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(04/01/21 9:58am)
While the return to campus this spring has meant limited indoor interaction for students, Middlebury College employees have been working tirelessly to offer venues outside for conversation and socialization. One of the biggest additions to campus for the spring semester was a bevy of new Adirondack chairs. Wayne Hall, the Facilities Department’s supervisor of carpentry, paint and locks, oversaw a staff of nine to build 44 supplementary chairs for students.
Beginning in January 2021 at the behest of the Administration, Hall and his team consulted archives for blueprints of the chairs that have been long enjoyed by students. The group cut out individual pieces, applied primer, assembled and then painted a solid body stain — of red, green, blue and other hues — on top. Campus horticulturist Tim Parsons and other members of the Facilities Department’s landscaping staff moved the finished products to the lawn outside the McCullough Student Center and to Battell Beach, where the ventilated tents had already been constructed on top of transported flooring panels.
For Hall, the opportunity to make the Adirondack chairs was a welcome departure from his usual duties: fixing furniture across campus and attending to other maintenance requests. In any given semester, members of Hall’s division are tasked with changing dorm room lock codes and fixing desk drawers, window screens and shades. In the winter and spring, they dedicate a substantial amount of time to preparing for commencement. This year, however, with plans for an abbreviated, less extravagant celebration for graduating seniors, a pivot to other carpentry work in January and February was timely.
“It’s a nice change to get in the shop and build stuff,” Hall shared, adding that creating plexiglass dividers has also been a task for employees in the woodshop. Most of the partitions his staff has created have been distributed to food and retail services across campus, as well as to the College Bookstore and the Student Financial Services office. The plexiglass is sourced from a local Middlebury vendor.
In past years, other enjoyable projects for Hall and members of his staff have included creating the wooden newspaper stands for weekly printed editions of The Campus. “It’s nice to give the guys a chance to be a little more creative, beyond the rote work,” Hall said about the variety of projects his staff has taken on in his 27-year tenure at the college.
The new outdoor seating has had a favorable impact for students and staff alike. Especially for first-years, the tent and chairs outside Battell have proven to comfortably accommodate group meals and weekend socializing. Near McCullough, the chairs have become a component of a pavilion-style setup, complete with fire pits and lights adorning the trees, adding to the spot’s charm.
Assistant Director of Student Activities Valerie Nettleton shared that the chairs have provided student organizations and programming staff alike with a venue for events to draw students outside of their dorms during the winter and spring months. “We needed a place for students to safely be with friends that’s not class, Zoom or their dorm rooms,” Nettleton said. “We focused on making the outdoors more accessible and more comfortable.”
Hall echoed Nettleton’s appreciation for the Adirondack chairs and other Covid-friendly additions to campus as they offer students spaces to gather outdoors. “This fall, I asked a few students why they came back,” Hall said. He was perplexed by many students’ decisions to return to a campus markedly different from past years. Yet the answers he received, which frequently cited a need to return to friends and to Vermont, brought the importance of his work to light. The Adirondack chairs, one of Middlebury’s finest accessories, have once again proven their importance during students’ time on campus.
“We’re a service organization – we’re here to serve the students first,” Hall said, and his staff’s service has certainly shown with the addition of more than forty much-appreciated chairs.
(11/07/19 11:02am)
Arizona PBS news anchor Vanessa Ruiz, who made national headlines in 2015 for her accented pronunciation of words in Spanish while serving as broadcast anchor, visited Middlebury this week to share her unique experience as a reporter. Ruiz gave a lecture, “Speak American: How A News Anchor Became the News,” on Monday, Nov. 4. She also visited with students interested in media and communications careers at the Center for Careers and Internships, and ate with a cohort of students and faculty members from the Luso-Hispanic Studies Department.
In her lecture, held in the Rohatyn Center for Global Affairs, Ruiz recounted her ascent to a nightly co-anchor position in the major television market of Phoenix. It was there that Ruiz faced racially-charged attacks for her on-air pronunciation of Spanish words, including the names of nearby towns, like “Mesa” and “Casa Grande.” The packed audience on a Monday afternoon included Spanish majors, professors and students interested in journalism.
