Professor Stephen Whitfield

The first is the force of anti-Semitism that endured until the late 1960s, and the second is the rise of multiculturalism in the 1980s—a movement that continues today, Whitfield said, as Americans of the 21st century embrace diversity as a source of national pride and strength.

American society has changed over the past 70 years, and the Jewish people’s place in that society has evolved along with it. Making references to American literature (Richard Wright), theatre (Arthur Miller), film (Otto Preminger), music (Louis Armstrong), sports (Jackie Robinson), and journalism (Look magazine), the guest speaker took the audience on a scholar’s tour of the Jewish-American experience over the past seven decades.

Whitfield was at Middlebury College on April 14 to mark the 25th anniversary of the Quint Lectureship during the day-long symposium on “The Jews in America: Past and Future.”

The Max Richter Professor of American Civilization at Brandeis—a chair he has held since 1985—Stephen Whitfield is the author of eight books, the writer of 60 articles, and the recipient of Fulbright teaching professorships in Israel and Belgium. And while Whitfield’s C.V. says his “curricular and research interests are primarily in the intersection of politics and ideas in the 20 century,” it is clear from his scholarship and his talk at Middlebury that his expertise also extends into civil rights, foreign languages, modern American and European history, philosophy, and of course Judaism.

Whitfield was one of four speakers invited to give presentations at the conference. The others were: Riv-Ellen Prell, professor of American studies at the University of Minnesota, speaking about “Women, Men, and Families: The Axes of Jewish Cultural Change”; Ted Sasson, professor of international studies at Middlebury and visiting research professor in sociology at Brandeis, on “American Jews’ Changing Relationship to Israel”; and Michael G. Holtzman, rabbi of the Northern Virginia Hebrew Congregation, on “The ‘Joining’ Paradigm and the Future of Communal Life.”

Historian Stephen Whitfield (l.) greets Adam Jones ’13 (r.) and faculty member Larry Yarbrough at the symposium.

Professor Whitfield, in the Sunday afternoon lecture delivered in McCardell Bicentennial Hall, equated the anti-Semitism of the post-war era with the racism that was prevalent in America at the time, and yet he said there was always a sense that intolerance was at odds with American values.

Bigotry in America was “seamless” in the years immediately after the Second World War, Whitfield said. “Prejudice was seen to spring from a single psychic source or distortion, even if the targets might be multiple. Who the minorities were was fluid because the hostility toward them was sometimes generic.” This tendency demonstrated historian John Higham’s theory of the “unitary character of prejudice,” the guest speaker said.

Something extraordinary was going on in the 1950s and 1960s that made the nation more democratic, something Whitfield called “a tectonic shift in the definition of the American identity.”

“An awareness of the heterogeneity of the pot increasingly gathered momentum. The American way of life that was so frequently invoked in the 1950s, increasingly needed to be expressed in the plural. The republic was increasingly appreciated as a collection of groups.

“The pot had not melted,” Whitfield noted. “It meant that all sorts of changes would be taking place, and it also meant that the place of Jews in American society could rise to extraordinary influence and conspicuousness.”

By the 1980s, the differences between peoples ceased to be a cause of divisiveness in the United States. Diversity became a source of national pride for minorities, and thus did multiculturalism provide the framework for Jews to strengthen their place in society.

Whitfield, who mentioned earlier that his family’s name was originally Weissfeld, or “white field,” concluded with remarks about the “conundrum of Jewish identity” in America today where “prejudice has been replaced by popularity, hostility has given way to hospitality.” In this context Whitfield related a remark by Elvis Presley who apparently had taken to wearing the Star of David around his neck. Elvis explained his choice of jewelry saying: “I wouldn’t want to be kept out of heaven on a technicality.”

So where Jews in America had once been subject to widespread anti-Semitism, today they live in a pluralistic society in which they are appreciated for cultivating their heritage in ways that could not have been anticipated in the 1940s or 1950s.

The Quint Lectureship was established at Middlebury in 1987 by the late Hannah A. Quint and her son Eliot Levinson, a member of the Class of 1964. Its purpose has long been to provoke thought at the College and within the community on issues of Jewish history, religion, and culture.

Rabbi Arthur Hertzberg delivered the first Quint lecture in 1988 on the topic “Israel and Palestine: A Battle of Two Rights.” Since it was founded, the lectureship has always been delivered by a different speaker, with one exception: Rabbi Hertzberg, a prominent scholar and activist, was invited back in 1997 to mark the 10th anniversary. His subject: “The Future of the Zionist Movement.”

Our regular recap of goings on at the College and a look ahead to events on the horizon. As always, we hope to call your attention to items that captured ours and alert you to events that you won’t want to miss. If you have a news item that you think we’d be interested in, drop us a line at middmag@middlebury.edu.

• Last Thursday the 2013 Solar Decathlon team invited the campus to walk through its solar house under construction next to the recycling center. It was a spirited event with students cheering, a band playing, and the president speaking, so in case you missed it watch this short video produced by Stephen Diehl. What happens next? Once “InSite” house is completed it will be disassembled, transported to Irvine, Calif., and reassembled again for next fall’s international competition held by the U.S. Department of Energy.

• Middlebury graduates have supported their alma mater again! In March, when a generous donor offered $20,000 if 2,000 alumni would make a gift during the month, the grads rose to the challenge and made donations. Our hats are off to the alumni, the donor, and the hard-working College Advancement staff for reaching their Spark A Match! goal.

• The College has earned news coverage over the past few days: on Bloomberg.com for Middlebury’s position on divestment in fossil-fuel companies; in USA Today for Assistant Professor Joyce Mao’s course “Mad Men and Mad Women”; in the Boston Globe for winning an EPA award for reducing the College’s food waste; and in the Washington Post for Associate Professor Jason Mittell’s view on DVR’ing TV premieres.

• The Gensler Family Symposium on Feminism in a Global Context continues through Friday with discussions, lectures, and a film – all on the subject of “Body Parts.” 
  

• “Jews in America: Past and Future” will be the topic of a one-day symposium on Sunday, April 14, in honor of the 25th anniversary of the Hannah A. Quint Lectureship in Jewish Studies. Speakers from Brandeis University, the University of Minnesota, the Northern Virginia Hebrew Congregation, and Middlebury College will discuss American Jewry from four different perspectives.

