult for students to travel.
“For someone like me, who came from Manhattan and didn’t have a car, I went to UVM, I felt really isolated until we were able to get Wheeli as a functional and efficient transportation network for students,” said Philbrick, who helped bring Wheeli to UVM during his first year at Grossman. He added that Wheeli can help students travel around Vermont to enjoy the states’ natural attractions and ski mountains.
Currently, the Addison County Transit Resources (ACTR) shuttle and commuter bus systems offer students free to inexpensive rides to Burlington, Rutland and various destinations around the county. However, Middlebury students use ACTR mainly to get around town and to the Snow Bowl in the winter.
For more long-distance trips, the Student Government Association (SGA) sponsors discounted charter buses for students traveling to Boston, New York, and other popular locations at the beginning and ends of school breaks. Tickets typically cost between $35 and $65, with prices increasing in the weeks leading up to the breaks.
Apps like Wheeli provide an alternative for those who do not want to utilize public transport or who need to travel further than these options permit. The app especially strikes a chord with Middlebury students because so many students at the college have cars — Public Safety has issued 1,080 permits to student vehicles this year alone. Wheeli, unlike car rental services like Zipcar, allows students to carpool with students who already have cars at the college, offering a cheaper and more environmentallay friendly alternative.
Casey McConville ’20 noted that she prefers ridesharing to public transport options like the buses. Before she had a car on campus, she tried Zipcar, buses and carpooling to get home to New York and to visit her boyfriend in Boston.
“I think that as a freshman, I lacked a lot of networks in which to look for rides, and I ended up taking a lot of buses,” McConville said. “The problem with the bus system here is it usually takes you to Burlington and then takes you to whatever city you need to go to, which adds an extra two hours onto your trip because you’re going north instead of south.”
She added that she would have used Wheeli last year to find rides. Now that she has a car on campus, she would use Wheeli to connect with other people making the same trips.
Wheeli is currently live at Middlebury. To make an account, visit wheeli.us.
(03/22/18 1:42am)
MIDDLEBURY — Last Wednesday morning in New York City, students laid down in the streets. In Washington, D.C., they congregated on Capitol Hill. In Middlebury, high schoolers from Middlebury Union High School (MUHS) braved the snow on the Cross Street Bridge to protest gun violence alongside thousands of their peers from across the country. The MUHS students, joined on the bridge by teachers, community members, faculty and students from the college, stood in silence for 17 minutes to honor the 17 people who were murdered at Marjory Stoneman Douglas (MSD) High School in Parkland, Fl. last month.
The organizers of the event, which took place on March 14, sought to both commemorate the lives lost in Parkland and demand stricter gun control laws from state and national legislators. Theo Wells-Spackman, a sophomore at MUHS, spoke to the dual nature of the protest at the event.
“Those 17 minutes of silence were to remember the lives lost in Parkland, and to all the families who lost students there, our hearts are with you,” he said into a megaphone. “But we’re also here to demand change. Something has to happen in government. What is there right now is not enough.”
While high schoolers elsewhere walked out of their classes to protest gun violence, students at MUHS woke up Wednesday morning to a snow day. Although the weather made it difficult for some students to attend the event, both sides of the bridge were almost completely covered with protesters by 10 a.m. Many carried signs and chanted slogans such as “We want change” and “No more silence, end gun violence.”
Although there was no physical walkout at the March 14 protest, over 100 student demonstrators, determined to practice their acts of civil disobedience, stepped out of their classes and observed 17 minutes of silence the following Monday, March 19. After the moments of silence, 17 students read short bios for each of the victims.
“Just getting up and leaving class is typically something we would never do, at least I would never do, and it just shows how serious I am about it” said MUHS junior Marina Herren-Lage, who helped organize the protest. “I think to a lot of the teachers at our school recognize that the students who are participating in this are typically very good students, so if we’re leaving and we’re showing them that this matters enough to us, than I think that will just get our message across in a more powerful way.”
The protests in Middlebury and around the U.S. were organized in response to the Feb. 14 shooting in Parkland, in which a former student shot and killed 14 students and three staff members and injured 17 others using an AR-15 style rifle. This type of rifle has been used in five of the six deadliest mass shootings of the past six years.
In the wake of the shooting, around 20 students from MSD, the Florida high school, formed a gun control advocacy organization called Never Again MSD. The group has lobbied U.S. lawmakers to take tougher stances on gun control measures and has publicly criticized high-profile legislators, like Florida senator Marco Rubio, who have accepted donations from the National Rifle Association (NRA).
MUHS sophomore Sabina Ward, who helped plan the protest, said that she drew inspiration from the Parkland survivors.
“I think the fact that the Parkland students haven’t let people forget about them and are really really fighting and pushing has completely changed the game, because it’s obviously inspired students across the country and really taught us that we can use our voices and we can make change if we’re dedicated enough,” she said.
Ward also noted that she was influenced by the 2016 Pulse massacre in Orlando, in which a shooter opened fire in a gay nightclub and killed 49 people.
“I was in middle school when that happened and had just come out to my family and friends,” she said. “To have that happen just days after, that is the moment when I realized that I might not be safe being who I am as a person, and now I’m not safe being who I am as a student.”
On March 7, MUHS principal William D. Lawson emailed students expressing his support for the protests.
“I write to let you know that I share and support the goals of the many students and others who are voicing their urgent concern with school safety and the unfortunate incidents of gun-related violence that have plagued our schools across the country,” he wrote, adding that students would not face consequences for missing class for the walkout but would require parental permission for the march to the bridge.
“Immediately after the Florida school shooting, students in school were sharing/voicing their anxiety around the issue of school violence and safety,” Lawson said in an interview with The Campus. “I felt that it was important for them to give voice to their concerns and to take some reasonable actions that might serve to improve the current conditions. Psychologists tell us that these actions will help students re-balance their anxiety by giving them a sense of control.”
Ward said that the email got mixed responses at MUHS.
