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(02/27/20 10:58am)
History Professor and Black Studies Program Director William Hart announced the creation of the Twilight Project, a collaborative research initiative that will delve into Middlebury’s fraught history of inclusion and marginalization, during opening statements to Nikole Hannah-Jones’ talk on Tuesday evening.
The project follows the lead of several universities — including Princeton, Harvard and Columbia — that have launched initiatives exploring the connections of their institutions to the transatlantic slave trade. But the Twilight Project will extend beyond race to include issues related to gender, disability, sexual orientation, religion and ethnicity, among others. The project will also focus on the town of Middlebury, not just the college, in its investigations.
“We are asking Middlebury students, faculty, and staff to peer at some uncomfortable moments in Middlebury’s past so that we can better heal and move forward in the future,” Hart told The Campus.
Hart and other organizers expect to begin hearing research proposals for the project in late March, with the hope that projects will be completed in the 2020–21 academic year. Proposals can take the form of traditional research projects or other formats such as films, podcasts, walking tours, plays and public art. Hart assumes that research will lean heavily on archived resources from the Middlebury Library Special Collections and the Henry Sheldon Museum.
The project is named after Alexander Twilight, who became the first African American to receive a degree from a four-year American college after he graduated from Middlebury in 1823.
“We chose Twilight for that kind of ambiguity and this metaphor between the darkness and the light,” Hart said. “We are using this metaphor to shine a light on past moments that have been partially obscured by the receding light of history.”
President Laurie Patton approached Hart, Rebeka Irwin and Miguel Fernández with the idea for the Twilight Project a few years ago, and the idea began to formally materialize in 2018. Irwin is the Director and Curator of Special Collections, and Fernández is the college’s Chief Diversity Officer.
Irwin and Hart will serve as the project’s co-directors. They received financial support for the project from an anonymous donor, according to Hart.
“History can only be told by what was left behind and what was saved. All of those are in many ways deliberate choices,” Irwin said, noting how very little information remained about African American alumni. “All history has silences and absences, and this archive is the same. I think that creative projects might be best positioned to help answer the questions that are left behind and help fill those silences.”
The project is set to culminate in a conference in 2023, the bicentennial of Twilight’s graduation, which will feature the work done for the Twilight Project up until that point. Irwin hopes that the conference will not mark the end, but rather a jumping-off point for further iterations of the project.
“The more stories that we expose, the better off we may all be as a campus together,” Irwin said. “Many of the struggles we are experiencing now in the United States have been experienced on this campus before.”
Hart has done his own research on histories of racial tension at the Henry Sheldon Museum in town. He chronicled Frederick Douglass’s April 1843 visit to Middlebury, the first stop on a 100-city convention to spread the message of abolition throughout the Northeast. Douglass described his reception at the college as “intensely bitter and violent” and said that few people “professed any sympathy in opinion and feeling” with the abolitionist speakers. College students actively opposed his visit, hanging posters calling Douglass “an escaped convict from the state prison,” according to Hart’s essay “I Am a Man: Martin Henry Freeman (Middlebury College 1849) and the Problems of Race, Manhood, and Colonization.”
Irwin is also eager for students, faculty and staff to uncover the stories of the many LGBTQ+ individuals who inhabited Middlebury and feared coming out during their time here.
“The Twilight Project stands as an invitation to members of the Middlebury College to examine stories from our past — some hard, others gracious — that will enable us to create new stories that will sustain Middlebury College as a fully inclusive, all-embracing institution for generations to come” said Hart, who is set to retire at the end of this academic year.
(02/26/20 1:47pm)
Nikole Hannah-Jones, an award-winning investigative journalist and the founder of the New York Times’ Magazine 1619 Project, spoke to over 700 people in Mead Chapel on Tuesday night. In her talk, titled “1619 and the Legacy that Built a Nation,” she revealed the holes and hypocracies in the popular narrative of American history and the country’s indelible legacy of slavery.
The New York Times Magazine launched the 1619 project in Aug. 2019, the 400-year anniversary of the beginning of slavery in America. The project, initially developed as a magazine issue and podcast, hosted by Hannah-Jones, “aims to reframe the country’s history by placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of Black Americans at the very center of our national narrative.”
The event, featured as part of the Critical Conversations lecture series about race, was sponsored by the Black Studies Program, Middlebury College Activities Board, the Office of the President, and Critical Conversations.
During the talk, Hannah-Jones challenged the conventional view of the U.S. as an uniquely remarkable country founded on the principles of liberty and equality, highlighting the irony of Thomas Jefferson writing in the Declaration of Independence that “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal” while his enslaved brother-in-law served him and made him comfortable in his temporary Philadelphia residence. She noted that ten out of the first 12 presidents were slave owners.
Hannah-Jones explained that the U.S. was built on the “backs of Black bondage,” Proceeds from the slave trade led to the prosperity of American financial institutions like Wall Street and allowed for the creation of many academic instiutions. Slaves built much of Washington D.C. and constructed the infrastructure and provided that fueled the industrial revolution. Yet much of the basic infrastructure in modern America, such as the highway systems in many major cities, were built to contain and oppress African Americans.
Despite being the targets of oppression and hypocrisy throughout U.S. history, African Americans have constantly toiled to improve the nation. Hannah-Jones described the Black civil rights movement as a catalyst for change and equality across a variety of marginalized groups, pushing the country to live up to the ideals expressed in the Declaration of Independence.
“Out of the Black resistance struggle is every other resistance struggle and freedom struggle and rights struggle in this country. They all owe their inheritance to their Black rights struggle,” Hannah-Jones said. She cited the use of the 14th amendment’s equal protection clause, which emerged from the abolition movement, in the Supreme Court case that legalized same-sex marriage in 2015.
