A few weeks ago, I had a wonderful back and forth with a student and it came to both of us that perhaps the e-mail should be put in the paper. It asks a simple question but it is laced with tongue in cheek humor. I took that lead and gave more back. In the answers and fun, there is truth to how the ...
We are losing the fight with carbon usage. Since the summer of 2009, climate and energy legislation has gone from passing the House of Representatives with bipartisan support to worse than dead on arrival in the Senate. Climate change has evolved — according to President Obama — from an “epochal ...
Musical Chairs is an incredibly stressful game. I have few fond memories of this birthday party favorite. As I recall, manic kiddie music was featured prominently. Perhaps when we were a bit older and I was a bit luckier, we’d get to take a stroll around to Aaron Carter’s “Dream Street.” This ...
The uprisings in Egypt, along with similar demonstrations in Tunisia, Jordan and Yemen, have shaken the sociopolitical status quo in the Middle East. These revolts are, ostensibly, calls for reform and change in certain ‘corrupt’ governments; but the protests often become violent in nature. The ...
Jon Isham is an associate professor of economics This Winter Term, 21 students and I have learned a lot about social entrepreneurship. First, the idea is not new. For three decades, leading champions of social change have promoted social entrepreneurship. Bill Drayton founded the Ashoka Foundation ...
To The Campus, According to the New York Times, more than 400 universities and colleges worldwide offer individual courses, certificates and undergraduate or graduate degrees in peace studies. We believe that now is the time for Middlebury to join the ranks of schools dedicated to the cultivation of ...
To The Campus, They say that home is where the heart is. So, when I was preparing to come to college last year as an awkward first-year from Dallas, Texas, I was concerned about how I was going to make this new, scary, cold place called Middlebury College my home. My parents told me that it would be ...
To The Campus, You start your day with a cup of hot coffee. You grab a banana in the dining hall for a snack after class. You go to the lab to print out your most recent assignment. We establish a routine that dictates a rhythm in our day, but seldom do we stop to consider where all of these things ...
Seventy-six days ago, across the Unites State of America, contentious election after contentious election took place. At the end of the night, the Republican Party had taken back the house with a staggering sixty-three seat majority. The Democrats were narrowly left in control of the senate with only ...
The 24-Hour Play Festival, which began at 8:00 on Saturday and ended with performances at 8:00 and 10:00 on Sunday, was a definite highlight of this week. Full disclosure: I acted in the festival, playing an unemployed and promiscuous Princess Belle. It was mad fun, and I got to say, “I did it with ...
Dean of the College Shirley Collado’s Plates and Privilege article greatly bothers me. She distorts an issue of collective inefficiency into an opportunity to mount a self-serving moral crusade. Her argument is the same one that I’ve encountered many times, in one outfit or another: “If you’re ...
I am not going to write about what happened in Tucson two weeks ago. Obviously the events are tragic — although we can take a small measure of hope from the survival of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) — and enough has been said about the shooter. Nor am I going to try and lay this at ...
My basement at home has two sides: one is a finished section with a big television, computer desk and ping-pong table. A door leads to the other side, which is unfinished, poorly lit and filled with old paint cans and a tool bench. I usually spend my time in the former, but over Winter Break, I started ...
Grades: they are the universally recognized symbols of our knowledge, skill and effort; they give us a platform on which to stand and proclaim our proficiency; they provide us something to work toward and something to complain about; they give colleges and employers standards by which diverse candidates ...
To the Campus, In November 2009, a group of students and college employees asked a simple question: What if campus activists and experts interested in gender, sexuality, race, disability, ethnicity, class and nationality could have a permanent voice in Middlebury’s policymaking process — much like ...
The spoken word event last Thursday, Night Kite Revival, was phenomenal. Listening to Taylor Mali turn Microsoft Word into spoken music was inspiring, and when I walked out of McCullough there were so many things I suddenly had to accomplish. I wanted to write five poems, change the life of an impressionable ...
The subject of this month’s column is misinterpretation facilitated by technology. Now, I’m sure you all have saved every one of my past columns and reread them every night before bed, so I’m sure you’re thinking: “Ben you repetitive hack! You talked about Facebook and other forms of electronic ...
In 2004, UPS decided to stop making left turns. With a tweaked GPS system, they eliminated all left turns from the routes that their 95,000 delivery trucks would take — except for those absolutely necessary to avoiding ridiculously circuitous journeys. By eliminating the need to idle at red lights ...
Multitasking plays the dual role of virtue and vice. While some list it under the skills section on their resumés, others condemn its effect on our attention spans and our ability to retain information. In order to prevent us from multitasking, my Winter Term professor has banned laptops in our classroom, ...
It is a rare thing in life to be aware of the fact that you have just experienced something special. Many times we look over photos with fondness or back on memories with awe, but seldom do we stand in a room, buzzing with the energy of this collective recognition. That is something incredibly unique, ...