• The “Real Food Week” keynote speaker, author Philip Ackerman-Leist of Green Mountain College, will discuss higher education’s role in creating just, humane, and sustainable food systems on Thursday, April 11, at 7:30 p.m. in the Jones House Conference Room. Then, next Monday, April 15, there will be two talks about food: at 12:15 p.m. in Warner Hemicycle about creativity and food in the “elBulli” ecosystem, and at 7:30 p.m. in the Jones House Conference Room on the Arab influence on Mediterranean gastronomy.
• Global Vision, Global Reach: The Middlebury-Monterey Lecture Series will continue on Monday, April 15, at 12:30 p.m. in Franklin Environmental Center, Room 103, with John Balcom, a professor at MIIS in the Graduate School of Translation, Interpretation, and Language Education. His topic: “Serving Two Masters: Reflections on Literary Translation.”

Hang Du

With support from a faculty research grant, Du went to the C.V. Starr-Middlebury School in Hangzhou, China, while on her sabbatical in 2008.  Twenty-nine students on the Middlebury program gave her permission to study their every move, and so she went to classes with them, observed them in academic and non-academic settings, and interviewed them in Chinese before, during, and after the semester.

For three months she ate meals with the students, analyzed their questionnaire responses, spoke to their teachers, administered language proficiency tests, and even read their journals (with permission, of course)—all in an effort to understand how American students handle their immersion in her native country.

Hang Du transcribed all of her conversations, observations, and analysis into more than 2,400 pages of hand-written notes, and recently published an article on her quantitative findings in the Modern Language Journal, with a second article due out later this year.

On March 20 she presented her qualitative findings in a Carol Rifelj Faculty Lecture at Middlebury entitled “Study Abroad in China: Language, Identity, and Self-presentation,” to a gathering of about 60 students, faculty members, and community members. And as she shared stories about her observations in Hangzhou, about a dozen students smiled and nodded their heads indicating that a sizeable share of the audience had studied in China on the Middlebury program and had “lived” similar experiences.

For example, she told a story about a Middlebury student who took a 10-hour train trip to Beijing. As soon as the other passengers noticed her high level of proficiency in the Mandarin language, she was besieged by questions because her language skills exceeded people’s expectations. Added Du, “The Chinese people can be very blunt.”

She told about a student with Korean parents, who identified with the international students at Middlebury, but felt she was part of the majority in China. Or about the student-musician who was invited by strangers to perform at their wedding, and did so willingly. Or about the student who found he was “less eager” to defend American policies after living and studying in China.

Du, a veteran language teacher who first came to Middlebury in 2001 as a member of the summer Chinese School faculty, was particularly interested in the students’ awareness of dialects and accents. She played an audio clip for the audience in which one of the students in the program impersonated a Hangzhou resident’s less-than-perfect pronunciation of Mandarin.

Her qualitative findings fell into three categories: language proficiency, identity and self-presentation, and interaction with native speakers. “Soon after I analyzed the data,” she said, “these three themes jumped up and called out my name.”

Du was inspired to conduct her study when, in 2006, she found extensive research on study abroad in other countries such as Russia and France, but “there was nothing about American students studying abroad in China.” Her interest was compounded by the fact that more than 50 study-abroad programs had been established in China since the 1980s, and the realization that China ranks fifth on the list of the most-popular destinations for U.S. students studying abroad.

And yet, Chinese-language teachers in the U.S. did not have access to valid research findings about American students in China, she said. “Year after year we send students over there and then they come back, but we didn’t really know what [their experiences were,] so that’s why I wanted to study it.”

From her research, Du has concluded that Middlebury students felt “respected and valued” in China because of their language proficiency, and their positive images of themselves has motivated them to keep learning and practicing the language. Students told her that they could “fend for themselves” in the marketplace or with taxi drivers because of their language skills. They felt validated because they could make their opinions or feelings known in conversation with others in Chinese.

She also noticed a shift in students’ perspectives about non-speakers of Chinese, as demonstrated by the student who thought Westerners in Tiananmen Square who could not converse in Chinese were “shameless,” and by the student who observed that Europeans sitting at an adjacent table in a restaurant were actually “disappointed” to hear him speaking Mandarin.

Some students in study-abroad programs are ascribed “half-wit status” by native speakers because of their lack of language skills, Du explained, but for Middlebury students in China the opposite was true. “Our students were appreciated and honored by the Chinese people for their language skills.”

The exquisite paintings on wooden panels are attributed to the “Master of the St. Ursula Legend,” an unnamed artist working in Bruges between 1475 and 1500. The panels are the outside wings of a triptych – a popular format for religious art – and the whereabouts of the third or center panel is also unknown.

And yet Monod, the A. Barton Hepburn Professor of History at Middlebury, has determined almost to a certainty the identities of most of the major figures depicted on the panels. He has also determined when the works were painted, and has informed opinions about who the Master of St. Ursula was, why the paintings were commissioned, and what might constitute the subject of the missing middle panel.

“I have been in love with these two panels ever since we acquired them and they have fascinated me since I first set eyes upon them,” said Professor Monod, who acknowledged that he is not an art historian by training. Rather, he is an expert in 17th- and 18th-century European history, particularly the history of the British Isles, and he was motivated to delve deeply into the origins and symbolism of the panels because “they are very, very rare and very, very fascinating.”

Monod sees a direct British connection in the right-hand panel of the Middlebury triptych, particularly in the “protecting saint” shown carrying a scepter, wearing an open crown, and dressed in a gown bearing the coat of arms of England. Monod concludes that the figure in the painting is King Henry VI, although Henry VI was never canonized. The painter depicted the king to appear much as British royalty did on the coinage of the day: “a generic portrait of a king…with long flowing hair and a youngish look.”

Monod is certain that the man shown kneeling before the king commissioned the making of the triptych, the outside panels of which measure just over 20 inches in height and eight inches in width. “It is quite clear that he wanted something small and quite possibly portable, but he also wanted it packed with saints…for every possibility and every occasion.”

So who commissioned the work? “The man in the right-hand panel is well dressed, but not well dressed enough to be a nobleman, nor is he carrying a nobleman’s sword,” which leads Monod to believe that the patron of the triptych was “a wealthy merchant, an alderman of a town, or someone high-ranking within a city,” presumably in England.

Paul Monod says the “d” in his surname is silent and the accent goes on the first syllable

The author of five books and an assiduous researcher, Paul Monod examined the iconography associated with the eight saints in the left wing of the triptych and used those “clues” to determine who they are and how they might hold meaning to the patron.

