As the sun begins to set ever earlier in the afternoon, and the bitter chill creeps into students’ dorm rooms, the reality of winter in Vermont slowly but surely sets in across campus. These last two weeks of the fall semester and the looming reality of J-Term represent significant changes to student ...
When people ask, “What do you do on campus?” it is most often asked with good intentions. I absolutely hate this question. Over my time at Middlebury, I have crafted a decent elevator pitch for when I come across this awkward moment in conversation. I say something to the tune of “Oh, I ...
In the spring of 2017, Charles Murray, a political scientist known for his controversial work “The Bell Curve” was invited by the American Enterprise Institute Club to speak at Middlebury College. His presence sparked student protests that not only disrupted his speech but also escalated to violence ...
“Hello, you’ve reached the MiddSafe hotline. How can I help you today?” Power-based personal violence is not just individual occurrences, but structural, community-level problems that require collective actions to remedy. Violence continues to occur at Middlebury College and has pervasive impacts ...
As I approach the end of my final fall semester at Middlebury, I have found myself grappling with the realization that, forgoing any eleventh-hour surprises, I will likely graduate without experiencing a romantic college relationship. That fact has forced me to admit that over the past couple of weeks, ...
We are a group of 30 Jewish Middlebury students following in the footsteps of Brown University Jews for Ceasefire Now and many other Jewish students at schools such as Yale, Harvard, Columbia and Vanderbilt across the country who have rallied around important demands for justice and peace in Palestine ...
Ivan Valerio ’26 passed away last Tuesday. Evelyn Mae Sorensen ’25 passed away in mid-September. Yan Zhou ’23 passed away of apparent suicide on Oct. 20, 2021. After three deaths in two years, student death on campus is beginning to feel like a normal part of life at Middlebury. While ...
As I hustled along South Street, dripping with September sweat after underestimating both the heat and the distance to Middlebury’s Ralph Myhre Golf Course, I regretted enrolling for Beginning Golf this fall. Although exacerbated by the blazing sun that day, this has largely been my long-standing ...
The other day I was sitting next to a classmate. Together, we were reading their typed document when I couldn’t help but notice their preposterous font choice: Calibri. When I pointed this out, they sang its praises, describing how much they loved the sans-serif font with its minimalist nature and ...
Middlebury seems to be an institution that values justice. We certainly talk about it constantly, so if one can infer importance from repetition, we do value it. Climate Justice, Reproductive Justice, Housing Justice, Environmental Justice. But to be able to have productive discussions about those topics, ...
SPECS Panther is back and better than ever, this time honing in on a column about pop culture. Media portrayal of sex, sexuality and sexual health for teenagers is essential to normalize what can sometimes be embarrassing or seemingly silly conversations. An emphasis on visibility of sex-positivity ...
At Harvard University, the administration and student groups have been engulfed in controversy and doxxing after issuing statements on the Israel-Palestine conflict. At Dartmouth College, two students were recently arrested for camping out to protest the school’s approach to the war. And at Columbia ...
Throughout one’s experience at college, there are many opportunities to choose to engage — or not to engage — in sexual relationships. Different students across campus have widely varying backgrounds in sexual health education, and misinformation might be encountered along the way. SPECS strives ...
I tried hard to write my Common App on race. It seemed like the smart choice. Early in my college admissions process, I had gotten the sense from educators and peers that my biraciality was the only aspect of my personality that distinguished me from the hundreds of other straight-A private school ...
Taylor Swift is my role model. Now, I know what you’re thinking. Is a pop star with 46 Grammy nominations (including 12 wins) and an estimated net worth of over $1 billion really an appropriate role model for a graduating English major in rural Vermont? But let me explain.
With the Board of Trustees on campus and meeting throughout this week to discuss institutional priorities and planned spending, we want to take advantage of this opportunity to directly address the people who have a major role in deciding how the funds raised by “For Every Future: The Campaign for ...
Middlebury has a campus problem. While the majority of people might not notice some of the flaws with our campus, I believe that the physical layout of our sidewalks presents a logistical nightmare for lawn maintenance. By no means am I saying that the grounds crew that works day-in and day-out to pick ...
I hang no pictures in my room, only uninterpretable Ernst and Bosch paintings. I keep the postcards Vlera has gifted me in a shoe box, along with Christmas cards from my mother and a silver gelatin print of my two best friends, Atticus and Dylan. If someone were to ask me to describe my Middlebury experience, ...
I’ve only had one full year on Middlebury’s campus, and I am a senior. Let me elaborate. I started at Middlebury in the fall of 2019 and was only there until we all got sent home for Covid-19 in March 2020. The following year, I decided it would be best for me not to enroll for the spring semester ...
I have found myself as a president of a club I never attended, on a subject in which I am not well-versed. For me, meditation is an aspiration, not something one can achieve. It is a method by which people search for inner peace and connection to the world around them. Meditation is, simply, a thought ...