Critics have called Hannah-Jones unpatriotic, chiding her criticism of the legitimacy of the founding fathers’ ideals. In her talk, she responded by saying that the project is “only unpatriotic to those who believe that Black people are not Americans,” because Black people have always fought for and upheld those ideals, even as their rights were deliberately withheld by the U.S. government.
“We are never taught about the unparalleled role that Black people have played in perfecting our democracy and expanding the common good and actually believing in the ideals of the revolutionary period,” she said.
Hannah-Jones lamented the absence of these narratives in her own childhood, acknowledging the power in celebrating African Americans as “the real founders of this country”. Since the 1619 project launched, it has since expanded into an upcoming book and a history curriculum that has been widely adopted by schools across the country.
“When I think about the project, I hope that we will create a generation of Black children who are freed from that shame that so many of us were raised in and who feel they have a right to claim their own country,” she said.
Beyond empowering African Americans, Hannah-Jones hopes that the project will lead Americans of all races to reflect on the legacies of slavery in America.
“You don’t have to personally have family that owned enslaved people to have profited and benefitted from a system of slavery,” Hannah-Jones said. “[After this talk] you can no longer say that you don’t know that. From here on forward it’s a choice about whether you continue to benefit from it or if you work to deconstruct it and work to create the country of our ideals.”
(02/13/20 11:00am)
ZhiZhong Pu ’24, a Chinese international student who intended to matriculate at Middlebury as part of the class of 2023.5, was barred from starting school this semester due to President Trump’s travel ban.
The ban, intended to prevent the spread of coronavirus, prohibits any foreign nationals, including F-1 student visa holders, from traveling to the U.S. if they have been in China within the last 14 days. Trump issued the executive order that instituted the ban on Jan. 31, and it went into effect on Feb. 2 at 5 p.m. EST.
On Feb. 4, after the ban went into effect, the college told Pu that he would not be able to begin at Middlebury as a February admit this spring, and would have to wait until the fall to matriculate.
As the last Middlebury students studying abroad in China quickly evacuated after the college cancelled the spring semester of the Middlebury C.V. Starr School Abroad in China, Pu remained stuck in the country without access to his passport.
“I’m so frustrated,” Pu said. “I’ve been looking forward to this for so long, and I had everything prepared. To suddenly have this tragic issue, I’ve never felt so bad in my life.”
Pu had intended to visit Montreal before beginning orientation at Middlebury on Feb. 5. He applied for a Candian visa through Visa Facilitation Services Global and submitted his passport to the agency. The company had not processed his request before the Lunar New Year began on Jan. 25.
Although the holiday ended on Feb. 2, many companies, including VFS Global, remain closed to prevent the spread of the virus.
“Technically, if I had paid a huge amount to get here before the deadline, I still could have come. I would have done that, except it was impossible [because VFS Global has my passport],” Pu said.
Once VFS Global reopens and returns Pu’s passport to him, he would still have to travel to a third country and remain in self quarantine for 14 days before coming to the U.S. With a growing number of airlines suspending flights to and from China, even leaving the country could prove difficult.
If Pu received his passport today, he would still miss more than two weeks of classes. According to an email sent to Pu on Feb. 7 by Vice President of Student Affairs and Dean of Students Baishakhi Taylor, an absence that long would exclude him from enrolling at all this spring.
“We are a residential college where our living-learning community requires on-campus residency and participation,” Taylor wrote in the email. “I cannot grant your request to join the spring semester late. Please know that we are looking forward to welcoming you in the Fall.”
“The travel ban itself wasn’t that bad. I anticipated it very early on,” Pu said. “What I didn’t anticipate was the dean of students’ disapproval of me arriving two weeks late given this exceptional situation. I never thought that would be a problem.”
The returning Middlebury school in China students were instructed to self quarantine for 14 after their departure from China in accordance with Trump’s executive order and CDC guidelines. They may participate in the spring semester, though some will miss the first week of classes.
Pu lives in Xinjiang, the easternmost region of the country, more than 2,000 miles away from Wuhan, the epicenter of the outbreak. Despite the distance, Pu said that the disease remains a constant presence in the minds and lives of the residents in his region.
“The situation in China is very depressing. The government is trying to limit people’s interaction and prevent people from going out or traveling across the country,” Pu said.
Pu said he receives constant temperature checks whenever he goes into public. When he visited the VFS office, security checked his temperature upon entering the building and again when he reached the fourth floor. Face masks are mandatory for entering train stations or other public spaces.
Pu spoke to the Campus via Skype on a train from Shanghai to Xinjiang. His face mask, usually carefully secured, was haphazardly hanging on one ear, his face open to the computer camera. As the only passenger in his compartment, he was not worried about the possibility of infection.
“I’ve never seen this in my life,” Pu said. “In China, train stations are always so busy. You can’t even find a seat in normal times, and now, all the seats are empty. I’m literally the only person.”
Pu said he is not afraid of contracting the virus, since he is confident that his youth and good health would protect him from its fatal consequences. However, he finds the atmosphere of tension and fear in China nearly unbearable.
“The situation is very bad, but the sensationalization of fear, that’s even worse than the virus,” Pu said.
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(02/01/20 1:57am)
UPDATE — Tuesday, Feb. 4
Students returning from China will not be allowed to return to the Middlebury campus until 14 days after their departure to prevent any possible spread of coronavirus.
Following the suspension of Middlebury School in China, 11 students who had already arrived in China had to evacuate the country. The last program students evacuated China on Saturday and thus will not be allowed to return to campus until Feb. 15, five days after the start of classes on Feb. 10.
Middlebury made this decision in line with Center for Disease Control guidelines, which ask that travelers coming from China limit contact with others and submit to monitoring by health officials during the two-week period after their departure.
“You won’t be penalized for missing classes, since this isn’t your choice, but rather is something that the college is asking of you,” wrote Assistant Director of International Programs Bill Mayers in an email to returning students.
Sabian Edouard ’21 and Edgar León ’21 had already returned to campus when Middlebury made the decision to quarantine returning students. Two days after their arrival on campus, the two received an email requesting that they report to Parton Health Center immediately.