“We were really hoping to make a statement with leaving class, without permission,” she said. “A lot of us thought sure, it would be nice to not get detention, but at the same time, the civil disobedience part of it has kind of been taken away from our hands.”
The email came nearly two weeks after Vermont Secretary of Education Rebecca Holcombe sent out a memorandum asking superintendents not to encourage protests that would disrupt classes or pose safety threats to students leaving school without permission. Lawson noted that he coordinated with local police officers to ensure students’ security for the protest in town.
The assemblage of college students and faculty that joined the high schoolers on the bridge was in part led by Julian Gerson ’18, co-founder and president of Middlebury Students Against Gun Violence (MSAGV). Gerson and Cooper Babbitt ’18.5 founded MSAGV after the Parkland shooting and have been holding weekly meetings since.
Gerson created a Facebook event to advertise the protest and was aided by the SGA, which sent out a school-wide email about the event the day prior. Gerson also gratefully noted that there was support for the protest from many professors, who permitted and encouraged their students to miss class to attend.
Gerson said it was important to him to show solidarity with the MUHS protestors.
“I think it takes a lot of bravery and a lot of vulnerability to be a 17 year old organizing this big thing and I just wanted to make sure they had people there, supporting them, and that they knew this was a cause that a lot of people had their backs on,” he said.
“It was so powerful to see all of the college students there,” said Herren-Lage. “It was really wonderful to be able to combine forces and do it as one group because I think that’s really the point of this movement.”
Going forward, MSAGV will focus its efforts mainly on carrying out on-campus advocacy work and influencing gun control legislation.
Despite the impressive turnout and support from the school, MUHS senior and protest organizer Andrea Boe noted that the event was not unanimously supported.
“We have a pretty split community where there are a lot of very liberal people, but there’s also a big enough community who are very protective of their gun rights and the second amendment,” she said. “So I think we definitely had a huge community that was for the protests but also a smaller and slightly quieter community that was not.”
Vermont has a complicated history with gun control. Although a blue state in many respects, it has some of the laxest gun laws in the country. The dangers of these weak laws became apparent when last month, just days after the Parkland shooting, officials from Rutland County thwarted the plans of an 18-year-old from Poultney, Vt. who intended to shoot up Fair Haven Union High School in Fair Haven, Vt. The boy was preparing to buy a 9 mm Glock and an AR-15, both which he would have legally been able to purchase. He had planned to carry out the shooting Mar. 14.
The obstructed Fair Haven shooting proved influential within Vermont politics. Vt. Governor Phil Scott, a Republican and once-fervent opponent to gun control laws, has begun pursuing limitations on gun ownership as a result.
“I have thought for quite some time that Vermont was immune to this type of thing,” Scott said in Montpelier the week after the shooting.
Herren-Lage, whose father worked at Fair Haven high school until this year, talked of a similar feeling of immunity.
“I have friends that have always said, ‘Oh, it will never happen to us,’ but we really can never say that,” she said. “It’s genuinely terrifying to walk into school everyday and see all my friends and not necessarily know if I’m going to see them again.”
Lawson echoed her sentiments. “I have to say that there is not a morning that I don’t get up thinking about the bad possibilities that could happen to my students, colleagues or frankly to myself,” he said.
(03/15/18 12:48am)
In the year since students protested a planned lecture by Charles Murray last March, political science professor Allison Stanger has emerged as a prominent public figure in the national debate over issues of speech and protest on college campuses.
In the immediate wake of the protests, Stanger wrote multiple op-eds, including two for The New York Times. Last October, she spoke about the protest on C-SPAN’s “Q&A” with Brian Lamb. Days later, she testified before a U.S. Senate committee in a hearing entitled “Exploring Free Speech on College Campuses.” She has also spoken publicly at a number of panels and conferences, including those at Yale University, Elmhurst College in Chicago and the American Council of Trustees and Alumni.
Last month, Stanger spoke at Arizona State University (ASU) in a talk entitled “Speech on Campus: When Protests Turn Extreme.” The event also featured Lucía Martínez Valdivia, a professor at Reed College whose introductory humanities class was protested last year for featuring works that students deemed “white supremacist” and “anti-black.”
President Laurie L. Patton was also scheduled to speak at the event, but withdrew two months before the talk. The Campus requested comment from Patton, but Bill Burger, the college’s spokesman, said she was unavailable for comment due to traveling.
Both Stanger and Valdivia pointed to the current political climate as an aggravator for protests like those at Middlebury and Reed and spoke to the importance of harnessing reason and engaging in difficult conversations for the betterment of these institutions.
“From my perspective as a professor of political science, if we can’t have someone like Charles Murray on campus, who’s an influential voice in the Republican Party, well we can’t be a department of political science, we become a department of indoctrination if we can only allow Democrats to speak on campus,” Stanger said. “So for me on principle it’s extremely important that he be allowed to speak and I be allowed to engage him, along with my students.”
She also called upon administrators to stand up for the university’s core mission, which she deemed the “pursuit of truth.”
Stanger additionally spoke of her frustration that there is a sentiment emerging at Middlebury that freedom of speech and inclusivity are mutually exclusive ideas.
“I myself would like to do away with the terms ‘inclusivity’ and ‘diversity’ and instead talk about pluralism, and that freedom of speech is actually a means to greater inclusivity, greater diversity, and if we respect pluralism, the idea that there can be a multiplicity of views, and it’s interesting to contend with them,” she said, adding that this practice of pluralism is conducive to civil discourse both within and outside of academic institutions.
The Campus requested comment from Stanger with a series of questions, to which she replied from her office at the Santa Fe Institute with the following:
“I have been out and speaking about the larger issues that the Murray incident raises, which have to do with the challenges to American constitutional democracy,” she said. “Audiences have been receptive, and I have received wonderful support from Middlebury students.”
Stanger was scheduled to moderate a Q&A session after Murray’s lecture. Due to the protests, the lecture never took place, and the two instead engaged in a Q&A which was broadcasted to the college via live stream. When the two left the venue, Stanger suffered a concussion and neck injury. She began a two-year sabbatical in fall 2017, and is currently a scholar in residence at the New America Foundation in Washington D.C.