Ruiz was born in Miami and raised in Colombia until the age of five. She entered the field of journalism in college in 2001, taking an internship with Telemundo, a global Spanish-language television network based in Miami. From there, Ruiz worked as a foreign correspondent in Nicaragua and Venezuela, where she covered Hugo Chavez’s last presidential election. She returned to the United States as a reporter for the local NBC news station in Los Angeles.
Ruiz noted that in each site with a large Hispanic population, she was able to speak in her native accent without question.
“Growing up and living in cities like Los Angeles and Miami, you really are in a bubble – a multicultural bubble,” she said.
It was only once Ruiz arrived at KPNX or 12 News, the local NBC affiliate in Phoenix, that she faced criticism for her pronunciation of certain words. After just one month on the job, local viewers hurled insults at Ruiz on Twitter. One user wrote, “I turn in to watch a newscaster, not a mariachi.” Another viewer suggested in the tweet that Ruiz be deported, adding, “She isn’t American she has no right to be here no matter how much some corporation paid for her.”
Ruiz was offered the chance, by her bosses and co-anchor, to respond on-air to the acerbic commentary about her. On live television, Ruiz offered a rebuke of her critics.
“Some of you have noticed that I pronounce a couple of things maybe a little differently than you’re used to,” Ruiz said. “I do like to pronounce certain things the way they are meant to be pronounced.”
Following her response, Ruiz received support from local and national political figures, including Phoenix-area State Senator Martin Quezada. Quezada tweeted that “our news is now more mature, culturally accepting and accurate. How is that a bad thing?” The New York Times and BuzzFeed picked up the story and ran articles on Ruiz’s response to the contention she received.
The Phoenix community was also grateful that Ruiz decided not just to respond to backlash, but to stay at the news station too: they thanked her for not leaving.
“What does that say about a community, when they have to tell you ‘thanks’ for not leaving?” She answered her own rhetorical question at the talk: “They had been feeling repressed, antagonized, attacked for so long.”
During her lecture, Ruiz attributed her desire to respond and her upstanding demeanor to the pride she has for her identity. Acknowledging the privilege she experiences as a “fair-skinned” Latina, Ruiz told students that she felt the need to stand up for Hispanics in the Phoenix area, a city whose population is roughly three-quarters white, according to Census data.
Ruiz now reports for the PBS NewsHour West, based out of Phoenix, as well as Arizona’s PBS station, which is owned by ASU. She is also a professor at ASU’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, where she directs their Borderlands program.
Ruiz says she tries to do news “the good way,” by aiming to diversify the newsroom and encourage more bilingual students in the classroom to follow their professional goals.
“I look at bilingualism as an asset, nothing less,” Ruiz said.
Attendee Lila Sternberg-Schur ’21.5 read about Ruiz in professor Brandon Baird’s Hispanic Linguistics class last year. “Having the opportunity to hear Vanessa talk about what she’d experienced in person really brought the story to life and made it more tangible,” she said.
In a hearty question-and-answer session at the end of Monday’s lecture, Ruiz answered questions about her identity and her experience in journalism.
At one point in the Q&A, Ruiz spoke about the role journalists play in 2019, and how to write with one’s identity in mind.
“I still believe that I’m not the news – I shouldn’t be the news. At the end of the day, facts are facts,” she said.
However, she said that having diverse journalists engaged in the newsroom is essential.
“It’s up to us to bridge those gaps, and bring people together who may come from different backgrounds, different perspectives, and different experiences,” she said. “It’s not an easy muscle to flex, because it takes courage to be that person always raising your hand. But if we don’t do it, who will?”
(10/10/19 10:03am)
Sweaty students, rejoice! ... For now.
Laundry machines on campus, which students previously had to pay to use, will remain free for the rest of the fall semester. Typically costing between $2.75 and $3.00 to wash and dry a load, the old laundry system required students to first purchase a $2.00 reusable laundry card.