According to Monod, the saints in the background of the left panel are: St. Anthony Abbot, shown with fire coming from his feet; St. Barbara, who is about to be decapitated; St. Sebastian, who is naked and shot with arrows; and St. Giles, who is carrying a crosier in front of a hermit’s cell. The saints shown as bishops in the foreground of the left panel are: St. Nicholas, who has at his feet two little boys in a barrel; St. Omer, with a thick pair of eyeglasses; St. Eligius, who is holding a goldsmith’s hammer; and St. Blaise, with a wool-combers carding tool.

Each of the eight saints must have held significance to the patron who paid for the creation of the triptych, Monod explained. For example, it was believed that St. Barbara guarded against thunder and lightning, St. Blaise protected those in the wool trade, and St. Anthony was appealed to for infectious diseases.

Before Paul Monod concluded his research, the identities of St. Giles and St. Omer in the triptych were not known, and the identity of King Henry VI had never been confirmed.

The Middlebury historian and others have deduced that the triptych was painted in the studio of Pieter Cassinbroodt, a free master of the Bruges Guild of St. Luke. Based on his research, Monod believes that the Middlebury panels were most likely painted in 1495 by one or more of Cassinbroodt’s apprentices. (Cassinbroodt was known to take on as many as seven apprentices.)

The final piece of the puzzle is the center panel: where did it go, what did it depict, and why did it get separated from its wings? We may never know the answers to those questions, Monod remarked, but it’s likely that the missing center panel showed a powerful religious image such as the body of Christ being brought down from the cross.

The one certainty, though, is why the triptych was commissioned. It was intended to be  “a declaration of a kind of political loyalty and it’s meant to show that the patron has accepted the political transition and change of power” from King Henry VI to Henry VII.

He concluded: “This is a very rare piece that has a big, important story to tell, if not by me then by others in the years to come. These two panels – these two tiny, little panels – will reveal more and more about the history of the times, about the person who commissioned them, and about these charming little saints who are posed so mysteriously against this fascinating landscape.”

Middlebury College acquired the two painted panels in 2011 through the Christian A. Johnson Memorial Fund. The Museum of Art is open to the public without charge Tuesday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Saturday and Sunday from noon to 5 p.m. 

Inside the Service Building practice room

Until not long ago, if you were in a student band at Middlebury and wanted to practice, there was a series of steps you had to take before you could plug in your amp. First you had to reserve the only practice room on campus, which is in the Service Building under the smokestack, and before you showed up at the appointed time, you had to swing by the Public Safety office on South Main Street, show your student ID, and grab the key that would unlock the door at the Service Building. Meanwhile, your bandmates were probably shivering in the cold, cursing the process, wondering why they even bothered to be in a band in the first place, and gosh wasn’t it cold, and where were you with that key? Needless to say, not a lot of folks would choose to put themselves in this scenario.

Which is why the students in the Middlebury Musicians Guild—now called Middlebury Music United, or MMU—lobbied College administrators this fall to have keypad entry locks installed on the doors to both the practice room and the recording studio (across campus in the Freeman International Center) so that members of MMU could easily gain access to either space.

And this was only the beginning of a concerted effort by MMU to revive a flagging social culture built around live music at Middlebury. Since September, the group has acquired a slew of new equipment for the practice, performance, and recording of live music. It is providing resources for shows, planning a singer-songwriter workshop for students, and sending out weekly e-mails about live music events. It is beta testing an iPhone app created by students, called MMU on Air,  that will map all the live music events on campus. It uses Twitter (@middmusic) to call attention to the live music scene. Its new website is a sort of Craigslist-meets-Match.com for student musicians. (For instance, if your band is looking for a female vocalist, you might find one on middmusic.com.) And MMU members are involved with this winter term’s MiddCORE course—students take on real challenges facing for-profit and social enterprises—by providing recorded music tracks that students in the class will endeavor to package and sell.

“When we got to Middlebury in the spring of 2010, there was no community of student musicians here,” says Parker Woodworth ’13.5, an MMU cofounder. “It was as if the music had just disappeared for us. So Mike [Gadomski] and I decided we needed to create a culture where student musicians will want to play music for its own sake, where playing music is not an obligation.”

“A complaint you hear all the time is that there’s no good way to meet new people here, and it’s because people don’t venture outside their close circle of friends,” adds Gadomski ’13.5.

“We are trying to create a middle ground around the music, so it’s not so hard to meet people,” says Woodworth. “Let’s say I am at a show where one of my friends is performing, and you’re at the same show because one of your friends is performing, too. Now we have something in common, something to talk about. It is much more conducive to meet people in a coffeehouse atmosphere than at a DJ party with the music blaring and people dancing.”

“Our job in MMU is to create fertile conditions so the music scene will grow on its own,” Gadomski explains. “We don’t want to be the ones presenting the shows. That’s MCAB’s job. (MCAB is the Middlebury College Activities Board.) But we can help make it happen by providing the infrastructure”—like user-friendly keypads instead of locked doors—“to encourage student-musicians here.”

***

Middlebury is, after all, where the band Dispatch got its start and where solo acts like Courtney Brocks ’01 and Anais Mitchell ’04 cut their teeth. It’s where the rock group Throw Like a Girl was touted in The Campus in 1998 as “Middlebury’s first girl art-core band and one hell of a live show.” So what has happened to live music at Middlebury? Theories abound, but there’s general agreement about the primary cause of the decline: Middlebury students work so hard in and out of the classroom that they barely have time for more than one other major pursuit; and since there was no formal effort to support live music, students preferred activities with fewer obstacles.

Another reason for the decline of student-generated music is the shift toward live DJs and solo production (think: Apple’s GarageBand) and away from jam sessions and performing bands. That shift is something that musician Matt Bonner ’91 understands well. “The music scene when I was a student was like night and day from what it is now,” he says. “Twenty years ago, there were always three or four well-known bands on campus, meaning that on any given weekend at least one band was playing somewhere at Middlebury.”

An independent musician and producer of digital media (mattbonner.com), Bonner was a guitarist in Yukon Time, a rock-reggae hybrid band that played gigs on campus. “We were pretty good,” he says with a laugh, “at least in the context of being a party band.” And according to reports, they still are good. Bonner and his bandmates— Josh Sarkis ’91, Rodrigo Prudencio ’91, Barney Hodges ’91, and Andy Wiemeyer ’94—played last June during Reunion Weekend at 51 Main, the College’s off-campus performance space.

