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(11/19/20 11:00am)
Cooped up with her family in upstate New York and facing an interminable period of quarantine boredom, Mara Strich ’22 searched for a project she could focus her restless energy on. She decided to apply to the Miss Vermont competition on a whim in early September and was pleasantly surprised when she was notified of her acceptance a week later.
With the Miss Addison County title already claimed by another competitor, Strich decided to compete under the title of Miss Otter Creek, to represent her love for and connection to the Middlebury community and the meandering river that runs through it.
Strich describes herself as “adventurous” and a lover of learning new skills and frequently takes on passion-projects. Last winter, she learned how to hunt and obtained a license. During her two years at Middlebury, she has taught herself how to ski. In high school, she picked up the timpani and the saxophone on top of continuing to seriously practice the flute. In fact, she is a classically trained flautist and played in Carnegie Hall at the age of 17. Strich views her venture into the world of pageants as the latest in a long string of adventures.
The Miss Vermont competition attracted Strich because of its nonprofit status and emphasis on leadership, scholarship and public speaking, as opposed to beauty. Miss Vermont does not have a swimsuit portion, and Strich was not asked to include a photo of herself in her application.
“We help develop the next generation of Vermont women leaders. We are here to cultivate personal growth, develop professional skills, promote personal connections to community, encourage the pursuit of education and celebrate the unique talents of each individual,” the home page of Miss Vermont Scholarship Organizations’ website proudly states — all above a big gold button asking visitors to “become a candidate.”
While applications are still open, Strich is currently slated to compete against 11 other women between the ages of 17 and 25 in the pageant on May 29 and 30 in 2021.
The Miss Vermont competition is just one of the many pageants that fall under the Miss America Organization, which claims to be among the largest providers of scholarship assistance for young women in the world.
The winner of each of the competition’s segments receives scholarship prizes, with those who place in the overall competition receiving larger sums. Scholarships include both cash prizes and access to personal and professional development courses.
Miss America competitions, including Miss Vermont, are divided into four portions — social impact pitch and on-stage interview, red carpet, talent, and interview.
The Miss Vermont Organization hosts biweekly Zoom workshops to help contestants prepare for the competition in May. Strich views these workshops as learning opportunities to grow outside of pageant preparation, and she has already seen their benefits.
Shortly before interviewing for summer internships, she attended a public speaking and presentation workshop, which taught her how to talk about herself with confidence and gave her additional interpersonal skills that helped her interviews go smoothly.
Besides preparing contestants for the interview portion, workshop topics include crafting a social impact pitch, using social media as a marketing tool and practicing on-stage questions.
With so much time to develop her pitch, Strich has yet to finalize her social impact project. For now, she plans to focus on community mentoring, to which she has dedicated her time at Middlebury. She is involved in several on-campus mentoring groups, including Community Friends, Language in Motion and peer mentoring. She also served on Reslife last year and has led Middview trips.
Drawing from her previously acquired skills, Strich plans on playing the flute for her talent portion.
Should she win in May, Strich would spend the next year as Miss Vermont. Traditionally, Miss Vermont tours the state during her “year of service,” making appearances at events, promoting the Miss Vermont Scholarship Organization and the Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals and conducting her social impact project. Miss Vermont is also obligated to participate in the competition for the Miss America title in December of 2021.
The Miss Vermont 2020 competition was canceled due to Covid-19 concerns, and it is unclear whether the 2021 competition will be able to proceed or, if it does, what the year of service would look like.
Strich, however, appears unperturbed. With her schedule full of classes, assignments, extracurriculars and pageant preparations, she doesn’t have time to worry about things she can’t control. For now, she’s just happy to be along for the ride.
(11/12/20 10:59am)
As the nation waited on edge to hear the results of the 2020 presidential election, many of Middlebury’s students of color feared that tensions could erupt into racialized violence on campus and in town.
Students worried that the college, which hosts a much higher concentration of people of color than the surrounding area, would provide an easy target for racial violence and hate speech. Many students of color decided to stay on campus, travel in groups, avoid the main roads and town and remain hyper-vigilant for the duration of election week and beyond.
Jasmin Animas-Tapia ’21 made one last trip into town to stock up on groceries on Nov. 1. She worries that tensions will continue to mount over the coming weeks instead of dying down. Unless absolutely necessary, she does not plan on returning to town before she leaves for the end of the semester.
As a Black woman, Kaila Thomas ’21 believes she is an easier target for racial violence than male students of color. For the duration of election week, Thomas scarcely left her college housing except to attend in-person classes and eat in the dining hall. Friends escorted her to classes and sometimes brought her meals so she wouldn’t have to leave her refuge.
Many students of color did not fear outright physical violence in Vermont but worried that they might be verbally assaulted by passing cars or community members. The threat of these interactions undermines a sense of “emotional safety” for students of color, according to David Vargas ’22.5.
Vargas defined emotional safety as the feeling that he is wanted or belongs here, something he has felt infrequently during his time at Middlebury. Similarly, Animas-Tapia thinks about it as “feeling comfortable enough in spaces to be open and honest” about who she is.
None of these feelings and fears were new or unique to this election week. The election, and the rising national tensions that surround it, only serves to exacerbate existing worries for students of color, many of whom feel unsafe and uncomfortable in town even under normal circumstances.
Vargas is hyper aware of how his skin color visually marks him as an “outsider” in town. He remains constantly on guard, aware of his surroundings and thoughtful of his actions to avoid conflict when he leaves campus.
“Being Brown in America, you always have to be careful,” Vargas said.
Animas-Tapia carefully polices herself and her conduct when she enters the town. She tries to keep her head down and avoid calling attention to herself. She wears makeup and purposefully dresses up and tries to “look presentable.”
When she walks with her Spanish-speaking friends, she is careful to only speak English. Though it goes against her nature as a native New Yorker used to brusque interactions, she tries to appear overly friendly to passersby and cashiers in town.
“I’ll go out of my way to make small talk even if I'm not invested in the conversation just because, if I come to your store, I want you to recognize me,” she said. “I don’t want you to see me as a threat or as an outsider.”
Many students of color shared stories of facing racial harassment in Middlebury in the past. Vargas recalled a man shouting “Make America Great Again” at him as he rode by on a bicycle during his first semester. A man recently yelled “All Lives Matter” at Hennah Vohra ’21 out of the window of a passing car, and Animas-Tapia recalls freezing in shock when a white woman referred to her using a racial slur in Hannaford.
“I can’t remember her face anymore, and I never saw her again, but it was just something that really really stuck with me,” she said. “It just takes one moment to mess up the relationship [with the town].”
An “institutional memory” of past incidents also informs students’ fears, according to Vargas. A recent incident in which a white student used a racial slur against Rodney Adams ’21 looms heavily in many of their minds. Other past incidents, such as the appearance of stickers for a white supremicist organization on campus and white nationalist propaganda in Davis Family Library, all lend weight to students’ worries that they too could be targeted.
The college responded to students raising concerns about their safety during the election by organizing volunteer groups of faculty, staff, and community members to patrol the campus perimeter during the week. Patrols ran on Monday and Tuesday from 8 a.m. to midnight and from 6 p.m. to midnight for the rest of the week, according to Center for Community Engagement Assistant Director Jason Duquette-Hoffman, who organized the patrols.
Volunteers walked through the biting winds and blistering snow Monday night for over nine miles during their three-hour shifts, on the lookout for any outside agitators harassing students. Professor of Anthropology Michael Sheridan volunteered Thursday night, completing eight laps of the campus during his shift. At the end of the night, Sheridan’s Fitbit informed him that he had taken 21,000 steps.
“I thought it was wrong that anybody in our community should have to worry about their physical safety on our campus,” Sheridan said. “I saw this patrol idea as one way to contribute something to overall feelings of security and belonging in the community.”
According to Duquette-Hoffman, the volunteers were primarily meant to support students. Should something happen, they were told to follow the students' lead, but to try to support them and guide them away from the interaction rather than directly intervene. The college does not know of any incidents in the past week, according to Interim Director of Public Safety Daniel V. Giatto.
Duquette-Hoffman hoped that volunteers wouldn’t face any harassment and would instead spend their shifts enjoying a nice walk around campus and friendly conversations with students. He aimed for their presence to comfort nervous students and signal that the college cares about them and their fears. Many students of color said that they appreciated the volunteers’ efforts.
“BIPOC students on this campus often feel very isolated in the challenges we face,” Vohra said. “Knowing that our campus as a whole is finally cognizant of those is comforting.”
In addition to Public Safety increasing staffing on Monday and Tuesday nights, Middlebury also hired Green Mountain Concert Services (GMCS) to provide extra security during election week. Like the volunteer patrols, the college hoped that they could support students and guide them away from tense interactions should outside agitators approach them, according to Giatto.
GMCS’s presence raised concerns for students of color weary of security services and police in a time when the Black Lives Matter movement’s national prominence has put police brutality and racism at the forefront of people’s minds. Rather than alleviate her fears, GMCS staff only made Animas-Tapia more tense.
With no strong connection to the college or sense of the campus community, she worried about how they might interact with students. Should a student of color respond to harassment, she feared that GMCS staff might side with the initial attacker and cause further harm to the student.
The college’s lack of transparency heightened these concerns for some students. Though the college announced the volunteer patrols in a campus-wide email, they sent no communication about GMCS. Animas-Tapia only noticed their presence because their bright yellow jackets caught her eye.
Elijah Willig ’21 was also frustrated by the college’s lack of communication and failure to proactively address students’ concerns, noting that the college only organized volunteers and hired security after students of color repeatedly raised concerns about their safety. In his view, the college’s latest actions are part of a larger pattern of the administration reacting belatedly and insufficiently to the concerns of students of color.
“The administration only supports students when students demand that the administration supports them,” Willig said.
Animas-Tapia also wishes the college had reached out to students of color and directly asked them what they wanted and needed. A solution informed by their actual experiences would make students feel safer than GMCS or volunteer patrols, whose efforts she thinks are largely ineffective.
Those patrols do not enter dorms, nor do they monitor the everyday, small interactions where harms pile up, according to Animas-Tapia. While the fear of those interactions may die down as the election fades into memory, the threat will not disappear.
“This is not the only time you should prioritize keeping your students safe from harm,” she said. “It's not coddling your students; it's just giving them the peace of mind to know that they are safe here and to live happily and healthy.”
No amount of temporary security will effectively protect students of color on campus if the college does not directly address its role in perpetuating systemic racism, according to Vargas.
“It's all connected,” Vargas said. “If you don’t work hard enough to eradicate white supremacy and racism here, that's not really supporting people much with regard to the election. The election and the atmosphere here is just a byproduct of what's going on in the country overall.”
Editor’s Note: Professor of Anthropology Michael Sheridan is senior writer Sophia McDermott-Hughes’ academic advisor.
(11/06/20 3:07am)
Across campus, students gathered around television and computer screens and stared down at their phones while walking between buildings to watch renowned civil rights activist and educator Angela Davis answer student questions over Zoom on Oct. 28. Nearly 500 people tuned in to watch “An Evening with Angela Davis,”an event sponsored by Middlebury College Activities Board and co-hosted by the Black Student Union and Distinguished Men of Color.
Rather than a traditional talk, the event began with 30 minutes of pre-submitted student questions, followed by 45 minutes of live questions fielded by student moderators. Organizers hoped that the unusual format of the talk would tailor the experience to Middlebury students and their interests.
The event covered a wide range of topics, including Davis’ childhood and the beginning of her activism, her position as a vocal advocate of prison and police abolition, her views on intersectionality and her hopes for current students and coming generations.
Davis grew up in highly segregated Birmingham, Ala., in the 1940s and 1950s. A staunch believer in civil rights and equality from an early age, she joined the Black Panthers and the Communist Party.
“It was not possible to live in that kind of world and retain one’s dignity without resisting, without fighting back,” Davis said. “I knew that it was my responsibility to participate in the effort to change our surroundings and change our conditions and to move toward a world in which there would be justice and equality and freedom.”
For Davis, silence was never an option. As a shy young woman, she never intended to become a figurehead. Instead, she had planned to contribute to the movements she cared about as an intellectual. Although Davis empathizes with the many people whose silence comes from fear rather than ambivalence, she encouraged students not to fear the consequences of their actions as individuals, but to find courage in the collective of a movement.
Davis is all too familiar with individual consequences. She rose to prominence as an activist after the University of California, Los Angeles fired her from her position as a philosophy professor due to her affiliation with the Communist Party. Then, the national spotlight turned to her after she aided in the botched escape attempt of George Jackson in 1970. Before she was caught, the FBI listed her as one of their most wanted criminals. She served 18 months in jail — often in solitary confinement — and she faced the death penalty in court.
She was acquitted in 1972, but her time in prison has profoundly impacted her life and activism.
“I think I’ve lived the best life I could have possibly lived,” she said. “Even the things that have been really terrible that have happened to me, I realize now I’ve learned from them. They’ve been gifts. Even the time I spent in jail and on the FBI’s most wanted list and facing the death penalty. That was a gift because I learned so much.”