According to Director of Business Services Matthew Curran, the third-party vendor that handles laundry transactions, CSC Laundry, has changed its control system, and the college is in the process of transitioning to the new program. Come J-Term, students will have to pay for laundry services with their student ID cards, he said.
Curran said that Business Services had intended to charge students for laundry this fall, but they encountered difficulties using the student IDs as a payment method.
“While going through this process, it was determined that the data needed to be on the ID cards to procure laundry services was more difficult to upload than originally thought,” Curran said.
Throughout the summer, CSC Laundry changed its charging system in laundry units across campus. The result was that select locations had washing machines and dryers running free of charge.
According to Torre Davy ’21, who was on campus over the summer, one washing machine and dryer duo in Meeker House was free, while other machines in the building required the usual pay-card method. Now, none of the machines in the building require any payment to function, as is the case across campus.
Many students rejoiced in learning that their first few loads of laundry this academic year would be free. Vanessa Young ’20 said she hopes to run more laundry loads before having to pay again.
“It’s amazing to have free laundry,” Young said. “I’ve split my load into two each time I’ve gone, but I would have previously shoved the same amount of laundry into one washer.”
For some, a free laundry system isn’t entirely new. Varsity athletes enjoy free laundry in the Athletic Center, but the services are limited to athletic clothing during their season. Young, who plays for the women’s basketball team, said the washer and dryer unit that runs athletic apparel often leaves her clothes damp and musty.
“We aren’t ungrateful for having laundry, but we end up having to spend money still by washing stuff in the dorms during the season,” she said.
Natalia Santiago ’23 hopes laundry will remain free beyond winter break. Santiago said she often has to run the dryer twice to completely dry her clothes, and her bedding requires an entirely separate cycle.
“Paying for laundry would be such a burden because these washers and dryers do not work to their maximum potential,” she said. “I don’t want to pay over three dollars on one round of laundry for it to be sub-par quality.”
Cost is not the only barrier to easy laundry access. Laundry rooms are scattered across campus, and not all residential buildings have machines. Notably, students living in Battell, the biggest first-year dorm, must trek to the expansive laundry complex in Forest Hall’s basement.
Students have also complained that the machines used to load money onto laundry cards are distant from many laundry rooms, and that the machines require cash to add more value onto the cards.
Curran ensured that any money on current laundry cards will be transferrable to students’ ID cards when the new system launches. Although the Business Services office has no official plan yet, Curran said they are anticipating students may be able to submit their current laundry cards and ID numbers for the College to add value on their behalf.
“Students should hold onto the old laundry cards for the time being,” he said.
(05/02/19 10:38am)
Every Monday this past April, the Middlebury men’s and women’s lacrosse teams have hosted local youth at lacrosse clinics. Guided by head women’s lacrosse coach Kate Livesay and her staff, student athletes on both teams have taught dozens of kids in the Panther Lacrosse Clinic.
Coach Livesay, who grew up in Middlebury, took over the program upon her return to Middlebury in 2014 after having spent time coaching at Trinity College. Livesay has partnered with the Town of Middlebury’s Parks and Recreation Department, locally known as the “Rec Park,” to promote the clinics. Both Middlebury and non-Middlebury residents from first through third grade are eligible to play, and the participation fee is donated to the Rec Park’s scholarship fund for low-income youth to participate in similar programming.
According to Livesay, the program hopes to foster a positive relationship between the local community and lacrosse, which, in Middlebury, begins as an organized sport in the third grade. “We really want it to be a positive experience and a great first exposure to lacrosse,” she said, adding that “lacrosse is a hard sport for little kids.”
Each week, a group of about six players from each college team has joined the aspiring young athletes inside Virtue Field House. The student participants vary weekly and all of their efforts are voluntary, but Livesay sees their roles as vital and is extremely grateful for their participation. “It’s really important that the kids have a college counterpart to look up to,” she said.
While Livesay secures the space and equipment, the players are the ones leading kids through passing and catching, dodging and shooting drills. “It is awesome to watch them grow and improve over the years, always with a smile on their face,” said captain Sara DiCenso ’19, who has coached the clinic during each of her four years with the program.