The purpose of the sabbatical program, according to the faculty handbook, is “to enhance the scholarly and teaching capacity of the individual faculty member and to promote the general interest of the college.” The handbook says that sabbaticals can be either a half year or a full year, but does does not discuss the possibility of a two-year leave.
Even before she moderated the Murray talk, Stanger was a high-profile scholar. She testified before three different Congressional committees in 2010 and was a guest on “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” in 2011. Today, Stanger continues to deliver talks about her work around the country.
Still, many of Stanger’s public appearances within the last year have centered on Middlebury and its place in the greater national debate about free speech on college campuses, and these appearances have not come without contention. During her Congressional testimony last October, Stanger criticized the actions of her colleagues in the Sociology/Anthropology (SOAN) department in the weeks preceding Murray’s visit. This comment instigated a back-and-forth in the opinion pages of The Campus among various professors and Paul Carrese ’89, who introduced the ASU event.
The first piece, published Nov. 29 and written by the SOAN department, disputed Stanger’s accusations toward the department and emphasized that the department did not release any collective statements about the event. Stanger responded with a Dec. 1 letter of her own, in which she specifically faulted Michael Sheridan, chair of the SOAN department, for criticizing the political science department for co-sponsoring the talk.
Another Dec. 1 letter, by Russian professor Kevin Moss, replied to Stanger’s letter and called for a correction to the description of the then-upcoming ASU talk.
Referencing Murray’s talk, the ASU website claimed that “Professor Stanger was there to verbally challenge the speaker. She never got the chance, and the invited speaker never spoke.”
Moss claimed the school’s description of the Murray protests distorted the story and played into “the dominant narrative used to defame [Middlebury].” He argued that Stanger did have a chance to challenge Murray and that he was able to speak, referencing the live streamed Q&A. He also said that Stanger did not challenge Murray. Moss asked the university to correct its description.
Laurie Essig, director of the college’s gender, sexuality and feminist studies program, also reached out to Carrese via email to ask that he revise the statements.
“I would like all of these factual errors corrected as soon as possible,” Essig wrote. “I appreciate your attention to this since what you are doing is in fact spreading false information about a series of complicated events.”
In a letter to the editor published on Dec. 6 in this paper, Carrese denied that the information on the website was false.
While intra-faculty discord is not usually so apparent to students, statements like the feuding op-eds published post-Murray have made tensions more overt.
Political science professor Matthew Dickinson expressed dissatisfaction about the back-and-forth nature of the debate.
“It is clear that, for anyone seeking the truth, there are more than enough sources to understand what happened during the Murray incident. The facts are not in dispute,” he said. “In this regard, it is unfortunate that the debate has veered away from discussing the links between speech, toleration, diversity of ideas, and a liberal arts education, and toward a story about who said what to whom.”
On “Q&A,” Stanger condemned the actions of her fellow faculty more broadly.
“What disturbed me about what happened at Middlebury was that I think students were actively encouraged by some members of the faculty to do things that were not in their interest. And that upsets me,” she said when Lamb asked why she did not want to see student protesters punished. “So 18- to 21-year-olds are still developing and need to be advised in the right ways. But I think I’ll just — I’ll just leave it at that to say that I would fault some faculty more than the students for what happened [at] Middlebury.”
Moss and other faculty have said they find it problematic that Stanger’s remarks have been those which have most prominently defined the national story surrounding the Murray protests.
“The press comes and pays attention to the part where students appear to be overreacting to something, and that’s kind of the narrative that they prefer to give,” Moss said in an interview with The Campus. “And then the press moves on, and what tends to happen at the colleges is that they have a community discussion that can go on for several days and come to very interesting moments of reconciliation among themselves, and the students always tend to be much more articulate than the press makes them out to be, in part by just not quoting them.”
He acknowledged that while The New York Times quoted student perspectives in its March 7 article, “Discord at Middlebury: Students on the Anti-Murray Protests,” these perspectives remained eclipsed by the story Stanger promoted.
Sheridan, whom Stanger criticized in her Dec. 1 op-ed, expressed similar concerns.
“I think that the story of what happened last year has cohered into a single dominant narrative, but overall I think there are other stories of what happened too and a lot of those other perspectives have not gotten into that dominant narrative, precisely because they’re small, they’re local, they’re personal, they’re not amplified on the national stage,” Sheridan said.
Moss also pointed out that the narrative of Stanger being a liberal professor added fuel to the fire.
“The average person who is out there and doesn’t know what really happened will think, ‘Oh, well the students they don’t even support somebody who’s liberal and leftist, they’re so far off the scale that they’re attacking even this person,’” he said.
Other professors think that Stanger’s injury was not focus enough within the conversation about the Murray protests.
“In general, I think there is lack of empathy with Professor Stanger, actually,” said Ata Anzali, professor of religion. “Even though I might not agree completely with her position, for example I don’t think the portrayal of our differences along departmental lines like political science versus SOAN is accurate, I think it is unfair to think about her contributions without first taking a deep and long look at what we, as a community, did that resulted in her injury.”
Anzali said that although the nuances of arguments might be lost on the national media stage, he understands why a colleague would want to use such a platform to insert his or her voice into the national debate.
“I personally don’t make that choice, but I think people have justification to do that,” he said.
Keegan Callanan, a political science professor, also called attention to Stanger’s trauma from the protests.
“I think she has downplayed the heroic character of her own actions before, during, and after the event and assault,” he said, adding that he did not find her story one-sided. “She is a model for us all in her commitment to protecting freedom of inquiry within a scholarly community and freedom of speech for those with whom we disagree. She has demonstrated moral and intellectual courage of the first order.”
In many of her public appearances, Stanger has expressed worry that the media attention to the protests will fail to take into account the complexities of the situation.
