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(11/29/18 10:59am)
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Midterm elections historically see far lower turnout than presidential elections, especially among college students. But this year’s midterms, at least in Middlebury, represented a deviation from that trend: 67 more students cast their votes in the town of Middlebury this midterm election than during the 2016 presidential election, a 30 percent increase.
Students gave many reasons for deciding to vote in Vermont instead of sending an absentee ballot back home. Some students, such as Paul Flores Clavel ’22, cited their involvement in local politics as the reason they decided to cast their vote in Addison County.
“I’ve been getting to know more about Vermont politics and in general I just feel like I’d vote here where I’ll be living for the next few years,” said Clavel, who is from New York City. “New York will definitely vote the way it has in the past but Vermont seems to be really crucial right now so I decided to express my voting power here.”
Some international students with U.S. citizenship also voted in Vermont because they do not have another domestic address where they can register.
Others voted after attempting to vote back home and experiencing problems with the absentee ballot system. Many never received their absentee ballots in the mail, like Maddie Ledet ’22.
“I actually wanted to vote in Georgia where I’m from, since we had a pretty historic election going on for governor, but unfortunately my absentee ballot did not come in so I did same-day registration for the election in Vermont,” she said.
Other students did receive their ballots but were not able to return them in time. Langley Dunn ’19 discovered that her Oklahoma ballot needed to be notarized and received back home by election day at 7 p.m. in order to count. Knowing she would not be able to send it back in time, she decided to register to vote same-day in Vermont.
Dunn and Ledet were among many other students who took advantage of the same-day registration option. This is the first year that Vermont has offered same-day voter registration, and over half of the students who voted in town registered on Election Day. Students comprised almost 70 percent of all same-day registrants in Middlebury.
Ashley Laux, program director at the college’s Center for Community Engagement, said this may be in part because MiddVote, a nonpartisan student organization dedicated to encouraging students to vote, emphasized the same-day voting option on campus.
“Since many states have earlier voter registration deadlines, if a student who is an eligible voter was unable to register to vote in their home state and missed that registration deadline, MiddVote volunteers informed them that they could still register to vote in Vermont and vote here in Middlebury,” she said.
The Town Clerk’s office released an election participation report on Nov. 15. The Campus analyzed voting records for the town of Middlebury in 2018, and compared them to records from 2016. The Campus counted all voters who listed “Middlebury College or “14 Old Chapel Road” as either their legal or mailing address as “students” for this analysis. This method does not account for students who live off campus and may have used another address.
(11/15/18 11:00am)
Students filled Crossroads and The Grille to watch the results of the recent midterm elections in an unusually high showing of enthusiasm and support on Nov. 6.
The watch party, similar to those hosted during past elections, was co-sponsored by the College Democrats and the College Republicans. The event included live commentary from Political Science Professors Matt Dickinson and Bert Johnson, as well as a big screen playing CNN in the background that updated students on the Democratic Party’s takeover of the U.S. House of Representatives and the Republican Party keeping their hold on the U.S. Senate.
[pullquote speaker="Grace Vedock '20" photo="" align="center" background="on" border="all" shadow="on"]People were genuinely interested in the midterms, and they showed up in droves to the watch party.[/pullquote]
Grace Vedock ’20, president of the College Democrats, said she was happy to keep the tradition alive.
“Historically, midterm elections don’t generate the same amount of enthusiasm as presidential elections,” she said. “This round of midterm elections completely exceeded my expectations in terms of on-campus energy — people were genuinely interested in the midterms, and they showed up in droves to the watch party.”
College Republicans Co-President Sophia Dongas ’21 agreed, adding that she felt the event was a success for students with different political affiliations.
“We decided on co-hosting the party because we wanted everyone to feel welcome and decided that making it bipartisan would encourage people from both the right and the left to attend,” she said. “I think it is important to watch election results as they come in because I liken it to watching history unfold.”
Many students at the event said they wanted to be with other people when they heard the results. “I think it’s important to be with your community, especially because elections have become so divisive and more emotional than they have ever been to us in the past,” Elsa Rodriguez ’21 said.
[pullquote speaker="Sophia Dongas ’21" photo="" align="center" background="on" border="all" shadow="on"]I think it is important to watch election results as they come in because I liken it to watching history unfold.[/pullquote]
While some students said they were there to learn, many were also already following key races, both in their home states and nationally. Wynn McClenahan ’22 was watching the house race in her home district, New Jersey 11. “There’s a seat up in my district for the first time in a really long time, because the old representative retired,” she said. “I’m definitely interested in seeing how that will go.”
Caroline Harrison ’19.5 is from Florida and was watching the governor’s race closely. “I don’t want to be alone when the results of that election come in, either way,” she said. “Also definitely interested to see how Texas goes, because if Beto wins that that’s a real game changer and I think that’s the closest they’ve ever been to turning blue.”
Harrison was referring to Beto O’Rourke, the Democratic nominee for Senate in Texas, a race that students from across the political spectrum said they were watching closely. Students also highlighted the gubernatorial elections in Florida and Georgia — as of press time, the latter two races remained uncalled, with Republican candidates clinging to slim leads, while O’Rourke was defeated in Texas by Republican incumbent Ted Cruz.
Others were also keeping track of races that had the potential to yield historic firsts. “My congressional district elected Sharice Davids, the first openly gay member of the Kansas delegation and one of the two first Native American women elected to Congress,” Vedock said. “I was also watching Colorado, where Jared Polis became the first gay governor in US history.”
[pullquote speaker="Grace Vedock '20" photo="" align="center" background="on" border="all" shadow="on"]It’s always more difficult to harness energy on non-election years, but in the Trump era, there are never a shortage of things to fight against. I hope that people stay informed and engaged.[/pullquote]
Throughout the evening, Dickinson provided context for students on a national level while Johnson’s commentary focused on state and local races.
“As the election returns come in we’ll make fun of Wolf Blitzer, we’ll try to explain what’s actually happening,” Dickinson said as he kicked off the event. He later added, “The one thing that we know historically is we are in a period of unprecedented instability in American politics. And what I mean by that is control of our major institutions, the presidency, the house, the senate, has rotated from party to party.”
With the next national election now two years away, both Dongas and Vedock have plans for their organizations in the short term.
“Currently we are focused on building a strong community between our club members, and inviting a conservative speaker to campus,” Dongas said.
Vedock said that she hopes to build a bridge between her club and local community. “It’s important to get out of the ‘Middlebury bubble’ and learn about our fellow community members,” she said. “It’s always more difficult to harness energy on non-election years, but in the Trump era, there are never a shortage of things to fight against. I hope that people stay informed and engaged.”
(11/08/18 10:59am)
When I first heard about the shooting at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, I turned to writing as a way to process my grief. Since I wrote down my first reactions to the news, I have seen incredible resilience within the Jewish community and wonderful support from those who stand with us against hate. I am so grateful for the solidarity and love that I have experienced over the last two weeks.
When I saw the news, I tried to think if I know anyone who lives in Pittsburgh. If any of my Jewish friends have family there. If any of the first-years we’ve welcomed to Hillel over the last few months grew up there. I couldn’t think. I called my friend and cried on the phone. And I cried after we hung up.
When I saw the news, I got up and put my Magen David necklace on. It belonged to my grandmother. I needed to wear it that day.
When I saw the news, there was no news yet. Two police officers — shot but not killed, no information about further casualties. Situation developing. Eight confirmed dead, further injuries reporting to the hospital. Suspect at large. Suspect surrenders. 11 confirmed dead. Suspect yelled “all Jews must die” as he entered the Shabbat service and opened fire. I couldn’t read more news after that.
I thought about the chill that ran down my spine and into my toes when I heard white supremacists marching in Charlottesville chanting “Jews will not replace us.” I was scared then. This is what I was scared of.
I thought about the desecrated Jewish cemeteries with the gravestones tipped over. The rocks that were once stacked on top spilled off into the grass. I always put rocks on top of Jewish gravestones when I go to cemeteries. It feels like a promise. It feels like telling the dead that even though they are gone, they passed down their customs. That there are still people who know to put rocks on gravestones. They succeeded, they can rest.
I thought about the swastika that was chalked onto the Havurah in Middlebury after the 2016 election. We held a memorial service on campus and we sang in the November night. It was freezing out, and it felt like maybe every Jewish person in Vermont came to mourn with us. I held a candle. I felt so much less alone.
When I was in Prague this summer, I visited the surviving synagogues. The synagogues still stand there because Hitler planned to use the city as proof of the exterminated Jewish race. In the Pinkas Synagogue, they have painted the names of every known Czech Jew who died in the Holocaust. 78,000 names. The names cover every inch of every wall downstairs from floor to ceiling. Upstairs, they have an art exhibition: children’s art pieces from the concentration camp Theresienstadt. Most of those children died in Auschwitz.
I remember studying those kids during Holocaust Remembrance Day at my Hebrew school. When I was 15, we did an exercise where we each received the profile of one of the children to memorize. We stood in a circle and we told the other students about our assigned child. At the end, if the child had died before the war ended, we sat down. Writing this, I don’t remember if the child I learned about died or not. But I can tell you exactly which of my friends sat down in that circle. My little sisters were both in that circle. I know they both sat down.
Outside that synagogue in Prague, I walked through the Jewish graveyard. It’s all stacked on top of itself, since Jews did not have the right to expand it. I stepped across the rope to place a pebble on top of a gravestone nearby. It was the only rock I could find.
I can’t stay away from the news any longer. I click through the articles. CNN. Washington Post. New York Times. The shooter, they say, was a known white supremacist and anti-Semite. He posted evil words on the internet, as so many do. I don’t want to know his name. I don’t care what his story is.
He said “all Jews must die.” But I am still here. While I was standing in that synagogue in Prague, I thought about that. I am here. In a city that witnessed unspeakable atrocities, on a continent where six million people died for believing as I do. I am still here. We are still here. At the time, that gave me some small amount of hope. It still does, even on days like these.
In memory of those who lost their lives, I will try to practice “gemilut chasadim,” acts of loving-kindness. I will remember that our fight is never over and that my Judaism teaches me to fight for all those who face threats of violence and erasure. My heart breaks for all of those who lost loved ones on Saturday. May their memories be a blessing.
A version of this piece was originally published in New Voices, an online Jewish student magazine.
(11/07/18 5:36am)
Early on election night, Democrats Mari Cordes and Caleb Elder won seats in the Vermont House of Representatives, ousting the Republican incumbent Fred Baser. Retiring Democratic legislature Dave Sharpe, who left one of the house seats open, said he is pleased with the results.
“We’ve elected two Democrats and they’ve both worked very hard. They’re going to be great representatives,” Sharpe said. “I’m really pleased with their character and their knowledge.”