Describing varsity practice at the college as a challenging and tiring two hours, Livesay said the program helps to remind her athletes that “practice is fun and should be a learning process,” and provides her players with, “a nice time to have a little perspective on your own experience.” DiCenso agreed with Livesay, contending the program is refreshing and even relieves a bit of her team’s stress.
The Middlebury College baseball team has also hosted young athletes on Monday afternoons this April for a similar clinic. On the other end of the field house, inside the batting cages and across the indoor track, members of the team have pitched, batted and fielded balls with local kids.
The baseball team had hosted intermittent clinics in the past, but this spring they developed a weekly program with the Middlebury Area Little League, which provides a competitive youth baseball experience for families in Addison County.
Middlebury College Baseball Coach Mike Leonard echoed Livesay’s opinions on the role of the clinics in community building and program enhancement. “Our partnership with youth baseball in the area has been something I have worked hard to foster and I think it’s been a great program for both the youth players involved but also for the members of our team,” Leonard said. “The Middlebury College baseball players have done an outstanding job working with the youth players and have embraced their role as mentors as well as coaches.”
Patty Ross, the Athletic Department’s coordinator for student-athlete engagement, shared the praise Leonard had for his players. Ross works with the Center for Community Engagement to involve student-athletes in countless hours of community service programming, and described their dedication to volunteering both in and out of season.
Ross highlighted the breadth of stand-out efforts teams take in their community engagement, mentioning in particular all the teams’ continued dedication to hosting community suppers on Friday nights. On these teams’ given night, they are responsible for purchasing all the groceries, cooking and serving a free supper to local Middlebury residents. For many guests, community suppers are their one hot meal of the week.
By dedicating their time to bridging the college and town communities, these Middlebury teams and coaches are hoping to foster positive relationships between aspiring athletes and their sports — and to enhance their own as well.
(05/02/19 10:00am)
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Students overwhelmingly supported the statement that “it’s possible to do well academically without cheating at Middlebury.” Nearly nine in 10 respondents agreed to some degree with the prospect of succeeding without cheating. Still, over 35% of respondents also admitted to having broken the honor code, and 57% said they have never broken it.
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There was an overwhelming skew towards STEM-oriented classes when students identified their hardest class they have taken at Middlebury. Mathematics was most frequently listed as the hardest department students have taken a class in; the Computer Science, Political Science and Chemistry departments were also named by more than 10% of total respondents. Traditional humanities courses were less frequently perceived as difficult.
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The Zeitgeist survey also looked beyond students’ academic qualms and into issues they may face in the classroom. Students were asked how many times in any given week they feel they are unable to express their opinions. As a whole, roughly one in seven respondents reported feeling unable to speak freely more than three times in a given week; over half of respondents reported withholding their opinions one to three times a week.
Students who identified as social conservatives reported dramatic differences in their willingness to express opinions in class. 48% of social conservatives withhold their opinions four or more times during an average week, compared to 14.5% of the student body as a whole. Most saliently, 17% of social conservatives reported withholding their opinion more than 10 times a week, compared to a mere 2% of the overall population.
(05/02/19 10:00am)
The Campus’ inaugural Zeitgeist survey saw enthusiastic participation from the student body. 46.57% of actively-enrolled Middlebury College undergraduate students completed The Campus’ first-ever survey.
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The survey’s 1,202 respondents were divided roughly equally among classes. The junior class, including the classes of 2020 and 2020.5, had the fewest number of students represented in the survey, under 22%. This may be attributed to the high volume of students abroad.
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Over 70% of respondents identified as white. The next largest bloc of respondents, over 11% of the total, identified as Asian. 6.5% of respondents identified as Hispanic or Latinx, and around 3.5% of respondents identified as black; under 7% of respondents labeled themselves as biracial or multiracial.
A quarter of respondents identified themselves as lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer, or questioning (LGBTQ). Cisgender female students were almost twice as likely to identify as LGBTQ or questioning as cisgender male students.