“I wouldn’t want to downplay the anguish that was expressed through those protests and through the shutdown because it’s real, the emotions are real. They have to be validated,” Stanger said on C-SPAN. “But to me, the most important part is thinking about, O.K., you feel that way, what do we need to do about it so that it’s different? How can we move the needle forward and make this a better place for you?”
“I guess the main message I would want to give to your audience is that there’s a variety of views in Middlebury,” she said. “It’s not this monolithic, extremist place. It’s just that a certain small segment of the population’s voice was amplified in a variety of ways and you can draw all kinds of erroneous conclusions from that about Middlebury students.”
As the Murray story continues to cycle through the media and academia, the college community is left to come to terms with what the incident means for Middlebury going forward.
At the ASU talk, Stanger acknowledged these divisions and called for a mutual understanding between faculty.
“I really think we need to uphold a Treaty of Westphalia between different groups and departments on campus where you just respect the right of another group to put forward what they think is important to engage with, even if you are absolutely convinced that is totally worthless,” she said. “Let them do that, because the reciprocal principle that you will be allowed to do the same.”
Moss expressed worry that the media attention the college has received post-Murray has hindered reconciliation efforts.
“I think we’re starting to heal on campus, but I don’t think that things like the ASU event make that easier,” he said. “At the same time it’s provoked a lot of people to come out to address racism at the college in ways that they hadn’t before. But I’m not sure whether events like the one at Arizona necessarily make the divisions that were created at Middlebury any better.”
Though he is in agreement with the principles she has spoken to, Anzali noted that Stanger’s absence on the Middlebury campus might make it difficult for her to see the impacts of her appearances.
“My ultimate goal, and my main concern, remains our own small community. And that is why I am only interested in a kind of rhetoric that can move our small community forward,” he said. “That is why I would take some issue with the tone in some of professor Stanger’s public appearances. I think the larger goal for all of us has to be do we heal this community, how do we build this community, and I think when you are way from Middlebury like Professor Stanger is, it is really difficult to calibrate your rhetoric precisely.”
“But again, when I look at this in the context of what happened to her, and the lack of any meaningful response from our community to that, I am not sure if I would have reacted differently,” Anzali added.
Other faculty are optimistic that professors are rebuilding trust between one another.
“I have great friends all around this campus who have lots of different points of view, and even if we disagree I think we can agree to be a community and to be a faculty that respects each other. So I hope there hasn’t been fracturing that has damaged that truth,” said Bertram Johnson, chair of the political science department.
Sheridan, who was partly inspired by post-Murray discussions to have students in his “Trust: Social and Cultural Capital” class write reports on the status of trust at the college, also said that while the campus is still on the mend, he no longer sees rifts between the faculty.
“We’re not done healing, we’re not done getting over that feeling of conflict, but I think we’ve definitely turned the corner on that,” he said. “Do we trust each other? That is harder, that’s a longer term thing.”
(02/22/18 2:27am)
Pamela Sands, a long-time postal clerk at the college, died last Tuesday at her home after a brief illness. Sands worked at the college for over 34 years and was well known throughout the Middlebury community for her position at the student mail center. She was 54.
Sands was born in Germany in 1963 to Thomas Francis Sands Sr. and Angela Bonita (Vieland) Sands. She began working at Middlebury in 1983 as a temporary postal clerk and was promoted to full-time postal clerk five years later. In 2010 Sands was inducted into the college’s 25-Year Club, which celebrates members of the college’s staff and faculty that have worked at the college for 25 years.
Throughout her tenure at the college, Sands forged close relationships with her co-workers, many of whom were Middlebury students.
“When we learned of her passing, Nicole [Duquette] and I gathered with our student workers to share stories, memories, funny moments and tears. We are family. She was family,” said Jacki Galenkamp, mail center supervisor, in an email to faculty and staff. Nicole Duquette is also a clerk in the mail center. “She would never go to graduation because it was too hard for her to say goodbye. So, from the many students and coworkers whose lives you touched, we say ‘see you later Pam!’”
Student postal clerk Lily Wilson ’18, who worked with Sands for three years, added that she always took a genuine interest in hers and other student workers’ lives.
“Pam ended up being one of the sweetest and kindest people I’ve had the pleasure of knowing at Middlebury,” Wilson said. “It’s hard to explain Pam to people who didn’t know her: why it’s funny how often she used hand sanitizer, how absurd it is that she came up to us searching the shelves to tickle us, her hilarious one-liners to chirp us, her love of playing matchmaker for all the mailroom employees. She was one of those people with such a unique personality that she can’t be summed up in just a few sentences.”
Sands is predeceased by her parents and her son, Christopher Ryan. She is survived by her significant other Michael Ryan and her sisters, lead mail service technician at the college Patty Murray and her husband Mark, and Johanna Freihofer and her husband Ed of Florida.
Friends and family of Sands celebrated her life at the Middlebury American Legion on Monday. Duqette, Galenkamp and 20 past and present student mailroom employees attended the service, where they met Sands’s family and shared stories and memories.
Sands was very fond of animals and her family requests that contributions be made in her honor to the Homeward Bound Addison County Humane Society at 236 Boardman Street, Middlebury, VT 05753.
“Her dream was to own a big house and provide a home for all cats in need,” Galenkamp said.
Donations can be made online at https://www.homewardboundanimals.org/donate/.
(01/17/18 11:51pm)
In an effort to bring together divergent perspectives, the Student Government Association (SGA) and President Laurie L. Patton have partnered to create the Communicating Across Difference Fund (CADF). The fund seeks to put opposing viewpoints on balanced footing by sponsoring events that allow student organizations to discuss points of contention without privileging one side over another.
“At a time when our campus is greatly divided, we wanted to find a way to provide people with differing views to have a seat at the table and promote conversations for understanding,” said SGA president Jin Sohn ’18. “We wanted to invite people and provide opportunities for ownership of conversation for those whose voices have been misrepresented or silenced in any way. We believe helping financially to create these events and conversations is one of the many ways to make these opportunities accessible for more on our campus.”