Davis has carried those lessons with her through a career as a leading activist. She is one of the most prominent advocates for police and prison abolition, positions that have garnered national attention in the wake of the police killings of Georgy Floyd and Breonna Taylor this year and the gathering momentum of the Black Lives Matter movement across the country.
Davis believes that the police and carceral systems were founded on racism and that no reform can ever divorce them from their past. Efforts to reform these institutions over the past century have only served to strengthen and legitimize them. She views the current punitive model of the current American justice system as ineffective at actually protecting people and their rights. Davis advocates for abolishing prisons and police and creating new, better institutions in their place.
When it comes to police officers killing unarmed Black civilians, Davis does not agree with calls to imprison criminal cops. Instead, she prioritizes constructing institutions that will prevent the deaths of any more Black people at the hands of the police.
“A punitive, retributive approach, regardless of who it is directed at, is never going to accomplish anything,” she said. “I want to create the framework for forms of justice that will be more compelling and that will help us rid our world of racist violence.”
Davis’s activism reaches far beyond civil rights and abolition movements. A vocal advocate for women’s rights, class struggle, LGBTQ+ rights and many more progressive issues, she rejects the hierarchical view that activists must prioritize one issue over the rest to be effective. Instead, she encouraged students to view all of these issues as connected to each other, nationally and internationally, and to work to solve them where they intersect.
Davis told students, no matter which issues they care about, to vote in the general election and to vote for Vice President Joe Biden and Senator Kamala Harris. While she does not agree with many of their policies nor see them as nearly radical enough for the moment at hand, Davis emphasized that a Biden-Harris administration would create more opportunities for activism, while those opportunities would shrink under another Trump term.
“I am going to vote for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, but I’m not really voting for them,” she said. “I’m voting for us. I’m voting for our own capacity to continue to the work that has begun so powerfully during this period [after] the murder of Breonna Taylor and the state lynching of George Floyd.”
Davis ended the talk on a note of hope for the future directed at the students listening.
“I’ll be 77 in January, and in all of these years I don’t think I’ve ever experienced such an exciting moment, and it's largely because of young people . . . leading the way,” said Davis. “I trust you. I place my hope in the work that you’re doing over this period and in the coming years and decades.”
(10/29/20 10:00am)
As Middlebury students from across the country fill out absentee ballots and slip them into mailboxes in hopes of influencing state, local and federal elections, many of their peers can only watch from the sidelines. Yet the futures of non-citizen students depend just as much, if not more, on the outcome of the coming elections. While international and immigrant students anxiously await the results, many are getting involved in politics in whatever way they can.
Tony Sjodin ’23, a Swedish-born U.S. permanent resident, spent the summer volunteering for campaigns in his home state of Massachusetts and in Vermont. He estimates that he spent between 15 and 25 hours a week for nearly three months canvassing over the phone to encourage people to vote.
Unable to canvas due to Covid-19, Niki Kowsar ’21.5, an Iranian-born Canadian citizen and U.S. permanent resident, has focused on encouraging her citizen friends to vote, spreading awareness about the issues she cares about and discussing the issues with friends. Asif-Ul Islam ’23 and Paolo Gonnelli ’21, international students from Bangladesh and Italy, respectively, have closely followed the election by watching the debates and keeping an eye on the news.
Students reported worrying about the future of their health care and the possibility of growing xenophobia and racism. All of these worries are compounded by their inability to vote, creating a feeling of “powerlessness” as they helplessly watch and wait for the election results that may very well determine their futures, according to Kowsar.
The actions of the current administration, particularly regarding immigration, have impelled Kowsar and Sjodin, both green-card holders, to pursue citizenship. Sjodin applied in August. Kowsar’s application, however, has been delayed for another five years due to new immigration laws passed under the Trump administration.
The situation is even more precarious for student visa holders as the future of the visas they depend on to study and work in the U.S. likely hinge upon the outcome of the next election.
Trump signed an executive order in June suspending the issuing of new H-1B visas, which allow U.S. employers to temporarily employ foreign workers in speciality occupations through the end of 2020. The Trump administration has also threatened to curtail Optional Practical Training (OPT) visas, which allow international students to remain in the U.S. and legally work in an area related to their major after graduation until they are sponsored for an H-1B visa.
Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE) issued a declaration in July stating that student visa holders would not be allowed to remain in the U.S. if their colleges did not offer in-person classes. While ICE later rolled back the decision as colleges began to file lawsuits, it alarmed many international students.
For Gonnelli, the policies drove home a feeling that has been building within his heart throughout his three years here: he is not wanted or welcome in this country. He feels isolated in a country with no family and no safety net under a government he feels does not care about him. Though ICE reversed its decision about student visa holders, he decided conclusively this summer that he would not remain in the U.S. long after graduation and will instead build his future life in Europe.
Islam also worried about ICE’s decision. He decided not to go home to Bangladesh this summer out of fear that he would not be allowed to return to the U.S.
Coming from a Muslim-majority country, Islam is constantly concerned about Trump’s iterations of Muslim bans and the possibility of tightening immigration laws stranding him in the U.S. or Bangladesh. He looked into transferring to a Canadian university this summer, but most were not accepting transfers because of over-enrollment and pandemic-related issues.
Islam has not seen his family in over a year — the longest period he has been away from home — and he misses them greatly. Still, his parents are waiting to buy his plane ticket home for winter break until the election results come out. If Trump is re-elected, Islam will likely continue to stay in the U.S.
The United States does not exist in a vacuum, and the results of the upcoming election will have far-reaching effects on the rest of the world, including the home countries of many Middlebury students.
Kowsar worries about future policies of the U.S. toward Iran, where she was born. Recently, she has spent a lot of her time talking to her friends who are U.S. citizens and encouraging them to hold the future administration accountable over their policies towards Iran.
She hopes the next administration will not surround itself with people connected to the Iranian government who encourage policies that support the Iranian government, at the cost of their people.
Islam’s home country of Bangladesh has an important relationship with the U.S. As the third largest exporter of ready-made clothes, Bangladesh mostly trades with the U.S. They also send many students to study in American universities.
Islam worries that the Trump administration and Republican Party’s increasing isolationist tendencies — evidenced by recent policies limiting immigration and pulling out of international agreements and organizations like the Paris Climate Accords and the World Health Organization — may affect the flow of aid and trade between the U.S. and Bangladesh if Trump is reelected.
Kowsar hopes that Middlebury students who are American citizens will “vote and think about how [their] votes are affecting the lives of others, especially those who can’t vote.”
Tony Sjodin ’23 is a Senior News Writer for The Campus.
(10/22/20 10:00am)
At 12:30 p.m. each day, the 48 bells suspended in Mead Chapel’s tower ring out. The sounds of Irish folk songs, Baroque fugues and ragtime jigs echo across campus. The chapel’s tower is a central landmark on campus, but its virtuoso remains an enigma to many.
George Matthew Jr. has played the carillon — the set of bells suspended in the tower — for 59 years, 35 of them at Middlebury College. His love for the instrument started long before that, more than 81 years ago.
In one of Matthew’s first memories, he sat on his grandfather’s shoulders, his head standing high above the crowd at the 1939 World’s Fair in Queens, New York City. He had an unimpeded view of the carillon tower rising high above him. When the bells began to play so thunderously loud that they echoed in his head, he stared, enraptured. His four-year-old heart sang, and from that moment on, he was hooked on the carillon.
Matthew comes from a family of musicians who were more than supportive of his interests, but his early efforts to learn music were unsuccessful.
At age five, his uncle tried to teach him how to play the violin. But as a naturally talented player, his uncle didn’t understand how to teach Matthew, who didn’t share his gift.
At age six, his father, who directed the church choir and played the organ, started him on the piano with a stern German instructor, but, once again, the instrument didn’t stick.
At age seven, the magic struck. His parents bought him a mellophone, an instrument similar to the french horn. He played it for hours, practicing and practicing until his lips swelled up, and he was forced to take a break. He drove the neighbors crazy, so his parents banished him to the cellar, where the walls muffled his playing, and he could happily practice for as long as he liked.
Still, he dreamed of playing the big, booming organ that he watched his father play at church. His parents insisted that he learn to play the piano before advancing to the larger instrument. So he started piano lessons again at age nine, until he finally graduated to the organ at age 12.
He “loved every aspect of it,” and demonstrated a natural gift. By age 13, he became the church organist, playing for his congregation every Sunday.
Matthew inherited his love of music from his father, but he never wanted Matthew to follow in his footsteps. He recalls his father telling him, “You won’t make any money. You’ll be unhappy, and you’ll turn against yourself because your art won't be supporting you.”
Matthew showed a natural aptitude for science, so he followed his father’s advice and enrolled at Columbia University, where he graduated with a bachelor’s degree in chemistry.
Even as he committed himself to his studies, he never forgot about music or the carillon. Whenever he had breaks from classes, labs or other responsibilities, he would go outside to hear the great Belgian carillonneur Kamiel Lefevere play the 74-bell carillon at Riverside Church just four blocks away. Matthew tried approaching LeFevre for lessons, but he was refused.
Matthew held on to his dream of playing the carillon even as he went on to work in chemical research. He continued to play music on the side, working as an organist at various churches and temples.
In 1963, he learned that Princeton carillonneur Arthur Lynds Bigelow was offering free lessons in New Canaan, Connecticut. He jumped at the opportunity. Once a week for a year, Matthew attended carillon lessons with a group of other students. The experience was well worth the long wait. Matthew loved playing the carillon even more than he enjoyed listening to it.
For the next five years, Matthew drove all over the northeast to play whenever and wherever could until the First Presbyterian Church in Stamford, Connecticut hired him as their carillonneur in 1968.
Matthew continued to work as a chemical researcher for 15 years while simultaneously playing music at a series of churches and synagogues. In 1972, he was working upwards of 80 hours a week between his multiple jobs while studying for a master’s degree in world music. He quit his job as a chemical researcher to dedicate himself to a career in music.
“There was no use fighting it anymore,” he said. “Music just took over my life.”
In 1985, Allan Dragone, then the chair of Middlebury College’s Board of Trustees, approached Matthew to help the college create their own carillon. Matthew helped expand the college’s set of bells to a full-scale, four octave carillon that he has played for the last 35 years as the college’s carillonneur.
One condition of Matthew’s contract with Middlebury is that he teaches whoever asks him for lessons, for free. He estimates that he's taught between 80 and 90 students in the 35 years he’s played at Middlebury. One of his students, Amy Heebner ’93, began playing the carillon under his tutelage and has since gone on to a successful career as the Albany, N.Y. city hall carillonneur.
When he’s not playing the carillon at Middlebury College, Matthew is playing the organ for St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church in town or traveling around the country or the world to play elsewhere. He began his first carillon tour of the U.S. in 1979. Since then, he has traveled on 39 more tours in North America and 13 in Europe.
When Matthew plays, he hopes that his listeners understand his “emotional language.” He recalls a woman approaching him after a carillon concert in Brussels, Belgium. When she began speaking to him in Flemish, he had to interject to tell her that he couldn’t understand. She spoke again, and a bystander translated.
“You don’t speak our language, but your hands speak our language,” she said.
When Middlebury evacuated students from campus last March, he played the carillon for several hours each day as students moved out. He interspersed Bach with the alma mater every 15 minutes to tell students, “We ain’t beat yet, and we want you back.”
When the college permitted Matthew to play again in mid-May, he returned to an empty campus. Matthew regards himself as serving Middlebury the town as much as the college, so he played every day to try to lift the town’s spirits.
As the pandemic continues, he frequently plays “Va, pensiero” from the opera Nabucco by Giuseppe Verdi, one of the songs that people across Italy sang to each other from their balconies during the national lockdown. He wanted to transmit that same spirit of community and hope to Middlebury.
He also uses the carillon for political messages. Matthew views the Trump administration’s family separation policy as “one of the [greatest] crimes of this century.” For the past two years, he has been playing Mexican folk songs every day as his own form of protest. He also frequently plays the spiritual “Joshua fought the Battle of Jericho,” the second line of which is “and the walls come tumbling down” in defiance of Trump’s “build a wall” rallying cry.
After police killed George Floyd in May, Matthew began playing songs related to the Black Lives Matter Movement. For the past six months, he has alternated between playing “O’ Freedom,” “We Shall Overcome” and “Lift Every Voice and Sing” — otherwise known as “The Black National Anthem” — every day.
“I'm hoping to just make people aware of this and pay tribute to the many millions of people who have gone through a pretty hellish experience here,” Matthew said.
Though already 85, Matthew has no plans to retire or stop playing, not until he “can’t play decently anymore or Gabriel blows his horn, whichever comes first.”
Corrections: An earlier version of this piece incorrectly reported that Matthew rode on his father’s shoulders at the 1939 World’s Fair; it was his grandfather’s shoulders. It also said that Matthew recalled reaching up to the piano keyboard to practice when he was six years old when he was two years old at the time. The previous version erroneously stated that George Floyd was shot and killed by police. He was choked to death as a police officer knelt on his neck.
(10/01/20 9:59am)
Chicken. Sweet potatoes. Vegetables. Chicken. Sweet Potatoes. Vegetables. Over and over again, I filled container after container of food until it became almost robotic, studiously ignoring my grumbling stomach, parched throat and sweaty hands steaming inside my vinyl gloves. There was no time to rest, only time to prepare for students to arrive.