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While some figures in the Zeitgeist survey sample size are relatively representative of the share of alike students in Middlebury’s entire population, a skew was present in terms of gender. Notably, more respondents were female than male. Short of 40% of respondents identified themselves as cisgender males when completing the survey, while about 58% of respondents identified as cisgender females. The remaining students either did not identify with either gender or chose not to respond to the question. In reality, the split between cisgender males and females at Middlebury is closer to 50% on both sides. This may introduce skew in our results.
Current demographic figures can be expected to change as the student body becomes more diverse. In a Campus article published in February, the Admissions Office reported a record number of applicants of color while reviewing applications for the Class of 2023. The numbers of first-generation students and students of color admitted have also been gradually rising, as has the share of students on need-based financial aid per year.
(04/11/19 10:30am)
The doctor is in, and she’s taking an innovative approach to patient care. Doctor Laura Weylman, MD, and Ania Mortier, NP, recently opened Green Mountain Primary Care on 102 Court St. near Middlebury Union High School. The duo of trail running companions left separate primary care practices in Addison County to form an alternative healthcare provider option of their own.
Weylman and Mortier employ their combined skill sets to provide patients with primary care, pain relief and treatments for chronic illnesses and ailments. “The basis of our practice is to keep our patient pool small and create a healthy, therapeutic relationship,” Mortier told The Campus in an interview.
The two have long wanted to team up, but each has danced across Addison County, working in offices the other hasn’t been in. Each had also been yearning for a more intimate connection with clients. The Court St. location has allowed them to finally realize their ambition of collaborating. Located just upstairs from the facility is the Pregnancy Resource Center of Addison County, a Crisis Pregnancy Center (CPC) that students have criticized for being a deceptive resource for pregnant women seeking abortions. CPCs aim to discourage women from obtaining abortions by providing information that is often medically inaccurate and influenced by religious bias.
“We’re not pro-life; we’re pro-choice. There’s no association there,” Mortier explained. “For us, it’s really important for people to understand there is no affiliation professionally.”
At long last, the Mortier and Weylman strategized to create a practice that encourages patient health, emphasizing routine visits and developing long-lasting and refreshing relationships between the professionals and their patients.
“Our goal has long been to work together because we’re very similar to each other in our passion, our practice style and our approach to patients,” said Mortier, adding, “We could never make it work [previously], but we really wanted to work together.”
Their patient base is capped at approximately 300 individuals. The clinic also features and home visits, an online communications portal and a 24/7 hotline, all of which augment the intimacy and accessibility of the practice.
“What is most important to me is my relationships with my patients -- they are like family,” Dr. Weylman wrote on the Green Mountain Primary Care website. “I want to care for them at the beginning of life, through life, and at the end of life.”
The comprehensive services offered by the small practice are a testament to the founders’ impressive knowledge in their fields; both of their resumes boast eye-opening credentials. Weylman has previously worked at primary care affiliates of Porter Medical Center. She received her doctorate degree from Dartmouth College and holds a master’s degree in education from Harvard University.
Mortier has similar work experience and received both her master’s degree in nursing and bachelor’s degree in nutrition from the University of Vermont. Mortier is also trained or certified in a plethora of modalities, including bodywork and massage therapy, cognitive behavioral therapy, integrative dry needling and nutrition counseling for chronic pain. She is currently working toward a certification to administer biofeedback treatment and Botox.
Green Mountain Primary Care offers patients three possible enrollment plans. Under the Health and Wellness plan, patients receive an annual hour-long comprehensive physical appointment. The physical includes routine and special screenings, disease prevention, health coaching, and ECGs and other situational tests. This plan can also address sexual and women’s health needs with Pap smears, STI testing and birth control prescriptions.
The Health and WellnessPLUS plan includes the same physical and its perks in addition to an integrative pain component, which consists of an initial pain consultation and subsequent monthly acupuncture, biofeedback, nutrition, bodywork or CBT sessions. Patients can also opt for the integrative pain package alone, dropping the physical appointment component.
Each plan brims with the promise of a strong patient-provider connection. Every Green Mountain Primary Care patient receives access to an online portal for scheduling and communication, as well as connection to Weyman and Mortier on a 24/7 hotline. The providers also promise to support patients with guaranteed next-day appointments and referrals to specialists.