The fund is part of the SGA and Patton’s common agenda, which aims to encourage collaboration between the student body and the administration.
“Stronger communication is key to several items on the common agenda,” Patton said, “as is supporting more student leadership on key challenges on our campus.”
Organizations will apply to the CADF together through the SGA Finance Committee and will receive funding on a mutual basis. The first $2,000 of funding will come from Patton’s discretionary fund, while any requests thereafter will be sponsored by the SGA.
According to SGA treasurer Peter Dykeman-Bermingham ’18.5, the fund was originally framed in political discussion but extends to organizations of any type.
“The goal is really just finding difference in how we operate day-to-day as human beings in all of our passions and projects,” he said. “It doesn’t necessarily have to relate to the politics of the day.”
Dykeman-Bermingham also noted the importance of bilateral agreement among participating organizations.
“Neither organization has complete control of the money, neither has complete control over the event,” he said. “They both had to agree to the conversation together, they both had to be consenting parties and that’s really key to us, so we’re not forcing anyone into a conversation they don’t want to be in.”
Such conversations, according to Patton, may build trust among members of the college community.
“If we can sustain social relationships, and build what some theorists call ‘social capital,’ or long term relationships of mutual trust and benefit, we can work together in times of crisis,” she said. “We can learn to debate and disagree in an atmosphere of confidence and connection, rather than let the disagreements erode trust.”
The CADF is live now, and members from student organizations may propose their budgets for CADF-sponsored events at SGA Finance Committee meetings. Representatives from each of the participating organizations must be present at the time of application.
(11/16/17 1:28am)
As students filed in and out of Proctor dining hall on Monday afternoon, a group of student actors staged a performance activism piece called “Laurie’s Big Apology” on Proctor Terrace. Performers played a cast of characters from the administration, board of trustees and student body, while other students handed out pamphlets detailing their demands of the administration.
The piece was created by Eliza Renner ’18, Elizabeth Dunn ’18, Emma Ronai-Durning ’18.5 and Matea Mills-Andruk ’18.5, who also helped formulate the list of demands.
The piece follows months of tensions between the administration and student body, which were evident in last Thursday’s town hall.
Renner noted that although the development of “Laurie’s Big Apology” began before the town hall, it reflects many of the same frustrations voiced last Thursday.
“The town hall was also just another classic example of stalling tactics and making students feel like their voices are heard when they’re not,” she said.
“Performance activism was just a different way of communicating our message,” Dunn said. “I, and probably other people, was drawn to performance activism because I think a lot of the time activism can be very draining since it focuses on negative and painful topics, and I really wanted to do something with a group of people that was more light-hearted and fun even as it satirized a very serious topic.”
“Students have protested, students have joined student councils, students have met with members of the administration, students have joined every committee, students have met with every administrator and the message isn’t getting across, so this was just another tactic,” Renner said.
The performance began with the entry of three Middlebury “cheerleaders” who riled the crowd with call-and-response cheers, including “When I say rhetorical, you say resilience!” and “In-clusivity! In-in-clusivity!”
Then entered Dunn, Kizzy Joseph ’18 and Shaun Christean ’19, who collectively portrayed Addis Fouche-Channer ’17. The Campus reported in September that Fouche-Channer, who graduated last spring, claims to have been racially profiled by a public safety officer in the wake of the March 2 protests. The college disputes her account, even though a judicial official terminated the case against her in May.
Next filed in a procession of students playing college administrators, including Renner as President Patton. They were joined by two masked individuals posing as “trustees.” The performers made speeches satirizing each administrator, using critiques commonly leveled against them by student activists.
“I know no one in this community would do anything to fracture this community, right?” said Renner at one point. “That includes but is not limited to chanting, spitting, yelling, breathing and sneezing. And laughing.”
Renner also referenced the administration’s use of committees to address the concerns of students.
“We are thrilled to announce a very exciting development,” she said. “That’s right. We are implementing a new focus group that will form a subcommittee on inclusivity at Middlebury.”
Renner made overtures toward an apology but was stopped when Tyler McDowell ’19, playing college spokesman Bill Burger, rode onto the terrace on a toy car. The three Addises then gave testimonies to their innocence from the March 2 protests.
After these testimonies, McDowell discouraged any admission of guilt from Renner.
“You needn’t apologize, you’re the administrator!” he said.
The administrators then walked off the terrace and left Alex Rodgers ’20.5, playing Judicial Affairs Officers Karen Guttentag and Brian Lind, to point and yell “You get probation!” into the crowd.
The piece was playful, but Renner was careful to ensure that it complied with college guidelines and that was not mean-spirited.
“I think as a community we can call each other out and we can criticize each other, and it doesn’t mean we don’t love each other,” she said. “I have gratitude for a lot of members of the administration, and I care so much about the people that make up this campus, and so I have no interest in doing something that’s fueled by making fun of someone.”
Renner also made clear that the performers acknowledge the constraints the administration is under from the trustees, who were looming figures in the piece.
“We don’t want to vilify the administration and we are not trying to say that this is all President Patton’s fault,” she said. “So yes, President Patton needs to apologize, but we recognize the pressure she’s under, and she isn’t some singular unit.”
College spokesman Bill Burger declined to comment.
[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x9BKpmlFSBk[/embed]
(09/14/17 4:01am)
This fall, the Mahaney Center for the Arts will celebrate its 25 anniversary in style, bringing to the College an exciting schedule of events showcasing a variety of artistic disciplines. The scheduled performances, exhibits, talks, and film showings are emblematic of the MCA’s vibrant history at the College and its role in connecting students to art from both within and beyond the Middlebury area.
The festivities will commence this weekend with performances from the vertical dance company BANDALOOP, which will be returning to the College after a jaw-dropping show in 2004. The company will also offer free vertical dance workshops at Virtue Field House, as well as a dance technique master class and alumni talk with artistic associate Mark Stuver ’97.5. BANDALOOP’s performance is the first of many must-see events that the MCA is sponsoring this season.