On Sept. 17, I went to work a dinner shift at Proctor Dining Hall to speak to staff and see first hand what it is like to work in the dining halls under the Covid-19 restrictions.
When I arrived at 5 p.m., the area where staff serve food, known to those who work there as “the line,” was full. Three student workers, four full-time staff members and I stood at the ready. It was the most workers one senior staff member, who wished to remain anonymous, had ever seen. For him, it was a welcome relief.
Throughout Phase One, only three staff worked the line most days due to staff shortages. Three people alone had to manage all the normal operations of the kitchen — cooking extra food and refilling the food pans — in addition to all of the new responsibilities that came with Covid-19 guidelines. The typical self-serve buffet style dining is no longer possible due to Vermont-wide Covid-19 restrictions. Instead, dining staff have had to serve students on top of their normal responsibilities. And they have to do it with fewer staff.
During meal times, staffers are frantically filling and stacking to-go containers in preparation for the dinner rush. At my station, we tried to have more than 50 containers ready to go at all times. The day I worked was the first day of Phase Two, and the rush never really arrived, probably because everyone was enjoying their newfound freedom. But most days during Phase One, especially Mondays and Tuesdays when the Grille was closed, students came crashing in like a tidal wave at 6 p.m., overwhelming the staff and quickly wiping out the stock-piles of meals no matter how diligently staff prepared in advance. The number of meals served frequently reached 800 to 900 during Phase One, according to the staff member.
When three staff work the line, one has to serve pasta, another the meat course, and the third the vegetarian option. When something runs out, they have to interrupt the serving to switch out trays of food, causing the entire operation to fall behind.
One of the most onerous tasks is stacking the to-go containers. They all have to be brought up from downstairs, unpacked, and neatly stacked in a little alcove at the serving stations, a task that can easily take two people over an hour and must be done multiple times a day. If they run out of stacked containers during serving times, one of the three employees has to leave the line, interrupt their work, and get more, throwing the whole operation off balance.
The dining halls have also had problems with food supply, which has been irregular and temperamental. They have frequently had to make last minute changes to the menu and have sometimes run out of food midway through the meal, wreaking havoc on the existing workflow as someone has to frantically whip something up.
With so few staff, the little tasks that make work easier and more efficient — like separating and cross-stacking serving dishes for easy access — have to fall by the wayside in favor of the immediate need to serve students. Instead, staff have to confront those issues as they pop up. Without those crucial time-saving preparations, the work and stress only continue to build, according to William Anderson ’20.5, who has worked as a kitchen staff helper since Oct. 2017.
Each shift thus turns into a frantic race to keep up with the deluge of students. When things get busy, even the short amount of time it takes to leave the swelteringly hot line, take off your gloves, gulp down a few sips of water, and replace your mask and gloves feels like an unaffordable luxury. Each time I pierced the crispy breaded layer of the fried chicken with my tongs to serve hungry students, I was taunted by the scents of rich, buttery deliciousness. With none to spare, my grumbling stomach was left to complain to itself.
Just one shift takes a “physical toll” on your body, according to Betsy Oullette, a catering employee who has been reassigned to work in dining twice a week. This exhaustion only builds for staff who have been forced to work more days and longer hours. Though dining staff’s responsibilities increased, the college’s hiring freeze prevented Dining from hiring new workers to replace those who did not return to work this year due to fears of contracting Covid-19. During Phase One, one staff member worked 21 out of 23 days. Most staff regularly worked upward of 50 hours a week, according to the anonymous staff member.
After returning to my dorm at the end of my shift, absolutely spent, I realized that I had forgotten my camera in the locker room. I rushed back at 9:30 p.m., expecting everyone to be gone, only to find one employee still working. His shift began at 9 a.m. — he had worked more than 12 hours that day.
Things have been improving now in Phase Two. During evening meals, servery staff have been helping serve at the line, freeing dining staff to resume their normal responsibilities. Meal counts are also down slightly as students can now go into town to eat or buy groceries.
Still, even amid all the stress, new Covid-19 guidelines and short-staffedness, the dining hall was cheerful and emanated a welcoming comradery.
“You really, really, really only get through a busy or tough shift with humor and we have that in abundance there,” Anderson said.
Anderson joked with his friend on staff as they planned to go for a hike on their day off, and showed off to everyone the knife the friend had spontaneously given him. Oullette asked one of the new first year student workers about her classes as they served vegetarian meals. Everyone traded tips on the most efficient ways to fill meal boxes, and Oullette or others would often intervene to help me manage my stack of containers. Calls of “behind you with a hot plate!” interrupted the choreographed rhythm and concentration of filling boxes. Anderson described the kitchen dynamic as that of a family, with younger staff joking around like siblings and supervising staff functioning as alternatingly stern and understanding parents, managing the chaos.
The occasional “thank you” from passing students felt like a jolt of energy, a small motivation to hurry my dragging feet. As the shift wore on and I grew more and more tired, these small motivators made all the difference. Anderson says that he appreciates when students treat him and the staff like actual people, thanking them or briefly conversing with them as they pass along in line. Behind the counter, it's easy to feel invisible. Dressed in a dining hall uniform, with a comically big blue chef’s hat covering my hair and a mask covering my face, I made direct eye contact with a number of friends who completely failed to recognize me, only to startle in surprise when I said hello. Many students ignored me completely.
The best moments are when students compliment food from previous meals, according to Anderson. The staff work hard to prepare meals for students and take pride in their work, though it often goes unrecognized. In those rare moments where someone does take the time to compliment their hard work, it makes all the difference.
(10/01/20 9:58am)
Last Thursday, Kaila Thomas ’21 left her Russian class feeling a burning need to do something. The night before, the verdict was announced that none of the Louisville police officers who shot and killed Breonna Taylor in March would be charged for her death. Yet, despite the grief and rage boiling inside of Thomas, the campus seemed unperturbed, the calm unruffled. She took to Instagram, calling for students to march with her the next day in protest of the verdict.
Despite receiving little more than 24 hours of notice, the campus community came out in force. Over 500 people, almost all students with some faculty and community members, attended the protest. Nearly a quarter of the 2,219 students living on campus or in the adjacent area joined.
Students gathered on Battell Beach and the McCullough lawn beginning at 2 p.m. on Friday, proceeding in carefully coordinated groups of 10 and filing down to the college green in neatly arranged pairs for the rally. College staff helped coordinate the march and ensured protesters followed social distancing rules.
Student speakers addressed the crowd at the rally, expressing what it means to be Black on Middlebury’s campus and in the U.S. They called for the college and Middlebury community to take decisive action against racism locally, decrying them for their perceived inaction over the last few months.
Over the summer, Middlebury received a $500,000 donation for anti-racist initiatives on campus. More than a month into the semester, the college has yet to announce plans to put that money to use or reveal a timeline for when they will make and implement those decisions. Some students have become frustrated by their inaction.
“I want Middlebury to show that Black lives matter to them and not just raise money,” Thomas said in an interview with The Campus. “They need to put their mouth where their money is and actually take action.”
In his speech at the rally, Luka Bowen ’22 called for the college to seek out Black students and directly ask them what they need. In an interview with The Campus, he advocated for the college to direct the money toward present material needs, such as financial aid and textbooks, rather than forming unnecessary committees and centers.
“We already have communities that we can go to,” Bowen said. “The real problem is that many Black students can barely afford to go here.”
Both Thomas and Bowen criticized the college for failing to prioritize anti-racism this semester in the same way they focused on Covid-19. While the college mandated that all students take two SafeColleges courses totalling 212 minute on the new Covid-19 protocols, they provided no anti-racism training. Middview orientation programming fell under criticism for a clumsy attempt to insert anti-racism training into their plans at the last minute, centering white students over their BIPOC peers.
“I am more afraid of getting brutalized by the police than getting coronavirus, and I’m scared of getting Covid-19,” Thomas said in her speech. “This is as pressing as coronavirus measures right now.”
Bowen also advocated for the college to defund Public Safety, which he believes exists solely to “harass Black students.” Calls for the college to restructure the department and address its history of alleged racial profiling have grown over the past months.
Despite Middlebury’s promise to reduce public safety presence on campus, their roles have only increased as they have assumed the responsibility for enforcing Covid-19 health guidelines.
Bowen called for white students, faculty, staff and community members to step up and “take the baton” to help Black students fight racism in Middlebury.
“We cannot end the white killing spree of our neighbors, our siblings, our parents, children, friends or any Black person in our community alone. We cannot end racism alone,” Bowen said. “It is time for you white individuals to look inside yourselves and figure out what you can do to help without waiting to be asked.”
Beneath the specific calls for action ran an undercurrent of grief and rage, though not surprise. Breonna Taylor’s murder and trial followed an all-too-familiar pattern of police murdering Black people with impunity. Students were not shocked when the result was the same.
“I wasn’t surprised by the verdict,” said Melynda Payne ‘21. “We should never expect justice from a system that supports white supremacy.”
While Payne did not expect justice, that did not lessen the harm of its denial. Particularly heartbreaking for many students was the fact that the only officer indicted, Brett Hankison, was charged for wrongfully endangering Taylor’s neighbors. As one protester’s sign read, “they only got charged for the bullets that missed.” Several Black students expressed alternately feeling grief, rage and anguish.
“My name is [Breonna] too,” said Breanna Moitt ’24, one of the rally’s speakers, in an interview with The Campus. “I'm a Black woman too, and the idea of me and my death being worth so little that the bullets hitting someone else's door are worth more than my life was so painful to think about.”
For some, a small town in rural Vermont may feel far-removed from police shootings and the murder of Black people throughout the country, but, for many students, it is impossible for such events to feel distant.
“We like to pretend that campus is a bubble, but it's not,” Payne said. “[Racism and police brutality] affect my life here on campus as a Black woman; it's an active trauma. It's not just an Instagram story, it's my life.”
After the rally, the protesters marched out of the college green and into town, gathering on both sides of the Cross Street bridge and spilling out onto the nearby sidewalk as they held signs and chanted at the busy afternoon traffic.
The protest received mixed reactions from passing cars. Some honked in support; others yelled “Trump 2020” and “all lives matter” out of open windows. A truck with a Trump flag revved past protesters before circling back for another pass. One motorcyclist stuck his middle finger up at the crowd.
At the end of the bridge intersecting with South Pleasant Street, one maskless man stood mostly silently, facing protestors with a smirk on his face and a Trump-Pence 2020 sign in his hands. His occasional cheer of “four more years” was drowned out by students chanting “no Trump, no KKK, no facist U.S.A.”
Just hours after the protest, Rodney Adams ’21, who is Black, and Jameel Uddin ’22, who is South Asian, reported being the targets of a racial slur from two white students walking on campus. One student, who was not wearing a mask, reportedly told them, “Well look, here goes them n******.”
“Whether there was a protest on that day or not, sh*t like that is still going to happen,” Adams told The Campus. “It’s even more of a reason why we need action to start from the institution to say that this is not okay and that this shouldn’t be happening any more.”
One of the two students involved came forward, and the college has promised to address the incident.
Victoria Netter ’22, who is Black, said that she frequently experiences racism on campus, even if it isn't always as blatant as what happened to Adams and Uddin. Those everyday experiences of racism, compounded with larger scale events such as the death of Breonna Taylor and the failure of the grand jury to indict her killers, can wear Black students down and contribute to a sense of hopelessness and helplessness, according to Netter. Still, when Netter spoke to The Campus the night before the protest, she remained resolute and determined to attend the march and take action in Middlebury.
“I don’t feel hopeless, otherwise I wouldn’t be [protesting],” said Netter. “You can only keep moving forward if you have something to move forward to.”
Student activists plan to continue pushing for anti-racist change and racial justice at Middlebury throughout the upcoming year.
“This work, anti-racism work, starts locally,” Thomas said in her speech. “Change starts now, it starts here and it starts with us.”
(09/24/20 9:59am)
As states across the country issued stay-at-home orders last spring, essential workers carried on working and took on personal risks to keep the country functioning. Among their ranks were several Middlebury students who faced daily concerns about personal and familial health, battled exhaustion, balanced school work and struggled with their mental health. These are the experiences of a few MiddKids who worked, and continue to work, on the frontlines.
Concern for family
For student essential workers, deciding to work was not without pause: many worried that they would become sick at work and infect their families when they returned home. Meg Haberle ’22, worked at a private ambulance service in Worcester, Mass. She would immediately place all her items in a plastic storage unit, shower and wash her uniform upon returning home before interacting with the rest of her family.
Alex Myers ’23, who worked as a cashier at a craft store over the summer, lived in isolation at her extended family’s home in Chatham, Mass. When cousins came to stay, she quarantined herself to avoid any chance of infection.
Emily Klar ’21 began working as an EMT in Bethel, Vermont immediately after being evacuated from Middlebury in March. Her mother, a registered nurse at a local hospital, worried for her and her daughter’s safety given that their jobs could potentially put them in contact with Covid-19 patients. She nearly quit her own job and urged her daughter to stop working as well.
“I’m deciding to continue working on the frontlines [because] I think I am relatively healthy, and I want to give back to my community now that they need me the most,” Klar recalled telling her mother.