Sharpe speculated that Baser may have lost on the basis of his voting record. “The concerning part for myself, and I think for a lot of voters in the district, was that while he voted for some good policy on the floor of the house, he sustained the governor’s vetoes and changed his vote to do that,” he said. “I think the blue wave is real.”
Sharpe also applauded state senator-elects Ruth Hardy and Chris Bray for their landslide victory. “I knew that Bray and Hardy were going to win big right from the beginning,” he said. “They outshine their competitors by a whole lot and the public realized that. They’ll have a big win tonight before all the votes are counted.”
Other Democratic candidates are still waiting for their election results to come in. Dennis Wygmans, the current state’s attorney for Addison County, does not expect his election to be called before morning. “So far I’m optimistic but it’s going to be very tight,” he said. Wygmans has never run for election before as he was appointed by former governor Peter Shumlin. He said the process of running for office has been eye-opening. “It’s a lot of work,” he said. “Especially when you have to work the job of being state’s attorney on top of trying to run for office.”[pullquote speaker="Dave Sharpe" photo="" align="center" background="on" border="all" shadow="on"]I knew that Bray and Hardy were going to win right from the beginning.[/pullquote]
As for the other races of the night, he said he is hoping for all the county races to go blue. “I have a lot of folks I’ve campaigned with here,” he said. “I’m rooting for all the Dems on the ballot.”
Lieutenant Sheriff Peter Newton, who is currently running for sheriff, is also optimistic about his prospects, especially after winning both the Democratic and Republican primaries in August as a registered Democrat. “Going into this we knew we would do well, it’s just a matter of waiting for the results to come in,” he said. Like Wygmans, Newton expects this to be a long night. “It sounds like I’m ahead by a lot, but until I start seeing it for myself, I won’t rest,” he said.
(11/07/18 5:18am)
[video credit="AMELIA POLLARD" align="right"][/video]
Democratic candidate Ruth Hardy was elected to represent Addison County in the state senate, and fellow Democrat Chris Bray was re-elected to a third term. At a victory party for the local Democrats at the Middlebury Inn, Hardy said she feels honored that Addison County residents trusted her to represent them.
“I’m really excited to get to work on their behalf and to learn a lot,” she said. “I’m proud of all the people who worked with me to make this victory happen.”
Bray said that despite having served in the state senate since 2012 and in the house from 2006 to 2010, he had never faced such a competitive field before. “It makes you wonder what people think about the work we’re doing,” he said. “To have such a strong vote affirms that I am on the right track and the county is on the right track.”
Bray said he is excited to work with Hardy in Montpelier. “We’ve been great partners throughout the election,” he said. “We’re two independent-minded people with our own skill sets our own backgrounds. My partner in the senate has been Claire Ayer and I was really hopeful that we would maintain a gender balance in this county.”[pullquote speaker="Chris Bray" photo="" align="center" background="on" border="all" shadow="on"]We’ve been great partners throughout the election.[/pullquote]
Hardy said that among the first projects she wants to tackle at the statehouse is affordable childcare and paid family leave. “That’s something that hasn’t been worked on enough in the legislature,” she said. “It’s really important to me as a mom that we take care of families with young children.” She also mentioned the need to move the ball forward on universal primary care as a crucial early step, alongside keeping Vermont education strong and providing programs for seniors.
Bray echoed many of Hardy’s priorities. “If we want people to be able to enter the workforce securely, there has to be affordable abundant child care available,” he said, adding that he believes universal primary care is the most cost-effective option. He also mentioned his intention to continue past work on his Farm to Plate initiative. Other pillars of his political repertoire include clean energy and water bills.AMELIA POLLARD
In their remarks to the crowd, both candidates doled out a long list of thank yous, including to the Addison County Democratic Party and the college students who were involved in the campaign process. At the end of her speech, Hardy highlighted the four key elements of her platform: healthcare, access to child care for families with young children, strong local schools and services for seniors.
“We’re going to do it all,” she said.
Editor's Note: Ruth Hardy is the spouse of Prof. Jason Mittell, The Campus' academic advisor. Mittell plays no role in any editorial decisions made by the paper. Any questions may be directed to campus@middlebury.edu.
(11/01/18 10:00am)
[pullquote speaker="Alex Bacchus '21" photo="" align="center" background="on" border="all" shadow="on"]Trans, gender non-conforming, non-binary and intersex people don’t need to wear labels or pins or present themselves differently to receive the affirmation we deserve.[/pullquote]
In the middle of the #WontBeErased rally on Friday, Alex Bacchus ’21 invited the 200 attendees to dance. Lady Gaga played on the speaker as students and a few faculty, staff and community members danced together on Proctor Terrace to protest a memo from the Trump administration’s Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
Bacchus explained that part of the inspiration for incorporating a dance party into the protest came from the organization Werk for Peace, which was co-founded by several Middlebury alumni, including Firas Nasr ’15.
“Dance is a non-violent expression that has so much power; it can even be used as a tool to heal,” Bacchus said. “I wanted to include movement as a piece to today’s rally because of its great versatility. The fight for trans and intersex rights has been an ongoing battle, and this week’s news triggered a range of reactions: anger, hatred, frustration, sadness, fright, and I felt movement was an appropriate medium.”
The leaked HHS memo, released on Oct. 21, detailed the department’s plan to require government agencies to adopt a uniform definition of gender as determined by biological sex. This decision would revoke legal recognition and thus remove protections for transgender and intersex individuals, undoing several Obama-era policies that had widened the definition of gender.
In the wake of the memo’s release, Queers and Allies (Q&A) and the Trans Affinity Group (TAG) co-organized Friday’s rally to protest the threat of government erasure of transgender and intersex people. Ami Furgang ’20, one of the co-presidents of Q&A, said they decided to center the event around transgender and nonbinary voices. Three students spoke at the rally, and members of Q&A read two anonymous submissions they had received prior to the event.
Leif Taranta ’20.5 spoke about their personal experiences with their gender identity, and emphasized the interconnectedness of many different groups struggling against erasure.
“We must stand with together and support Indigenous people, women, people of color, refugees and immigrants, disabled people, poor people, and all other marginalized people,” they said. “Trans people facing oppression on many fronts should be the central focus of our movement.”
Speakers at the rally also focused on what students can do to support transgender and intersex communities going forward. Lee Michael Garcia Jimenez ’20, co-founder of TAG, spoke about their experience presenting a list of demands to the administration to improve the on-campus experience of transgender and nonbinary students.
“Demands were both long term and short term including creating a faculty position for managing queer and trans life on campus, creating a web-page describing the resources available to transgender members of the Middlebury College community and creating and implementing a plan to stop gendering public restrooms,” they said in an interview with The Campus.
Garcia Jimenez said that one good way for students to get involved in supporting transgender, non-binary and intersex rights on campus is by advocating for more gender neutral restrooms.
[pullquote speaker="Alex Bacchus '21" photo="" align="center" background="on" border="all" shadow="on"]There are a lot of movements nationwide that are campaigning for trans and intersex rights but limited by lack of funds.[/pullquote]
Speakers also shared ways to donate money to help transgender and intersex people.
“There are a lot of movements nationwide that are campaigning for trans and intersex rights but limited by lack of funds,” Bacchus said. “If you have the financial capacity, please donate to organizations fighting for trans and intersex rights and awareness.”
Furgang named the Trans Lifeline and the Marsha P. Johnson Institute as two such organizations. They also pointed out that students and community members can donate directly to online fundraising campaigns set up by transgender or intersex individuals.
Lastly, multiple speakers mentioned how important it is for attendees to educate themselves on trans and intersex issues.
“Learn about our history, our diversity, our richness,” Bacchus said. “There’s more to it than trans man, trans woman and intersex individual. It’s not our job to be educators when every day we wake up knowing we are rejected by society and we have to fight to live authentically.”
Bacchus said that one step in the right direction would be for cisgender people to be better about asking what pronouns someone uses.
“I have a lot of friends who consistently misgender me, and I’m sure none of it is intentional or out of malintent, but it’s painful and emotionally draining to have to experience being called ‘he’ so frequently,” they said. “Cis people, when you meet someone for the first time, ask them their pronouns. Trans, gender non-conforming, non-binary and intersex people don’t need to wear labels or pins or present themselves differently to receive the affirmation we deserve.”
(11/01/18 9:57am)
Former Vermont Governor Madeleine Kunin had a favorite saying about representation in politics, one that stuck with many of the women she worked with: “If you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu.”
It was with that philosophy in mind that Kunin founded Emerge Vermont in 2013 to help elect more women to public office. Kunin was inspired to start the organization after she spoke at a conference hosted by Emerge America, the national parent organization. Since its inception, Emerge Vermont has trained 88 Democratic women to run for office. 20 Emerge Vermont alumnae currently hold elected office in the state. In 2018, 34 Emerge Vermont alumnae are running for office or for reelection, including gubernatorial candidate Christine Hallquist.
These 34 Emerge alumnae run alongside a record number of female candidates across the country this year. According to PBS News, more women than ever before have won major party primaries in races for governor and Congress this year. Most of these women are Democrats. “I’m thrilled that so many women are thinking about it who haven’t thought about it before,” Kunin said in an interview with The Campus. “Emerge is really filling a need.”
Though Kunin applauded the high number of female candidates, she said Vermont still has a lot of work to do. Vermont is the only state that has never sent a woman to Congress. Kunin is the only female governor to have served in Vermont.
Many women in government are working to change the state’s political culture to make it more egalitarian. State Sen. Debbie Ingram (D-Chittenden) said that women need to run to advocate for issues that impact them disproportionately, such as women’s health care needs and child care.
“When half the population is female then we should have a similar proportion in our government,” Ingram said. “We can’t expect men to continue to be in the majority and represent our interests. We need to speak for ourselves.”
But it is often a challenge to get women to run for public office, as State Rep. Jill Krowinski (D-Chittenden 6-3) experienced firsthand. Krowinski currently serves as the House majority leader and is a member of the Emerge Vermont advisory council. When somebody first suggested she run for office in 2012, she hesitated. Krowinski was familiar with politics. She had served as the director of the Vermont Democratic House Campaign, the executive director of the Vermont Democratic Party and run a gubernatorial campaign, but she saw her role as helping other women get elected. She said she “had to be talked into” running herself. This experience further hit home for her the importance of programs like Emerge.
Emerge Vermont offers two types of trainings for women: a six month in-depth training and a boot camp weekend option. The six-month intensive includes 70 hours of programing, during which participants learn about everything from public speaking and fundraising, to campaign strategy and field operations, to cultural competency and ethical leadership. During the training sessions, prospective candidates get advice from Washington experts and local politicians.