The Campus spoke to Liza Sacheli, director at the MCA, about her experience with and plans for the center.
Middlebury Campus: In your time here, what are some of the most memorable moments or performances that you’ve been able to see in the MCA?
Liza Sacheli: I’ve been at the Mahaney Center for the Arts for 20 years now, so I’ve seen my fair share of memorable moments. Some of the highlights for me have been Wynton Marsalis and the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra; amazing string quartets like the Emerson, Tokyo, and Takács; world-class pianists Emanuel Ax, Peter Serkin, Krystian Zimerman, and Paul Lewis; theatre companies like Anne Bogart’s SITI Co and the Abbey Theatre of Ireland; and more recently the Nile Project (an amazing East-Central African music/dance/environmental cooperative).
MC: In the aftermath of national and local rifts, what role do you think the MCA can play in healing in our community? What role do you think the artist can play in our society today?
LS: The arts have always been reflective of culture and society. Our programming often explores issues that are on our campus community’s minds. Take last year’s play “Rodney King,” for example. The performer, Roger Guenveur Smith, has made a career out of portraying important figures in African American history. Rodney King came to our national consciousness as a victim of police brutality over 25 years ago, but the issue of race relations and policing is unfortunately still an issue today. The show provided a platform for conversation and exploration — many students took part — and Pulitzer winner Junot Diaz came to moderate a discussion about the show with student, faculty, and community members.
At the same time, we offer plenty of arts experiences that are a “balm” of sorts — an enjoyable, engaging performance can do so much to reduce our stress, offer us a sense of peace or pleasure, and increase our sense of connection to others in the audience and on stage.
MC: How does the MCA interact with the art scene in town? In the state of Vermont? What larger partnerships does the MCA maintain?
LS: We communicate quite a bit with the other cultural organizations in town, like Town Hall Theater, the Sheldon Museum, the Vermont Folk Life Center, and others. We have collaborated closely on events with Town Hall Theater, the Middlebury New Filmmakers Festival, and the Vermont Symphony Orchestra, among many others. Middlebury has a very lively cultural scene. It’s all we can do to not program big events on top of one another.
The MCA also works with national organizations like the Association of Performing Arts Professionals and Americans for the Arts, the International Society of Performing Arts, and regional organizations like the New England Foundation for the Arts. Those relationships help keep us connected to the broader arts scene, and to best practices in our field.
MC: How does the MCA go about attracting talent to rural Vermont? What does the selection process for artists look like?
LS: The Mahaney Center for the Arts staff has developed strong working relationships with a network of artists, agents, and other arts centers throughout the region, nationally, and even internationally. So we hear about what artists are touring, and when. We go out and see hundreds of performances every year. There are some artists we keep an eye on for years, until the time is right to bring them to Middlebury. The Performing Arts Series has a very impressive track record at catching artists while their stars are on the rise — take Yo-Yo Ma, for example. We take lots of suggestions from faculty, students, and staff in the arts departments, and we work with them to complement their own work with the best professional artists we can “import” to campus. And once they perform at Middlebury, their experience at the MCA and with our audience is so good that they’re usually happy to come back.
MC: What does the future hold for the MCA? Do you have a vision for where you’d like the MCA to be in another 25 years? Are there any upcoming programs or initiatives that you’d like to preview.
LS: We have two long term goals: First, we’d love for our Performing Arts Series to continue its nearly century-long tradition of presenting the best in classical and chamber music, but also to broaden its programming to embrace all the incredible and diverse artists the world has to offer. We would love for the diversity of our curriculum and community to be even better represented on our stages. I bet that would make the Arts at Middlebury even more attractive to students, too.
Second, access to the arts is important to us. The Mahaney Center for the Arts team continually works at breaking down the barriers of participation in the arts. We’ve made significant strides in physical accessibility — the MCA is one of the most physically accessible public spaces in the state of Vermont, and we offer assistive listening devices, large-print programs, and priority seating and parking. The MCA has also committed to price accessibility; fully half of the arts events we support are free, and for those that are ticketed, we keep our prices at or below that of other local/regional cultural organizations. We have held the line on $6 top ticket prices for Middlebury students, and we offer several free and discounted ticket programs for them too. But we still have work to do in terms of ensuring equal cultural access to all audiences. That may include rebalancing our program offerings to meet the community’s needs and interests, removing the barriers of formality that often play out in arts events, and/or finding new ways to communicate with and welcome new audiences.
As for upcoming performances, everyone should come to the MCA’s 25th anniversary kickoff with BANDALOOP, the first week of classes! This incredible company combines rock climbing technique with contemporary dance to create spectacular, perspective-bending dances. They’ll perform on the side of the Mahaney Center for the Arts — suspended from the roof on ropes — on Friday September 15. The performances will coincide with the fall all-campus picnic, to be held on the MCA back lawn, and WRMC’s SOSFest, featuring Noname, immediately following on the front lawn. It’ll be a night to remember! All free for Midd kids. Students can also sign up to dance on the wall with BANDALOOP at go/bandaloop.
Visit the MCA’s website to learn more about the upcoming events of the 2017–18 season.
(09/14/17 4:01am)
Jonathan Kemp, telescope and scientific computing specialist at the Middlebury College Mittelman Observatory, was thrilled and surprised by the immense national popularity of the August eclipse.
“I expected a lot of interest, but I think it was even more than I expected,” Kemp said. “The amount of interest and enthusiasm across the general public was quite impressive. From my perspective, it seems like for an entire day the national dialogue was changed, just a little bit, for the better to think about science, astronomy, STEM, the sun, the moon, the solar system, and our place in the universe.”
Kemp and a handful of students and faculty gathered on the McCardell Bicentennial Hall rooftop on August 21 to watch the phenomenon, which reached its maximum at 2:41 p.m. when the moon covered 60 percent of the sun. The eclipse was North America’s first transcontinental eclipse since 1918, and garnered significant media coverage and enthusiasm from around the country.
