It goes without saying that “Black Lives Matter” has become a household term. The founders of the movement, however — Patrisse Cullors among them — are much less widely known. When I received a promotional email from the Middlebury College Activities Board (MCAB) that Cullors would be giving ...
The Editorial Board of The Campus is proud and excited to endorse Raymond Diaz ’23 for Student Government Association (SGA) president for the 2022–23 academic year. Diaz, who plans to appoint Evelyn Magdaleno ’24 as his vice president, boasts an impressive background of campus leadership positions ...
This op-ed was originally sent as a letter to Dean of Students Derek Doucet and Assistant Director of Student Activities for Student Leadership and Development Erin Morrison. It has been lightly edited for brevity and clarity.
With luck, as a community we’re moving to an ‘endemic’ phase of Covid-19. As a community though, it’s time again to recognize the many endemic problems staff face at our institution, and talk about taking one or two off the plate before we add another.
My idea is simple. Wear who you are on your sleeve. Think about a label that has always defined you. Cross it out. Be you.
Since coming back from spring break, a lot of my conversations with friends and acquaintances have revealed new interests and values about people I either know well or have been getting to know. Hearing about museums people have gone to, trips they’ve gone on, and ways they’ve spent their time at ...
I will never forget the face of my Moroccan teacher when I entered his class and said to him, ‘Ya‘tik al-‘afiya.’ This expression is a key for everyone who visits the Levant, the Arab Gulf, and Egypt — we use it in all contexts for literally everything.
With the end of Middlebury’s indoor mask mandate came a return to pervasive individualism — in most places if you want to wear a mask, you do, and if you don’t, you don’t. The college administration is no longer the primary regulator of Covid-19 guidelines. Beyond required masking in classrooms ...
Tuition increases are not new or unexpected. However, we ask that this price tag be accompanied by comprehensive, accessible information regarding exactly how this money will be used. If Middlebury expects students to pay more, it makes sense that we as students can expect to know where our money is ...
After more than six months for me at Middlebury, I miss many things in Jordan. When I say Jordan, I mean the Arab countries in general, which share many customs and habits. I decided to turn this longing for home into a door through which I might open the opportunity to pass on a part of my culture ...
Middlebury's (and America’s) rapid and genuine humanitarian response to Putin’s aggression is admirable — and incomparable, in relation to other crises outside of Europe. It’s worth thinking about.
Middlebury College has existed on unceded Abenaki lands for the past 222 years. Following recent conversations about decolonizing curricula and the renaming of the Middlebury Chapel, there arises the question of land repatriation. Upon recognizing the moral imperative of repatriation, the question becomes ...
I’m excited to extend the platform of The Campus as a physical and digital space for other historically marginalized members of the Middlebury community to share their experiences.
Two weeks ago, in our second staff issue, we editorialized on the apparent disconnect between staff and students, calling upon the latter to use their status as patrons of this institution to rally on behalf of those making barely livable wages. On Thursday, our community woke up to multiple instances ...
Dear Class of 2021.5, Middlebury has taught me a lot. After attending this elite liberal arts academic institution for eight semesters over four and a half years, I sure hope I’m smarter than when I started, and that you are all, too.
For almost two years, we’ve lived in this gray area of cultivating a community without physically being together. As a result, many of us have forgotten about a core value of community: commitment.
When we left our little apartment—located in a beautiful corner of Polytechnic University in Kabul—to the airport, my little sister wrote, “As I write, I miss our beautiful home. I miss the tableau on the wall, the decorated candles, the clock, and all those Eid days and Yalda nights that will ...
You might think Orientalism was buried long ago, but these neo-Orientalist perspectives are not unique to Middlebury. Organizations of power still systemically infect all aspects of Arabic language instruction in higher education.
In the past two years, we’ve gone through a period of both collective, mass-scale loss but also individual experiences of grief. Yes, we’re “all in this together” — but we’ve also all encountered vastly different versions of the pandemic, from the initial quarantine to the return to school ...
In January 2019, we published our first staff issue. It detailed the impact of workforce planning — a concerted administrative effort to reduce employee compensation costs by 10% — on the staff of the college. Three years (and one global pandemic) later, we again find ourselves inamidst a critical ...