In 2018, the full program cost $750, and the bootcamp $265. Executive Director Ruth Hardy, who is currently working part-time as she runs for an Addison County state Senate seat, said there are several options available for women who cannot afford the full cost. “Scholarships are available, as are payment plans, and assistance with fundraising to cover tuition,” she said. The 2019 tuition has not yet been set.
Hardy said that Emerge Vermont tailors their training to the state’s political landscape, but that much of their curriculum translates to other places. She also noted that while “campaigning in rural areas is different than urban areas,” alumnae sometimes move and run in other places. Hardy also mentioned that Middlebury students have participated in the bootcamps in the past, and that they would be welcome in the longer program as well, although the scheduling commitment would be difficult to balance with a full course load.
State Rep. Carol Ode (D-Chittenden 6-1), who graduated from Emerge in 2014, remembers that the program challenged her to consider all aspects of running for office. Ode and Ingram, who are both currently running for reelection, mentioned that they still receive support from Emerge in the form of bi-weekly strategy phone calls.
“We’ve had periodic phone calls where several of us get on together and trade ideas and talk about what’s going on the campaign,” Ingram said. “Emerge has sent out several emails highlighting those of us who are running and getting the word out.”
Equally important to the strategy sessions, Ingram said, are the lasting relationships that Emerge alumnae form with one another. “We refer to each other as Emerge sisters and it really does feel that way, that we have a special bond,” she said. “We help each other with campaigns and call each other to vent when we need to.”
Ingram has also worked as a mentor for subsequent classes of Emerge trainees. As part of the program, the women spend a day shadowing a representative at the state house. “Some of them have reached out to me to ask if we can get coffee and ask me advice and I always try to make time to meet with them,” she said. “I want to make sure I help women come along and get more women running for office.”
For Democratic women considering running for office, Ingram, Ode and Krowinski all recommend Emerge Vermont as a good way to get started. Krowinski also noted that not all the women who participate necessarily end up as candidates. “We have alumnae who have gone through the program and didn’t feel ready to run for office so my next advice for them was to get involved in a local campaign,” she said.
Going forward, Emerge Vermont is considering expanding their program on the local level. “We are seeing a lot of interest, especially given the climate nationally, of women wanting to run for office,” Krowinski said.
Applications for the next round of training will open in 2019, and the next training session will begin in the spring.
Editor’s Note: Ruth Hardy is the spouse of Prof. Jason Mittell, The Campus’s academic advisor. Mittell plays no role in any editorial decisions made by the paper. Any questions may be directed to campus@middlebury.edu.
(09/27/18 9:49am)
Small newspapers around the country are feeling the effects of a now-repealed tariff placed on Canadian newsprint, including The Middlebury Campus.
After the U.S. Department of Commerce implemented the tariff in January of this year, The Campus saw a 17 percent increase to the cost of printing a 16-page paper.
In part to counter the cost, The Campus decided this fall to print a 12 page paper with two fewer color pages. Even with the cuts, the cost of printing The Campus is four percent higher than last year.
The tariff, which functions as a tax on foreign goods collected by the federal government, was enacted after the North Pacific Paper Company petitioned the Commerce Department, claiming that they could not compete with cheaper Canadian newsprint flooding the market. After the Commerce Department announced preliminary findings and enacted the tariff in January, it then affirmed the decision on Aug. 2, announcing several different tariffs on Canadian paper companies.
Several weeks later, the U.S. International Trade Commission announced a decision to overturn the tariff. This may alleviate some of the financial burden placed on local newspapers, but many fear the tariff’s effects will continue, further impacting an already volatile industry.
The Campus prints at The Press Republican, a small company that also runs a daily paper in Plattsburgh, N.Y. George Rock, the company’s director of sales and marketing, hopes the prices will return to normal. If they do, Rock says they hope to lower their prices for existing customers once they sell out of the inventory they purchased at the raised rate. Still, Rock stressed that the tariff had profound consequences.
“It affected the whole newspaper industry,” he said.
Corinne Rigby, the co-owner of The Adirondack Pennysaver, a small local newspaper in Plattsburgh, N.Y., printed by The Press Republican, has seen her printing costs rise since the tariff took effect. She said her price went up $325 per edition, which could add up to an cost increase of $16,900 per year.
Advertising is the only source of revenue for The Adirondack Pennysaver. Rigby said they are hesitant to raise advertising fees because their advertisers are small businesses, too. Even though the tariff has now been overturned, Rigby does not think the printing cost will return to the lower rate.
“If this cost increase goes on and on it will impact us,” she told The Campus. “We’re already talking about changing the size of our paper because there is a size that’s less expensive.”
STOPP, which stands for “Stop Tariffs on Printers and Publishers,” is a coalition of small newspapers and publishers, which banded together against the tariff and collected statistics about how it negatively affected local papers. According to STOPP, at least three newspapers, two in Minnesota and one in Ohio, closed entirely while the tariff was in effect. The Tampa Bay Times announced cuts to their staff in April, and a number of other papers reduced the number of days a week they publish or cut down on content. In total, STOPP named 24 newspapers in 14 states that were impacted.
Many worry that the tariff caused a permanent cost hike, one that will continue to drain the industry. Lamiaa Elshafay, who works in the accounting office at The Press Republican, does not believe the cost of newsprint will go back down anytime soon. Elshafay said The Press Republican has not been notified of any price reduction from their manufacturer, despite the fact they have purchased two shipments since the tariff was overturned. She said The Press Republican is trying to cut other expenses, hopefully limiting the extent to which they have to pass the increased cost onto their printing customers. If the price of newsprint lowers, she said they will lower their prices too.
“I don’t think people understand that this whole industry is getting harder every year,” she said, adding that prices were rising before the tariff even went into effect. “There is less production happening, and less competition means higher prices.”
“I’ve been doing this for a long time,” she said. “And I really think it’s watching time right now. I don’t think pricing is going to go down.”
In the meantime, the Student Government Association Finance Committee, which oversees the more than $1 million student activities budget, approved extra funding for The Campus to help cover the increased printing costs.
Evan Chaletzky ’19, The Campus’s business manager, said he hopes the cost of printing will fall soon, but there’s really no way to know.
“As it stands, we can cover costs,” he said. “But it’s really out of our hands.”
(09/20/18 10:00am)
The community-initiated conversations have been hosted, the survey results analyzed and invitations to facilitated talks no longer populate student inboxes. The next phase of Envisioning Middlebury begins this semester, the phase in which the framework will start to have a concrete impact on the institution. Yet, despite the fact that this process has been in the works for well over a year, many in the broader Middlebury community still do not understand what it is.
That is in part because Envisioning Middlebury is not the typical strategic plan college presidents implement upon assuming their roles. Instead, it is a set of guidelines and values that inform decision-making, big and small, across the institution. Since Envisioning Middlebury’s adoption in 2016, members of every facet of the Middlebury community have engaged in dialogues centered around the future of the institution. Those discussions shaped and informed Envisioning Middlebury, and under President Laurie Patton’s direction, then-Provost Susan Baldrige took the lead in developing the new framework. The Board of Trustees approved the framework last October.
The decision to create a framework, rather than the typical checklist plan, came after issues that arose with the institution’s last 10-year-plan, Knowledge Without Boundaries, implemented under then-President Ronald Liebowitz in 2006.
Knowledge Without Boundaries took a more traditional approach, offering 82 concrete recommendations that were hindered when the 2008 financial crisis interrupted the subsequent fundraising process. According to Vice President of Communications Bill Burger, Envisioning Middlebury is intended to be “crisis proof,” to provide more flexibility and withstand unknown future obstacles.
This fall, the project will move into the implementation stage. With all the major building blocks of the program now in place, centered around a new mission statement, the institution is ready to accept proposals for “first moves” that will lead to changes based on the values and goals laid out in the strategic framework.
FRAMEWORK COMPONENTS
Envisioning Middlebury is comprised of five distinct pieces. First, a new institution-wide mission statement, which emphasizes immersive, engaged and creative learning. Second, a vision statement, which underlines the need for a “robust public sphere” in which citizens work across boundaries. Burger said the goal of the vision statement is to provide a more short-term focus in service of the broader mission statement.
The framework also highlights “distinctions,” or areas in which Middlebury already succeeds, and “directions,” which are areas for growth. Distinctions include Middlebury programs around the world, as well as more local programs like MiddCore and Oratory Now. The “directions” aim in part to bolster existing resources and programs, like the Anderson Freeman Resource Center and the Middlebury School of the Environment. Lastly, the framework includes four principles: promoting community, making intentional choices, responsible use of resources and committing time and space to collective goals.
Burger explained the principles as values that would guide intentional choice making. “That means holding ourselves accountable for the fact that Middlebury tries to do so much, or not allocate sufficient resources to our ambitions.” he said. “We have a tendency to stretch ourselves a little too thin sometimes and so these exist to help check ourselves as an institution.”
The entire framework can be found at go.middlebury.edu/envisioningmiddlebury.
With the framework in place, the Envisioning Middlebury Committee set about developing transformational goals, which the Board endorsed in January 2017. The three goals are to turn Middlebury into a center for persuasive and inclusive dialogue, a laboratory for curricular innovation and experiential learning and a globally networked changemaker. Each goal now has a working group led by a senior administrator who is responsible for brainstorming programs in pursuit of that goal.
ALL OF THE INSTITUTION
The framework also incorporates for the first time each part of Middlebury: the Language Schools, C.V. Starr Schools Abroad, Bread Loaf School of English, Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, School of the Environment, Institute of International Studies at Monterey (MIIS) and the undergraduate college.
Amy Morsman, interim dean for faculty development and research, believes the broad framework model is particularly useful for an institution with so many branches, though she acknowledged that it may feel undefined.
“It is a set of guidelines and that sometimes can feel frustratingly vague, but Middlebury is a big place and it doesn’t make any sense to create a fixed plan that is one-size fits all,” she said. “Some folks may not like that, but that is the reality of Middlebury, and so our strategic planning process should reflect that.”
The Campus reached out to three of the four undergraduate students who served on the advisory committee. Two felt that the inclusion of MIIS and other branches of the institution in the Envisioning Middlebury process made it harder to address issues specifically related to the college during the conversation phase.
“I had to keep reminding myself that Envisioning Middlebury was about all of the programs that fall under Middlebury’s umbrella,” said Tabitha Mueller, who graduated last May.
“I’d hoped Envisioning Middlebury would be a campaign to develop and strengthen the undergraduate college, but it took a macro-scale approach rather than a micro-scale one,” she said. “This macro-scale approach may have achieved the administration’s goals, but as a student, I remember getting frustrated because there was so much I hoped to address at the more micro-scale.”
Morgan Rawlings, a MIIS student, served on the advisory committee and wished more students and staff at the institute had participated. She felt the Envisioning Middlebury process was relevant to MIIS and hopes the framework will have an impact in Monterey. She also felt, like many at the college, that students at MIIS did not understand what Envisioning Middlebury was.