Director of Health Services Dr. Mark Peluso informed the students that their risk of infection was low because they had left China quickly and because their study abroad location was not near the epicenter of the outbreak.
Edouard and León elected to remain on campus for this period and will be quarantined in a house on campus. They chose not to return home due to concerns about potentially contaminating their loved ones.
“Back in Beijing, my study abroad site, my friends and I were heavily encouraged to stay indoors as much as possible during the outbreak, so this is nothing new,” Edouard said. While he is disappointed that he is unable to continue his study abroad experience in China, Edouard feels lucky.
He acknowledges the many who are suffering from the novel coronavirus and those in the immediate outbreak zone in Hubei Province. “We are privileged to be back home safe and sound,” he said.
Edouard and León are good friends, so he predicts that the two weeks in quarantine will not be too unpleasant.
“Besides, now I can start watching that Game of Thrones series everyone was raving about,” Edouard said.
__
Friday, Jan. 31
The three Middlebury C.V. Starr Schools Abroad in China will not run this spring due to concerns over the coronavirus, the college announced in a campus-wide email this Tuesday. The college advised students who were planning to study in Hangzhou, Kunming and Beijing beginning this February to re-enroll in their home universities this spring. Non-Middlebury students whose home institutions have begun spring classes have been offered the chance to attend Middlebury for the semester — an estimated seven or eight out of the 37.
The World Health Organization declared the coronavirus a “public health emergency of international concern” on Jan 30. As of this morning, the World Health Organization confirmed 9,720 cases and 213 deaths in China, and that the disease had spread to 19 other countries. Today, the US State Department raised the China travel advisory to “Level 4 - Do Not Travel”, their highest rating. Only 13 other countries share this classification.
“There is too much at stake to risk any course of action other than suspending the program,” wrote Bill Mayers, assistant director of international programs, in an email to students enrolled in the Middlebury School in China for the spring semester and their parents. “We are considering both the potential health and safety risks, as well as the consequences for your academic progress,”
Program participants, hailing from 15 different universities, were set to arrive in China on Feb. 12. Eleven students, however, had already arrived when news of the cancellation hit — two of whom were planning to study there for the entire year and eight of whom arrived on Dec. 27 for a winter term course with CET Academic programs in Beijing.
Students began evacuating on Jan. 28, and the last student is scheduled to leave China at 6:30 p.m. local time on Feb. 1, according to Benjy Renton ’21, a Campus editor and one of the Middlebury students evacuating the country.
Capital Normal University, the location of the Winter Term class, is closed to all non-university personnel, including CET Beijing's resident director. In the interim, Renton is helping coordinate student departures and repatriation efforts. Middlebury will screen students upon their arrival on campus.
With several major airlines suspending or considering suspending flights to and from China, as well as President Trump’s administration instituting a partial travel ban, the Office of International Programs was worried that students might become stranded in the country.
“We don’t want them to be getting stuck there. We don’t know how Chinese authorities are going to react, if they are going to be clamping down more. We have no control over that, and that’s the part where we are a little more concerned,” Mayers told The Campus.
“When to make a decision and what we should decide to do are unbelievably challenging, given that the whole situation was changing so quickly,” said Zhang Kai, director of the Middlebury school in China in Beijing.
In addition to health and safety concerns, logistical challenges played a large part in informing the Office of International Programs’s decision, according to Mayers.
“We do this program hoping that students are going to have an immersive experience, but, frankly, they’re restricting gatherings of any size,” Mayers said. “You can’t go out and gather with other Chinese students. You can’t go to the movie theater, you can’t go to the club, you can’t do anything that Chinese people do in China. What are you going to do? Just stay in your dorm room the whole time? It’s not an immersive experience.”[pullquote speaker="Bill Mayers" photo="" align="center" background="on" border="all" shadow="on"]You can’t go out and gather with other Chinese students. You can’t go to the movie theater, you can’t go to the club, you can’t do anything that Chinese people do in China. What are you going to do? Just stay in your dorm room the whole time? It’s not an immersive experience.[/pullquote]
Schools and universities are indefinitely suspended across the country, with municipalities deciding when to reopen campuses. The Chinese government has imposed wide-scale travel restrictions — and many train lines have closed across the country and many of the top tourist attractions have closed indefinitely, according to Renton.
“At Capital Normal University, security guards are becoming increasingly more strict with entering and exiting. Each exit requires the guard to call our Resident Director to seek her approval,” he wrote in a post on his blog.
The cancelation poses academic concerns to many students. Some majors require a semester abroad. The Office of International Programs plans to run the program in China next fall, and will offer spots to the students who were unable to study abroad this spring. Students who have fulfilled the relevant language and course requirements were also offered the opportunity to study at other Middlebury schools abroad, such as those in Latin America.
“We feel horrible about [canceling the semester]. We know a lot of students come to Middlebury because they’re planning on studying abroad and we’ve got good programs,” Mayers said. “They’ve been waiting for two and a half years and we pulled the rug out from under them .... We feel that it’s the right decision, but it’s not a good one.”
The Office of International Programs sent an email to the faculty encouraging professors to be understanding and flexible in their class sizes to aid registration for incoming students.
Mayers confirmed that the college has found housing for all 37 students, should they choose to come to Middlebury. Non-Middlebury students must make the decision to enroll in the spring by Feb. 3.
“We do hope that you will help us in every way you can to make them feel welcome,” wrote Vélez in his initial campus-wide email, “Whether they are Middlebury students to begin with or if they come to us from other institutions, they will be Middlebury students for the time they are here.”
Editor’s note: Middlebury Campus editor Benjy Renton ’21 has been independently reporting from China on his blog, “Off the Silk Road.” Read his posts here.
(01/23/20 11:09am)
Middlebury became the first college visited by the Vermont Supreme Court as part of its “On the Road Series” when it held hearings for four cases in a packed Wilson Hall on Jan. 15.