Bonner is collaborating with MMU to rekindle the live music scene at the College. “One thing that would be really cool would be a student-driven music label at Middlebury so people can write, record, produce, and mix their own stuff, and then get it out using digital distribution services. It would not be a ‘pretend’ label; it would be a real label with real people making high-quality music. Admittedly they’d have to be advised by, shall we say, certain alumni who happen to be in the music business. We just have to figure out how it will work and get the right equipment in the FIC recording studio, and then it could be really sustainable.”

The record label is a topic that gets the current leadership of MMU, Gadomski and Woodworth, very excited. “To have original music coming out of Middlebury would be good for musicians, good for our students, and good for outsiders looking at our college for the first time,” says Gadomski, whose rock band Thank God for Mississippi has attracted a following on campus.

“We have amazing students,” adds Woodworth, who, like Gadomski, plays electric guitar. “Look at the Solar Decathlon team and all that they accomplished: We don’t have programs in any of those things, and yet somehow we are competing with students who study engineering at the graduate level. We have kids capable of being part of the real-world playing field in any number of areas, and music could be one of those.”

Peter Hamlin ’73, the Christian A. Johnson Professor of Music, sees what MMU is doing in the context of a liberal arts education. He has been the adviser to the Musicians Guild/Music United since its founding in 2004. “Now it’s seven years later and we have Mike and Parker diving in,” he observes.  “It’s a thrill to watch them operate. One of President Liebowitz’s themes has been to allow students to use their own leadership and creativity and give them a measure of autonomy to follow through on the things they are passionate about. The MMU today is just a perfect example of that.”

In a panel discussion on Feb. 19 in McCardell Bicentennial Hall, Professor Barbara Hofer of the psychology department said that the method of assessing students, such as quizzes or short-answer tests vs. term papers or presentations, often drive how students go about their learning and what they’ll gain from it in the future.

“When students think what they are going to be tested on is discrete facts, then they make flash cards, right? They use rote memorization strategies. [But] if we are asking them to do higher-order tasks in our assessments, they are far more likely to use the strategies that lead to deeper understanding and knowledge,” she said.

It comes down to whether we want our students to remember disconnected bits of information or whether we want them to develop an entire web of knowledge, Hofer explained. Students don’t always see that the goal of learning is acquiring “rich, flexible, generative knowledge”; all too often they are concerned simply with the intake of information without any depth of analysis.

Cognitive psychologist Jason Arndt, an associate professor who specializes in human memory, supported Hofer’s views on knowledge acquisition.

In terms of a human being’s “working memory,” i.e., a person’s ability to think about things in the moment, people have an “exceedingly limited” capacity to hold onto data in the short term, said Arndt.  Teachers should be aware that working memory serves as a gateway to longer term retention, and if information “doesn’t get past working memory, it’s just not going to be there over the long term.” One of the techniques that Arndt uses when teaching highly complex material is limiting the number of words and ideas on each of the slides he shows his students.

He also pointed out that doing things in the classroom that demand deep, active thinking is much better for long-term retention as opposed to cursory activities that don’t demand active engagement.

“When left to our own devices,” Arndt said, “we don’t do a ton of things on our own that require a lot of effort to process it or to think about it, and that has consequences for later retention. If we do things in a relatively shallow way, that information is not likely to be there for us five minutes down the line, 10 minutes down the line, or three days down the line.”

Room for space and improvisation

The other two faculty members on the panel looked at the question of how students learn from vastly different points of view than that of their faculty colleagues from the psychology department.

Jonathan Miller-Lane, an associate professor of education studies, said that students’ curiosity should be at the center of teaching-learning process. “Before we talk about learning, we need to talk about which questions matter to students and what students are curious about,” he said.

Professors should be willing to give up their own preconceptions in honor of emphasizing the student’s place in the exchange of knowledge because, he explained, the student’s experience is more important than the teacher’s. To illustrate his point, Miller-Lane pointed to a quote from author and educator Parker Palmer: “To teach is to create a space, not to fill it.”

Said Miller-Lane, “We often assume as professors that the syllabus must pre-exist the arrival of the student and that the essential content pre-exists the arrival of the student. That’s a really interesting assumption to unpack, and this statement – to teach is to create a space – suggests that maybe there is something in the interaction between us that is at the heart of what learning means.

“Space for what then? If teaching is to create a space, where do we go but to John Dewey with this beautiful sentence: ‘Intelligently directed development of the possibilities inherent in ordinary experience.’ That’s what we are creating a space for. Where learning [is] acquiring abilities to engage that.”

Penny Campbell, senior lecturer in dance, said, “I am an improviser. That’s the bottom line in my life, [and] what I have been doing the whole time I have been here is bringing the body into the classroom, bringing the body to the center of our inquiry and our study.”

To foster improvisation, Campbell puts her dance students into situations without actually telling them what the expectations are. (She demonstrated her point by asking the audience of faculty, students, staff, and Middlebury parents to put their arms in the air and move them around. Some people moved their arms about wildly while others were more passive. Still others declined her request. But the point of the exercise soon dawned on everyone: our bodies were front and center, and none of us knew beforehand what the outcome of the exercise would be.)

“Living on the edge of chaos is something we can learn to do. We can learn the skills of operating that way. And also, we can have faith that if we are developing this amazing system of perception that the body-mind is – a continuous, active, self-organizing system in a way – if we can learn how to use that and open it and learn how to be comfortable with it, because I think we live in a culture that’s very, very suspicious of bodies.”

Every one of us has an “enormous amount of potential as a living being to perceive and pay attention to ourselves, to our environments, to the people around us, to what is going on” in life, and Campbell probes that potential in her students through improvisation.

The panel was moderated by Professor James Calvin Davis, the associate vice president of academic affairs, and was organized by his office to further the campus-wide conversation on the future of the liberal arts.

The next program in the series called Core and Change in the Liberal Arts will be held on Thursday, Feb. 28, at 4:30 p.m. in room 220 of Bicentennial Hall. Speakers from three academic disciplines and from Library and Information Services will broach the question: How can we use emerging technologies to support Middlebury’s mission “to cultivate the intellectual, creative, physical, ethical, and social qualities essential for leadership in a rapidly changing global community?”