This semester, Klar is living in Weybridge, Vermont. She is enrolled as a remote learner and continues to work as an EMT.
Battling frontline fatigue
While the pace of life has slackened for many during the pandemic, frontline workers have felt opposite effects.
The private ambulance company where Haberle worked frequently contracts with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). When FEMA asked the company for volunteers to deploy to New York City during the height of the pandemic there, Haberle stepped up.
“I felt like I had a calling to go to New York City,” she said. “I have the skills, the means, the opportunity. I couldn't reconcile not going.”
She worked 12 hours a day, seven days a week with only one day off during the three weeks she was there. Dressed from head to toe in PPE, her plastic hospital gown became a sauna in the sweltering July heat as she moved people and bodies in and out of her truck. Haberle recalled returning to the hotel each night and crawling into bed, utterly spent, only to start all over again in the morning.
Haberle missed the end of the school year — including finals — to volunteer. In rare moments of peace, she would watch recorded lectures and scribble down biochemistry notes on the truck’s dashboard. She recalls staking out parks to wander through when she called her mom, who tried, — and failed — to hide her concern for her daughter.
However, the details that most stood out to her were not the crippling exhaustion nor the fear of contracting the virus, but the food. Haberle quickly grew tired of the eggs and cheese provided to the crews each morning. She relished the opportunities to order from the local restaurants, and raved about the delicious dumpling and Mexican food joints scattered throughout Jamaica, Queens, where she was stationed.
Hazardous working conditions
Myers felt unsafe and uncomfortable working as a cashier at a craft store under conditions that placed her at risk for contracting Covid-19. Her boss did not believe in the effectiveness of masks nor the seriousness of the pandemic. He refused to wear a mask or require patrons to wear masks and follow social distancing requirements mandated by state law.
Myers felt that her employer placed her health and safety at risk, all while paying her minimum wage. Although she could not convince her boss to implement safety protocols, he did acquiesce to her demand for hazard pay. Meanwhile, Myers tried to enforce state health requirements within the store, repeatedly reminding patrons to wear their masks or telling them to wait outside when the store became crowded.
Though she never felt that anyone actively endangered her life, she described several “close calls” where gentle reminders of state guidelines ended in “screaming matches” with patrons. Myers did her best to remain patient and “kill them with kindness,” but the frequent confrontations wore her down.
“The hardest part of the job was making sure people were aware that we are in a pandemic,” Myers said.
A toll on mental health
Throughout the spring and summer, first responders reported high rates of PTSD and burnout. But Emily Luber ’22, who worked as an EMT in Middlebury and Fairhaven and at a pop-up Covid-19 testing clinic, found that, in some ways, working during the pandemic helped her mental health.
“I don’t do well when I’m at home, and I also don’t do well when I’m not busy and when I’m not being social,” Luber said. "If I had just been at home at Massachusetts this summer, I probably would have lost my mind.”
Similarly, Klar saw work as an escape from a house where she had only her family and her schoolwork for company. Working, she said, provided her with the opportunity to “feel like I was doing something.”
For Klar, one of the hardest parts of the pandemic was seeing the decline in other people’s mental health. Klar, who has worked as an EMT since June 2019 and started working as soon as she was sent home, noticed an increase in attempted suicide calls.
Public praise only goes so far
Throughout the early months of the pandemic, politicians and the media repeatedly praised frontline workers for the essential role they were playing in keeping the country functioning. Some of these workers, however, found the praise hollow and frustrating in the face of their daily reality.
Will Anderson ’20.5 planned to spend the summer working at an internship he hoped would turn into a job after he graduates in February. When the company canceled all their internships, Anderson returned home to a job at the Whole Foods he has worked at since high school in Hingham, Mass.
Anderson described “waking up everyday to a cognitive dissonance.” While the news praised essential workers like him, he faced verbal attacks from customers refusing to follow the Covid-19 safety protocols.
“The attacks felt more real than messages of ‘Thank you essential workers,’” he said.
Haberle also grew frustrated at the hollow public praise for EMTs and essential workers. While politicians and the public lauded their efforts, they gained nothing materially substantial or helpful to combat how chronically underpaid and overworked they were and continue to be, according to her.
“The appreciation frustrates me,” Haberle said. “Thanks for the bagels. I just want a raise.”
Finding a pandemic work-school balance
Klar continues to work at three different ambulance services in Vermont as she studies remotely. After working 60 to 100 hours a week during the summer, she has now cut back to 36 hours, which still amounts to nearly a full time job.
Klar said she prefers working to school. Her job helps lessen and put into perspective her anxieties about classes. While the demands of her classwork can feel all-consuming, no one is dying in her biology class.
Haberle feels glad to be back on campus but worries about students not following social distancing and other health guidelines. Her work has given her an image of what the virus looks like up close.
“I don’t know if everyone quite realizes what it's like and what happens when it picks back up again,” she said.
For Anderson, returning to Middlebury has brought him “a feeling of closure.” He relishes in the opportunities to see old friends and enjoy his last semester on campus. Instead of worrying about contracting Covid-19 at work and bringing it home to his family, he now frets that “the bees will get diabetes, and the squirrels will get high cholesterol.”
(09/17/20 10:00am)
This semester, the dining halls look very different. Instead of clattering metal cutlery and conveyor belts of dishes stacked waiting to be washed, students spent the first week back on campus stuffing compostable containers and leftovers into overflowing recycling bins outside. The bench outside Proctor, empty of the usual groups of students chatting and eating side by side, is now filled with stacked boxes, empty sandwich containers and soda cans. Now, a couple of weeks into the semester, students discard their trash in dumpsters outside of each of the dining halls, careful to avoid the bees and wasps flitting in and out of the accumulating waste.
As an institution, Middlebury prides itself on its sustainability efforts, pointing to its Energy2028 plan and divestment efforts, amongst other initiatives. However, during a global pandemic, sustainability has taken a backseat to employee and student health and safety. The college has had to make difficult decisions, such as sacrificing years of effort put into sustainable waste management. according to Eva Fillion, the sustainability communication and outreach coordinator for the Office of Sustainability Integration.
Following Middlebury and Vermont health guidelines, the dining halls have worked to eliminate the possibilities of surface transmission of Covid-19 between students and staff. Dining Services has replaced dishes, silverware and reusable to-go containers with compostable and recyclable single-use alternatives. In place of condiments, soda, cereal and milk dispensers, the dining halls now provide pre-packaged, single-serving alternatives.
The college is spending more than seven times as much on food packaging and flatware as in the past. In September alone, the cost was $60,141, as opposed to $8,361 for the same month last year. The college purchased 271,372 individually packaged foods for August and September, including 33,840 plastic water bottles and 37,000 ketchup packets.
Under normal circumstances, all waste collected at Middlebury goes to the Material Recovery Facility (MRF). There, staff sort through it, often physically opening and hand-sorting bags intended for recycling or compost. Before students were sent home last spring, Middlebury was diverting 69% of waste from the landfill, largely due to the efforts at the MRF, according to Supervisor of Waste Management Kimberly Bickham.
However, the MRF staff can no longer open bags of waste, which could contain tissues or other material possibly carrying the virus. Instead, they now only examine bags from the outside, throwing away anything that does not appear properly sorted. Bickham estimates that the diversion rate has now fallen below 30%.
“My staff works really hard to keep the diversion rate high, and we really pride ourselves on that,” said Bickham. “It breaks my heart to be throwing stuff away. I absolutely hate it.”
Compostable containers are arriving at Middlebury’s composting facility in such large quantities that they cannot all be composted. The containers require longer periods and higher temperatures to biodegrade and are designed for commercial composting facilities, not smaller-scale operations like Middlebury’s.
During normal years, Bickham said that the ratio of compostable containers to food scraps almost never exceeds 30% — a percentage that still allows for the decomposition of the tougher material. She estimates that it is now 70% and said MRF staff now must throw out bags filled with the containers, composting only those filled mostly with food scraps.
No one has communicated the new waste policies to students, many of whom were under the mistaken impression that they should compost their food containers, according to Will Anderson ’20.5 who also works as a kitchen staff helper in Proctor.
A shortage of staff and supplies poses challenges to an effective waste collection setup. Compost bins cannot be left unattended overnight because animals could get to them. However, facilities — already short-staffed and working additional hours — does not have the manpower to place and replace compost bins around the campus every day, according to Fillion. Instead, she encourages students to bring their food waste back to their residence halls, each of which has a compost bin.
Demand for the compostable containers and flatware exceeds the available supply as Middlebury and other institutions seek them out as sustainable alternatives, according to Dan Detora, executive director of food service operations. Middlebury’s primary purveyor, Reinhart Foodservice, has repeatedly run out of the college’s preferred compostable packaging, forcing them to purchase less sustainable alternatives at times, according to Ross Commons Chef Chris Laframboise, who played a major role in designing how the dining halls would operate under Covid-19 guidelines.
Facilities, Dining, the MRF and the Office of Sustainability Integration have faced logistical challenges when trying to resolve some of the waste management issues. Each department plays a role in waste management and has already taken on additional responsibilities and undergone a reshuffling of roles around health management, making coordination difficult, according to Fillion.
With the state of the pandemic constantly shifting, no one knew exactly what the new semester would look like and what new challenges would arise prior to students’ arrival, making planning almost impossible. Instead, most of the waste management efforts have been reactionary, according to Fillion.
“Everyone is stretched so thin and reacting so quickly to things that we haven’t had as much of a chance as we’d like to really sit down and examine the best ways to reduce waste through dining,” Fillion said.
While the college will continue to prioritize health and safety above sustainability, Dining Services is looking to reduce waste as restrictions ease in Phase Two, which begins today, Sept. 17. They will replace the compostable food containers with reusable ones and the individually packaged soda and gatorade with a dispenser. Still, state guidelines limit what the college can do. Vermont still prohibits restaurants and food service locations from having high-touch services, such as condiment dispensers or self-operated drink dispensers, according to Detora.
“Middlebury does an amazing job prioritizing sustainability and the environment during a typical semester,” said Fillion. “This semester is not typical, and, when the rubber hits the road, health and safety has to come first.”
(08/21/20 3:50am)
Several local business owners reported seeing whom they suspected were college students wandering town and attempting to patronize their shops as Middlebury College welcomed its first crop of students back to campus on Aug. 18. Such actions are in direct violation of Middlebury’s pre-arrival quarantine orders that require students to travel directly to campus and remain there until the college moves into the second phase of its opening plan. While some business owners took to social media to remind students to follow the college’s orders, unconfirmed rumors of students drinking at a Vergennes bar, visiting the Natural Foods Co-op and purchasing coffee in town circulated Twitter from a professor’s account that has since been deleted.
Pierre Vachon, owner of Frog Alley Tattoo and Leatherworks, turned away roughly a dozen people identifying themselves as Middlebury students seeking piercings at his shop on Aug. 17. Chiyo Sato, the manager of Otter Creek Bakery, reported seeing an influx of customers within the last week. She suspects many were college students and their families returning to campus. The Campus spoke to almost 20 business owners and staff members, nearly all of whom had heard similar reports and were worried about interacting with students throughout the semester.
The first group of students arrived at Middlebury for testing on Aug. 18 after signing a health pledge stating that they would complete a 14-day at-home quarantine and take the most direct route to the college to avoid infection or infecting others en route. Students were instructed to remain in their rooms while they waited for their test results and were released to campus quarantine on Aug. 19 or 20 provided their tests came back negative.
Vachon worries that, should Middlebury students continue showing up at his shop requesting services, he may be forced to close for the next month to protect the community. The move would cost him thousands of dollars in lost revenue. He fears local customers will simply choose to patronize his competitors who are not forced to close, crippling his business in the long term. He has only now just begun to get back on his feet after having closed in March under the state-mandated lockdown and then slowly reopening in June following state guidelines and safety protocols.
“I think that's important for students to understand. . . if I get shut down . . . I lose my entire income,” Vachon said. “It's not the same as you just go[ing] back home and go[ing] back to school by remote learning.”
Vachon, like many other business owners and residents, worries that the actions of a small pocket of the Middlebury student population will cause an outbreak and undermine months of hard work and sacrifice by the local community to bring the numbers down. According to the CDC, Vermont currently has only 244 cases per 100,000 residents, making it the most successful state nationwide in controlling Covid-19 transmission. There are currently no active student or employee cases at the college.
“[I’m] nervous and scared for my community. I worry about those like my neighbor’s grandmother who lives with the server who works at Two Brothers or works at the restaurant and the people that are immunocompromised,” Vachon said.
Senator Ruth Hardy, who represents Addison County in the Vermont Senate, shared similar concerns in a letter to President Patton on Aug. 12 urging her to drastically scale back the college’s reopening plan, which Hardy says risks the health and safety of her constituents and puts the possibility of any in-person K-12 education in jeopardy.
Throughout the summer, many of the senator’s constituents have contacted her expressing their concerns about Middlebury’s reopening and the possibility of a local outbreak. She says that while the college did consult with the town’s Select Board in forming its fall semester plans, the decision was made without input from other Addison County leaders, contributing to a sense of powerlessness among her constituents and amplifying town-gown tension.