“We are very fortunate to have a state supreme court that is so willing and open to bring the court to the community,” said Susan Ritter, special assistant to the president and director of community relations, at the start of the hearings. “As President Patton has noted, this offers a rare opportunity for our students and community members to learn more about the Vermont’s judicial system.”
The court heard a broad array of cases: TC v. LD, a civil case; Progressive Northern Insurance Company v. Muller, an insurance case; State of Vermont v. Darryl M Galloway, a criminal case; and Athens School District et al. v. State Board of Education et. al, a constitutional case which reviewed the validity of the board forcefully merging school districts.
The court releases the decisions for most cases one to six months after hearing the oral arguments, according to Justice Beth Robinson.
The hearings were open to the public, and groups of students from Middlebury Union High School and Mount Abraham High School attended throughout the day.
“I really value the opportunity to include people and help people understand [the Vermont Supreme Court,]” said Robinson in an interview with The Campus. “We get our accountability through transparency.”
Retired Vermont Supreme Court Justices John Dooley and Marilyn Skoglund coordinated the hearings held at Middlebury. The two retired justices are also teaching a winter term course this January entitled “State Supreme Courts: How They Work and When They Don’t.”
Dooley was motivated to teach a winter term class and bring the Supreme Court to Middlebury when he heard President Laurie Patton speak about her wish to make the college a school “of Vermont” rather than simply a school “in Vermont.”
The “On the Road Series,” which was born through the wish “to help teach civics through [witnessing] an actual court argument and seeing the process,’’ according to Skoglund, seemed to be the perfect vehicle to facilitate a deepening relationship between Vermont state government and the college and impress upon students the importance of the state courts.
While many people follow the national Supreme Court when it comes to issues such as abortion, “day in and day out, 100s of those similar cases are being decided by state supreme courts,” Dooley said. Vermont has no intermediate appellate courts, so all appeals go to the State Supreme Court, which hears about 400 cases per year.
Nationwide, 95% of cases are tried in state courts, according to data collected by U.S. Court of Appeal Judge Jeffery S. Sutton in his book “51 Imperfect Solutions.” These cases, especially in the state supreme courts, weigh heavily on the lives of the state’s citizens, according to Dooley.
“We live in a world where the state has a constitution, the federal government has a constitution and you are doubly protected by both of them,” said Dooley. “A decision of the state supreme court on a state constitution could be more important to you than what happens in Washington.”
In the 2018 fiscal year, the Vermont state courts heard 51,000 cases, not including 93,000 traffic cases, according to the Vermont Judiciary Annual Statistical Report published in fall 2018. The number of cases has steadily increased over the years, according to Dooley. He estimates that the courts heard 55,0000 cases in the 2019 fiscal year.
With a population of roughly 624,000, according to the US Census, Vermont’s ratio of cases to people is nearly one to 11. When including traffic cases, that ratio jumps to almost one in four.
“Usually, cases have at least two people, sometimes more, so you can see how much the state courts affect people,” said Dooley.
While the hearings and winter term class aimed to educate students and community members on civics, Middlebury College and its community were not the only beneficiaries.
“[Interacting with students] is very invigorating for us. It’s a fairly monastic job working at the Supreme Court,” Robinson said. “We don’t have a lot of social interaction, so being able to be with such smart engaging people, it makes me feel a little better about the future.”
(12/07/19 5:53pm)
Falling snow and the impending threat of finals did not deter over 200 students from gathering in Mead Chapel on Thursday to rally in support of higher wages for Middlebury facilities and dining staff.
Students Celia Gottlieb ’21.5 and Connor Wertz ’22 organized the protest, along with the rest of their Race, Rhetoric and Protest class, taught by Professor of Writing and Rhetoric James Sanchez.
“The people who make our food, clean our buildings and maintain the school are vital to having a functional institution,” Gottlieb told The Campus. “Their work is of the utmost value, yet their wages do not reflect this. They dedicate a significant portion of their days to making sure we can live our lives, yet, they don’t make a living wage to live theirs.”
The protest began with a sea of students stomping and yelling, the clamor rising to a crescendo before ending with a thunderous clap. After addresses from the student organizers, protesters marched to each dining hall and posted messages of gratitude to the staff on pieces of paper, with the heading “Students value the hard work of Middlebury staff. Pay them a living wage.” Around campus, students wore all black to demonstrate solidarity.
According to an article about low staff wages from The Campus’s January Staff Issue, 15% of staff fill the college’s lowest paying positions, in the Operations Level 1 and 2 pay bands (OP1 and OP2). OP2 positions begin at $12.07 per hour, and OP1 positions begin at $11 per hour.
These wages often fall below the estimates for what constitutes a living wage in Addison County. In an October article about custodial staffing shortages, The Campus reported that the Vermont Legislative Joint Fiscal Office found the 2018 livable wage for the state to be $13.34 per hour. A 2018 study by the National Low-Income Housing Coalition set the Addison County housing wage at $19.63 per hour.
Staff receive yearly raises, which the college calculates based off annual increases in living expenses. But for staff earning low wages without disposable incomes, changes in a single factor, like an increase in the price of the gas they need to commute to work, could throw their entire budget off balance, according to Tim Parsons, the college’s landscape horticulturist and Staff Council president.
At the protest, many students asserted that this precarious balance between financial security and insecurity is unacceptable.
“When the same people that we ask to feed us need food stamps to feed their own family, when the same people that we ask to keep our dorm rooms warm need to use emergency Chaplain’s Funding to heat their own homes in the winter, that is a problem,” Wertz said to the crowd.