• Earlier this week the featured presentation on the TEDx website was a talk given by Shabana Basij-Rasikh ’11, a leading spokesperson for the education of women in her native Afghanistan. Shabana, who dressed as a boy for years to elude the Taliban and get to a secret school in Kabul, is now the managing director of a nonprofit that helps young Afghan women gain access to education worldwide.

• This year’s crop of Febs enjoyed a two-day celebration to mark the completion of their undergraduate careers. Our coverage includes videos of the talks given by President Ron Liebowitz, Professor Jay Parini, and Ben Orbison ’12.5; photos from activities on campus and at the Snow Bowl; and a thrilling “Feb Cam” video shot by a “ski-down” senior descending the mountain with her class.

• Middlebury students were in the news this week for taking a stance about the role they believe economic disadvantage should play in the college admissions process. The author of the article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Richard D. Kahlenberg, calls it a “once-taboo” topic that is emerging from the background. An attorney, Kahlenberg is also a Middlebury parent, the author of five books, and a senior fellow at the Century Foundation.

• Middlebury’s 90th Winter Carnival opens this Thursday, Feb. 14, and runs through Sunday, Feb. 17, with skiing (both intercollegiate and recreational), music, fireworks, an ice show, bonfire, comedian Adam Ferrara, and the gala carnival ball. Not just for students, many of the events are open to the college community including free hot chocolate at a number of venues.

• Abe Streep ’04, remembered by many at Midd as a musician in the bluegrass band Route 7 Ramblers, is now a senior editor at Outside Magazine. On Tuesday, Feb. 19, at 4:30 p.m. in 220 Bicentennial Hall Streep will give a Middlebury Meet The Press talk on “Building and Busting Legends: Reporting on Icons from Lance Armstrong to Greg Mortenson.”

• 51 Main at the Bridge—the College’s in-town social space—will welcome Megan Laslocky ’89 on Wednesday, Feb. 13, at 7:30 p.m. for a talk titled “Love Gone Wrong…at Middlebury.” Described as a “sure-to-be-a-hit, student-friendly, anti-Valentine event,” Megan will talk about her just-published The Little Book of Heartbreak: Love Gone Wrong Through the Ages, which she discussed in the winter issue of Middlebury Magazine.

• Education Studies will host a four-part film series beginning with “The First Year,” a documentary about five public school teachers in Los Angeles, on Wednesday, Feb. 20, at 7 p.m. in Dana Auditorium. The series will continue every other week into April; other titles in the series are “Precious Knowledge,” “Bag It,” and “Bully.”

The deep fryers at Proctor hold 14 gallons of vegetable oil.

If your vehicle runs on diesel fuel, then a recent experiment conducted by 14 members of the Class of 2016 could save you a few trips to the gas station and reduce your carbon footprint too.

The first-year students made their own batch of biodiesel from a vat of used vegetable oil — 10 gallons of expended French fry oil from Proctor Dining Hall — and converted it into fuel that will power a diesel engine.

How difficult is the conversion process? How does the energy output of biodiesel compare with that of petroleum-based diesel fuel? What is the cost savings, if any? How does biodiesel compare with conventional diesel fuel in terms of greenhouse gas emissions?

The students in chemistry professor Jeff Byers’ first-year seminar called Smart Energy Choices pondered all of these questions and more, but first they had to get their hands a little oily too.

For a week on either side of the Thanksgiving break, the aroma of French fries filled Lab 459 in McCardell Bicentennial Hall while Byers and his students converted the used canola oil into biodiesel.

It was a multi-step process, with more than its share of glitches along the way, as the students made their biodiesel through transesterification, which is the chemical reaction that occurs when an ester, or carbon compound, is converted into another ester through the introduction of an alcohol and acid or base catalyst. (The students’ ester was the veggie oil and their alcohol was methanol.)

The All American Biodiesel Processor

Byers, who is the Philip Battell and Sarah Stewart Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry, has taught the seminar before, but he offered it this year with the addition of a weekly lab component to a) ensure that it was writing intensive, and b) give the first-year students a solid foundation in the scientific method. One of the few first-year seminars at Middlebury with a required lab, Byers recommended that students have a year of high-school chemistry and a year of high-school physics before enrolling in Smart Energy Choices.

The professor used research funds from his endowed chair to purchase a 40-gallon “All American Biodiesel” processor. Made in Missouri, the apparatus consists of two large mixing tanks, two electric pumps, a fuel filter, brass valves, and about 15 feet of PVC pipe. Not sleek or high-tech like most of the equipment found in a chemistry lab, the processor looks more like something your eccentric neighbor might assemble in his garage.

Because the experiment involved numerous steps, including filtration and titration (and unclogging sludge build-up in the lines), the class used a shared online document from Google Docs to record, review, and analyze the processes involved. And only toward the end of the experiment, when the class attempted to draw off its first sample of biodiesel to test its energy output, did the entire group come together around the processor.

Then, using a standard bomb calorimeter, the students measured how much heat was generated by the biofuel, and with this data they compared the energy output of  biodiesel with that of other combustible fuels.

As Byers explains it, the smartest energy choices are the ones that have the highest ratio of hydrogen to carbon:

Virginia Wiltshire-Gordon ’16 performs titration testing to measure the amount of fatty acids in a sample.

“When you define ‘smart energy choices’ within the confines of still having to burn stuff for energy – accepting the fact that the smartest energy choices are the ones in which you don’t have to burn anything at all, like wind or solar – then the fuels that offer the highest ratio of hydrogen to carbon, and with least amount of oxygen in the molecules, are the fuels that will generate the most energy per CO₂ emission.

“That has been our standard in this course. High energy is good. High CO₂ is bad. So what you are looking for is the ratio between the two.”

So is biodiesel a smart energy choice? “Absolutely,” said Amari Simpson ’16, from Chicago, who would like to carry the experiment one step further. “We have diesel trucks and vans at the College right now, and I would like to know what the feasibility would be of using the All American Biodiesel processor to create our own biodiesel from vegetable oil to use in those engines.”

Simpson continued: “We would need to know the actual cost of making our own biodiesel, and calculate the environmental impact of using it” – studies show that biodiesel is cleaner than conventional diesel fuel – “so I think the College should give it a try.”

Middlebury students have long been a driving force for the environmental movement at the College. A student-driven initiative led to the construction of the biomass heating plant; a recent Winter Term class modified a tractor engine to operate on hydrogen; students have experimented with biodiesel from algae; and in 2003 and 2004 students drove across the U.S. in a school bus powered by veggie oil. So as Middlebury approaches 2016, the year when it has pledged to be a carbon-neutral campus, some members of the “carbon-neutral class” (as the first-year group has been called) are now thinking about ways to get there.