NEXT STEPS
Jeffrey Cason, the interim provost and vice president for academic affairs, began overseeing Envisioning Middlebury on July 1 after Baldridge stepped down, and has been tasked with moving the framework from conversation to implementation.
“Envisioning Middlebury was designed to hear from as many voices as possible across Middlebury,” Cason said. “Now that those voices have been distilled into strategic directions and transformational goals, we have a solid foundation from which to act, and to build.”
According to Cason, the next stage of the process, which is already underway, is to solicit ideas from programs, departments, offices and self-organized groups on how to move forward within the framework. Cason received initial proposals for programs and initiatives on Sept. 14, though he says the submission process will be ongoing. Working within budget constraints, academic leadership will determine which projects have priority and help refine proposed ideas. “There will also be some great ideas that we will have to say no to, because they require resources that we don’t have or don’t align with the strategic directions,” Cason said.
Cason acknowledged that resource allocation is especially important since Envisioning Middlebury took shape as much of the institution is working to cut costs and rein in financial deficits. But he argued that a strong strategic framework is exactly what Middlebury needs in the face of tough financial decisions. “In a sense, the Envisioning Middlebury process is even more important now, when we know we have to limit our expenses,” he said. “We need to decide what is most important to invest in, and we need to prioritize.”
ENDURING CHANGE
Envisioning Middlebury is designed to create change gradually while asking big, complicated questions about what Middlebury is and where it is going. Given the wide scope of the project, it is unclear whether current students will see the effects of the framework before they graduate. With time, though, the foundation laid so far during Envisioning Middlebury, and the work that has yet to be done, could fundamentally change the character of the institution.
For that to happen, Morsman believes, faculty and staff will need to continue to frame their work with the aforementioned directions and principles in mind. She acknowledged that this can feel like a big ask when everyone is already so busy.
“If people don’t stay engaged, then they are just leaving decisions to be made by a smaller group who have to pay attention to this, and that will reinforce the notion I have heard several times on campus that the administration is ‘just going to do what it wants anyway,’” she said, adding that the framework can create lasting change.
“I see the possibility of a Middlebury that is more focused, more collaborative among faculty and staff as well as students,” she said. “And more in tune with helping learners become highly capable participants and contributors to the world that is developing in this century.”
(09/20/18 9:56am)
Peeing on an Alaskan glacier was so frustrating for Georgia Grace Edwards ’18 that she decided to start an outdoor clothing company.
“I was spending anywhere from eight to 12 hours a day on the ice,” she said. “I found myself having to trek across the glacier for privacy, completely remove three to four layers in freezing temperatures, do my thing, put it all back on, and hike back.”
It was enough of a hassle that Edwards, who was working as a glacier guide, began drinking less water on the job, as many women do in outdoor settings. She thought to herself: “There has to be a better way to do this.”
Several years and many hikes later, she developed a solution: SheFly Apparel, a company she founded alongside Bianca Gonzalez ’18 and Charlotte Massey ’19. SheFly designs outdoor pants with a zipper that runs along the crotch so women can relieve themselves without removing all their layers. SheFly is currently testing prototypes of thermal leggings, snow and hiking pants, with all of their products made from recycled materials.
Their solution is so good, they recently flew out to the Bay Area to pitch at the Movers and Makers Pitchfest hosted by Title Nine, a women’s activewear company looking to invest in female-owned startups. SheFly was among nine companies out of hundreds that were invited to compete in the event and Massey said they gained valuable mentorship connections.
The team also competed in the Central Vermont Road Pitch competition in late July. The event was hosted by FreshTracks Capital, a group of bikers with entrepreneurial experience who ride around the state and listen to business ideas. SheFly took home the People’s and Rider’s Choice awards, which meant $1,250 in prize money. It was the first time Edwards had pitched the product to a group that was not SheFly’s target market.
“I got on stage and talked about pants women can pee out of to a crowd of 40 white, middle-aged male motorcyclists,” she said. “Even though this is not a product they will use, they were convinced of its necessity and importance.”
In addition to prize money, SheFly earned the opportunity to compete for a $5,000 prize in the Road Pitch state finals in Oct.
Before they won any awards or even had their own products to pitch, the SheFly team started small last winter, inserting zippers into their friends’ old hiking pants.
“Women have to go out of our way to avoid being exposed to other people, and even then, we still often have to deal with the cold, bug bites, and thickets of trees,” Gonzalez said. “I sat on Georgia Grace’s floor in LaForce for hours with her, tearing apart pants and modifying while our friends brought us food and encouragement.”
The pair presented their ideas to Middlebury Entrepreneurs, a winter term course designed to provide mentoring to fledgling companies and ideas. By the end of the term, they had won Vermont’s first SOUP Pitch Competition in Burlington, which gave them a couple hundred dollars to start designing their own products. It was around that time Massey joined the team. Since then, all three women have experienced the excitement that comes with launching a new business, as well as the learning curve that goes along with it.
“One of our biggest challenges is figuring out what order to complete steps in,” Massey said. “Should we start marketing before we get the design patented? How are we going to pay for all of the prototypes before running the Kickstarter?”
Despite the challenges, Massey said her favorite part is trying the “revolutionary” product out herself.
“I’ve been able to pee safely while roped up on glaciers, which I never thought possible,” she said. “It’s really empowering.”
The team has spent the summer laying the foundation for the company to grow. They have worked on securing patents, incorporating SheFly into an LLC, and completing orders for prototypes. They are currently preparing a Kickstarter campaign, which will launch their product and reach a wider audience. Currently patent pending for their design, several other students — Allyson Stevens ’19, Gabby Davis ’19 and Alexis Hughes ’18.5 have joined the company. The team also recently began working with a student PR team through an experiential learning class at Emerson College in Boston to form marketing and advertising strategies.
For now, Edwards said it is satisfying enough to see her product become a reality.
“The most exciting part of SheFly has been watching my idea morph from an abstract idea in my head into a real-life product I can wear,” she said. “It excites me to imagine a world where one day, women don’t have to think twice about using the bathroom outside in group settings or cold environments, and I’m really proud that SheFly is playing a small role in helping to craft that future.”
(11/29/17 11:57pm)
After a tense town hall meeting in Mead Chapel on Wed., Nov. 8, students and administrators continue to work to address the issues that face the Middlebury Community. The town hall, which was co-sponsored by President Laurie Patton, the Student Government Association (SGA) and the Black Student Union (BSU), came in the wake of several racially charged incidents including violent graffiti in a classroom and a case of alleged racial profiling. SGA President Jin Sohn ’18, who helped organize the event, said she feels that the town hall was “able to serve its purpose for some people and not for others” because everybody attended the meeting with different hopes and expectations. “Some members of our community came to the meeting looking for answers Senior Leadership Group (SLG), while others came to voice their opinions and provide personal testimonies to the racial tensions on campus, and others may have come to listen and learn,” she said.
Sohn was heartened to see so many people in attendance. “The most important thing we can do as a community is to show up,” she said. “That is the only way that we’ll be able to actually learn from one another and try to understand what members of our community are experiencing.”
However, Sohn also acknowledged that not everybody could attend the meeting, both because of time constraints and because of the emotional toll that events such as the town hall can take. “I understand that some students couldn’t attend because of other priorities or simply because the nature of these conversations are very draining,” she said. “I respect both and other situations, and I still firmly believe that there are multiple ways to contribute to efforts and to engage in ways that might not be in the typical form of conversations.”
Vee Duong ’19 attended the meeting, and she agrees that events such as this one can be emotionally exhausting for students. She also pointed out that many students showed up to speak, despite the challenges. “We witnessed the brave vulnerability of students who are already facing intense emotional and mental burdens from the events of this semester and those passed,” she said. To Duong, this meeting was emblematic of the wider dynamic between students and administrators. “On one hand, we have strong and courageous students putting their emotional and mental health on the line in order to voice their opinions about the racialized systems that are repeatedly, relentlessly inflicting harm upon them,” she said. “On the other hand, we have ‘the College,’ who is beginning to hear these distressed voices, to slowly put real faces to the damage and hurt that is caused by a system that is hundreds of years old, and [who] can only approach the problem with a doubled sense of half-defensiveness, half-humility.”
Duong appreciated the thoughtful questions that students raised over the course of the town hall, and she spoke at the town hall about the burden that falls on cultural organizations to educate the student body.
“Students in these organizations have taken on the burden of peer-to-peer education in order to cultivate an understanding for the experiences of marginalized groups on this campus,” she said.
Many administrators also attended the town hall to answer questions and listen to concerns. Chief Diversity Officer Miguel Fernández said his biggest takeaway from the meeting was that the administration has to work harder to make all students feel comfortable. “I’d say that the message heard loud and clear is that the administration is not doing enough to improve the experience of students of color on campus and that there needs to be more training for all students, staff, and faculty,” he said.
Fernández reiterated that there are trainings in the works, but he also said that the administration alone cannot fix the situation.
“I understand the finger-pointing at the administration, but no matter how many people we ‘train,’ the administration alone is not going to solve all the issues. It has to be the work of everyone,” he said. “I’m not trying to burden students of color with more. I’m talking about everyone. At the conversation at Mead, we heard stories of inappropriate images, comments, or words in classrooms where the sole student of color waited for someone to speak up and was frustrated when no one else did. No matter how many training sessions we do, the administration will not be able to force those classmates to stand up and say something.”
Dean of Students Baishakhi Taylor echoed Fernández’s desire to create an environment where students of color feel comfortable and included. Taylor mentioned several student advisory groups she has been meeting with to help incorporate student feedback into these efforts.
“To continue our shared work in a collaborative and transparent manner, we recently formed a student advisory group for the Dean of Students Office,” she said. “We have been meeting every Tuesday evening to discuss issues that are on students’ minds.” Taylor also said she is working with students to gather feedback on the college’s handbook.
Moving forward, outgoing Vice President for Student Affairs and Dean of the College Katy Smith Abbott mentioned administrative efforts to enact restorative justice practices. “Over 50 students, staff, and faculty are signed up to participate in a three-day training in December and my expectation is that a steering group responsible for guiding additional trainings and implementation will emerge from that first cohort of participants,” she said.
Duong feels that our community needs to address the questions that students raised, and mentioned a questions few specifically, including: How do we increase transparency? How can we get actual timelines and dates made for the implementation of desired programs and initiatives? Can we create a better communication route between the greater student body and the college? She suggested several potential solutions for communication, including using the SGA to reach administrators and reviving the “We the MiddKids,” petition site.
The SGA created a form so that students can give feedback to the administration, which they emailed to all students after the event.