“Even in regular times, [there is] tension between Middlebury College and the broader community. Add on top of that a pandemic, and it becomes magnified,” Hardy said. “You’ve made all these sacrifices in order to keep our community healthy: You haven’t seen your family. You haven’t gone on vacation. You haven’t gone to your job. And then this big institution says, ‘Well, we’re going to bring 2,300 students back.’ I think that people feel like this is a further way that they’ve lost control of their community and lives.”
Hardy was careful to direct her comments toward the administration and their policies rather than the students themselves, whom she believes have been set up to fail by strict rules and regulations they won’t be able to follow.
All of the business owners who spoke to the Campus emphasized their overwhelmingly positive view toward students, who form a large share of their clientele. The incidents of students violating quarantine are the exception rather than the rule, Vachon said. Most of his shop’s patrons come from the college, and he loves having the school as part of his community. Unfortunately, the most visible students at this time are those violating the guidelines, as compliant students remain on campus.
“The story that has gotten lost in recent conversations is that approximately 280 students have already arrived, received their first Covid-19 test, fully observed their room quarantine, received negative test results and been released to campus quarantine without incident,” Dean of Students Derek Doucet said. “By definition, those students were essentially invisible after they left the test center because they were doing exactly what we asked of them.”
The college asks that those who believe they have witnessed students violating Middlebury’s Covid-19 health protocol report the details to the college through an online form. The Department of Public Safety and the Office of Community Standards will investigate those reports, and the Office of Community Standards will decide the validity of claims and sanction students if necessary. The college promises to be transparent with the outcome of investigations, though the personal information of students and reporters will remain confidential.
While most of the students who called Vachon or went to Frog Alley Tattoo for piercing appointments were happy to comply with his requests to schedule appointments for later in September — when the college plans to move into phase two — others allegedly became aggressive.
Vachon described facing a group of four people who identified themselves as Middlebury students, all unmasked, that showed up at his shop while he was piercing another client. After refusing to see them that day and requesting that they schedule appointments after they completed their full testing and quarantine, one group member started yelling at him.
The group member reportedly called him racist and accused him of discriminating against her and her friends. Vachon — feeling threatened not only by her intense reaction but by the health risk of facing four unmasked students, whom he worried were from out of state— told the Campus he retreated into his shop and faced the group from behind his glass door. Vachon reported the incident to Public Safety, but the college determined that there was “insufficient information to pursue that case further,” according to Doucet.
Public Safety determined that they had enough information to investigate five of the incidents reported last week. Two claims, including Vachon’s, had “insufficient information to investigate further.” Two others were originally reported to the Middlebury Police Department and “determined to be unfounded” by the college after discussing the incidents with the police. The college determined that one claim constituted a minor violation of the health protocols and resulted in a sanction against a student, according to Doucet.
After posting a video on Facebook describing his interactions with college students over the last few days, Vachon reportedly received an outpouring of support and effusive apologies from Middlebury students on behalf of their classmates.
“[I want students to] understand that you fit and you have a place in [the Middlebury] community. You may be an odd and separate piece at times, but you're a part of the community,” said Vachon. “But you also have a responsibility to take care of your community. . . Your community needs you to step up.”
(06/08/20 4:49am)
Protesters have taken to the streets across the country in a national outcry against the death of George Floyd — and other Black Americans — at the hands of police. Middlebury students past and present stood at the center of many of these protests, organizing both in person and virtually to stand against police brutality and systemic racism.
For many, the recent police violence struck close to home.
“When I saw George Floyd on the ground, I wasn’t just seeing George Floyd,” said Angelina Gomes ‘23, who has attended several protests in her home city of Boston. “I was seeing a Black body. I have a Black body, My brother has a black body. My mom has a Black body. My boyfriend has a Black Body. I see these people as well.”
Based in New York City, Lazaro Galvez ’23 had already attended his fourth protest of the week when he spoke to The Campus on June 6. While protesting together on May 30, one of his friends was maced directly in the face by a police officer for allegedly getting too close to a police van. Galvez, who was standing directly beside him, dropped everything to pour water in his eyes and wipe him down.
The week has been very emotional for Galvez, who said he has repeatedly cried alone in his room. As a “White-passing Latino” growing up just outside of Harlem surrounded by Black and Brown friends, Galvez has spent the week in a near constant state of fear that his friends will attend a protest and not come back.
Maddy Stutt ‘21.5 spoke with a voice hoarse from shouting chants at the many protests she has attended in New York City. She views it as her moral obligation to attend as many protests as possible. While the crowds have remained largely peaceful, Stutt said that police have not.
Stutt winced recounting how police deployed a sonic cannon on her and other dispersing protesters Wednesday night, an experience she described as extremely painful and scary. The day before, a group of agitators followed the protesters, including Stutt. They jogged alongside the crowd, shouting racist and homophobic slurs and shoving Black men in an effort to raise tensions and incite violence, according to Stutt. As police presence increased, she and other White protesters linked arms to provide a barrier between Black and Brown protesters and police. One of the agitators stood behind the police line hurling more slurs and pushing those around Stutt to try and break through. She said the police not only failed to intervene, but many looked amused and nodded in support of the agitator.
“Every time I’ve been afraid or things have escalated it was because of the cops,” she said.
Police presence has also increased the risk of spreading Covid-19. While all of the students interviewed said that protesters had been trying to carefully manage risk by social distancing and wearing masks, several recounted incidents in which fleeing from police forced them to ignore these measures.
Kai Velazquez ‘23 helped hoist people over a fence after police left them no other escape route, coming in direct contact with other protesters. The use of tear gas and other chemicals forces people to cough, increasing the potential to spread the virus, according to Sabrina Wang ‘19.
Despite the risks, many are still committed to attending as many protests as possible.
“Injustice doesn’t have a schedule. This is not a moment where we have the option to not speak up and not say something about it,” Ian Blow ’19 said. “Yes Covid-19 cases will rise, but that doesn't invalidate how important it is that these protests are happening right now.”
Beyond providing their bodies and voices to the movement, Middlebury students past and present have donated material aid as well. Blow enlisted the help of Wang to provide supplies for protesters in New York City on May 30. The two spent six hours dashing between Duane Reade and CVS stores to buy supplies, hailing taxi cabs and running to catch the subway in a mad race to keep up with the crowd. Blow estimates that they bought between 20 and 30 cases of water along with snacks and other supplies, largely with their own money.
“The problem we are trying to solve is systems and institutions hurting lives and claiming lives,” Blow said. “The way that I wanted to combat that was to help preserve the safety of lives and make sure everyone was okay and able to protest the injustice.”
Blow later requested donations through Twitter. After partially reimbursing himself, he donated the remaining $910 to the Atlanta Solidarity Fund, which provides bail, legal advice, and access to representation for arrested protesters in Georgia. Blow plans to reprise his role this weekend with a larger group of volunteers to more effectively support the movement.
Wang said that supporting Blow, who is African American, and following his lead helped her understand her role as an ally. She plans to continue “physically and emotionally supporting Black protesters,” using her privilege to support the Black Lives Matter movement.
“These are the communities that we need to stand with as they stood with us,” Wang said. “They stood with us at the murder of Vincent Chin [and] . . . as we went through struggles in the 60s of both immigration [and discrimination]. Our Asian American movements were based on the civil rights movement, so I think it’s necessary that we stand with them now.”
Lily Laesch ‘23 has also spent the last week examining how to best support the movement as an ally. She used her social media accounts to raise money for various organizations, including the Seattle Bail Fund and Black Trans Release Fund. She estimates that she raised almost $700 in the last week alone. She plans to continue her efforts garnering support and raising funds on Instagram as well as working on a local ranch to generate income to donate herself. For Laesch, allyship is “a constant process of learning and unlearning [your own] implicit and subconscious biases and being willing to educate, not just yourself, but the people around you.”
This type of allyship, that of material aid and internal examination, is distinct from widespread virtue signaling on social media, according to Gomes and Blow. Both criticized “Blackout Tuesday,” a social media trend of predominantly White individuals posting black squares to demonstrate what they view as superficial solidarity. Many of Gomes’ former classmates at her predominately White private high school participated in this trend despite idly standing by when she and her Black peers faced blatant racism.
“White silence is violence, and they've been silent for a while now,” Gomes said. “To see them go on social media and post one black square or one thing on their [instagram] story not acknowledging their part in the violence against me and so many other people . . . feels like a spit in the face.”
Velazquez believes that real and effective allyship must start from within — educating oneself, confronting one’s own internal biases and racism, as well as confronting and educating racist family members and friends. While she has attended protests in New Jersey and New York City, she views the current turmoil as a stepping stone in what will be a long fight.
She has been inspired by Black female activists on social media, many of whom stress that it is beholden on allies to confront racism within their own homes even as they take to the streets. Velazquez has spent the last week trying to educate her family about the movement and confront what she views as rampant anti-Blackness within the Latinx community.
Speaking on the phone, she frequently paused to lower her volume so that her family wouldn't overhear. They were no longer speaking to her because she refused to drop the issue. This work has left her emotionally exhausted and distraught. Still, she views it as central to her role as an ally to her Black peers and has no plans to stop.
However, the emotional toll of protests can be particularly unbearable for Black students. Gomes described how the pervasiveness of George Floyd’s story, images of his death and footage of police violence on social media forces her to repeatedly relive the trauma of the perpetual threat of police violence to herself, her family and her peers. This anxiety exacerbates her already significant struggles with mental health and manifests physically in pervasive nausea, stomach aches, insomnia and loss of appetite.
Gomes is currently taking a brief break from attending protests and scaling back on social media over the weekend. She views this self care as a form of activism, citing the famous Audre Lorde quote, “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation — and that is an act of political warfare.”
Despite the personal risk, Gomes plans to return to the streets on Tuesday.
“I put my body on the line every time I do this. I put my mental health on the line every time I do this . . . I'm willing to risk it all," she said. “And if I'm willing to risk it all, it is to burn this whole thing down.”
Editor’s note: Lily Laesch ‘23 is an opinion editor for The Middlebury Campus.
(05/07/20 10:02am)
Fifty years ago today, students, faculty, staff and administrators crowded together in the pre-dawn light to watch a fire consume Recitation Hall, a temporary building behind what is now Carr Hall. Earlier, at 4:15 a.m. on Thursday, May 7, 1970, a student doused rags in gasoline, placed them against the base of the building and set them alight. The flames engulfed the wood-frame structure at the height of the 1970 student strike over the Kent State shootings and Vietnam War.
While it later emerged that the arsonist was not politically motivated, the fear and tension ignited by the event epitomized the emotion and turmoil on campus and across the nation.
The Campus spoke with former student leaders and activists, faculty, and administrators from the 1970 strike about the triumphs, pitfalls and lasting legacy of the strike and the surrounding years of anti-war organizing.
The Strike
Just three days before, on May 4, protests against the Vietnam War and the bombing of neutral Cambodia engulfed Kent State University. The Ohio National Guard was called to intervene, and in the ensuing chaos, used live rounds on the students, killing four and injuring nine others.
The deaths of affluent, white college students engrossed the nation, bringing home the horrors of war to many in a way the far-off deaths of working class Americans and Vietnamese civilians had not. Calls for a national student strike spread like wildfire across college campuses. Five hundred miles away, the spark of radical anti-war activism finally reached the sleepy town of Middlebury.
“For six years, now, the flood waters of frustration and alienation and hopelessness have been rising behind the dam,” reads an article from the 1970 Middlebury summer newsletter. “The shooting down of the Kent State demonstrators finally cracked the facade, and all of this accumulated despair poured forth.”
For Howard Burchman ’73 and his band of fellow student activists, May 4 was a night of frenzied activity and organizing. In the WRMC-FM college radio office, Burchman manned the teletype, a machine that sends and receives typed messages, to follow the news coming out of Kent State and traded phone calls with student organizers across the country to coordinate political action at Middlebury. Students covered campus sidewalks with graphics calling for a strike and superglued padlocks on classroom doors so no one could attend class the next morning. At 7:00 a.m., Burchman called Dean of Students Dennis O'Brien to inform him that the students were striking.
By midday, the College Council and faculty had voted and approved a resolution to suspend classes for the rest of the week, both to grieve and memorialize those killed at Kent State and to protest the war in South Asia, joining over 800 colleges and four million students nationwide in the largest student strike in U.S. history.
That evening, students packed into Mead Chapel for a memorial service honoring the four dead students and for the first rally of the strike, which began immediately afterwards. Burchman recalls the space overflowing with bodies as 1,000 students crowded into the aisles of the chapel, designed to hold only 700. The choir sang “Absalom,” a haunting hymn whose lyrics poignantly encapsulated the grief, shock and anger of the student body (“When David heard that Absalom was slain, he went up to his chamber and wept, and thus he said, ‘O my son, Absalom my son, would God that I had died for thee!’”).
Students demanded that the college end its complicity with the U.S. military by removing the Reserve Officers Training Corp (ROTC) from campus; called for the federal release of political prisoners, including jailed Black Panthers; and urged for an immediate withdrawal of American troops from South Asia.