(12/05/19 10:53am)
I’m sobbing, furiously wiping tears from my eyes with the back of my sleeve as I push myself on a KneeRover scooter in a mad dash to make my orthopedics appointment. I slip and slide, desperately trying to maintain traction on the sidewalk covered in a thin layer of icy slush, clutching my mini handbrake fully against the handlebars as the scooter rockets down the College Street hill towards town. Out of the corner of my eye, I see the bus pull out of the stop. I’ve missed my appointment.
Thirty minutes before, I had called PubSafe, confident that they could give me a ride to my appointment just as they’d taken me to the hospital after my initial injury. They could not.
Since I hurt my foot three days before, navigating Middlebury had become a nightmare. The daily frustrations started at night, when unsteady and scared of falling on my crutches, I crawled on all fours up the two flights of stairs to my room on the third floor of Allen Hall, trying to ignore the pain of the built-up bruises on my knees. Leaving my building the next morning, I faced one of the many doors on campus with a decorative “Caution Automatic Door” sticker and a handicapped button that didn’t function.
That day, getting around campus had been particularly difficult. The thick flakes of falling snow and accumulation of slippery slush made the campus practically impossible to navigate. Trying to reach my classes in Warner and the Johnson Memorial Building class in Warner’s hemi, I desperately gripped the icy railing as I hoped up the stairs, swallowing my fear of falling down the rock slabs.
Luckily, everyone around me had bent over backwards to help me in those three days and beyond. A classmate who I barely knew refused any sort of payment and let me borrow his KneeRover for free. People I’d never spoken to before carried the scooter up and down stairs at my request, hurried past me to open doors and asked if I needed help as I maneuvered around the dining halls. I am so grateful for the incredible support of the Middlebury community.
However, a system that relies on luck, the goodwill of others, social connections and the ability and comfort level to constantly advocate for oneself is not a functioning system. Middlebury is not a functioning institution for people with temporary disabilities. It is certainly not for those with permanent mobility constraints.
Slowly renovating Munroe, then Warner, then every single non-ADA-compliant building on campus (and trust me, there are many) is not enough. Middlebury needs an institutional support system that is actively advertised so that when students injure themselves, they know who they can reach out to and how they can get help. For the buildings that clearly fail ADA requirements, the college needs to create ways to make them more accessible while they wait for the opportunity to redo them. Where they do have structures meant to increase accessibility such as automatic doors, they should at least work.
The kindness and generosity of the Middlebury community is wonderful, but it’s a band-aid solution for a problem that requires institutional change.
Sophia McDermott-Hughes is a member of the class of 2023.
(11/14/19 11:02am)
Over three-quarters of Middlebury faculty come to the college with a partner. But inadequate college policies for employing these partners and integrating them into the Middlebury community have led some faculty to consider leaving, according to a survey conducted by the Faculty Council Working Group on Partner Inclusion in March.
In response to the group’s report summarizing the survey results, President Laurie Patton announced at the Nov. 8 faculty meeting the creation of a new half-time five-year position that will be specially dedicated to improving partner inclusion policy and practice.
Partner inclusion, while mainly focusing on employment, also encompasses concerns about helping partners feel part of the Middlebury community.
“Partners are not, contrary to popular belief, looking for a handout in the form of a tailored job,” wrote Sarah Laursen, assistant professor of history of art and architecture, in a 2018 internal report to the Faculty Council. “They are simply people who moved here with their partners in hopes of a better life but are continually faced with disappointment and rejection in the job search.”
Of the faculty who responded to the March survey, 90% said that an institutional partner hiring policy was important to them, and 76% came to Middlebury with a partner. Of these, there was a roughly evenly split between academic and non-academic partners.
The college’s current partner employment policy states, “Middlebury will strive to attract and retain the best faculty and staff. While doing so, Middlebury will also strive to increase the number of women and persons of color on its administration, faculty and staff.”
However, due to the lack of a robust partner inclusion policy, 18% of faculty reported that they are actively looking for other employment, according to the report. When accounting for faculty members passively searching for employment or those who have searched in the past, hypothesized the report, this figure is likely much higher.
“We moved from far away, into an isolated place with no network — a common story here — and so job hunting was difficult without having any college support,” wrote one faculty member in response to the survey. “[It] was a big letdown. The longer I’m here, the more I feel like my experience is not unique, and the college really doesn’t care about this at all.”
Issues of partner inclusion disproportionately affect female faculty, who, according to the 2008 Report of the Task Force on the Status of Women at Middlebury College, face uneven challenges in this area due to societal norms.
The report found that gender discrepancies among associate professors were due in large part to Middlebury’s partner inclusion policy, since female faculty were more likely to leave before achieving tenure if they did not think their spouses would be employed by the college or in the area. Between the fall of 1997 and the spring of 2008, 60% of departing female faculty cited spousal employment as the main reason for their resignation, while the same was true of only 10% of departing male faculty, according to the report.
Under the current policy, the dean of faculty informs new hires that they can contact Human Resources for assistance in partner employment. However, 92% of the respondents to the survey said that they did not receive any support, though many tried.
Another respondent to the survey expressed dissatisfaction with the way their partner was treated when he applied for a job at the college after the respondent was hired.
“When my partner did apply for a position that he was well-qualified for, he was treated poorly by the HR process — long delays between app submission and first interview, and then before the second interview, with little communication in between, and long lag before final rejection,” the faculty member wrote. “We are not alone. A colleague in my area had a similar experience with her partner. Neither partner has any interest in reapplying to Midd.”
The lack of partner inclusion affects faculty morale, creates problems in drawing talented prospective candidates and takes a psychological toll on both faculty and their partners, according to Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies Merrill “Mez” Baker-Medard. Baker-Medard is a member of the Faculty Council Working Group on Partner Inclusion.
“Every day, we faculty come home from our dream jobs to our demoralized partners, and we feel miserable that our success comes at the cost of their self-worth,” wrote Laursen in the 2018 internal report to the Faculty Council. “The constant job search and the stress of trying to survive on less income … puts a strain on our relationships, and we come to resent the College too.”