“This feedback form is crucial for student engagement on voicing their opinions and concerns about the initiatives by the SLG and for the campus climate at large,” Sohn said. “Students can voice opinions on areas of accountability, markers of progress, student involvement, and transparency for the initiatives. Once feedback is collected, the SGA will move forward with presenting the information to respective members of the community and SLG, with possible legislation and recommendations stemming from the collected feedback as well.”
Sohn also noted that the several members of SGA and BSU have been working on a resolution about a set of recommendations to the administration for institutional support for minority students on campus. This resolution is on the SGA website at go/sga.
(11/01/17 11:08pm)
On a sunny Saturday afternoon, a group gathered inside Mead Chapel to celebrate the life of Juana Gamero de Coca, a Spanish professor, who passed away suddenly on Oct. 6. The room was full of photographs and colorful flowers that the attendees brought with them and placed in vases. Juana’s family and friends spoke in three languages about a woman full of love, life, and passion. To celebrate Juana, The Campus has gathered excerpts of those eulogies and statements from Juana’s students, published with permission. Some of the passages have been edited for length.
I used to always complain that you weren’t a normal mom. You wore a lot of black. You never once made me chocolate chip cookies. Or meatloaf. You always kissed me a lot. And I mean a lot. On my cheeks. My arm. You really liked to kiss my knee. You had an accent that made it sound like you were saying “bitch” instead of “beach”. The first time you took me on a vacation, you chose Peru instead of the Florida Keys. You didn’t live in a big home, with a picket fence and a photogenic dog. You smoked cigarettes. You cried a lot. You laughed a lot. You yelled a lot. You weren’t the mom that hid your feelings from your kids. Or pretended that because you were a mom you had life figured out. You told Carmen and I to feel the weight of this world. To let our emotions in and let them blanket us from all sides. You never told us to pick ourselves up. We were allowed to feel the comfort of staying fallen. To take a break from the exhausting demands of being eye-level with everyone else.
Why can’t you just be normal? I used to say. Why do you always have to embarrass me? I would say. Now, what I long to say most is that I loved the way you were. I understand that this world weighed down on you. It was hard on your body. Tough on your heart. I don’t blame you for leaving so early. For wanting to escape Trump America and leave while Cataluña is still a part of Spain. The last few years, I met you in a new capacity. You opened up to me about your heartaches and troubles. You showed me what happens behind your bold red lipstick. That there are times when you feel fragile, too. Sometimes when you woke up in the morning, you would ask me if I thought you were pretty. When your relationship was stung by conflict, you lay paralyzed for days. When your sickness took you to different hospital beds, you asked to borrow my hand to be fed. And when you realized life isn’t always as happy as in the books, you asked Carmen and I to be happy for you. It was hard for my self-absorbed college student self to understand the gift of being able to take care of my mother. I’m sorry I didn’t offer more, but thank you for letting me in.
I stay up now thinking about the stories I never heard. About the memories that never had the chance to become memories. But just like you used to say to me. We are more than the same blood and bone. We are mother and daughter. Carmen and I will carry on for you. We will travel the world, go to India, have your grandchildren, and fall in love.
The last time I talked to you was the night that you passed away. I told you I was having a sad day. I had broken up with my boyfriend and I felt lonely. You called me and again, for the millionth time, told me that it was okay to feel sad. You said that hard things happen and I shouldn’t expect to get over them. Instead, sometimes you just have to leave sadness in a little pocket nearby. Life will carry on but the sadness will stay to help you remember and to help you grow. I’ve put you in a brand new pocket that I made out of silk and cashmere. You’ll stay there forever. And I’ll never mix you up because you were not a normal mom. You were special. And as my sister already said, you are the most beautiful woman we will ever meet.
by Izzy Fleming ’17, Juana’s Daughter
...
Mi mama era la mujer mas hermosa que conocí en toda mi vida. Y no lo digo por como se veía físicamente porque eso es obvio. Lo digo por su forma de pensar, su manera de bailar, su pasión para la justicia y la importancia que daba en asegurar que todos los demás estaban bien. Ella lucho mucho con ella misma durante su vida y creo que eso la hizo querer mas para los demás que para ella.
She taught Izzy and I to be aware of the world and what was happening to people everywhere. She taught us to be proud of being different. She taught us to speak our minds. And she was successful, because she taught me to really, really speak my mind, which meant that when I grew up we had similar ways of arguing and discussing issues. When we discussed issues of social justice and politics we would start calmly and then without fail begin to yell at each other for 10 minutes until we realized we were agreeing with each other and just saying the same thing in different words. We used to scare my sister Izzy and my friends because they would think we were fighting but really she just taught me to be passionate like her about what I believed.
When my mom came to the U.S. her father told her that he had lost her and she would never go back. She told him he was crazy and that she was just going to work as a nanny and take English classes and would be back soon. She met my father and everything about her life changed and her father was right, she stayed.
The other day our dad said that he was always so impressed and so proud of her for what she accomplished, coming to the US without speaking English and making it to where she did. Izzy and I are so lucky that we had our mother and father as parents, who unlike other divorced parents always truly cared so deeply for each other that we all remained a very close knit family.
Mi mama fue alguien con quien todo el mundo se enamoraba con solo conocerla. Hizo sentir a todos que eran importantes y felices. En su presencia todos se reían y bailaban y reían y bailaban. Creo que mi mama es la persona mas hermosa que todos aquí hemos conocido y somos todos mas hermosas con solo haberla conocido.
My mom was someone that everyone fell in love with after meeting her. She made everyone feel important and happy. In her company everyone laughed and danced and laughed and danced. I think my mom is the most beautiful person that everyone here has ever met and we are all more beautiful just from having met her.
by Carmen Fleming ’10, Juana’s Daughter
...
Lo que viví toda esta semana no tiene nombre ni palabras. Por eso fue tan difícil tejer el manto delgadisimo y frágil que quise venir a compartir hoy con todos porque a todos nosotros pertenece. La red de protección que es el amor de los otros por mí, por ti, por ustedes, por ellos, hasta convertírsenos en amor de nosotros por nosotros.
Gracias de todo corazón... Roto.
Finalmente para dar remate a la más tierna ceremonia que los vivos pueden hacer por los muertos - recordarlos que significa literalmente “volverlos a pasar por el corazón”- subieron Isabel y Carmen, la verdadera sangre viva de Juana, su verdadera mirada y su verdadera sonrisa hecha dos seres humanos. Subieron a decirnos con muchas historias y pocas palabras que son ella, que ellas son su madre - la más amada, la más admirada, la mejor del mundo- y que en ellas perdura nuestra Janita, aquella bendecida por todos los dones y todas las virtudes que hoy perduran porque Juana es Isabel y Juana es Carmen, e Isabel y Carmen están salvando siempre a su madre por ellas y por nosotros.
Y así llegó a su final lo que será el principio de nuestra vida. Nuestro “sin ti” , que es el larguísimo porvenir, pero “con nosotros”, que es el presente y que ya está aquí.
Qué puedo decirte, Jana mía. Voy a ser tú, voy a intentar ser tú, yo, como tus hijas, voy a emprender la increíble e imposible tarea de multiplicarte.
by Visting Lecturer Ricardo Chávez Castañeda, Juana’s Partner
...
No le puedo escribir cartas
porque en la muerte no hay dirección.
Ayer para clase (como si hoy
o mañana nos importaran las clases)
leí una flor amarilla. Los árboles
eran chispas bajo la lluvia y hoy
lloramos por ella.
Juana nunca volverá a verse
en autobús, sudando, la línea 95.
Todos somos inmortales pero
ella fue mortal. We’re never too grown
to stop growing but what if we just
stop.
No creo en el cielo y de hecho
prefiero imaginarla en la biblioteca
de Babel (Borges, sé que por el velo
me puedes escuchar). En el laberinto
en las estanterías infinitas
se sienta tranquilamente en un sillón.
Sabe que un día vendrá la locura
para comernos crudos, salados,
más lindos que lo rojo en una capilla.
Yo soy joven y torpe y no sé
que tipo de flores llevan al velorio.
Pensaba rosas pero ahora
girasoles que brillan hasta morir.
by Hayley Jones ’18.5, Juana’s Student
...
Eso que acabas de leer es una juanería.
Juanerías. Juanerías extremendas. Juana es de Extremadura. Extremeña. Y bien sabemos, es tremenda. Extremenda.
Gestos excéntricos, salados, brillantes.
Bailar vestida de rojo, con la mano en alto, curveando la muñeca, su cuerpo esbelto y grácil. Sonreír como nadie.
Llenar de flores la casa de la amiga que sufre por sus seres queridos. Repartir abanicos a las chicas guapas.
Saber la importancia del contacto. Aplicarlo sin hacer cuentas. A alumnos, a colegas, a amigos. Sea políticamente correcto o no.
Insistir en cuidarnos, y bueno, por desgracia, no siempre cuidarse muy bien.
Defender a quienes lo necesitan, arriesgue lo que se arriesgue. Hace meses en Crossroads café, rodeada de estudiantes que habían protestado racismo e injusticia. Estudiantes investigados porque le habían gritado al racista. Ante la noción de que gritar es peor que cuestionar la humanidad de alguien, qué hizo Juana? Gritar. Es una juanería.
Qué es la ética, sino abrazar al débil, ver su dolor, la injusticia, y nombrarlos en voz alta? En voz muy alta.
Cariño: Manejar horas y horas al hospital Dana Farber, tomar la mano de nuestra amiga Ana. Hacerla reír con chismes y gracias mientras le metían la quimio en el sillón de los venenos.
Subirse a un estrado como éste—es decir, a este estrado, y dirigirse a un público como éste que lloraba a nuestra Ana, la primera chica guapa que se fue. Con su vestido rojo y unos tacones tan altos que Ricardo le dio el brazo, no fuera que tropezara al bajar.
Saben que Juana era ombudsman del profesorado? Ahora no tenemos ombudsman.
Juanerías. Juana es todo eso. No es una santa. Es una persona que iba y venía por el mundo, repartiendo abrazos ante el dolor, el dolor que terco la rondaba. Repartiendo el antídoto: besos y abrazos y cariños.
Juana dio y dio y dio. Intuía que la vida no podía durar mucho viviéndola de juanería en juanería. Que la vida se va gastando al vivirla. le decíamos que no, que claro que no. que mientras más das más tienes.
Aquí estamos. ¿Y tú, extremenda?
Pues no sé a dónde huyes, ni sé a dónde voy,
¡tú que lo supiste!
by Professor of Spanish Gloria Estela González Zenteno
(11/01/17 10:41pm)
Author Jim Grimsley returned to campus on Thursday Oct. 26, almost exactly a year after he last visited, to discuss his book “How I Shed My Skin: Unlearning Lessons From a Racist Childhood.” The book is about his experience living through school integration in Jones County, North Carolina. This year, Grimsley was joined on stage by the three black women who integrated his all white sixth grade class in 1968: Donnie Meadows, Fernanda Copeland, and Rose Bell.