Throughout the week, students spent their days attending teach-ins, workshops and rallies to learn about the war, the draft and Black Panthers. Students marched through Middlebury Union High School to “liberate” the high schoolers and inspire political action. Activists canvassed throughout the town, engaging residents in conversations and aiming to educate the conservative-leaning community about the anti-war cause, according to Steve Early ’71. After the burning of Recitation Hall on May 7, many spent their nights patrolling the campus to prevent further destruction and to avoid the widespread violence witnessed on college campuses nationwide.
The town residents feared similar violence, and the fire seemed to only reaffirm those fears, causing tension to emerge between the campus and community. In an effort to improve public relations, Obie Benz ’71 organized a group of students to stay in Middlebury over the summer. The students engaged in community service work to try and mend the town-gown relationship and reassure locals that Middlebury students were not like the violent anti-war radicals frequently featured on their TVs.
Results
Classes resumed on May 11 with academic exceptions made for students who took the rest of the semester off to protest the war. The College Council, faculty, and student body voted to broadly affirm the national strike goals, substituting the demands of national leaders for more moderate language.
The Middlebury administration worked hard to maintain Middlebury’s reputation and reassure parents, alumni and community members that the college-wide activism was moderate in tone. Middlebury President James Armstrong never referred to the events as a “strike,” describing it instead as “suspending normal activities,” being “in extraordinary session” and deciding whether or not to “resume classes,” according to Baehr. In the summer newsletter to parents, the college framed the strike as “a united searching — by students, faculty, and administrators — for the most useful set of responses to the national situation.” The newsletter failed to mention Black students’ efforts to raise issues of race, or calls for solidarity with the Black Panthers. That year set the then annual fundraising record high of $272,000.
Still, the strike was a catalyst for widespread student anti-war action at Middlebury in the years that followed. Radical Education and Action Project (REAP), founded by student activists Early and Burchman the following fall, brought speakers to campus and hosted rallies, with the goals of inspiring political action and thought through education.
Burchman recalled groups of students routinely burning draft cards outside of Proctor Hall in shows of public defiance against the war. Burchman himself faced disciplinary action when he protested Navy representatives publically advertising beside the cafeteria line. He set up shop next to them and projected images of napalm-ravaged villages and mutilated Vietnamese children until the Navy representatives left.
“It's not like the student strike happened once and there was no more unrest,” Burchman said. “The great mass of Middlebury returned into its slumber, but there was an activated core of hundreds of students who remained very very committed.”
While immediate responses to the strike and student anti-war organizing at Middlebury may have been tepid, students’ efforts did make a long term difference. O'Brien cited the strike as a major reason for the college’s ultimate decision to remove the Military Studies Department as a credit-bearing program and relegate ROTC to an off-campus extracurricular in 1976.
“The collective activity, unexpected and unprecedented in scale, put pressure on lots of other people [like Armstrong], drew them in, and made them part of the process of seeking solutions to the situation,” Early said. “Students became a conscience for people in positions of authority, including elected leaders and heads of institutions.”
On a national level, many consider the widespread student activism on college campuses instrumental in pressuring the U.S. government to withdraw from Vietnam in 1973.
Issues of Inclusion
Anti-war efforts at Middlebury struggled to include more diverse voices.
While the killing of four white students at Kent State galvanized the campus into widespread action, the shooting of Black students by the National Guard, resulting in two dead and 12 injured, at Jackson State University in Mississippi just 11 days later hardly registered a response at Middlebury. Efforts by Black Students for Mutual Understanding (BSMU) to organize around the shooting and raise consciousness around the Black Power movement went largely ignored by the student body.
“The death of the four Kent State students was a very tragic event for Kent State and the parents of those students,” read the BSMU position paper published May 6. “However it would be hypocritical of this organization and its members to pretend that these deaths have rendered us emotionally bankrupt; for many of us, and the vast majority of Black people, death and suffering has become a very real part of life.”
“We barely paid even lip service to the urgent issues Arnold [McKinney ’70, the leader of the BSMU,] and others were trying to have us see during the strike,” wrote Kaarla Baehr ’70 in an email to The Campus. “Not surprising given the time and place, but painful.”
Just as Black activists were excluded from the mainstream conversation, women were sidelined as men took center stage in the anti-war movement at Middlebury and beyond. Baehr, the Student Senate president at the time, was the only prominent female voice during the strike.
When she came to the stage to speak to the assembled crowd at Mead Chapel on May 5, the entire rally had to pause for several minutes as she attempted to lower the microphone positioned well above her head. That struggle was indicative of an entire movement structured around an assumption of male leaders, Baehr said.
The summer newsletter to parents made that divide even more apparent.
“Striking blonde reads a letter to her teachers explaining why she was quitting for the rest of the year,” read an article detailing the chronology of the strike.
Class also divided student protesters. Calls to shut down the campus for the rest of the semester failed to inspire many low-income and first-generation college students, who did not want to jeopardize their hard-won and expensive education, according to Baehr. While some students took the summer off to protest the war, Early, a dedicated activist and major organizer of the strike himself, had to start work flipping burgers at McDonalds immediately after finishing his finals in order to afford his next year at Middlebury.
Learning to Lead
The gaps in representation during the 1970 strike gave rise to opportunity. Torie Osborn ’72 transferred to Middlebury in the fall of 1970 after being inspired by the anti-war activity of the previous fall. She became one of the most visible figureheads of the modern women's movement at Middlebury, helping eliminate curfews for female students, advocating for access to birth control and organizing an abortion underground to Montreal where it was legal in the days before Roe v. Wade.
She learned how to organize and lead as an activist through her anti-war activism at Middlebury. Those skills helped shape her decades-long career as a queer feminsit activist, which has included serving as the executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and a term as senior advisor to the mayor of Los Angeles, focusing on reducing homelessness and poverty.
“I was used to being one of thousands of followers. When I got to Middlebury, I learned how to be a leader. I learned how to organize,” Osborn said. “The skills that I learned and the passion that was reinforced at Middlebury for social justice activism has shaped my whole life.”
Many of the organizers of the 1970 strike and subsequent anti-war activity went on to lead lives as prominent activists, like Early, who is known as an organizer, union representative labor activist, lawyer, and author. He said his time at Middlebury taught him how to successfully organize action and the importance of patience in long-term social justice efforts.
Burchman was a freshman in 1970. Leading anti-war activism over the next three years, he learned how to take advantage of the power of crises to galvanize the masses and create longstanding positive change. He later used those lessons to fight the ’80s HIV/AIDS epidemic in New York City, advocate for community health and residential care and work to develop solutions for homelessness across the country. He is now working remotely to advocate for the homeless in Nebraska in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic.
“[The strike and anti-war activism at Middlebury] gave me a direction in life. The war gave me an understanding of the basic question: Who benefits?” Burchman said. “I’ve been able to have a wonderful professional career orientated towards issues of social justice... that I’m so grateful for. It gave me a great life.”
Beyond the individual lives of Middlebury graduates, the 1970 strike and anti-war activism of the late 60s and early 70s has left an indelible impact on the landscape of education nationwide.
In a Jacobin article, Early cited student walkouts over the Iraq invasion, Parkland shooting and climate change as echoes of the 1970 strike continuing to influence national politics.
“The memory of [the student strike] hangs on and hangs on,” said O'Brien. “The effect of that one moment, that one week, has impacted into the student DNA [at Middlebury and beyond].”
(04/30/20 10:00am)
A global pandemic is not an ideal time to make major life decisions. Yet graduating high school seniors across the country are deciding where they will spend the next four years of their lives.
Middlebury’s Preview Days, originally scheduled for April 18–20, were canceled along with all other on-campus spring programming, and campus is closed to all tours. As a result, many seniors are now unable to visit the schools where they were admitted. For the 70% of prospective Middlebury students who have not visited campus, these factors compound the difficulty of an already-fraught decision.
“The tours that I did go on gave me a really important sense for the energy of the campus that you’re not able to get over a Zoom call,” said Carly Cairns ’24 from Phoenix, Ariz. “That was definitely difficult [not to have that] and not being able to see the location. Because Middlebury is in the middle of nowhere, it’s a leap of faith that I'll like it.”
“I personally feel that any aspect of a school cannot be fully expressed online, even with detailed descriptions and virtual tours,” wrote Scout Santos, from Seattle, Washington, in an email to The Campus. “In particular, the ‘vibe’ of the student and local community is something you can only get a true sense of by visiting the college in-person.”
The admissions office has ramped up its virtual programming, coming face-to-face with the challenge of marketing the college to prospective students who are restricted to the confines of their homes. In addition to connecting current undergraduates with prospective students, the admissions office senior fellows’ been hosting frequent Zoom information sessions. Several high school seniors considering Middlebury said they have attended every session.
However, for some, even the increased online presence and outreach is not enough.
Charisma Hasan, an admitted student from Gladwyne, Pennsylvania, is the child of South Asian immigrant parents who “have a strong prestige mentality” and want her to attend a larger, more well-known university. Hasan was planning on visiting Middlebury and using the occasion to convince her parents of the value of a liberal arts education. She says she’s tried everything to sway them, from attending the online webinars to arranging virtual meetings with professors. A week before the deadline to commit, Hasan was resigned to having to enroll elsewhere and losing the opportunity to study at her dream school.
“I definitely think if I got to visit the campuses [it would be different],” she said. “Personal connections drive many decisions in people's lives. I know that I would be strongly swayed by them, and I think it would be able to sway my parents too if they got to talk to more professors in person and meet the people who I would be interacting with.”
With unemployment rising rapidly over the last month, many families find themselves in dramatically different situations than when they applied for financial aid several months ago. Seniors are having to sit down with their parents and have difficult conversations about money and the affordability of Middlebury, whose full tuition, room and board costs $71,830.
Margaux Eller is an admitted student from Seneca Falls, N.Y. Her father, an architect, still has intermittent work as some of his job sites remain open and the firm he works for received a small business loan. However, her mother is a wine salesperson whose main commissions come from restaurants. Middlebury is the top choice for both her and her twin brother. But with a now uncertain family income, Eller worries that it is now outside of their price range.
The family of Nikash Harapanahalli ’24, from Dallas, Texas, has also lost half their income for the foreseeable future. His mother worked as a dentist, but the office had to close due to a shortage of supplies and extra difficulties surrounding social distancing orders. She is now facing unemployment for the coming months.
Harapanahalli decided to commit to Middlebury despite the cost, but with no end to the current financial difficulties in sight, he worries that his family will be unable to afford his education. He petitioned Middlebury for more financial aid but was rejected.
Harapanahalli has since begun to investigate private loan companies and work study programs to try and offset the costs.
“I had to choose between making a financially sound decision or a decision that makes me happy,” he said. “I ended up choosing the latter.”
The worries of precarious financial situations are only compounded by the logistical uncertainties of the coming academic year. There is still no official word from the college about the status of the fall semester, whether students can return to campus or will continue their education remotely.
Several seniors said that they would defer their admission if classes continue online in September, either by a semester or by a whole year. For international students, the dangers of travel in the midst of a global pandemic and the uncertainties of when travel restrictions will lift make a gap semester particularly attractive, according to Hanwen Zhang ‘24 from Shanghai, China.
Others remain committed to enrolling in the fall no matter what.
“I’m lucky to still be here, be safe, be healthy, and if that means going to college online, so be it,” said Harapanahalli.
All of the high school seniors who spoke to The Campus cited the uncertainty as a factor compounding the difficulties and stresses of this major life decision.
“It's horrible. It's soul wracking, nerve racking. I hate it,” said Harapanahalli. “This whole process over the past month has been the hardest in my life. It was really hard to make such a big financial commitment, such a big emotional commitment [in the midst of this uncertainty]. It's still weighing hard on my parents.”
[pullquote speaker="" photo="" align="center" background="on" border="all" shadow="on"]Life isn’t over. This isn’t the end of the world. There are still amazing things to look forward to that are still going to happen at some point once things start to become safer.[/pullquote]
For others, their impending enrollment offers a welcome sense of hope and something to look forward to in the midst of the current crisis. Eller has taken a lot of comfort from attending the webinars and learning about Middlebury’s various programs and offerings.
“Showing that things will go on despite what everyone’s going through right now is definitely very hopeful,” she said. “Life isn’t over. This isn’t the end of the world. There are still amazing things to look forward to that are still going to happen at some point once things start to become safer.”
(04/22/20 10:00am)
Mixed in with the chaos and messy moments of young adults trying to understand themselves and their places in the world— compounded with fear, and conflict, and exclusion — are moments of joy and love within the queer community. Stories of friends, of partners, of community, and of self that are unequivocally worth celebrating.
While united under a shared family of identities and similar struggles, each queer student has their own unique story. This article is neither a summation of the troubles, nor of the beauties of queer love on campus. It is simply a collection of queer love stories.
Blurring the lines between romance and friendship
Rachel H. ’19.5 discovered her queer identity on campus. She has experienced “some of the most genuine love of [her] life from the queer community at Middlebury, both in friendships anad romantic relationships.”
“Being queer has really essentially shaped who I became in ways that I’m really really proud of,” she said. “My queer friends taught me how to have a voice and how to speak up for myself and how to be ok with being different. And that there are so many ways to love.”
