I love to be alone. There is something so valuable about solitude, something so unique and singular, that I make a point to find it wherever I can. If I can find time to be alone, then that day is a success. Eating lunch by myself is the very least of the ways I can find solitude. I walk into town by ...
Automatic Problematic This professor’s eyeballs are about to pop out of her head in front of this surly discussion section. She wants you to find what is problematic. Oh honey! What isn’t!? Moby Dick is problematic. The Help is problematic. Jezebel should be more problematic. Your ...
What does $60,000 mean to you? Perhaps a couple new cars, a good chunk of a house, an annual salary in tech or finance for a recent grad or the rounded comprehensive fee at Middlebury College. In 2009, colleges like Middlebury were cresting the $50,000 mark; now five years later, we are approaching ...
I have to admit that when I received my tuition bill I felt guilty. With my parents nearing retirement age, suddenly they have to put me and my twin brother through college. It was not just the price of college I felt guilty about, however. It was the price of Middlebury — my brother’s tuition bill ...
It seems each week there is a new article in the Campus that has dangerous implications. These articles are the mouthpiece of hegemonic ideology — dominant discourse — that challenge the legitimacy of marginalized groups’ liberation movements. It is impossible to respond to each prejudice, though ...
This past Sunday, a New York Times opinion piece entitled “Global Warming? Not Always” made the claim that “the scientific evidence does not support an argument that human-induced climate change has played any appreciable role in the current California drought.” To support his argument, NOAA ...
I don’t know how many months I spent at Middlebury before more than just a few people knew that I hunted. It wasn’t that I was expecting a negative response to my hobby — it was just that no one on campus ever talked about hunting. No one discussed their plans to head to the woods for the ...
Whether it was in the panini line at Proctor, in the midst of conquering a snow mound, or inaudibly over the loud base of Atwater, I have tried to approach every new face with an open mind and faith that the kind act will be reciprocated. Like blinking, introducing yourself to new people is a natural ...
With pricey tutors who teach you to game the system and a strong correlation between income and higher scores (average score rises with every $20,000 of additional family income), the SAT is flawed, and its prestige is falling as the ACT and other options rise in popularity. This week, the College ...
I’m sorry, I totally spaced out can you say that again? Something about your dying pet? Someone is having a birthday party? I wasn’t listening. What do you think the back of my head looks like to that boy by the soda machine? I don’t think I can make it, but have fun! Why? Well. ...
Last week, our fellow editor Edward O’Brien ’17 wrote an interesting Notes from the Desk calling out a group of straight Middlebury guys who verbally berated men who tried to dance with them at a Q&A (Queers and Allies) party, telling them to “fuck off.” We were talking about that situation ...
Within minutes of Jared Leto taking the stage to accept the award for Best Supporting Actor at this year’s Oscars, there was a predictable, yet no less inane, post on my newsfeed in protest of his win. It was a link to an article titled, “10 Actors Who Could Have Played Jared Leto’s Role in ‘Dallas ...
We need to change the way we interact with each other. Words are disconnected from speech, and the subsequent loss of emotion, rationality, and intent that comes with them has harmed all of our relationships. But everyone has heard the prophecies of the end of all meaningful interaction, how society ...
I had the unique opportunity of speaking at The Moth this past Thursday (the Moth, for those of you who don’t know, is a live story telling event held in the Gamut Room). The experience proved to be extraordinarily fun and exciting, yet I realized something as I stood up there recounting my tale. ...
What do you want to do when you graduate? Although I only have a year left, that question is quickly joining the list of things strangers ask you when you’ve just met them and they have nothing left to say. The answer is that I have no idea. When I think about how much I have changed every year since ...
You cannot use the word “faggot” and not mean it offensively. You cannot say “no homo” around your friends and say it doesn’t matter because none of you are gay. You cannot claim that because “some of your best friends are gay,” that you are an ally. Last Tuesday, Queers & Allies and ...
On February 12th, Max Kagan ’14 wrote an op-ed in The Campus entitled “Just Call AAL Other” in response to a recent student-led campaign that seeks to modify the current Cultures and Civilizations requirement. The current system requires students to take one class with a large focus on each of ...
Last week, the Campus updated us on Middlebury’s plan to become carbon neutral by 2016. The degree of precision found in this initiative is incredible. To cite but one example, Middlebury collects data on where each and every woodchip burned in our biomass plant is harvested and milled. This seems ...
The discipline of political science has come quite a long way since Aristotle’s Politics, arguably the classic work in the study of politics, which asked and answered questions about our nature as political animals. Whereas Aristotle’s methods in that book were primarily observational and logical, ...
If I were to try to describe it, I would root my answer in dichotomies: overwhelming yet exhilarating, unknown yet expected, intimidating yet motivating, and most importantly fearful yet rewarding. No, I am not talking about skydiving or meeting Will Ferrell, but rather the trials and tribulations, ...