“They all changed my life in different ways,” Grimsley said.
Grimsley explained that the reason that Meadows, Copeland, and Bell were the only black students in their middle school was because of a program called Freedom of Choice.
“Freedom of choice was white people’s last-ditch effort to refuse integration altogether,” he said. All three women had to elect to attend the white school, though Copeland and Meadows, who are sisters, said that their father made the decision for them. “We moved from Washington, D.C. so schools were already integrated there,” Copeland said. “I knew what it was like to go to school with people of different races. It didn’t bother me.”
Their father chose the white school because he wanted his daughters to get a better education.
“My dad said you’re going to go there, and I want you to sit there and I want you to learn. I want you to stand up for yourself, but be respectful,” Copeland said. “I was not nervous. I knew that I needed to go because we were taught that anything in life that you want you have to work for, and education was the key.”
Bell said she also chose the white school because of the better educational opportunities, but she made that decision herself.
“I told my parents that I wanted to go over to the white school. They said, ‘are you sure?’ I said, ‘yes, I’m sure.’ I wanted to know what they were learning. We had been told that they had the new books. [The black students] got the books after [the white students] did,” she said.
Meadows said that even back then she was impressed that Bell had decided to integrate.
“I would like to say that Rose was the champion because Rose decided to attend the school that was all white,” she said. “Not her father, not her mother, she did. And that age it took some guts to do that.”
Bell talked about what it was like to walk into the classroom for the first time.
“All eyes were on us,” Bell said. “We were different because of the color of our skin, which was something we could not help. So I go in there and I said it’s like this: I know who I am and I know what I stand for. I stand for right. Even though I’m out numbered I’ll stand for what’s right.”
All three women described that first year as difficult as they settled into a new learning environment. Bell said that the boys sitting behind her often called her fat, and that sometimes her classmates would push chairs into her back.
“A lot of times I didn’t say anything I just took it,” she said. “Then it got to the point, sometimes, I would have to defend myself. I would have to actually get into arguments with the boys. Our teacher at that time was an older white man and he would be in and out of the classroom a whole lot. And that caused a lot of friction in the classroom. Most of the time everything would start was when the teacher left the classroom.”
Copeland also talked about standing up for herself rather than telling the teacher, including once when several of the boys in her class exposed themselves in front of her.
“I never told the teacher because I felt like I handled that myself,” she said.
The group also addressed an incident that Grimsley writes about in his book, when he decided to call Bell a name in class.
“When Jim called Rose the name, I’ll never forget that day,” Meadows said. “He wasn’t ready for her. It came out of his mouth so quickly, and she came right back, and she came back stomping. And I couldn’t believe that she had it to go back like that.”
Grimsley credits Bell with helping him see his own racism that day, so he could eventually work to counteract it.
“As white children we were shaped to be very quiet and not to talk and not to ever make noise. Rose came into that classroom prepared to make any amount of noise she needed to to make her point,” Grimsley said. “On [that] particular day when I was 11 years old I was confronted with my racism in such terms that I could not deny that I wanted to change it.”
After their two years together in middle school, the Supreme Court ruled that Freedom of Choice was not an adequate form of integration. Going into their first year of high school, all four students were faced with a fully integrated school system. Grimsley pointed out, however, that many of his white classmates opted to go to white private schools when this happened, which meant that white students were in the minority at the newly integrated public school.
Grimsley also discussed the tracking programs at their high school to force a new kind of academic segregation.
“As soon as full integration happened, what happened all over the south was there were different tracking programs within the integrated schools that re-imposed a kind of segregation at the classroom level,” he said. “The first strategy was the notion of college preparatory courses....The school was 70 percent black, 30 percent white. But I was never in a classroom in which the balance was not reversed. Our college prep classrooms were always 70 percent white, 30 percent black.” Meadows, Copeland, and Bell were all in the college preparatory track as well, along with seven other black students.
The four speakers described a high school experience full of turmoil.
“When we walked three miles to the courthouse and to the community center, you got suspended for 15 days,” Copleand said, at which point her father drove down to the school. “He had choice words for the superintendent. He went to the superintendent’s office that next day and when he came back he told us, ‘you guys will be in school tomorrow.’ And we were there the next day. Finally, they lifted the suspensions and the other students were allowed back in.”
The women also talked about the presence of religion in their lives, and the differences between the white church and the black church when they were growing up. Meadows described Jones County as deeply Southern Baptist.
“You had two churches, the white church and the black church. And there were two different messages being taught out of those two churches,” she said. “The black church, that’s where Martin Luther King got his start. Everybody knew that the black church is where the NAACP would come and hold their meetings. And everybody was in the NAACP when we were young. And so the black church did not teach us to hate.”
The white church, on the other hand, had an active role in spreading racism, and Grimsley remembers hearing sermons about white superiority and segregation.
“What they would say was, well, you cannot love them the way you love another white person. If God had intended us to be one people, he would have made us all the same color,” he said. “Once you begin to use a holy place for that kind of purpose, it’s not altogether a holy place anymore.”
Today, Copeland and Bell still live in Jones County, and they say it hasn’t changed much.
“We learned to be cordial to one another, greet one another, we go to each others churches and we tolerate one another,” Copeland said. “But the underline is we are still not equal.” She says she still sees racism, which is part of why she has decided to run for a county commissioner position.
Bell said she also tries to get involved.
“I try to get on as many boards as I can in the country, be very instrumental, and let my light shine before people. Because that’s all I can do,” she said. “If I could help one person to change then I feel like I have accomplished something.”
(10/11/17 10:32pm)
The college published its annual security and fire safety reports on Oct. 1 for each of its campuses — Middlebury, Bread Loaf, Monterey, and the Language School at Mills College. The report, which is required under the Clery Act, includes statistics about various crimes reported on campus in the last calendar year.
Among the statistics are several crimes that fall under the category of sexual assault, including rape, fondling, statutory rape and incest. In the most recent report, the College disclosed eight reported rapes and one reported fondling for 2016. They also reported three instances of dating violence and one instance of stalking.
Title IX Coordinator Sue Ritter helps put together the report, alongside the Department of Safety staff. Ritter said that a sexual assault may be reported by the victim or anyone with information about the crime, either through the online reporting form on the Public Safety website or through a staff member such as a dean, public safety officer or coach. Individuals can also make anonymous reports by, for example, asking their counselor at Parton to help them provide the information to the Title IX Coordinator or Public Safety without disclosing any identifying information.
Ritter also clarified that for the purposes of counting statistics in our Annual Security Report in accordance with the Clery Act, the incident must have occurred on campus, on public property adjacent to campus or in housing or other property that is owned or controlled by the college and frequently used by students. She added that a reported assault does not need to go through the adjudication process to be included in the statistics.
The victim does not have to be a student for the crime to be included in the statistics. “It doesn’t matter who’s reporting it. It could be a non-member of our community who was raped here on our campus. We’d still report it as a Clery statistic,” Ritter said.
The reason for this is Clery was designed to give potential students and parents an idea of campus safety before students agree to attend a certain college or university.
“I think for parents and students who are looking at what campuses across the country are safe, the number of crimes that are occurring on a campus or being reported to have occurred is something they would look at and take seriously,” she said.
Ritter emphasized that it is very important for the College to accurately report sexual assaults under the guidelines of Clery, but she also pointed out that the annual security report does not include the true number of sexual assaults that occur on campus every year.
“What I grapple with is the fact that the Clery stats vary from year to year and there’s no real way to ascertain why,” Ritter said. “We also know that not every sexual assault that happens here is reported so it’s hard to draw real concrete conclusions from the data.”
Director of Public Safety Lisa Burchard said that another issue with the statistics is that sexual assaults are recorded when they are reported, not when they occurred. This means if a survivor came forward several years after an incident occurred, that is when the college would record the assault in their statistics.
Ritter said that though there have been many national studies about prevalence of sexual assaults on college campuses, there is no way to know what percentage of assaults on campus are never disclosed to the college.
“I wish I knew that. We have no way of knowing,” she said. Ritter acknowledged several barriers to reporting assault including social stigma, fear of retaliation and students being unsure if a line was crossed.
“It’s a complex question because someone may have actually been sexually assaulted but they don’t think that they were,” she said. “Or they have other barriers to reporting like they’re fearful of having to go through a process they don’t know anything about.”
In order to remove some of those barriers to reporting, Ritter said she has been trying to demystify the reporting process. She clarified that just because a student reports a sexual assault does not mean they will have to go through a formal investigation.
“Our policy goes into depth about the rare exceptions with sexual assault cases when we would investigate and adjudicate regardless of the person’s wishes because there’s a significant and appreciable ongoing threat,” she said, adding that the college is more likely to pursue a compulsory investigation in cases of domestic violence, dating violence or stalking. But for the most part, Ritter said, students will not be forced into an adjudication process they do not want to participate in.
Ritter stressed the importance of making reporting easy for students so the college has accurate statistics about sexual assault. She also said that biggest reason she would encourage students to report, in addition to safety concerns, is so they can learn about all of the resources available to them, including academic accommodations, the ability to move rooms, and the ability to place a no contact against the alleged perpetrator.
Burchard said that the college can also help students preserve evidence in case they choose to pursue a case later on. “Some of the resources could be maintaining evidence, collection of evidence,” she said, adding that a lot of cases include both physical and electronic evidence such as text messages. “Even if they don’t want to do anything at the time, they just want to know that it’s been preserved because it’s hard to get it back later.”
Ritter also pointed out that although Clery limits which incidents are included in the college’s annual security report based on geography, the same resources are available to all students struggling with this issue.
“Regardless of where the incident happens, we are going to address that matter with the student and provide resources and accommodations and maybe even adjudication depending on the circumstances,” she said. “Whether or not it counts as a Clery crime is not the same question as whether or not the student is entitled to support from us. We have much broader obligations on that front.”
(09/27/17 11:09pm)
Professor Jonathan Miller-Lane gave a talk titled “Discourse and Discord at Middlebury: A Way Forward” on Wednesday, Sept. 20, as part of the annual Carol Rifelj Faculty Lecture Series. In an interview with The Campus, Miller-Lane said he asked to give his talk early in the semester in order to help shape the conversation about discourse on campus.
“We’re in a really fragile moment within the context of a polarized conversation nationally,” he said. “And we have a chance to un-polarize ourselves and step into this more complex space of discussion together, to see if we couldn’t articulate a sense of who we are and what our work is together in a way that might give us a chance to evolve.”
Miller-Lane began his talk by outlining Bell Hooks’ theory of engaged pedagogy, a holistic approach to teaching that considers students’ whole beings.