For Rachel, queer love blurs the lines between romance and friendship, and many of her closest friends are her exes.
“Usually, when I’ve dated someone, it's been because I loved them for their friendship and the personal things about them in addition to and beyond just being attracted to them,” she said.
According to Rachel, the smaller size of the queer community and dating pool necessitates maintaining amicable relationships after breakups. Especially among female and nonbinary queer Middlebury students, there is a respect for emotion and a culture of open communication that allows people to preemptively address hurt instead of letting it build up. Not only does that make it easier to stay friends with past partners, it creates deep bonds between queer friends..
“I feel like my queer friends have been some of the most emotionally aware, caring, thoughtful human beings in my life, and I’m super lucky to have them,” she said. “I love them so much.”
Queer-loving your queer self
Jack C. ’20 has grown into his queer identity at Middlebury, an important part of which, for him, is performance. Jack relies on cues, like his nose ring, the limp positioning of his wrists and short shorts, to signal his queerness to those around him.
“When I walk into a room and I’m freaking wearing those tiny gold shoes that are three sizes too small and give me blisters every time I wear them and my black little short shorts and a cute shirt tucked in and I have my face done, I feel so queer because these people are seeing me,” said Jack.
Around straight people, Jack says he feels obligated to censor his queerness.
“I’m queer. But I want to be appropriate,” he said. “It's queerness that’s easy to swallow and easy to digest. I wear a nose ring but I can't go around talking about the orgy I had last night at the Mill. That’s too much.”
In queer spaces and in the company of other queer people, Jack feels that there is room for his queerness in all its wild exuberance. He views the ability and space within the queer community to connect on a shared plane of identity — of cultural references, struggles and experiences — as a form of love.
“At Middlebury I feel so free to do whatever I want,” he said. “It’s all about queer loving your queer self.”
Not queer enough: cross-sections of identity
While the love of the queer community has played a pivotal role in the experiences of many students, others feel alienated rather than accepted. As a woman of color, N. B. ’22 has never felt included in the queer community at Middlebury, which she views as overwhelmingly white and singularly focused. To belong, queerness has to be the central pillar of one’s identity.
“At Middlebury, I feel like my queerness is erased,” she said. “I’m not queer enough for the queer community.”
“Being black, race is always number one. I am black above all. I am a woman next,” she said. “Being queer is nowhere near the top of things I’ve struggled with.”
Overcoming shame
For Ciara C-H ’22, her current queer relationship has been a journey of self-acceptance and love.
During high school, Ciara came out as queer to her boyfriend, expecting acceptance and support from someone who she thought loved and cared for her. Instead, it changed everything. While the relationship continued, her queerness remained a taboo topic.
“Whenever it came up or anything about it came up, it would be very bad,” she said. “I would feel a lot of shame.”
That shame led to an unhealthy cycle of self-doubt and insecurity about her identity. Her current relationship helped her emerge from that cycle and learn to be comfortable in the uncertainty and fluidity of her sexuality.
“There are a lot of things I don’t know about my sexuality. But I can say for sure that this is true for me right now, and that she is who I want to be with,” Ciara said. “There’s not a single thing I’ve said or a single thing about me that brings her shame.”
The dark side of queer love
The queer community at Middlebury, like any other, is not without its issues.
“The love is so so strong in our community,” Rachel said, “but to fully consider love you also have to see the dark sides of it.”
Abuse, especially verbal and emotional, can be prevalent within the queer community at Middlebury, yet it often goes unspoken and unaddressed.
“There is often this sense that as queer people we need to be perfect in our relationships, that they need to be better than heterosexual relationships,” Rachel said. “Any time that there’s a flaw in a queer relationship, there’s this fear that it could be used to justify homophobia ... Abuse within queer relationships has been silenced or brushed under the rug because people think it will weaken the public image of queer love.”
Building queer spaces
Many students described the unasked-for and often unspoken acceptance from their queer peers as a form of love. In the presence of visibly out people, many feel senses of safety, security and normalcy that they may lack in the larger campus community.
“It is love in the sense of a little signifier that you will be loved here. This is a place where we have love for you,” Ciara said. “This is a place where every single person is different and their stories are different, but we have something that unites us.”
For many, a huge part of experiencing and providing that love has been through visibility. Openly queer upperclassmen model what it can mean to be queer and help younger queer people integrate into the community, explore their identities and find a home on campus.
However, that model can also lend itself to predatory behavior. Several seniors described feeling alienated from queer spaces as freshmen because older peers seemed focused on finding romantic partners and hook-ups rather than genuinely looking out for younger students.
Now upperclassmen, Van Lundsgaard ’21 and Rachel have worked to reverse those practices and create a healthier system of mentorship and queer spaces. Rachel collaborated with other super senior Febs to revive Queers, Lovers and Homies, a group of female-identifying and non-binary queer folk who party and hang out together. Van has used his position as a party captain for the ultimate frisbee team to promote a team culture where queerness exists in the open and is an accepted and integral part of the community.
The hope of these spaces is to show younger students that there are upperclassman they can come to for help and guidance and to allow queer people to connect and explore their identities in comfort. For current underclassmen, the love felt in those spaces has played an important role in making Middlebury a home, according to Eva ’23.
“Wanting to support your friends and your community is a huge form of love,” Eva said. “It’s community love. Its love in its purest form. You want to help someone and care for someone for their own benefit.”
Sunshine on the other side
“Queer love is so beautiful and powerful and I'm so grateful that I get to experience it, whether romantically or platonically,” said Alyssa B. ’20. “It's comforting and empowering and full of dancing and sunshine, and even when your heart is being torn out it's nice to know that there's more dancing and sunshine on the other side.”
Author’s note: Interviewees have been granted varying levels of anonymity for their own future privacy and protection.
Editor's note: The name of one of the interviewees was abbreviated after the article was published to protect their privacy.
(04/02/20 9:55am)
The college and the wider Middlebury community are closely collaborating to prepare for the rapidly-mounting Covid-19 crisis. Following the college’s decision to suspend in-person classes and evacuate the majority of students on March 10, the college has leveraged resources and unique opportunities that come with the mass exodus of students to support local organizations.
The college has partnered with several homeless shelters to feed displaced Addison County residents and is preparing college facilities to aid Porter Medical Center as it copes with the expected influx of patients.
“The college, town, and hospital are stronger together than we are alone,” President Laurie Patton said in an email to the Campus. “It's important that we collaborate and assure the community that we are doing so as we face Covid-19.”
Donating meals
Prior to students leaving campus, the Center for Community Engagement (CCE) worked with commons coordinators and facilities staff to create drop-boxes in each commons office, where departing students could leave non-perishable food items for donation to the Helping Overcome Poverty’s Effects (HOPE) food pantry.
Donations also came from the dining halls. Dining Services were unable to cancel some food orders as the college decided how long and in what capacity the dining halls would remain operational. While it is standard protocol for the dining halls to donate excess food to HOPE, Charter House and Community Suppers during breaks, the sudden and dramatic decrease of students created a much larger surplus than normal.
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Instead of letting the food go to waste, Dining Services, the CCE and several local organizations worked together to distribute it to those in need throughout the Middlebury community, said Director of Media Relations Sarah Ray on behalf of Bo Cleveland, assistant director of Dining. Dining Services donated perishable and dairy products to the Charter House, a local homeless shelter, and gave non-perishable goods to the HOPE food pantry.
The CCE worked with the United Way of Addison County to convene a group of local service providers and discuss how to sustain these services during this crisis. Through this group, the CCE was able to identify areas of community need, according to Jason Duquette-Hoffman, assistant director of the privilege and poverty academic cluster at the CCE.
On March 20, the Charter House and John Graham Shelter had to move several former residents to local hotels and motels due to the health risk of the close living quarters of the shelters. As a result, they lost access to the meals that the shelters normally provide them. The CCE coordinated with Dining Services and the shelters' volunteers to feed the 14 evacuees, according to Duquette-Hoffman.
After the Charter House closed its warming shelters entirely on March 21, sending the remaining guests to hotels and motels, demand for alimentation assistance rapidly spiked. Again, Middlebury stepped in to close the gap, providing 42 lunches and dinners on March 21 and 42 breakfasts and lunches and 46 dinners March 22, according to Cleaveland.
The following week, on March 24, Executive Vice President for Finance and Administration David Provost committed the college to providing up to 50 meals to those in need each day as long as the dining halls remain operational, according to Duquette-Hoffman.
“In a time when things were changing nearly by the minute, Dining Services was working throughout the weekend and in constant contact with us and community colleagues to understand, adapt to and meet these needs,” Duquette-Hoffman said. “I am deeply grateful for their work and the support of the college in so readily meeting this most critical need.”
Individual staff members also stepped up to address community needs. Dining staff at Proctor packaged and provided meals for four families of migrant dairy workers, according to Cleaveland.
Lending college spaces
The college is temporarily housing Porter Medical Center clinical employees in Munford House residential hall. The employees are all healthy, and none are suspected to have been exposed to Covid-19. By providing them with isolated housing, however, the hospital and college hope to reduce the risk that they will become infected by the larger community and endanger the residents of Helen Porter Nursing and Rehabilitation Center with whom they work, or vice versa. The employees will move into Munford today, according to a campus-wide email.
A greatly diminished campus population has dramatically decreased the demand for dining and facilities’ labor. In order to retain staff, the college is also prepared to assign extra facilities and dining staff to work in the town and hospital if they cannot find tasks on campus, according to a campus-wide email on March 18. Given safety and health concerns, staff members would not be mandated to work in this capacity, but instead asked to help if needed, according to Provost.
As Covid-19 spreads throughout Vermont, Middlebury is prepared to repurpose Chip Kenyon Arena to host a Department of Health mobile hospital unit in the event that coronavirus cases exceed Porter Medical Center’s current capacity. Porter hosts 25 acute care beds under normal circumstances. The mobile hospital unit at Kenyon could nearly double that capacity, according to the Addison Independent.
“The College’s guiding principle is to be ‘on call’ for the community and help in any way it can,” Patton wrote in a joint letter written with Brian Carpenter, chair of the Middlebury select board, and Thomas Thompson, interim president of Porter Hospital.
To that end, the college is preparing for scenarios in which it would “share its building, dining, and other infrastructure resources” with the town and hospital, Patton explained in her letter. While the administration is still consulting with town and hospital officials, Patton expects they will be able to announce more details soon.
“This work is so critical not only because this community is where we study and learn, but because it is where we (faculty, staff and students) work, live and make our homes, said Duquette-Hoffman, “It is part of what makes Middlebury, Middlebury.”
(03/13/20 9:00am)
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Last updated March 20, 2:40 p.m.
For updates on the suspension of classes at the Vermont campus, check here.
All remaining students abroad
Middlebury has advised all remaining students studying abroad on externally sponsored programs to return to the U.S. immediately, according to an update from Dean of International Programs Carlos Vélez. This advisory follows the U.S. Department of State’s Global Level 4 Health Advisory announced on March 19 and will impact 108 students. “These decisions never come easily, and we never could have imagined that we would be suspending all of our programs and calling all of our students home from abroad,” the message read.
The State Department has advised all U.S. citizens to avoid international travel and for those currently abroad to arrange for immediate return to the U.S. Many of the universities where Middlebury students were studying this semester have implemented online learning options so students can complete course work remotely.
Read the college's March 20 announcement here.
Schools abroad in Argentina, Brazil, Cameroon, Chile, Uruguay
Programs suspended on March 13 for spring semester
The remaining five Middlebury schools abroad were suspended on Friday, according to an update from Dean of International Programs Carlos Vélez. "Despite the fact that confirmed cases of COVID-19 remain relatively low in your host countries, we are very concerned about the imposition of future travel bans and other restrictions around the globe," the statement said.
Students enrolled in the programs in Latin America will be given the option to withdraw from the program with no academic credit and a full tuition refund, or to remain in the program with remote coursework for a full semester of Middlebury credit, according to a Friday email to enrollees' parents from Assistant Director of International Programs Alessandra Capossela. The Campus is currently looking into what the academic options will be for students enrolled in programs in other areas.
Read the college's March 13 announcement here.
Schools abroad in France, Germany, India, Japan, Jordan, Morocco, Russia, Spain
Programs suspended on March 12 for spring semester
The college suspended eight of its abroad programs on Thursday, two days after the college suspended on-campus classes at his core campus. An email to all schools abroad students said the decision was based in part on the CDC's newly elevated advisory of all European countries to Level 3 status, as well as the U.S. Department of State's new global health advisory and President Donald Trump's proclamation of a travel ban on foreign nationals from Europe to the U.S. The email asked students to make arrangements to go home "as soon as possible."
Read the college's March 12 announcement here.
Middlebury Institute for International Studies in Monterey
Classes to continue remotely after spring break ends on March 23
The institute had a planned spring break beginning this Friday, March 13. After break, classes will resume remotely on March 23, and will remain so for the rest of the semester.
Read the college’s March 10 announcement here.
Middlebury-CMRS program in Oxford
Program suspended on March 10 for spring semester
The college suspended the Middlebury College CMRS-Oxford Humanities Program in England on March 10. The 35 participating students will complete their studies remotely, including the research project that constitutes a main part of the program. They have been asked to leave the country by March 15.