Professor Jeff Byers and his first-year seminar

• Writer/cartoonist Alison Bechdel entertained a packed house in Twilight Auditorium on Tuesday with a glimpse into her new graphic memoir, Are You My Mother? A Comic Drama. The Vermont resident, who penned the self-syndicated strip Dykes To Watch Out For in Seven Days and other alternative papers for 25 years, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for her 2006 graphic memoir Fun Home.

• The Smithsonian Institution is keen on Anne Kelly Knowles, associate professor of geography, and how she is using GIS to expand the view of history. Not only has she won the Smithsonian’s 2012 Ingenuity Award for her groundbreaking work, now Smithsonian Magazine (December issue) has published a feature story about her historical mapping projects.

• Middlebury student David Elber ’15 was a contestant on the television show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? on Tuesday. David handled himself well, but he’s not coming back to Middlebury with a seven-figure check. The Burlington Free Press has the story.

• Shirley Collado‘s blog, One Dean’s View, takes an interesting turn this week. In response to the Dean of the College’s piece two weeks ago about the desire for more face-to-face communication, two juniors — Anthony Perez and Alan Sutton — have recorded a frank conversation about sexuality for this week’s blog.

• Wednesday at 7 p.m. in Twilight Auditorium, filmmaker Mark Kitchell will present his chronicle of the environmental movement, A Fierce Green Fire, which premiered at the 2012 Sundance Festival. The director will be on hand for Q & A after the screening. See the trailer here.

• The Jupiter String Quartet, known for its blazing, passionate, and energetic performances, will present two free concerts at Mahaney Center for the Arts this week: Kurtag’s 12 Microludes on Thursday at 12:15, and Schubert’s Quartet in G Major, D. 887 on Friday at 8 p.m. Both performances will be held in the Concert Hall.

• You’ve heard about the Hepburn Zoo but have you ever seen a play there? Theatre majors Noah Berman ’13, Isabel Shill ’13, and Paula Bogutyn ’14 are presenting The Vanek Trilogy, three short plays written by Vaclav Havel, on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday at 8 p.m. in the tiny “Zoo” theatre inside Hepburn Hall. To order tickets, visit the online box office and scroll down to “V” for Vanek.

Richard Cizik

Yes, Richard Cizik was the public face of evangelicalism in the United States until he went on the National Public Radio program Fresh Air and—much to his employer’s surprise—expressed his support for same-sex civil unions.

Nine days later he was asked to resign as vice president of the conservative National Association of Evangelicals, after 28 years with the organization.

“So here I am in charge of all the [evangelical Christian] lobbying on Capitol Hill, and lo and behold I go on the radio and give too much fresh air,” Cizik said during a visit to Middlebury College last week.

Now the president of the New Evangelical Partnership for the Common Good, a nonprofit that he launched in January 2010, Cizik met with students in Professor James Calvin Davis’s Religion and American Politics class for a candid, hour-long conversation on Nov. 2, just days before the American election.

On politics in America today, Cizik said: “In evangelical right circles there is only one answer and that answer is: Republican. God is a Republican! Didn’t you know? Didn’t you get the memo? My answer is: ‘No, I didn’t get the memo. I never found it in the Bible either and I thought the Bible was supposed to be our authority.’”

On what today’s politicians need: “Politics requires a lot of prudence and knowing how to make judgments on difficult matters. Politics is all about the pursuit of values—personal, social, and transcendent.”

On what religion and politics have in common: “The key verse to consider is Matthew 22:21. ‘Render unto God the things that are God’s, and render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s.’ So Jesus was saying, ‘Yes there is a role that Caesar has that you must respect. Conversely there are obligations that you have to God that you must respect.’ Politics is all about determining which is which. What is God’s and what is Caesar’s. It really is.”

Students in James Davis’s Religion and American Politics class

After his debacle on Fresh Air, Cizik (pronounced CY-zick) distanced himself from mainstream evangelicalism, not only on the subject of same-sex unions, but also with his comments about climate change (it’s real and humans caused it) and government support for contraception (he’s in favor of it).

In his role as president of the New Evangelical Partnership for the Common Good, he travels extensively “to advance human well-being as an expression of our love for Jesus Christ, which is itself a grateful response for his love for us and for a good but suffering world.” On the same day that Cizik visited Professor Davis’s religion and politics class, he spoke at Middlebury’s Rohatyn Center for International Affairs and shared his view that environmentalism should be part of the evangelical movement in America.

(His belief that “it’s time we return to being people known for our love and care of the earth and our fellow human beings,” a philosophy he calls “creation care,” put him at odds with the National Association of Evangelicals and hastened his departure.)

In response to a question about the rise of secularism in America, Cizik said, “The rise of the nones [i.e., people who profess to have no religion] is the fastest growing segment of the population. From my standpoint as an evangelical, that’s just an enticement. So rather than view that negatively, the rise of the nones should be good news to evangelicals. Because quite frankly people who are unrooted are more receptive to evangelical messages than those who are firmly hitched.”

Calling himself an “evangelical ecumenist,” the Whitworth (Wash.) University graduate said, “I am willing to work with people of all faiths and no faith to achieve what is the common good for all of America. …I want everyone in society to flourish and to prosper and to enjoy the benefits of liberty and freedom and all that we have in this country.

In 2008 TIME magazine named Cizik to its top 100 list of the world’s most influential people.

“I am not threatened by diversity. In fact, the more diversity, the more liberty. So diversity and liberty go hand in hand together. But some people are threatened by it. I am not.”

For example, regarding a burning of the Koran in Florida by the pastor Terry Jones, Cizik told the Middlebury students: “What you do today against Muslims, you can only expect to have done to yourself later. So the religious freedom you accord to them, you in effect accord to yourselves. That’s why you should stand against Muslim bigotry.”

Richard Cizik’s visit to Middlebury College was sponsored by the Rohatyn Center for Global Studies, Scott Center for Spiritual and Religious Life, Franklin Environmental Center, Department of Religion, Program in Environmental Studies, Academic Enrichment Fund, Newman Club, and InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. 

Dwight Garner lives in New Jersey, near the Delaware River.