The around-the-clock hotline is a testament to both the tight-knit relationship Weylman and Mortier are developing with patients and their dedication to the practice. Mortier described the relationship she has with her patients as predicated on understanding and respect. The nature of their small practice means she knows full well her patients’ health records and can be prepared to respond to them in times of health crises. Simultaneously, her patients are familiar with her background as a mother and avid trail runner.
“When people know you, they call you when they need you, and there’s a different awareness of the resource,” said Mortier. She has found that patients are far more understanding of her own limits as one half of a small primary care practice when she is able to kindle a relationship with them. She further posited that patients feel comfortable making appointments at times of health - not just for their physicals or when sick - to enhance their wellbeing.
All plans begin with a baseline monthly fee of $50 for private care; this is the entirety of the cost for the Health and Wellness plan. Working alongside a lawyer, the pair was able to comply with the law while also eliminating the burden insurance companies can pose towards continued, intimate care. The monthly fee must be paid out-of-pocket. Insurance companies, many of whom the practice is credentialed with, can then cover drop-in visits made by patients as well as emergency room visits.
For patients with robust insurance plans and generous co-pay rates, visits beyond the annual physical can abound, and they can lean into visiting their physician routinely to draft a healthy living plan for themselves. The direct-care approach also allows the practice to offer patients medications and lab tests at wholesale prices.
According to Mortier, this approach is sustainable, legal and “encourages a really healthy, therapeutic relationship.We don’t see seven other providers’ patients,” she said, “and they certainly don’t ask, ‘Who are you?’”
Mortier contends that their model will be successful because of the unique harmony between patient and provider, and between prevention and remediation. The practice has certainly seen early success. Mortier has had to curtail the amount of integrative pain patients she’s enrolling due to astronomical demand. A large amount of Green Mountain Primary Care’s current patient base has followed Weylman and Mortier from their previous practices, yet they are also quickly gaining attention from Middlebury locals. Their enthusiasm and desire to establish a positive connection with their patients is a welcome addition to the local medical landscape.
(12/01/17 6:26pm)
James O’Keefe’s descent onto Middlebury’s campus, by infiltrating our email system from his cryptic Gmail account and another account belonging to the purportedly-fake Preservation Society, is infuriating. His impending attempts to manipulate interviews of students’ passionate beliefs are a slap to our entire community’s face. For O’Keefe to state that free speech is under attack on campus is one farcical claim. For him to arrive in Middlebury, though, and propagate this is a wholly blasphemous idea. He and his ideas have no legitimacy or space at Middlebury.
James O’Keefe is not the model figure for integrity. Ironically, this is a critical pillar of free speech. When integrity is bypassed in speech for the selfish and wrongful means of pushing one’s dangerous beliefs on others, the boundary between free speech and unlawful speech has been crossed. Hate speech, by virtue of being aggravated, disorderly, and connected to criminal action, is not protected by the First Amendment. Neither are libel or slander.
O’Keefe was arrested for entering the federal offices of then Senator Mary Landrieu under a false name. He had hoped to push a narrative of Landrieu ignoring her constituents — again, with a fake identity. This seems like it may question his speech’s legitimacy; one could even say he intended to publish libelous content about the senator, as it was unfounded with his false identity. O’Keefe and his organization, Project Veritas, have not been wary of the worst glimpses of the spotlight. Most recently, they paid a woman to offer The Washington Post an entirely fake story about sexual assault by Roy Moore. The Post, through its strict adherence to the highest standards of journalistic integrity, didn’t fall for the bait.
It is disgusting that O’Keefe and his group could create a falsified narrative of otherwise very real accusations against a prominent figure in American politics. His accusations demean all women and the sexual abuse experiences some have faced. He perpetuates a power structure that illegitimizes the terrible experiences of sexual assault victims. His attacks on the credibility of an organization committed to sound journalism are further incendiary. Ironically, it seems that O’Keefe may be the one going after the free, legitimate speech of others by haranguing the Post’s sound, factual journalism with unfounded claims of liberal media bias.