The lack of prospects for faculty partners causes heightened turnover of faculty and can also deter new professors from taking jobs at the college. This creates extra work for hiring committee members and causes financial waste within the hiring process, according to Kristina Sargent, another member of the Faculty Council Working Group on Partner Inclusion and Assistant Professor of Economics.
“I find it ironic that the school is so obsessively cutting budgets while they spend who knows how much on recruiting to replace faculty who would have stayed if their partners could have found even marginally satisfactory employment nearby,” responded one faculty member to the working group’s survey.
According to Baker-Medard, faculty have raised concerns about the college’s faculty partner inclusion policy for the last 25 years with little to no change resulting.
“While my experience was over a decade ago, it looks like little has changed,” responded one faculty member to the survey.
“The people we are hiring as professors today are not the same as 30 years ago when the model was originally set up,” said Sargent. “The world is just different, so the policy should be different.”
Following the group’s report and its presentation to the faculty in September, Patton negotiated with a donor to secure funding for the new five-year position. The Faculty Council Working Group on Partner Inclusion hopes to work with administration and faculty to design the job description for this role and finalize the hire by the end of this academic year, according to Baker-Medard.
“The person who had this task before, it was one of many, many other things they did, so having a dedicated person is a big win,” Baker-Medard said. “I think it gives us a little bit of momentum. Maybe that person can also help us think about the no or low cost things we can do as well as the things we want to invest in financially in the future based on our recommendations.”
The creation of this new position addressed just one of eight recommendations from the working group’s report. These recommendations included having Human Resources proactively reach out to new hires about partner inclusion, offering courtesy interviews and introductions to partners to help them find local employment outside of the college, creating a formal process for two-year visiting appointments for partners, and creating better channels into staff positions for non-academic partners.
According to the report, “Partner employment is not just an opportunity for partners, it is also an opportunity for the College. Faculty partners are often highly skilled and readily employable.”
The working group also recommended that Middlebury put more effort into including partners in college activities and events, “revise existing partner employment guidelines into a clear and transparent partner inclusion policy” and continue allowing the Faculty Council Working Group on Partner Inclusion to address these issues.
“There’s definitely interest and a willingness and openness around these other requests, but nothing’s been concretized yet,” Baker-Medard said. “I think the Dean of Faculty as well as other administrators, including President Patton, are aware of the issue and thinking about it in new ways due to this report.”
(11/07/19 11:05am)
Middlebury is optimizing and modernizing its administrative systems with a new finance program called Oracle — the implementation of which has caused many difficulties and inconveniences for Middlebury staff, faculty and students.
This change occurred in collaboration with the Green Mountain Higher Education Consortium (GMHEC), which includes Middlebury, Champlain, and Saint Michael’s colleges. All three institutions are working to improve and reduce costs for common administrative services.
Through an initiative called Project Ensemble, GMHEC plans to implement a new Enterprise Resource System (ERS), a software system designed to integrate each college’s various administrative processes — finance, human resources, advancement and, potentially, student records — into a unified structure. At Middlebury, this new ERS will eventually replace Banner, the computer software the college currently uses. Phase one of Project Ensemble is projected to cost Middlebury $4.6 million, according to Mike Thomas, the vice president for finance and the college’s assistant treasurer.
As part of this effort, the college adopted the information system Oracle Cloud and began using its financial system in April to help track and manage the day-to-day financial transactions of the college.
Instead of running financial operations on-site, Oracle is housed in the cloud, which helps prevent against data loss. Like Banner, it is browser-based, and employees can access it through by signing in to an online portal.
According to Thomas, one benefit of this new system is that the budget office can approve purchases and expense reports from a computer or mobile device.
“Before Oracle, nearly every purchase we made at Middlebury involved a form that a person had to fill out and send to someone to then manually approve. Now, all of that happens through automated workflow,” Thomas said.
The switch has also helped Middlebury take advantage of the GMHEC for technical support, supplier management, accounts payable and more.
However, the change caused significant issues for Middlebury staff, who received minimal — and at times, incorrect — training in the system, according to a staff member who asked to remain anonymous.
“I wish we had gotten real training,” she said. “It felt like our work isn’t important enough to take the time to invest in it. We do an important job and it didn’t get the sort of attention that it needed.”
According to Thomas, Middlebury hired Hitachi Consulting — a firm that had minimal experience with Oracle, a system normally used by for-profit companies — causing significant issues with the roll out. With no people experienced with Oracle on campus, Information Technology Services was forced to learn and troubleshoot on the spot, the anonymous staff member said.
“At the beginning, people weren’t getting paid at all. Several departments, especially around commencement, were having trouble getting speakers paid. People didn’t even want to come to campus … It has hurt a lot of our relationships with people who have done business with the college over the years,” the staff member said.
The switch has also caused issues within the budget office. There were many bugs in the early stages of implementation, which took time and effort to troubleshoot and led to delays in processing payment and difficulties for employees, according to Thomas.
“We realized that we underestimated the required post go-live support from our implementation partners. It was definitely a lesson learned as we look at other modern systems,” Thomas said.
The change has also created extra work and complications for the Student Activities Office (SAO) and student organizations, according to Derek Doucet, the senior associate dean of students.
Most student organizations receive an annual budget of between $400 and $4,000 from the Student Government Association (SGA), which they spend and manage through the SAO. The SGA expects to allocate approximately $1,100,000 this academic year, according to Kenshin Cho ’20, director of the SGA finance committee.
Student organization leaders need to track budgets and expenditures closely, but the Oracle system has limited capabilities in tracking individual transactions. Student organizations also require regular, detailed budget reports, which the program does not provide, according to Doucet.
“The new Oracle system is frustrating as a treasurer that manages a relatively large budget and spends frequently, because we no longer get monthly expense reports with our operating account balance,” said Raechel Zeller ’22, treasurer for the female-identifying club frisbee team.