Garner returned to Middlebury on October 23 to present the annual Robert W. van de Velde Jr. ’75 Memorial Lecture on “The Future of Book Criticism” to an audience of about 100 students and college community members, and the 47-year-old book critic could hardly contain his joy at being back.

“You come to college I think to have your life changed, and mine really changed here at Middlebury,” he told everyone in Dana Auditorium. “It was a big deal for me to come here as a student.”

Garner was delighted that three of the faculty members who had the greatest impact on his view of literature are still teaching at Middlebury, and all three were in attendance for his talk: Stephen Donadio (the Fulton professor of humanities), Brett Millier (the Cook professor of American literature), and Jay Parini (the Axinn professor of English and creative writing).

Donadio, Garner said, “gave lectures that made me want to weep in my chair, such was the passion and intellect that he brought to talking about books.” Millier “has a great ear for good writing, and knows how to teach it to kids and how to put that sound in your ear.” And of Parini “who then as now is the hardest working man in show business,” Garner revealed that the professor’s tongue-in-cheek advice about writing biography – “Write the damn thing first and research it later,” i.e., get a draft down on paper – still resonates with him today.

After graduation Garner was a clerk in a book store, the driver of a sprout truck, and the arts editor for an alternative newspaper – all before landing a position in 1995 as the first book editor for Salon.com. In 1998 he joined the New York Times Book Review, and since 2008 he has been writing his literary criticism for the daily paper.

“The future of book criticism is like talking about where reading is going in this country. And there’s no doubt about where it’s going – it’s going online. We are all going to watch a movie in 15 years and see people reading newspapers and magazines on the train and laugh because it will be like seeing those huge cell phones in movies we watch now from the 1980s.

“Seventy percent of me loves the idea of this technology,” Garner said. “I am a fan. I agree with the novelist Tim Parks who wrote in the New York Review of Books website that platforms like the Kindle ‘offer a more austere, direct engagement with words.’ He reminded us that no tyrant can ever burn an e-book. [Brooks’s article] made me stop and think, and I got serious for a while about trying to read across different platforms.”

Garner said he is “bullish” about technology, especially about the iPhone because “it obliterates that great fear that we have of being trapped somewhere, like at the DMV or on a train, with nothing whatsoever to read.”

One downside of e-books for Garner “is that on New York City subways one of the great things used to always be seeing what people were reading. But now all you see are slates – people holding this blank thing – which is also a tremendous loss for publishers because, as you know, books are sold by word of mouth in this country. And the biggest word of mouth is seeing some groovy person with a groovy book, and that is almost entirely gone now.”

He also lamented how “the tactile sense” of books, magazines, and newspapers is lost with reading done using the latest technology. You can’t put an old love letter in a Kindle, Garner said, and you can’t use an old ticket stub as a bookmark in one either.

Being able to take notes in a book is very important to the book critic too. “I almost can’t read without a pen or pencil in hand, and I have no faith whatsoever that five, 10, or 15 years down the road that we’ll be able to access the notes we took in e-books today. It will be like trying to find an e-mail that you wrote on a computer that you had eight years ago,” he added. “And I am the kind of person who needs his notes.”

Without trying to seem like he was piling on the criticism of digital reading – “declinists bore me,” he said – Garner pointed out that he regrets what technology has done to independent book stores and to book-review sections in newspapers and magazines in America, and how it seems like “an entire editor class has vanished in this country.”

“Having an editor as a young writer of any kind, and especially as a critic learning to hone your arguments – I can’t stress how important that is. I feel lucky to have had so many great editors in my career.”

Nevertheless, Garner is sanguine about the future for cultural criticism in America. “Things look good for the new generation of critics” and he mentioned a few by name: Anthony Lane, James Wood, Manohla Dargis, Frank Rich, and Dana Stevens.

So if you’re looking for Dwight Garner’s book reviews in the Times, check the paper (or look online) every Wednesday and Friday. “This schedule seemed to be crushing and grueling the first year I did the job. I was terrified,” Garner confessed. “But I quickly came to realize that I can read most books in about eight hours, and it takes me five or six to write a review.”

And what happens to the rest of the books he receives? Garners dutifully spends 15 minutes with each one “trying to find a spark or a reason to care” because his greatest fear is that a important book might slip by unnoticed.

In his short film below, see how a college student from Arizona experienced the big city while interning at Ars Nova, one of New York’s leading incubators for emerging artists. David Seamans is a film and English joint major currently sharing his talents as an intern with the College Communications Office.

David’s internship was made possible thanks to funding from the Middlebury Arts Council and the Center for Education in Action.

• Julia Alvarez, writer in residence and member of the Class of 1971, appeared on the NPR program “Tell Me More” on Monday to discuss the Parsley Massacre in her homeland, the Dominican Republic. You can listen to the interview, or read more about the events of October 1937, including Julia’s explanation about why the Spanish word for parsley (or “perejil”) was so crucial, on NPR’s news blog.

• For three days last week the Clifford Symposium infused the campus with enthusiasm as students, faculty, staff, and guests explored the subject of creativity and collaboration across a broad spectrum of subjects. Middmag covered the elaborate dance event called “A Curious Invasion,” and the illustrated lecture about the development of New York City’s High Line. Later this week watch for an interview with keynote speaker Julie Burstein, the author of “Spark: How Creativity Works,” and a video about the sister-and-brother wire-walking/music duo, Rachel ’06.5 and Ben ’10 Schiffer.

• Middlebury is near the top of the list again. Teach For America just announced that the College has 15 recent graduates teaching in under-performing school districts this fall. That number of new TFA teachers ranks seventh in the country in the small-college category, which ties Middlebury with Williams.

• The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments next week about whether the University of Texas at Austin exceeded its right to consider race and ethnicity in admissions decisions. To learn why this topic is important to Middlebury, see Dean of the College Shirley Collado’s blog, One Dean’s View.

• The annual D.K. Smith Lecture will be given this year by Professor David G. Blanchflower on “The Economics of Youth Employment” on Thursday, Oct. 4, at 4:15 p.m., in Twilight Auditorium. Blanchflower is the Bruce V. Rauner Professor of Economics at Dartmouth College, and is a contributor to the U.K.’s New Statesman and Bloomberg TV.

• The Parents Are Coming! Fall Family Weekend begins this Friday, Oct. 5. The slate of activities — from open classes and panel discussions to arts and athletics — is too numerous to list here, so be sure to visit the FFW website for details.