Kemp was careful to keep the eclipse-viewing event small, so that he could offer one-to-one guidance with each observer. He and science data librarian Wendy Shook, who helped Kemp prior to and during the event, answered questions and ensured that each viewer handled all equipment and eye protection correctly. Spectators utilized eclipse glasses, an indirect solar projection method, and a small telescope outfitted with a solar filter to securely view the sun. Some viewers brought their homemade pinhole cameras to the event as well.
Luckily, the group enjoyed a relatively unobstructed view of the eclipse, unbothered by the cloud coverage that plagued spectators’ views elsewhere. They even saw sunspots on the sun’s surface through the telescopes, which appeared dark in contrast with the brightness of the sun.
Shook, who has a background in physics and astronomy, was amazed by the eclipse and its power to bring people together.
“It sounds trite, but reading about eclipses and experiencing them are very different, and there is a thrill when the science you learned as a child becomes real,” she said. “It becomes a shared experience that brings people together in a good way, and I think the world sorely needs experiences like these.”
Despite the limited size of the event, Kemp managed to engage with members of the community through the observatory email list and the observatory website, which he updated with detailed safety protocols and other links about optimizing the eclipse-viewing experience.
Kemp also took photographs of the eclipse for the College communications department using a solar telescope mounted onto the 24-inch telescope in the observatory’s dome. The solar telescope was mounted with a Hydrogen-Alpha filter, which, like all solar filters, let little enough light into the field of view so that spectators could carefully view the sun.
Kemp’s photos were picked up by the College’s social media feeds and various local news outlets. Interestingly, the photographs show the presence of a solar prominence, caused by a flare of gas on the sun’s surface. Like the sunspots viewed through the rooftop telescopes, these prominences offered an exciting new look at the sun for the average viewer.
Kemp was excited to share his love for astronomy with the Middlebury community through the viewing event and his other outreach efforts, and believes that celestial phenomena such as solar eclipses can open people’s eyes to the wonders of astronomy. Many organizations used the eclipse as an opportunity to educate, taking advantage of its enrapturing effect to pique people’s interest in science.
“I think a lot of the outreach that was done by scientific organizations was centered around not just the eclipse itself but in engaging the public and schoolchildren in things like STEM activities, things that perhaps have a pedagogical aspect, to allow appreciation of the eclipse specifically and the universe more generally in a way that could stoke people’s interest and enthusiasm in astronomy and in science more generally,” Kemp said.
Though Vermonters witnessed a partial eclipse, viewers from several towns and cities throughout the nation saw the moon completely cover the sun. This obstruction was accompanied by a host of eerie effects, including darkening of the sky, cooling of the atmosphere, and changes in animal behavior.
Spectators often describe witnessing totality as a transformative experience.
“The astronomer at Columbia who was my mentor for many years and also my advisor in college would proudly say that he became an astronomer on the day in March, 1970, when a total solar eclipse went across the Eastern seaboard,” Kemp said. “It was such a seminal event in his budding career as a scientist that it perhaps solidified his path in astronomy on the day that he experienced that total solar eclipse.”
In addition to looking marvelous, total eclipses give scientists unique opportunities to study and learn things about the sun that they may otherwise not be able to witness. Scientists use total eclipses to study the sun’s outer atmosphere, or solar corona, for example, which can only be seen when the brightness of the sun is completely blocked from vision by the moon.
While total solar eclipses in themselves are not rare — they take place, on average, every year and a half — they may only occur once every 400 years or so in a given location. Middlebury will be fortunate enough to witness a total solar eclipse in 2024, when a path of totality approximately 175 miles wide will make its way across the eastern half of the U.S. It will experience another — though partial — eclipse in 2045, when North America is again treated to a trans-continental eclipse.
Until then, Kemp invites students to the observatory to enjoy the countless other celestial sights our solar system has to offer. Because the night sky changes continually throughout the year, spectators are always in for something new, whether they are observing the stars, the moon in its many phases, or even the International Space Station as it flies overhead. Kemp and his student assistants at the observatory are eager to help science majors and non-science majors alike use the large telescope at the top of the observatory, the smaller telescopes on the rooftops, and the naked eye to view the incredible sights above. They also want to provide students and members of the community with the resources they need to see the stars anytime, anywhere.
“We’re pretty fortunate that here in Middlebury, despite the sometimes cloudy weather, we have fantastically dark skies,” Kemp said. “We’re hoping that people realize that they can go home or go back to their dorm and still enjoy the night sky. They don’t have to be at the observatory.”
The College additionally offers courses for students who want to extend their education about space to the classroom. Although Middlebury does not have an official astronomy department, it does offer astronomy-based courses through the physics department. Many of these courses, such as An Introduction to the Universe and Ancient Astronomy, are designed for non-majors and require use of the telescope.
Curricular use of the telescope, Observatory Open House Nights and the eclipse viewing event in August are just some of the many ways in which Kemp and the Mittelman Observatory team have connected the community to the resources necessary to appreciate and understand astronomy. Visit go/observatory to see what events are on the observatory calendar for the fall.
(05/10/17 5:38am)
The fellows of the eighth annual Middlebury Fellowship in Narrative Journalism will present their year-long radio documentary projects to the Middlebury community on Friday, May 12 in the Axinn Winter Garden from 4 to 6 p.m. The fellows — Matthew Blake ’17, Will DiGravio ’19, Izzy Fleming ’17 and Tabitha Mueller ’18 — have crafted digital portraits of 13 students after asking them the event’s titular question, “How Did You Get Here?”
Middlebury Scholar-in-residence Sue Halpern and Middlebury Magazine Editorial Director Matt Jennings founded the The Middlebury Fellowship in Narrative Journalism in 2008 and have been co-directing it since. The fellowship teaches students how to conduct narrative journalism projects using interviews and digitally-based media. The fellows work with Halpern throughout the year to learn the basics of radio production and narrative journalism.