“I’m placing engaged pedagogy in this space because I believe that in this historic moment, and this historical moment, we need to disrupt our norms of interaction by explicitly connecting our will to know with our will to become,” he said. “If Middlebury is to become what it needs to be, we have to trouble and expand our too-often rigid distinctions between learning, teaching, scholarship, relationship and becoming, and honor engaged pedagogy as a form of scholarship.”
Miller-Lane then went on to present three claims, the first of which was that we need to embrace complexity in our studies, conversations and lives.
To demonstrate the need for complexity, he referenced Nigerian author Bayo Akomolofe, who wrote, “We are never not broken. Rather than seek to become some whole that does not exist you must make an altar out of the pieces and embrace the world as grotesque and monstrous.” Miller-Lane said this quote speaks to the work we have to do at Middlebury over the course of this upcoming year. “We have to reject the polarization and embrace complexity and make some sort of secular altar out of our grotesque and monstrous world, out of those pieces that we might have,” he said.
For his second claim, he talked about the need to understand the limits of critical theory. “It doesn’t mean you abandon critical theory,” he said. “It means you use it in a way that’s useful but recognize its limits and then explore alternatives that might actually enable the complexity to be sustained long enough that we can listen Middlebury into existence, to use that phrase [taken from Mary Rose O’Reilley].”
For his last claim, Miller-Lane said that the Middlebury community needs to address the meaning and impacts of whiteness on campus.
“We have to do this. And this has been years and years and years coming. I think we must initiate a deep and relentless inquiry into the impact of whiteness on all aspects of life here,” he said. “I don’t think it’s ever been taken seriously as a project by Middlebury. We’ve done very little, I think, in exploring what the implications of [whiteness] actually mean and are for a place like this.”
After presenting his three claims, Miller-Lane passed out two proposals for the audience to read and discuss. The first proposal, developed from Professor Tricia Rose at Brown University, set forth a framework for including texts on syllabi and inviting speakers to campus.
The second proposal aimed to create spaces for different community members to talk about and deconstruct whiteness. It suggests both “whiteness workshops” for first-year students who identify as white, and three-day seminars for faculty, staff and coaches in which the discussion of whiteness would play a central role.
“The goal is to have those conversations happen. What the best format is I don’t know. And I trust in the wisdom of the community to sort out what the best way to do it is,” Miller-Lane said in an interview.
He said the college has a unique opportunity this year to contribute to the national dialogue.
“I don’t want the emphasis to be on resolution or doing something or‘crushing something like ‘We’re going to crush this problem,’” he said. “In this pace of life that we live here, to commit to sustaining and stewarding a fragile space of discourse would be radical. That’s what I think is available to us this year in a way that it hasn’t been in the past, and I would love to be part of that stewardship and I was trying to give the talk as a way to contribute to that.”
(09/21/17 12:00am)
In a move that outraged many advocates for survivors of sexual assault, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos announced on Sept. 7 that her department would reexamine Obama-era guidelines regarding how colleges handle sexual assault claims under Title IX. DeVos’s remarks, delivered at George Mason University, came after she met with various groups to discuss sexual violence on campuses.
Title IX is part of the Education Act of 1972, and it states that “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.” Many people associate Title IX with the effect it had on women’s athletics in schools, but Title IX also includes provisions about how colleges and universities handle cases of sexual assault.
Sue Ritter, the Title IX coordinator at the College, explained that because the College receives federal funds, we must comply with Title IX, which includes directives that govern the implementation and enforcement of sexual assault and sexual harassment policies. “Any college or university that receives federal funding regardless of whether they’re public or private has to comply with Title IX and it’s the federal law that prohibits sex discrimination,” Ritter said. “Sexual assault is a form of sex discrimination just as sexual harassment is a form of sex discrimination — the theory being that if you are sexually assaulted it has such a profound impact on you that it essentially denies you equal access to educational programs or activities.”
Though DeVos did not make any concrete policy proposals during her speech, she emphasized the need for due process in Title IX enforcement. “The truth is that the system established by the prior administration has failed too many students,” DeVos said, adding that part of why our system is failing is because it lacks due process.
“Due process is the foundation of any system of justice that seeks a fair outcome. Due process either protects everyone, or it protects no one,” she said. “The notion that a school must diminish due process rights to better serve the ‘victim’ only creates more victims.”
Ritter explained what a renewed emphasis on due process might entail. Due process “means notice and an opportunity to be heard,” Ritter said. “The college must notify the responding party of the actual charges instead of just investigating and not letting them know what they’re investigating. The respondent should also have an opportunity to present their side of the story.”
Karen Guttentag, a judicial affairs dean at the college, noted that DeVos’ focus on due process could reflect DeVos’ desire to rebalance the system.
“I think that her reference to due process is because of her overall assessment that the pendulum has swung too far in favor of complainants as a result of the directives in the Dear Colleague Letter,” Guttentag said.
She explained that due process grants important rights to the respondent in sexual assault cases, including the right to tell their side of the story and the right to be informed of the nature of the charge. Guttentag also added that the College’s policy for adjudicating sexual assault already grants grants respondents and complainants these identical rights.
In her address, DeVos identified the Obama administration’s Dear Colleague Letter from 2011 as one of the main reasons why she believes the current system does not function properly. The letter, which Department of Education published to augment existing Title IX regulations, served as a reminder to colleges that lack of compliance with Title IX can lead to loss of federal funding. It also provided new guidelines, including how quickly schools need to respond to reports of assault and what information they need to provide to all parties involved in a complaint.
In an interview with CNN, DeVos said that her department had already starting rolling back guidelines set back by the letter, and she confirmed her intention to revoke the letter entirely. In her speech, DeVos echoed a common critique of the letter — that Obama administration published it as a directive, rather than go through the legislative process to turn their new guidelines into law.
“For too long, rather than engage the public on controversial issues, the Department’s Office for Civil Rights has issued letters from the desks of un-elected and un-accountable political appointees,” she said. She seemed to indicate she would not take the same route, adding, “The era of ‘rule by letter’ is over.”
One potential impact of the Department of Education changing the guidelines set forth by the letter would be a change in what standard of proof schools use to rule on sexual assault cases. The letter dictated that schools’ use of the “preponderance of the evidence” standard, one of the lowest burdens of proof in the U.S. legal system. The preponderance of the evidence standard says that if it is more likely than not that an assault occurred then colleges should rule that an assault occurred.
Many advocates for the accused and legal scholars have proposed changing that standard over the years, and in her speech DeVos referenced a paper from the American Trial Lawyers Association that suggests raising the standard to “clear and convincing evidence.”
Proponents of the Obama-era guidelines were quick to criticize DeVos, including former Vice President Joe Biden, who called DeVos’ speech a “step in the wrong direction” in a Facebook post the same day.
“Any change that weakens Title IX protections will be devastating,” he said. “Students have taken on this fight. Keep fighting. Tell this administration that we refuse to go backwards.”
Others praised DeVos for taking steps to balance the system, which some fear swung too far in favor of complainants under the Obama administration. Robert Shibley, the executive director of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, an organization that has challenged the Dear Colleague Letter in the past, praised DeVos’ speech.
“I thought it was a strong signal from the department that they understand the current approach is unworkable,” Shibley said in an interview with The Washington Post.
As of now, it is unclear exactly what changes will be made to the Department of Education policy regarding Title IX sexual assault enforcement on campuses. In her address, DeVos announced her intention to gather more information from relevant groups through “a transparent notice-and-comment process” in order to improve our system.
“We will seek public feedback and combine institutional knowledge, professional expertise, and the experiences of students to replace the current approach with a workable, effective, and fair system,” DeVos said.
Until definite changes to the policy are announced, Ritter said it is hard to know how DeVos’ speech will affect the College’s policy. However, Ritter also pointed out that our current adjudication process was modeled after the 2013 reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), which includes additional requirements about how campuses handle sexual assault claims. Ritter said that the provisions in this act cover some of the concerns DeVos raised about equity.
“VAWA answers, I believe, a lot of the concerns Betsy DeVos has about fairness to both parties. It’s scrupulous in that regard,” Ritter said. “What you do for one you have to do for the other and you have to be fair, thorough, balanced and unbiased for both sides.”
According to Ritter, the College has tried to model their policy closely to VAWA in order to promote a fair process “because if you don’t do that the [system] will collapse on itself,” she said.
Ritter and Guttentag both said that unless the Department of Education issues or passes a policy change, they plan to keep the college’s current policy in place. “Until we know more from DeVos, we plan to stay the course,” Ritter said.
(09/14/17 4:02am)
Welcome back to college. As the school year ramps up, we would like to share with you an upcoming project we are really excited about. One of our many goals this year is to write long-term, in-depth pieces that look at student life on campus, in addition to our weekly coverage. In that spirit, we have already started to put together the first in a series of articles that will examine sexual assault and misconduct at Middlebury.
We believe that the conversation about sexual assault on college campuses — which is often part of our national dialogue — needs to be a larger part of our everyday life here at Midd. We believe that thoughtful journalism can change discourse within a community, and that we, as the student newspaper, have a part to play in this conversation. We are committed to putting the necessary time and energy into this reporting — to elevate voices that often remain unheard.
Over the course of the semester, we will write about different aspects of this issue. We will talk to student groups like MiddSafe and It Happens Here to learn about the organizations on campus that do work surrounding sexual assault. We will speak with the Title IX office about enforcement, and look into programs like Green Dot. Our first story, scheduled to come out next week, will cover the changes to Title IX policy Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos announced last Thursday.
We also hope to speak to survivors that are willing to share their stories, anonymously or otherwise. If you have story you would like to share as part of this project, or if there is a topic you would like us to cover, please do not hesitate to reach out to campus staff. We are happy to meet with you and talk you through our process if you are interested in participating.
The features team can be reached at features@middleburycampus.com.
(09/14/17 4:01am)
Shawna Shapiro, an associate professor of writing and linguistics, conducted a research project this summer about how students interact with each other regarding contentious subjects.
The project, called “Students Engaging Across Difference,” used an online survey and in-person interviews to explore how often, and in what contexts, students have conversations with other students whose background or opinions differ from their own. Shapiro worked with two student research assistants, Jed Sass ’18 and Abla Laallam ’20, and all three hope that the results of their project will shape the Middlebury community going forward.
Shapiro said her goal was to better understand students’ conversations with one another, in part to discover what kinds of initiatives, resources, and experiences the college could provide to promote these conversations taking place.
“I want our future actions as an institution to be informed by data, not just by our often unquestioned assumptions about what students want and need from this intellectual community,” Shapiro said.
Sass added that another goal of the research was to seek out how students themselves feel about how they interact with others on campus. He cited several recent events that helped inspire this research, including Charles Murray’s visit, the election and the ongoing conversation about cultural appropriation.