Here at Middlebury, where O’Keefe challenges us, there is little doubt that we are soundly committed to every person’s First Amendment rights. Higher education fosters a culture of choice: a person can choose to take courses of his or her interests, choose to open his or her mind, and choose to speak his or her beliefs. Professor Erik Bleich gave a presentation on the line between free speech and hate speech. One group of faculty actively admitted their commitment to free speech. The Faculty for an Inclusive Community group seeks to qualify the speakers brought to campus by stopping the imposition of debasing ideas. This group has shown that Middlebury, as a private institution, has every right to deny groups and dangerous individuals a platform on campus. This power is to be used sparingly, only with the most inciteful of figures, as it should be. These individuals and groups leave no doubt that freedom of speech is an unalienable tenet of each student’s experience at Middlebury College.
Similarly, we students are indeed exercising our right to speak freely. We have had and will have every right to protest the promulgation of ideas we deem pernicious. When speakers come who challenge our very humanity — our being — we have the right to resist their tacitly wrong ideas. We should never engage in violence; nobody should. Nonetheless, we can commit to preventing dangerous and harmful ideas from entering our precious academic space through our right to freedom of speech. We know this is our right, as we are well-versed in free speech. It seems as though O’Keefe is lost in his hunt for an attack on free speech at Middlebury.
At a time when the Middlebury community is engaging in a very serious dialogue, O’Keefe’s entrance is demeaning to the conversations being had on campus. O’Keefe and his ideas promote the narrative that Middlebury has an identity crisis that it can’t reconcile. On the contrary, we are facing our communal identity and who we want to be on the daily. We are engaging in the difficult conversations that determine the culture of our community. We are actively speaking together and against one another. We have offered our peers this platform; it is just a matter of us listening in full to our community that is so bothersome.
To hearken back to the town hall held in Mead Chapel not long ago, there are serious, raw feelings on this campus. These are not about a freedom to speak one’s mind; they’re about the antithesis, the need for empathy on an apathetic campus. These conversations are built around people speaking their beliefs in tune with their cherished right to speak freely. We already have free speech. We are now trying to get the rest of this school to listen to us. There are no laws to make people listen. Rather, this change has to be internal and community-driven.
I only hope that the Middlebury community is willing to engage in listening to our own, rather than outsiders trying to manipulate our dearest feelings. O’Keefe makes a mockery of the students who fought Charles Murray’s presence and are still fighting omnipresent slaps to their dignity on campus, through institutional racism and serious, connected incidences of racism. He makes a mockery of the conservative students he claims to be the savior to, as well, by claiming their very real, vocalized beliefs on campus to be lesser than their liberal peers’.
Students have fled from the perception of being connected with O’Keefe. He and his cronies are adamantly trying to drum up illegitimate praise for his efforts. In a time of invigorating debate on campus, claims of free speech being exacerbated are simply untrue. I’ve heard enough of the tired argument about a lack of free speech on campus, and we’ve definitely heard enough of James O’Keefe — before his arrival in town. It is crystal-clear that there is no desire for a vile outsider to come with a false narrative and puncture our integrity.
You are not welcome here, Mr. O’Keefe. I will not stand for such a divisive person as you to enter the College’s academic sphere. If you find your own free speech to be under attack, it is because what you stand for is incendiary and malicious. You should know that I will not remain idle and watch you attempt to break apart this community for your warped propaganda. I would much rather listen to my peers than you, who seek to vilify us. The discussions we are having on campus, about race and identity, about ideas and credibility, are happening because students and faculty alike are coming forward and using their free voices. Don’t get this twisted.
I say this because I am not out of line of my First Amendment rights. I say this after reading fact upon fact about you, and then making a founded argument based on these facts. I say this in The Campus because I am offered a platform by a private group to publish my opinions. I say this proudly because I stand by my own commitment to allowing others to speak, so long as they are not committing libel or slander or inciting hateful acts. I say this proudly because I can protest such harmful individuals and their speech if I so choose. I say this proudly because I can speak freely at Middlebury College.
Zeke Hodkin is a student the class of 2021.