For their projects, the fellows drew on interviewees’ personal stories to create vibrant portraits of the paths that led them to the College. When presented, these profiles will give the greater Middlebury community a look into the diversity of experiences among students at the College and will honor the myriad of backgrounds and stories that students have to share.
“The Narrative Journalism Fellowship offers a solution for the divide that exists between ourselves and others, a divide which prevents the story of us to take place,” Blake said. “It creates a space for students to engage with their peer’s stories and develop an awareness of, as well as appreciation for, the multiplicity of stories and experiences on Middlebury’s campus.”
The audio-based medium the fellows used in their documentation allowed for narration that was completely story-focused.
“Learning the unique power of audio storytelling is my biggest take-away,” Fleming said. “Unlike other forms of expression, there is no room for prejudice when listening to someone talk. You can’t evaluate their level of education, identify their race, or notice how expensive their watch is. Instead, the human voice puts everyone on an (relatively) even playing field. It is an incredibly intimate medium, and the relationship you can nurture with a human voice is far deeper than I would have ever anticipated at the beginning of the year before this fellowship began.”
The student profiles will be between five and six minutes each. This may not be enough time to tell the entirety of a person’s story, Blake said, but it is enough time to spark meaningful discussions.
“After listening to one of this year’s pieces about a Football player,” he remarked, “a student commented, ‘I had no idea that someone on the Football team would write poetry or be so open about his emotions. . . . Do you think that he’d be willing to talk with me if I asked him some questions?’”
(05/04/17 1:30am)
The Community Council has unanimously called for the College to reassess and change the names of dining menu items that may be deemed offensive.
The recommendation, sponsored by Charles Rainey ’19 and passed on April 25, outlines a plan that will foster collaboration between Dining Services and cultural organizations to address “the issue of ethnic dish names and their problematic appropriation of various identities.”
Students and alumni of color have vocalized their concerns about these names to Rainey since he came to the College, and he decided that a recommendation would be an effective way to bring these voices to light.
“I’m a sophomore and I’ve been hearing concerns about dining hall names since I got here on campus,” Rainey said, “and the spirit of the bill was more to include those concerns in the decision making process when naming ethnic dishes.”
Cultural organizations will play a major part in facilitating these conversations.
“What the recommendation called for is to have Dining Services spend the semester going over the names with the Chief Diversity Officer and with any cultural organizations that are willing,” said Travis Wayne Sanderson ’19, co-chair of community council.
Sanderson emphasized that these talks will involve members of cultural organizations because Community Council wants to insure that the suggestions coming through are valuable and contribute to conversations about diversity in a meaningful way.
“[The recommendation] affects specific students,” he said, “and those students should have a form by which to express that, and that’s the main intention.”
However, Sanderson and Rainey both noted that they only want to involve willing cultural organizations, as to not place additional burden on organizations that already have their hands full.
“Having been involved with cultural orgs, I know how important it is to not give additional responsibilities to orgs who already do so much for our community and are doing more as the school continues to diversify and their membership grows,” Rainey said.
The administration also wants to stress that members of the College community are welcome at any time to approach Executive Director of Food Service Operations Dan Detora with their concerns.
“We are happy, and I know Dan Detora is happy, to speak with any student or group of students who have suggestions about either names of menu items or the way menu items are prepared,” said Vice President for Communications and Chief Marketing Officer Bill Burger.
One of the main concerns the recommendation expresses is that certain dishes’ names reflect cultural generalizations, and that naming a dish after a continent disregards the variety of perspectives and cultures that are represented within that continent. According to the recommendation, this is inconsistent with the College’s value of diversity and inclusivity.
“Certain offensive names include the frequent appearance of ‘African Peanut Soup’ and ‘Asian Snap Pea Salad,’ among others,” the recommendation stated. “These menu item names minimize the importance of other cultures and civilizations of the world that are not Western, lumping them together into one category. This signals a lack of attentiveness to the diversity of certain identities not traditionally represented in our community.”
Rainey added that consideration for authenticity is important and can also help students learn about the cultural context behind their meals.
“If you’re going to dive into a culture, I don’t think it’s too much to ask for you to know a little bit more about where it’s from and what it’s about,” he said. “And any way in which I can help make the campus more inclusive in that regard, I’m gonna do.”
Middlebury’s move toward a more thoughtful food-naming process is not the first of its kind — students at Oberlin expressed similar concerns last year and underwent conversations to address these issues.
“I’ve heard about these requests happening at other institutions, so this was not new, I think, to anyone in the administration,” said Burger. “I think that in this country, where a lot of cuisines and traditions around food come together, there’s been a lot of amalgamation, and a lot of Americanization of different ethnic and regional and national cuisines, and I don’t think that Middlebury is a particular offender about this, but we probably reflect the kind of national composition of the blending of cultures and cuisines and how some of these things may be less authentic than they might otherwise be.”
Sanderson sent out a student-wide email about the recommendation on the date of its passing. One sarcastically disapproving response he received came from a student who had recently transferred from the College, and has since gained national recognition in an article published to the Barstool Sports website, titled, “Middlebury Got Rid Of Some ‘Cultural Appropriation’ Food Items And A Student Gave A Quality Email Burn Back.”
Sanderson did not seem bothered by the “Email Burn” or the article that followed.
“I just think that it’s another iteration of a major problem in conversation about cultural appropriation,” Sanderson said. “Since last year with the Oberlin instance of the same sort of thing happening, it’s become this major strawman to attack on the right, and it’s viewed often as just being ‘not important, so why are we wasting time on this,’ and I mean there’s a valid conversation there, but I think that honestly the article was just unnecessary.”
Rainey is proud of the progress Community Council is able to make on issues that matter. He encourages students to come to Community Council meetings — which take place every Tuesday from 4:30-6 in Axinn 220 — if they have concerns they want to address. Rainey looks forward to the conversations that are to come.
“I think it’s a necessary recommendation and I’m proud that we passed it, however I’m ready to move on to bigger fish to fry,” he said.