“After living in a big city and growing so much, it’s hard to shrink back down to fit into Middlebury to adjust back to all this stuff,” a friend who had recently returned from a semester-abroad-in-a-major-European-cultural-and-historical-urban-environment said to me in an Atwater stairwell on ...
Last week’s op-ed, “A Call for a More Inclusive Movement,” attempted to show how white privileged men are excluded from feminist and other activist discourses on campus. It is important that all members of our college community, including those who are viewed as vehicles of oppression, feel welcomed ...
My last column talked about divestment — how I believe that it has powerful symbolic value but that it must not be used as a substitute for personal or community-level changes that would directly reduce the amount of carbon emissions for which we are responsible. Although I appreciate Hannah Bristol ...
Last Friday, President Obama began the gradual enactment of the long-dreaded “sequester,” a series of budget cuts that will cut funding from nearly every American government agency. Nearly everyone seems certain that in failing to avoid this “last resort,” bipartisanship has yet again proved ...
After Nathan Weil’s piece, “A Call for a More Inclusive Movement,” came out in last week’s issue of the Campus, I heard responses that generally fell into one of two camps. The first sort praised Nathan’s article for finally giving voice to a long harbored but scantly spoken sentiment. These ...
I write to address two points raised in your article “Abroad Programs Raise Concerns” printed Feb. 28, 2013. First, it is important to note that Ms. Stewart’s complaints were not unfounded, and I apologized to her in December on behalf of the C.V. Starr Middlebury Schools Abroad for the difficulties ...
“Did you see what he did last night?” “I know, what was he thinking?” “Did he think she would get with him for doing that?” What did he do? He walked her home. “Huh?” was my only response to overhearing this one Sunday morning. It may have bothered me less if it wasn’t me they ...
This Saturday, Middlebury is hosting probably the coolest event of the year. Not Middlebury running of the bulls. Not Middlebury cheese-tossing. Not Middlebury cage matches (if only). Not Bill Clinton coming to speak, or Michael Jordan or Lance Armstrong (too soon?). Middlebury will have speakers, but ...
This op-ed was written in response to Ryan Kim’s winning TEDx talkat the Nov. 8 student speaker competition. Kim will speak at this Saturday’s TEDx event. Ryan, I’m glad that you had an amazing summer experience — traveling the country by rail. There is so much to learn in this nation and I ...
I have grown to appreciate and accept Middlebury as the college that I attend. Daily we engage in dialogue surrounding identity. But many of these discussions are empty, one-dimensional and do not engage concepts of intersectionalities and larger societal structures that may influence one’s identity. ...
At 5:15 p.m. on Sunday, March 3, I walked into Ross Dining Hall to grab an early dinner. The line was already relatively long, and as I waited, several guys lined up after me. They were all wearing hats, and some of them were wearing sport coats and dress pants. Their conversation soon caught my attention, ...
On Feb. 10, “The Map Project” went up in Davis Library. The project documented locations where students had experienced sexual assault at Middlebury. And if there was one lesson from this map, it was that sexual assault occurs everywhere at Middlebury. With the exclusion of one residential building, ...
“It’s getting hot in here so take off all your clothes.” The above lyric is not only a line from rapper Nelly’s hit song “Hot in Herre,” but it also seems to be the Midd Kid’s anthem once the weather starts to warm up. Last Thursday, I noticed that it was unusually warm. My body had become ...
While I agree with Zach Drennen ’13.5 in his column “Divestment: No Excuse for Inaction” that divestment does not go far enough, his argument undersells the fight that the environmental movement will face in attempting to achieve his outlined solutions. Divestment is not the single solution to ...
In my opinion, people tend to feel one of two ways about summer. They are either anticipating the break from the routine of the academic year, eager for a change of scene and schedule, or they are anxious at the thought of being away from campus and separating from the community and resources that are ...
Learning to navigate a new community is a daunting task. For seasoned Midd kids, we forget that we were all once fresh faces on campus. We confused AXT with AXN (go/map), worried about how to maximize the ingredients in Proctor for a delicious creation and tested out study spots around campus before ...
I love Middlebury, but, despite all its beauty and opportunity, I am constantly disappointed in the culture of debate on campus. Daily, we engage in identity politics, doing nothing to further the conversation surrounding issues of importance like race or gender-based discrimination. Instead, through ...
If anything can be said of President Obama’s recent State of the Union address, it may be that it left environmentally-minded individuals with more questions than answers. The president wasted little time out of the gates bringing up energy issues (Politico has his first mention of renewable energy ...
The job hunt. I have begun to wonder if the anxiety that surrounds finding a job is less about being employed and more about our egos. Selling ourselves to employers may require as much boasting and resume-padding as we can muster without giving ourselves away, but its not illogical assume that as we ...
When I was a senior in high school and deciding where I wanted to go to school, most of my extended family expected me to go to a Division I school where I could experience the culture of big-time college sports. I didn’t know then that I would come to love Division III athletics, but choosing to ...