He didn’t want to tell us the story, but he did. The man at the dinner table this summer had dug up the bodies of murdered Kurds in the early nineties. He had recovered samples in order to help prove that Saddam’s regime had been responsible for using Sarin against defenseless citizens. He was then ...
What is this “divestment”? To those of you new to Middlebury or just returning from abroad, I wish to say welcome and keep an eye out for us. The issue of divestment from fossil fuels and arms manufacturing has been a hot topic for the past year, and it will continue to be. Let me get you up ...
The Campus has two contracts to uphold this year. A contract with you, the reader, and a contract to pursue the truth at all costs. We don’t write for Old Chapel. We don’t write for the Board of Trustees. We write for you, the Middlebury student. This year, we have made slight changes to try and ...
Student newspapers, especially at a place like Middlebury, face many challenges when it comes to our coverage of difficult stories. We exist within a small, transitory and tight-knit community. Middlebury College is a unique space to try and report the news, where the subjects of each story come into ...
This piece is in response to Michelle Smoler’s '13 “A Signed Professor Evaluation.” The professor to whom she refers advised our senior theses as well, but our experiences were so different that we felt compelled to respond to her evaluation. At the beginning of the academic year, our adviser ...
As Middlebury faculty and staff, we hope our trustees will commit to fossil-fuel divestment and a new kind of investment, investment that yields high returns and embodies the promise of this challenging age. Health technologies designed to perform miracles; clean-energy electricity for the world’s ...
This weekend, the Middlebury College board of trustees may decide whether or not to divest our endowment of holdings in fossil fuels and arms manufacturing. This community has engaged in conversations about divestment since September. Questions have been raised about the potential financial impact ...
Student government at Middlebury is currently based on the principle of representative government; we elect a handful of senators with whom we entrust our decision-making power. Beyond voting every spring, the average Middlebury student does not participate at all in the process of student government. ...
I’ve been writing this column for the whole of this school year. During that entire time there has been one conflict of major international importance which somehow has never been quite topical enough for me to discuss in depth. I refer, of course, to the civil conflict in the Syrian Arab Republic. ...
May 2012, I was elected to be a new Middlebury Open Queer Alliance (MOQA) President, or “President of the gays” as one of my exchange friends used to call me in her strong Russian accent. It was a very random decision of mine and I accepted the role with a lot of excitement; over the summer I designed ...
Our chosen school is pretty big on tradition. Every year, graduating Febs ski down the Snow Bowl in their gowns. Every year, when springtime hits full bloom the Adirondack chairs come out. Every year, the homecoming football game tailgate blows up, DKE throws a righteous party and everybody wins. But ...
News of the new Vermont Gas pipeline and the College’s announced endorsement of the project has created quite the stir among the community – and rightfully so. For a quick summary of the debate, see the dialogue that has taken shape between Zach Drennen‘13.5 and Cailey Cron‘13.5 and Anna Shireman-Grabowski‘15.5 ...
This week, President of the College Ronald D. Liebowitz released a statement reiterating the College’s support for the Vermont Gas pipeline. This comes in the face of motivated and organized student and community opposition that has made its presence well known over the last few weeks. This decision ...
Professors have a unique and important place in a student’s life. We should never underestimate the deep and at times life-long impact of the student-teacher relationship. Yet although the role of professors exists both in the classroom and in an advisory capacity, it seems that many are unaware of ...
Each academic year at Middlebury is slightly different from the previous one. While the College could not run without the hard work of faculty, staff and administrators, it is the student body that ultimately sets the agenda and tone for each year. In other words, students define Middlebury. At liberal ...
On April 17, after America’s 113th Congress rejected a series of proposed gun-control measures, Barack Obama asked a teary-eyed, red faced crowd in the White House’s Rose Garden, “how can something have 90 percent support and yet not happen?” Americans have debated the answer endlessly. The ...
Recently, an independent fact-finding mission of the United Nations (UN) presented a report about the Israeli settlement policy. The report confirms what was assumed for a while: the settlement project cannot be differentiated from the Apartheid system that was once applied in South Africa. The assignment ...
In his recent op-ed about abortion, Kenneth Burchfiel ’13 claims to “support life.” He equates abortion with the Nazi genocide of Jews and other non-Aryan groups and he implies, with an infantile reference to Disney movies, that those who are involved in providing abortions and those who choose ...
Last week’s op-ed by Kenneth Burchfiel ’13 regarding abortion has (unsurprisingly) already been met with vitriolic attacks on the Campus website, and will no doubt be the subject of even more criticism in this week’s issue. As someone who cares deeply about the issue, I’m glad Kenneth was willing ...
This op-ed goes out to everyone who is thinking about writing an opinion piece in a published medium that circles in a community (ie. newspapers, magazine, other public media). Think before you write. Sharing your opinions and thoughts on a certain topic is necessary to varying degrees. It helps the ...