Skip to Content, Navigation, or Footer.
Logo of The Middlebury Campus
Monday, Dec 8, 2025

Opinion


The Setonian

Letter to the Editor: George Altshuler '10.5

Dear Campus, I want to compliment Melissa Hirsch on her 9/30/10 Op-Ed “Truth in Biases.” Her piece was an entertaining read and I think she makes important points. Specifically, I agree that biases are almost everywhere. There are biases in the recent decisions of the Texas Board of Education and ...


The Setonian

An ode to yum brands

Some days here at Middlebury just seem too perfect. The autumn air is crisp, but not too cool, professors cancel class and homework assignments and maybe you even sneak a glimpse of your Proctor crush giving you the once-over from across the salad bar. Yet every golden sunset at the end of every sublime ...


The Setonian

A Presidential News Feed

One of the best things about this week was the opening of the movie The Social Network. I have not seen this movie, but I am assured of its brilliance because it was written by Aaron Sorkin, who wrote the many speeches of President Jed Bartlett, rated fifth best president by a survey of prominent political ...


The Setonian

The demands of an environmental reality - Andrew Conner '11

The recent column entitled “CEOs, hip-hop dancers and biofuel farmers” presents a compelling argument for why the environmental movement needs to be more inclusive so that it can fulfill its vision of reshaping society in an effort to save the planet. Let’s see if we can make this dream a reality. First, ...


The Setonian

Dancing with the stars

Great leaders are all judged by history. Centuries of human history are often boiled down to a list of those who have defied expectation: Pericles, Augustus, Queen Elizabeth, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Winston Churchill, Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela, to name just a few. But these are not ...


The Setonian

Editorial

For those of you blissfully unaware of the drop in temperature, the hike in workload or our past editorial alerting you to both of these trends — we have officially hit the month mark. While, for many of us, this will continue to be a shock to the system for the next couple of weeks, the wheels of ...


The Setonian

The customer’s always right, right?

In 1999, a Los Angeles court issued subpoenas to 17 U.S firms — including Wal-Mart, Tommy Hilfiger, The Gap, and Sears — seeking more than one billion dollars in damages over garments supposedly manufactured in sweatshops in the Mariana Islands. In 2005, the state of Illinois passed legislation ...


The Setonian

The consequences of kindness - Phillip Ziff '10.5

As you may have already heard, a Rutgers freshman, Tyler Clementi, leapt to his death off of the George Washington Bridge on September 22th. He was 18 years old and bullied for being gay. Dharun Ravi and Molly Wei are being charged with invasion of privacy after streaming video footage of Tyler having ...


The Setonian

Editorial

Last Wednesday, President of the College Ronald D. Liebowitz delivered his annual State of the College address, taking the opportunity to outline the current financial status of the College. He did so to a crowd comprised almost entirely of faculty and staff, despite his invitation to the entire College ...


The Setonian

The universe according to John

The more I learn, the more I learn that I have learned very little. Bertrand Russell said of this inverse relationship: “those who feel certainty are stupid, and those with any imagination and understanding are filled with doubt and indecision.” I like to use this quote. It lends credence to my ...


The Setonian

Two More Years!

Bill Clinton made an appearance on the Daily Show two weeks ago, and he made the first strong case I’ve heard in a while — from a Democrat — for keeping his party in power after November: 18 months have passed since President Obama took the White House with the tough task of repairing the damage ...


The Setonian

Truth in biases

An article in the New York Times last week described yet another issue that the Texas Board of Education took with their history textbooks.  The board accused that the new books assert a “pro-Islamic bias” and an anti-Christian agenda, and members worry about the influence such heretical material ...


The Setonian

A conversation with yourself

My second to last third Monday of a Middlebury semester began much like most of its predecessors: with a delirious 7:15 a.m. breakfast. Damn chemistry classes. Anyway, I was having a blast pacing back and forth in front of the Ross drink station trying to decide whether I wanted skim or two percent ...


The Setonian

Liebowitz’s Army

The highlight of this week was undoubtedly the rhetorical season-opener given by President of the College Ronald D. Liebowitz in Mead Chapel on Wednesday. Unfortunately, since The Campus goes to press on Tuesdays, I have yet to hear the heart-wrenching oratory of our great leader. The options for obtaining ...


The Setonian

9 p.m. do you know where your food is?

Dear Campus, I rarely get homesick. However, if there’s one instance when I really miss Mommy it’s when I’ve got the flu. If there are two instances when I really miss Mommy they are when I’ve got the flu and when I’m really, really hungry. Last night I was perfectly healthy, but boy did ...


The Setonian

CEOs, hip-hop dancers and biofuel farmers

When stripped of passions, ideologies and embellishments, environmentalism is fundamentally concerned with one fairly basic concept: limits. Whether it takes the form of slowing consumption of finite fossil fuel resources, achieving ideal population size or maintaining the range of planetary conditions ...


The Setonian

Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble

Since the day when the Mayflower first docked in Plymouth Harbor, the United States (as it came to be known) has always been thought of as the land of opportunity. For John Winthrop and his fellow Puritans, it was a city on the hill; a beacon for mankind. For the framers of our government, it was a ...


The Setonian

Editorial: Ephemeral autumn

It is easy to forget about the doldrums of January and the blistering cold of February during the mild days of September, but they will come. Despite the ominous tone, this statement regarding the advent of winter is meant to be inspiring rather than debilitating. The only problem with Vermont autumns ...


The Setonian

The new house on the block

I live in the newly renovated Munford House a.k.a. “Young Munny” a.k.a. “Beta Gamma Omichron” (BΓO). The numerous nicknames we’ve invented for our beloved house, as well as the fact that we made shirts celebrating Munford at the end of last year, provide a sense of how excited everyone is ...