Pranav Kumar ’20, co-president and treasurer of club tennis, said he worries that he will accidentally exceed his club’s budget and be forced to foot the bill.
“We’ve built alternative systems to help alleviate these problems, but they remain a significant challenge for student org treasurers and have created significant additional work for the student activities team,” Doucet said.
According to Doucet, the transition to Oracle caused many Middlebury businesses to stop accepting charges directly from student organizations. Instead, student leaders increasingly must pay for organization expenses out of pocket and wait for reimbursement from the college, something that many students cannot afford to do.
However, Doucet said that the issues posed by the change has also created opportunities as the SAO explores alternatives. For example, the office is currently piloting a program in which student organization leaders can sign out credit cards, which he believes will be a better system than off-campus charges.
Moving forward, the administration hopes Project Ensemble will continue to improve the financial system and the overall function of Oracle through an “optimization phase,” which will include “a mobile expense app, a supplier portal where our payees can go to update information, and optical character recognition for invoice processing,” according to Thomas.
This spring, Middlebury plans to transfer Human Capital Management to Oracle, a move that was originally planned to take place this fall but was delayed in order to not repeat the mistakes with the financial system.
“Because it was pushed back so much and not rushed like they did with the finance one, people are a little more comfortable,” said the anonymous staff member about the transfer.
“But people are still nervous . . . because it’s our pay and our benefits going through that.”
(11/07/19 11:00am)
“Hannaford, escucha. Estamos en la lucha. Leche justa, a mi me gusta.” Protesters chanted this phrase — which loosely translates to “Hannaford, listen, we are fighting for fair trade milk” — as they gathered outside of the Middlebury branch of the Hannaford supermarket. Through their protests on Saturday, Nov. 2, they demanded that the chain only buy its milk from dairy farms that respect the human rights of their workers.
Eighty to 100 farmworkers, organizers, Middlebury community members and Middlebury students attended the protest, which was organized by Middlebury students Olivia Pintair ’22.5 and Hannah Ennis ’22.5 and hosted by student organizations Juntos and Middlebury Refugee Outreach Club (MiddROC).
The protest was part of the Milk with Dignity Day of Action. Migrant Justice, a solidarity collective aimed at improving the economic and human rights of farmworkers in the northeast, organized the campaign with similar events at 21 Hannaford’s locations in Vermont, Maine, New Hampshire and Massachusetts.
Eleuterio, a prominent member of the Migrant Justice Coordination Committee and an Addison County dairy worker, and Jose Ignacio, a dairy worker in Shoreham, spoke to those assembled about the alleged human rights violations they have experienced as dairy workers in Addison County.
“I work on a farm in Addison county where . . . there are no raises. Where there are no vacations. Where we work 12, 13, 14 hours a day. Where we take only 30 to 40-minute breaks to eat. This is not just,” Euleterio said.
The Milk with Dignity program started in 2014, and Migrant Justice and Ben & Jerry’s signed the first Milk with Dignity contract in 2017. In June of 2019, Migrant Justice launched a campaign calling on Hannaford, a major dairy buyer with nearly 200 stores throughout the northeast, to join the Milk with Dignity Program.
Should the supermarket agree to join the program, it would only buy its milk from dairy farms that agree to follow the Milk With Dignity Code of Conduct, which includes “adequate breaks, time off, paid sick leave, humane and safe staffing and working conditions and fair housing.” These farms have to comply with Milk with Dignity Standards Council (MDSC) monitoring to ensure their adherence to the code. They must guarantee that their workers have unfettered access to MDSC complaint mechanisms and worker-to-worker education about their rights. In order to not place undue financial burden on the already-struggling Vermont dairy industry, Hannaford would pay an extra premium to farms to support wage increases. The supermarket would also “sign a legally-binding agreement that defines the program as an enforceable contract under law,” according to the Migrant Justice website.
A 2014 survey of nearly 200 Vermont dairy workers conducted by Migrant Justice showed that 40% of workers receive less than the Vermont minimum wage, 40% have no days off and 20% have their pay illegally withheld.
(10/17/19 10:10am)
The percentage of Middlebury graduates with jobs within months of their graduation date has been steadily rising since 2014.
Six months after graduation, 81% of the class of 2018 had found employment, the highest rate on record. Most of these graduates are working full-time jobs while others, also included in this definition of employment, are working part-time while studying or pursuing an additional career.
As of Aug. 1, two months after graduation, 69% of the class of 2019 was employed, representing a 50% increase from the class of 2014, according to Peggy Burns, director of the Center for Careers and Internships (CCI).
Even considering rising national employment rates, Burns said that the CCI’s increasing efforts over the last five years to help students find employment has also contributed markedly to this growth. Most notably, the center has increasingly funneled alumni enthusiasm through several new programs that help emerging grads enter the workforce.
These efforts include the creation of seven Middlebury Professional Networks (MPNs), consisting of alumni who volunteer to provide active career support in the fields of consulting, energy and environment, financial services, government and policy, international affairs, media and entertainment, and technology. The center aims to expand these offerings in the future, according to its website.
The CCI also created a program called “Student Treks” in 2017, which brings students on themed trips where they learn about a career pathway through meeting alumni, visiting their worksites, and shadowing them on the job.
Eight times a year, the center’s Field Guide program brings five or six alumni, who all shared the same major but have gone on to diverse careers, to speak with students. The CCI also brings alumni who work in the same industry, regardless of their major, through a program called Up Next.
“[The alumni] have always stepped up when asked. Now all these vehicles are set up where they can really channel their energy and enthusiasm for our students,” Burns said. In the last academic year, 500 alumni engaged in on and off-campus programming.
This year, the CCI created Midd2Midd, an online platform that connects members from across the Middlebury community. The platform hosts three programs: MiddMentors, which connects students with alumni mentors; MiddConnect, which allows students, alumni, and parents to ask for advice and share opportunities amongst each other; and MiddGroups, which hosts affinity-based communities of alumni and students.