School abroad in Italy
Program suspended on Feb. 20 for spring semester
The college suspended its programs in Florence, Rome and Ferrara on Feb. 29, 11 days after the programs there began. Students were given the option to take the semester off and get refunded for the semester’s tuition, or to take online classes taught by professors at Sede Capponi, the Middlebury Center in Florence.
Read The Campus’s coverage of those cancellations here.
School abroad in China
Program suspended on Jan. 28 for spring semester
The schools Hangzhou, Kunming and Beijing were closed in late January, before the spring semester began and while the coronavirus was still peaking in the country. The 11 students who had already arrived in China had to evacuate, some of whom were able to reenroll at the college in the spring.
Read The Campus’s coverage of those cancellations here.
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(03/11/20 2:43pm)
Students have created a “mutual aid spreadsheet” so that students, faculty, staff, community members and parents can help each other manage the logistical and emotional hurdles surrounding the college’s indefinite suspension of classes due to coronavirus.
People can post in the document to request services, resources and shoulders to lean on.
By Tuesday night, dozens of people had already extended almost 100 offers of aid in the spreadsheet, including temporary housing throughout the country, long-term storage in Vermont, local meals and rides ranging from the Burlington airport to Tennessee. Several people posted their contact information for those seeking emotional and spiritual support.
“Is it your birthday while stuck on campus? I will bake you a (mini) cake!” wrote Stace Marshall, Assistant to the Vice President for College Advancement.
Diana Cotter, a 79-year-old Middlebury resident, offered students space in her studio apartment, despite concerns over her own fragile health and coronavirus risk.
The mutual aid spreadsheet was inspired by concern for the students most impacted by the sudden announcement.
“We were thinking about who this might really affect, like low income students, international students, and students who don’t have homes they feel safe going to or don't have homes to return to,” said Ami Furgang ’20, one of the spreadsheet moderators. Cora Kircher ’20 and Leif Taranta ’20.5 are the other moderators. Taranta created the spreadsheet.
“We anticipated that, even if Middlebury did offer housing to students, people would definitely still fall through the cracks. So this is to fill up those cracks and beyond,” Furgang said.
While Taranta encouraged students to share the spreadsheet widely, they asked that people use it with trust and respect and not share contact details or sensitive information revealed in people’s posts. They encouraged those with privacy concerns to reach out to those who had already posted offers, or ask the moderators to anonymously request assistance on their behalf.
The spreadsheet is organized in tabs, including food, housing and transportation. People can post either offers or requests for aid in the appropriate columns. Taranta asked that people delete their offers and requests once they are fulfilled so that the spreadsheet can remain current and easily navigable.
The spreadsheet also hosts a list of Middlebury’s recent announcements and instructions relating to the coronavirus situation as well as resources the college is currently offering to students.
“[I hope people] notice in this time of crisis how much potential we have to support each other,” Furgang said.
The spreadsheet will remain operational throughout the semester and as long as people still need it, according to Taranta.
“Coronavirus is a crisis, but we are going to be facing even more crises as a community as the years go on,” Taranta said. “[The mutual aid spreadsheet] is beyond trying to help our classmates and the people we care about now. It's also trying to build those systems and practices, so, as this continues to happen, we'll have that support network.”
(03/05/20 11:05am)
Middlebury has canceled the three C.V. Starr Schools in Italy for this spring semester due to concerns over the coronavirus COVID-19.
In an email sent to students studying in Florence, Rome and Ferrara on Feb. 29, the college advised students to return to the United States as soon as possible. Each student will have the option to take the semester off and get refunded for the semester’s tuition, or to take online classes taught by professors at Sede Capponi, the Middlebury Center in Florence.
The decision was prompted by concerns that students might face more difficulties leaving the country as the virus spreads and governments impose stricter travel travel regulations, according to Assistant Director of International Programs Alessandra Capossela. The CDC raised the Italy travel advisory to “Level 3 — Avoid Non Essential Travel” on Feb. 28. The next day, the U.S. State Department raised the travel advisory level for Lombardy and Veneto, the epicenter of coronavirus in Italy, to “Level 4 — Do Not Travel.”
In January, President Trump placed strict restrictions on travel to and from China, where the virus originated. The college cancelled its schools in Hangzhou, Kunming and Beijing China that month.
Middlebury waited to suspend its programs in Italy even as multiple other universities with programs in Florence told their students to leave the country. Syracuse University announced it was canceling its program on Feb. 24, and both Fairfield University and Elon University followed the next day. On Feb. 24, New York University announced it was evacuating its students and suspending the program until March 29 at the earliest.
“We know that this decision came as a disappointment to many of our students and their families,” Capossela told The Campus. “We did not make this decision lightly, and it was made with the students’ health and wellbeing as our first priority.”
A prevailing sense of melancholy hangs over the Middlebury Schools in Italy students, according to Marco Kaper ’21, who was studying in Florence.
“A lot of students woke up to the email [on Feb. 29], cried a little bit and then cried a lot. For a lot of people, this is a really big deal,” he said. “They’ve been looking forward to going abroad for a very long time, and that opportunity has been taken away from them.”
However, Kaper understands that leaving the country is also a privilege.
“We are very privileged to be able to leave right now and ‘escape’ the pandemic as far as going to the U.S. is concerned,” said Kaper. “I live with a native Italian [roomate], and he’s freaking out right now because he doesn’t really have a home to go to to leave like we do.”
Twenty-three students were enrolled in the Middlebury Schools in Italy, including six Middlebury undergraduates, five Middlebury graduate students, and 12 students from other institutions.
Most were studying in Florence, with the exception of one student in Rome and one in Ferrara. On Feb. 24, the college closed its school in Ferrara, prompting the student studying there to transfer to the school in Rome.
Students were not in Italy long before the cancellation. All arrived in Italy by Feb. 9, and classes at Middlebury’s Sede Capponi Center began on Feb. 18.
Some students feel the decision exacerbates overblown fears about contracting the virus.
“The cancellations were very upsetting because none of us were afraid of getting coronavirus,” Eva Ury ’21.5 said. “The virus wasn’t impacting our daily lives in Florence at all. Only the Middlebury program’s fear of us getting the virus and their liability was affecting us.”
The Sede Capponi Center is set to begin online classes next week, which they will conduct through a mix of recorded lectures and video chats, according to a campus-wide email. Professors and students will have to surmount the logistical hurdle of differing time zones — Ury, for example, plans to remain in Europe and spend the semester traveling, while other students will return to their homes elsewhere.
The Sede courses are not designed to accommodate students who test into the advanced level of Italian. Those students are normally permitted to take only one class there, and must enroll in two local university courses or one university course and one internship. Those students, should they opt to take the online courses, will have to fit into existing intermediate or graduate level courses, according to Ury.
The college told returning students that they will most likely have to submit to health checks upon arriving in the U.S., but will not have to undergo quarantine unless they fail the screenings. But CDC and U.S. State Department guidelines could change in the upcoming days, according to Capossela.
Dean of International Programs Carlos Vélez said that decisions to close further schools will depend on a confluence of several factors, including increases in the number of coronavirus cases in the immediate vicinity of a program’s locations, indications that travel options will become limited, advisories from the Department of State and the CDC and decisions by local university partners.
Velez declined to comment on any specific sites that he is considering closing.
“Given the spread of the virus we have to actively monitor every site with [the] possibility [of closing them] in mind,” Vélez said. ”Health and safety are our primary concerns.”
(03/05/20 10:55am)
Students voted last week in favor of eliminating the position of commons senator, reducing the Student Government Association senate from 17 to 12 members. The Feb. 26 vote also confirmed a title change for SGA members, from “senators” to “representatives.” Both items were part of a referendum that was proposed in response to the dissolution of the commons system. Only 264 students voted, about 10% of the student body.
The referendum passed with 57.6% of the student vote. The changes will be implemented at the start of the 2020–21 academic year, according to the SGA constitution. These changes will affect elections this spring.
“Lack of participation in this referendum is indicative of a larger issue of communication between the student body and the student government,” said SGA Director of Membership Thomas Khodad ’22. “We are addressing this issue not only by reducing the number of representatives but also by increasing student outreach and transparency.”
Cook Commons Senator Karina Sharma ’22, whose current position will be terminated next year by the elimination of the commons system and the referendum, said that she thinks the dissolution of the commons system has given the SGA a chance to re-evaluate the structure of the senate and to reframe it for efficiency. “With a smaller senate, each representative will be able to contribute more, which will foster deeper conversation and more accountability,” she said.
Wonnacott Commons Senator Senator Myles Maxie ’22, whose current position will also be eliminated, claims that the wording of the referendum questions misrepresented the issue at stake. The first question in particular asked whether students “support the elimination of the Commons Senator positions.” Maxie noted that the commons senator positions will be eliminated with the commons system regardless next year, and said that the real question was whether the senate should shrink or create new positions to replace those senators.
Maxie believes that this change will only exacerbate current problems because students, by his assessment, already view the SGA as an elitist, ineffective, and overly bureaucratic body.
“I don’t think the answer to solving an issue of representation is to make fewer representatives,” Maxie said.
Maxie is not contesting the referendum results, but he believes that this incident highlights the need for a constitutional update. The senate is already planning to examine and possibly change the constitution at the end of this year in relation to unclear impeachment rules.
(02/27/20 11:03am)
BURLINGTON — Over 130 activists, including 20 Middlebury students, rallied in support of a proposed resolution to end collaboration between Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Burlington City Police Department at the Burlington City Council Meeting on Feb. 18.
The resolution aims to close four loopholes within Burlington’s Fair and Impartial Policing policy (FIPP). The current policy allows Burlington police officers to ask about a person’s immigration status if they are suspected to have recently crossed the border, and to report the immigration status of victims and witnesses of crimes to deportation agents. The policy also grants deportation agents access to individuals in police custody, and permits police to share confidential information with immigration agents if they deem it a matter of “public safety.”
“It’s really important that [the resolution] passes because Burlington sets precedent for a lot of other towns that are considering this,” said Leif Taranta ’20.5, a member of Juntos and Sunday Evening Environmental Group, both of which organized student involvement in the protest. “What happens here is going to set the stage for the rest of Vermont.”
So far, Winooski — the town adjacent to Burlington — is the only town in Vermont to have closed the loopholes.
The city council was initially set to vote on the resolution on Jan. 27. After postponing the vote to Feb. 18, they struck it from the agenda shortly before the start of the meeting in favor of what they deemed more time-sensitive matters.
“The City Hall can’t just table important things like this just to suit their own preferences and think that that won’t be met with backlash from the community,” said Lynn Travnikova ’20.5.
No Más Polimigra — whose name combines the Spanish words for police (“policía”) and immigration agents (“migras”) — hosted the rally in collaboration with several other community groups, including Migrant Justice, Community Voices for Immigrant Rights, 350 Vermont and the Vermont ACLU. The rally began outside of City Hall with several activists speaking about the importance of the resolution and expressing their collective rage at its continual deferral.
“This is a fight for our community, this is a fight for dignity, this a fight for the right to live in our community without fear,” said Betsy McGavish, an organizer with No Más Polimigra. “We are here to remind the councilors that they do not have to uphold a white supremicist police immigration state any longer.”
Protesters then marched inside, ringing the perimeter of the hall in a dense thicket of bodies, posters, and banners. Several Middlebury students, trained in de-escalation practices by Taranta before the rally, positioned themselves at evenly-spaced intervals along the wall, their bright orange vests highlighting them against the crowd. The room filled with the sound of 130 people chanting “Vermont will fight for immigrant rights”’ for over 30 minutes as the council members filed in, took their seats and faced the protesters.
During the public comment, several migrant dairy workers and undocumented immigrants spoke, recalling their experiences with Burlington police and immigration agents. Hugo Rojas described being detained by ICE after a routine traffic stop, calling the incident “one of the most bitter and difficult experiences of [his] life.”
According to No Más Polimigra, the FIPP loopholes violate immigrants’ rights to fair and equal treatment under the law, undermine public safety by scaring immigrant communities away from reporting crimes or working with the police, and divert resources away from community policing towards immigration enforcement.
“In these times of increased disparity of justice and wealth there is oppression coming down from the federal level, and we need to stand up on the state and local level and set an example for the rest of the country,” said Vermont State Representative Brian Cina.
“I call on the city of Burlington to take this action with the community here watching because we will be watching. We’ll be coming out of the shadows to raise our voices and make ourselves heard,” said Enrique Balcazar, a Migrant Justice leader and migrant dairy farm worker.
Throughout the course of public comment, tensions escalated between protesters and City Council President Kurt Wright. Wright repeatedly ordered the crowd to “be respectful” and not cheer for those speaking. Though the council limited public comment to one hour, several activists continued speaking even after the time had elapsed. One woman accused the council of upholding white supremacy through Wright’s conduct.
The City Council is set to vote on the proposed resolution on March 9. No Más Polimigra plans to hold another rally at that meeting. The protesters signaled their intent as they filed out of City Hall chanting, “We’ll be back on March 9th.”
“We are going to make our voices heard,” said Travnikova, “and we are going to keep coming.”