According to Shapiro, the results of her research both confirmed existing hunches and provided a new window into student life. She found, as she expected, that Middlebury students value conversations that involve difference of opinion over contentious subjects — 88 percent of participants marked the survey with a four or a five to indicate they found these conversations “extremely important.” The study also showed that 25 percent of students participate in these conversations on a monthly basis and 48 percent do so weekly, though they found that students tend to have these difficult dialogues within their existing friend groups.
“There were also a few findings that surprised me,” Shapiro said. “For example, the dining halls and residence halls are the top two locations in which students are most likely to engage in these dialogues. The classroom is number three on the list. Co-curricular talks or events were much further down.”
All in all, Shapiro’s research showed that lack of opportunity to engage is not the nature of the problem.
“Students feel that the conditions aren’t right for genuine, thoughtful engagement,” Shapiro said. “They worry about the social ramifications, for example. They feel that people aren’t truly listening to one another.”
Laallam agreed, saying that the failure of those on campus to listen inspired her to participate in this project as a researcher.
“Last year was my first year at Middlebury and I noticed that people do a lot of arguing and disagreeing without actually listening to each other,” she said. “I wanted to investigate what led these conversations to be unproductive and maybe find a way to make those conversations better.”
Laallam felt the most significant trend the research revealed was that students often want to engage with new perspectives, but that they nonetheless have trouble finding opportunities to do this.
Students “feel like those interactions are extremely important, but they all found their conversations across difference to be unproductive for the same reasons,” she said.
Among those reasons, one that keeps many students from speaking up is a fear of peer criticism.
“The most widely cited reasons by the students we interviewed were that students feared judgment or criticism from their peers for voicing an opinion or belief that may be seen as controversial,” Sass said, adding that many of the interviewed students described a growing unwillingness within the Middlebury community to listen to opposing perspectives.
Sass also pointed out that their research found two very different mindsets coxisting within the student body.
“We noticed a noteworthy dichotomy in students’ attitudes towards engaging across difference,” he said. “While many students stated their belief that engaging with different opinions has now become more important than ever, others mentioned they are less willing to tolerate opposing viewpoints.”
Shapiro felt the most significant result of the research was that most students, especially students of color, do not feel heard by their peers.
“We don’t just need more ‘speech’ — we need more listening,” she said. “We did an analysis of survey responses from students of color, and those students were three times as likely as white students to feel that they weren’t being heard in these conversations. A number of participants across groups admitted that they themselves sometimes tune out when they hear a perspective they find illogical or offensive.”
Shapiro suggested perhaps the college needs an explicit curriculum that teaches students to listen across their differences. “Some folks in Writing Studies use the term ‘rhetorical listening’ to talk about this skill set — I’d love to know whether that term resonates with students,” she said.
Moving forward, Shapiro would like to focus on how this problem is already being addressed.
“I’d love to know from people in our community: When, where, and how have you deepened your listening and empathy-building skills? Who and what has helped you do so? And how might we become a community that is committed not just to free speech but to deep listening?”
Laallam hopes the results of their research will help students bridge divides more often.
“People with different opinions than yours aren’t your enemies. They’re another source of knowledge and experiences that could contribute to your growth,” she said. “Listening, empathizing and understanding can help [us] have great conversations if people were willing to set biases aside and just talk things through.”
Sass added that students have power to make an impact on campus culture regarding difficult conversations.
“What stood out for us in doing this research is that students really do care about the Middlebury community and want to see it move forward in a positive direction,” he said. “No matter how hard the college works towards fostering healthier dialogue on campus, the onus truly lies on the students to instill the change we
(05/11/17 1:56am)
Every Wednesday, Hunter Graham ’20 drives to the University of Vermont to attend a Military Science class as part of the Reserve Officers Training Core (ROTC) of the Army. ROTC offers college students a path into military service, in addition to offering financial assistance to help pay for college.
According to the Army website, ROTC prides itself on being a leadership program and providing job opportunities to college graduates in Active Duty jobs as well as in the Army National Guard and Army Reserves. Graham has been a part of ROTC since the beginning of this semester.
“ROTC, and serving in general, were always things I considered in high school, but I think I was too afraid to try. Once I had more information, because I started talking to people at UVM and the other cadets, it became clear that this is something that I could really do,” Graham said. “It has added a whole other element of my college life, another really big friend group that can understand you better than people at Middlebury in some ways.”
Graham explained that when she attends class at UVM, the cadets in the program are split up by year. “The one’s have a relatively easy, introductory course,” she said. “The two’s course is a bit more challenging. The third year is the most important — it is the year that determines what branch of the Army they will go into.” Graham has also attended some labs to gain more experience. “Sometimes instead of or in addition to class there is a longer ‘lab’ that gives more hands on experience,” she said. “The only labs that I have been to are at a military base in Burlington called Camp Johnson.”
In addition to the educational aspect of the program, the cadets must complete an intensive training regiment. Since Graham and fellow Middlebury ROTC member Steve Bissainthe ’18 do not live in Burlington, they stay in shape by attending a work-out class at Middlebury called CATS twice a week.
According to Graham, she decided to pursue the program as a way to be involved in something important. “I became interested in it when I saw the life I could have if I was willing to make sacrifices and put in the work,” she said. “There are so many opportunities that only the military can give you, and not all of them put you on the front lines. I could graduate and take an educational leave to go to medical school, or go into military intelligence. I joined because I wanted to be a part of something bigger than myself. The military is about as big as you can get.”
Graham also has a unique perspective, as a woman in the male-dominated program. She says there are five women in her class of 25, and that half of the women are in the nursing program. “I do not feel any different as a girl in the program,” she said. “Women wear the same uniform and keep their hair in a low bun. The upperclassmen in the program that I look up to are all women, except for Steve, of course. There are two seniors in charge of the group each year, one per semester, and they usually choose a woman as one of the leaders. There are some really badass women in the program who will do amazing things.”
Graham says her favorite part of the experience so far has been the people. “It is nice to get off campus and be around a new group of people. Everyone I have met has been so welcoming and so real,” she said. “The UVM cadets are all amazing. The Green Mountain Battalion is one of the best in the country and I am lucky to be a part of the family.”
The program has been challenging for Graham. “It’s been hard to do something so out of the ordinary,” she said. “I’m excited and nervous to see what it will be like to wear the uniform on campus, something that will happen every Wednesday.” Graham also said it was hard to join part way through the year and catch up on the content in the science class.
Another challenge has been how disconnected ROTC is from her experience at Middlebury. Graham made the decision to join ROTC without talking to any college administrators. “I have spoken to no college administration or the registrar about this,” she said. “We don’t get a class credit for taking another class, that has as much work and a huge time commitment. There is no college support other than our friends and the different articles written about it.”
Despite the challenges, Graham has found her friends to be very supportive of her participation. “I’ve really appreciated all of the love and support my friends have shown in this. I think a lot of people are confused about what it is, or think that it’s something foreign and unusual, when it’s unusual that there’s no program at Middlebury.”
According to Graham, if all goes according to plan, she intends to continue with the program for the rest of her time in college.
(05/04/17 3:59am)
Ross Commons hosted its first “Rosstaurant,” a restaurant style dinner event, on Saturday, April 29, in Atwater Dining Hall. Ross Community Council tri-chairs Zorica Radanovic ’19, Trisha Singh ’19 and Oriyomi Adeliyi ’20 planned the event to replace Viva Ross Vegas, which had been Ross Commons’ annual event for the last several years. According to Radanovic, Viva Ross Vegas was declining in popularity.
“As tri-chairs, we wanted to host a large-scale event again, but realized that Viva wasn’t getting the traction it once did,” she said.
Radanovic said they have been planning the event since the fall. “We started [planning] last semester in November, but at that point everything was very theoretical,” she said. “Then as the months passed, we began getting more serious and started contacting student chefs and looking for volunteers to help during the night of the event.”
Radanovic also said the tri-chairs were inspired by the success of Dolci, the monthly student-cooked meal hosted in Atwater, as they planned Rosstaurant.
“Having Dolci as a model and having the Dolci leadership be so willing to offer advice and guidance was essential to the tri-chairs who had never organized a large food event before,” she said. “The last two months have been heavily involved in working with Atwater dining staff in preparing the event and getting the necessary materials in order.”
Students put together the menu for Rosstaurant and incorporated food from many different regions in the world. Abigail Browngoehl ’19 helped decide on the dishes for the event.
“The theme of Rosstaurant in its inaugural year is ‘A Culinary Tour of the World,’” she said. “The menu is inspired by recipes and cultures from around the world, featuring cuisine from five different countries: Bangladesh, Ethiopia, India, Taiwan and Turkey. Clark Lewis and myself put together the menu, which was curated from a number of students who were inspired by their own recipes.”
Maria Hatjigeorgiou, one of the faculty heads for Ross Commons, found that the different kinds of food helped contribute to an open atmosphere at the event itself.
“The menu our Chairs developed utilized creatively national dishes from five different countries, blending flavors and traditions into a culinary tour of Peace and Friendship,” she said. “The food, as well as the map and the information they provided to each table of diners, sparked rich conversations and elicited memories of travel and personal experience. The evening was enhanced by an eclectic music program representing diverse geographies, traditions and styles by Ross artists.”
According to Radanovic, the goal of Rosstaurant was to create community around food and music.
“We wanted to bring the greater Middlebury community together over food, live music and conversation,” she said. “We wanted to showcase the amazing cooking talent of our peers. We wanted Ross Commons to get involved and to get excited about the Commons system.”
Fellow tri-chair Singh agreed. “Our goal was to provide a fun gourmet restaurant environment to a large number of students for a low price, while exposing them to a variety of cultures through food,” she said.
Hatjigeorgiou felt the event was very successful. “The event was a testament to what collaboration and synergy can yield in our Commons communities, if our Councils choose to activate the power of self governance supported by their budgets,” she said. “Sitting among all the different students from Ross and the broader College community, I felt I had a rare true moment of intense connection. It was a shared experience where all the different layers of rich identity that our students represent converge and become known and appreciated. I believe that moments like this are needed more than ever in our community.”
Radanovic was also pleased with how Rosstaurant went.
“It went better than I could have imagined,” she said. “The turnout was great, the food was wonderful, the music was amazing and it was just a bunch of fun. I am so thankful to all of the members in the community who attended and who wanted to help, so thank you!”
Radanovic also said that it is unclear if Rosstaurant will happen next year, but she hopes this event laid the groundwork for the future. “The tri-chairs operate on a yearly basis, so it will be completely under the discretion of the tri-chairs in the upcoming years, she said. “However, I do hope that because of the success it had this year, the tri-chairs in the future will want to pursue Rosstaurant again, especially because now there is a framework for future organizers to follow.”