The CCI also switched its online job-posting platform from Mojo to Handshake, both of which are sites used by colleges and universities across the country to aggregate job and internship opportunities. The switch is part of an effort to diversify the types of work Middlebury graduates pursue
Handshake makes it much easier for employers to post opportunities than Mojo, vastly increasing both the number and types of opportunities available to students, according to Burns. In the last academic year, employers posted 22,000 jobs and internships on Handshake, 10 times as many as with Mojo, on average. Middlebury students responded with 12,000 applications submitted through the site.
Recent shifts in industries that graduates are choosing to pursue reflect students’ ever-evolving interests. For the first time in years, the fields of arts and communication constitute the foremost employer for the class of 2018, according to a survey by the Office of Assessment & Institutional Research (OAIR) conducted six months after their graduation. Financial services, usually the most popular field, came in second, followed by education, consulting, technology, and science and health, amongst others. Social justice forms the smallest employment sector accounting for just 5% of those employed. However, Burns cautioned that these rankings do not tell the full story, as many jobs overlap categories.
While only 11% of the class of 2018 immediately pursued postgraduate education after graduation, 50% reported that they intend to do so within the next five years, according to the OAIR survey. Out of the NESCAC schools, Burns said Middlebury is on the lower end of the spectrum in terms of how many students transition straight to graduate school. While both Amherst and Hamilton also reported that 11% of the class of 2018 immediately entered postgraduate school, 15% of Bowdoin students, 19% of Tufts students, and 20% of Connecticut College students continued their education directly after completing undergrad. Burns said she sees this difference as a strength rather than a weakness.
“Graduate schools feel that students get more out of grad school, and grad school get more out of students when students have been out in the world and are more mature,” she said.
The center also aims to increase levels of participation by younger students in its activities and counseling. Burns encouraged students to come to the CCI early and often to prepare themselves and reduce stress come graduation. The center offers drop-in hours with peer career advisors every afternoon, and students can sign up for longer meeting with staff on Handshake.
(10/03/19 10:02am)
In a move hailed by advocates of students with disabilities as part of an important cultural and ideological shift, the Student Accessibility Services moved out of the risk management department and into the Office of Institutional Diversity, Equity and Inclusion as of this academic year. The office was also renamed the Disability Resource Center (DRC).
According to the center’s website, the DRC “provides confidential services and reasonable accommodations for students who have needs affecting their learning, vision, hearing, speech, mobility, and physical and psychological health.” The DRC also helps faculty and staff provide these accommodations, and trains them to work with students with disabilities.
The DRC’s former home in the risk management department reflected an institutional view of students with disabilities as legal obligations and potential lawsuits, said Renee Wells, director of education for equity and inclusion. Relocating the office suggests a welcome shift from that mindset.
Wells explained that previously, the Student Accessibility Services viewed measures improving accessibility in terms of complying with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), rather than as meaningful opportunities to make the campus more accessible and inclusive for all students.
“While Student Accessibility Services and the ADA coordinators have always had the primary responsibility for coordinating disability accommodations for students, the DRC’s scope is more expansive,” Marti McCaleb, civil rights and Title IX coordinator, said in an email to The Campus. “It’s made up of a number of people and entities on campus that advocate for and provide services to students with disabilities.”
The departmental reorganization, which happened simultaneously with restructuring of the Title IX office, is part of a larger effort to change the way Middlebury approaches issues of accessibility, Wells said.
“It’s largely about helping [the college] make that sort of ideological shift from seeing disability as a problem that an individual has, to being a cultural problem with whom we have imagined in our spaces and whom we haven’t,” Wells said.
The organizational change comes as Middlebury aims to improve life and services for students with disabilities, including making sure that everyone who needs help is receiving it.
After one of the ADA coordinators changed jobs in July, the remaining ADA coordinator, Jodi Litchfield, serves 375 students at Middlebury and 10 more in programs abroad. According to Litchfield, the DRC is in the midst of hiring a second ADA coordinator to help provide aid to more students.
The DRC provides services to the one in seven Middlebury students who self-report as having some type of disability, according to McCaleb.
“It’s likely that there are many more students with disabilities on campus than have come forward,” Litchfield said.
To address the disparity, McCaleb said, “I would like to find new ways to reach out to students to make sure that no one with a disability experiences unnecessarily barriers or hurdles to their education or their life on campus.”
Wells believes that one of the biggest challenges students face is the stigma surrounding disabilities. Other students may view these measures as unfair advantages and faculty can resent the extra effort required on their part, according to Wells.
The DRC grants letters of accommodation to students with disabilities. But those students must then meet with their professors and advocate for themselves, which can create uncomfortable power dynamics, according to Kamli Faour ’21, one of two student representatives to the Advisory Group on Diversity, Accessibility and Inclusion (ADGAI).
Wells also emphasized the importance of thinking proactively and designing physical and educational spaces for people of all abilities instead of making individual accommodations after the fact.
To this end, Wells aims to use the new Inclusive Practitioners Program workshops — a series of workshops for faculty and staff about bias and diversity — to help shift the way faculty and staff view disability and educate them on creating inclusive and accessible spaces.
McCaleb also plans to expand on Wells’ training in her own work.
“I also hope to be able to provide more education and training to faculty on how to support students with disabilities in their classes, and how to create more adaptive, inclusive learning environments,” McCaleb said.
With the help of the AGDAI, Wells’ office is creating a five-year diversity, equity and inclusion plan that will address accessibility issues.
“In the longer term, we will continue to work closely with AGDAI on new campus initiatives and advocate for ongoing improvements to facilities and technologies to create a more accessible campus,” McCaleb said.
“There are a lot of barriers to accessibility and accessible learning at this school,” Faour said. “Ultimately I don’t know if it’s possible to accommodate everyone ...[but] we need to be actively doing the best that we can to improve the lives of individuals on this campus.”