Adrian Benepe ’78, former commissioner of NYC parks, and architect Peter Mullan, vice president for planning and design of the High Line, presented the talk in connection with 2012 Clifford Symposium at Middlebury College.

The High Line stretches from Gansevoort Street in the West Village to the rail yards at West 30th Street, and it affords grand views to the east and west as it juts through the Meatpacking District and Chelsea. Never wider than 60 feet and more often just 30 feet from side to side, the High Line opened in 2009 and has quickly become one of the leading tourist attractions in the city.

So how did the High Line come to fruition? “It’s a story of collaboration and creativity,” Benepe said, and over the course of an hour he and Mullan took the audience on an excursion through its evolution.

After the last freight train ran on the High Line in 1980, the property lay dormant for nearly two decades until 1999 when two residents of the West Side, Joshua David and Robert Hammond, began an intensive lobbying effort for its preservation and use as a public open space. They formed a non-profit organization called Friends of the High Line, which was instrumental in garnering the civic, commercial, governmental, and financial support necessary for the project.

Adrian Benepe ’78

Benepe and Mullan pointed to three key developments that propelled the project forward during the first decade of the 21st century.

First, whereas former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani opposed the project, his successor in City Hall, Michael Bloomberg, ran on a platform in 2001 that favored conversion of the High Line into a city park. “I thought it was an insane idea,” the former parks commissioner told the gathering. “How would we get water 30 feet above ground?” he asked. “How would we get things to grow?” But the new mayor believed in the High Line’s ability to connect neighborhoods and bring people together.

Second, the proponents of the High Line could point to another world capital, Paris, where its Promenade plantée is an elevated green beltway built on a former railway line. The popularity of the Prominade plantée “proved that the idea of an elevated park could work,” Mullan said, which turned out to be a crucial factor in proving to people that the High Line project had merit.

Third, the Friends of the High Line worked with land-use planners to build an economic rationale for the High Line. They showed that if the city invested $100 million to build a public space on the High Line, the city would gain $262 million in increased property taxes to adjacent lands over a defined period of time, and the estimate has proven to be low because the High Line has had a “ripple effect” on the value of properties in the entire area.

Peter Mullan

The economic argument proved to be a powerful factor, Mullan said, because “as cities and municipalities are increasingly strapped for cash, they need to make investments in their public infrastructure that are going to be cost effective, and parks in general will do that if they are well designed.”

The High Line allows no bicycles, dogs, jogging, or ball-playing of any kind, and yet it has become wildly popular for city residents and visitors. The High Line attracts nearly four million people a year, Benepe said, which places it between the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Statue of Liberty in terms of attendance.

Its lush greenery and never-before-seen views of the Hudson River, its preservation of the rails and variety of environments, and its chaises and benches that seem to pop up out of the rail bed – inspire “a contemplative mood of awe and gratefulness that such a delightful oddity could be dedicated to public space,” the Wall Street Journal wrote just days after the first section of the High Line opened. (Photos of the High Line abound on the Internet; for a sample, click here.)

Built with brick, steel, concrete, soil, and wood, the High Line “is essentially a shallow planter box in the sky,” said Benepe, who is currently senior vice president at the Trust for Public Land and a trustee of Middlebury College.

The guest speakers closed the presentation by stressing that “public-private partnerships like the High Line work when they represent the local community,” and that preservation and the use of public space can be drivers of economic development. Moreover, they said people are inspired by innovation even when their natural reaction is to resist change.

]]> http://sites.middlebury.edu/middmag/2012/10/03/the-planter-box-in-the-sky/feed/ 0 http://sites.middlebury.edu/middmag/2012/09/27/under-lock-and-key/ http://sites.middlebury.edu/middmag/2012/09/27/under-lock-and-key/#comments Thu, 27 Sep 2012 14:39:33 +0000 Robert Keren http://sites.middlebury.edu/middmag/?p=9702 Locksmith Mike Pixley took three steps into the residence hall when he noticed something was wrong. The back door leading out to the patio was propped open and yet the security alarm was not going off.

“How did they do that?” Pixley wondered, and in an instant he found out. Using about 25 cents’ worth of spare parts, some students had figured out a way to bypass the alarm system. Could something sinister be afoot? No, the students simply wanted easy access to the outdoors on a hot and sunny September afternoon.

A locksmith’s hands are his most precious tool.

“I have to remove this,” Pixley said, disassembling the bypass device, “but I do have to admire their ingenuity. Sometimes the students create more work for us, but that’s okay. They’re the reason why we’re here.”

Pixley has been at Middlebury for 26 years, and he has staffed the lock department with Randy Benedict, a fellow locksmith, for all but two of those years. Together they have had a hand, literally, on every lock and every key and every door at Middlebury College.

At last count, Pixley and Benedict have issued 21,290 keys to operate the more than 5,000 locks on campus. They are also accountable for the hardware on every door on campus – a number that approaches 10,000 – whether it has a lock or not. Things like hinges, doorknobs, strike plates, and crash bars are their responsibility. Keyless push-button locks, like the new ones in Forest, Meeker, and Munford, and the older ones in Peterson Athletic Center, fall under their purview too.

You see there’s a whole lot more to being a locksmith than installing locks and making keys.

For example, if you have one of the 21,290 keys issued by the College, take a good look at it. See those numbers and letters stamped on the key? That’s a code the locksmiths have stamped on every key at Middlebury since the late 1980s, and just by looking at the key code they can tell you which lock it opens. The code also tells them who the key was issued to and when.

Likewise, look at the face of almost any lock on campus. It too has a code that the locksmiths have stamped on it. That way the lock department can make a duplicate key or replace the core or analyze a problem without having to make multiple trips to the site. But quick trips across campus are nothing new to the locksmiths. A student’s room door won’t lock. A professor can’t get into his office. A classroom door won’t open.

Pixley (left) and Randy Benedict install a door at McCullough.

“Call the locksmiths!” It’s a refrain heard nearly every day at Middlebury, and that’s when either Benedict or Pixley will zip across campus — on foot, in their John Deere “green machine,” or in their own vehicles — to solve the problem. They work so closely together, and have for so long, that they share a single two-way radio and the same call sign (#371) in Facilities Services.

The locksmiths start most mornings before 7:30 a.m. by meeting with their supervisor, Wayne Hall, in the Service Building. Next they head upstairs to the lock shop to go over the day’s work orders together (yellow for routine maintenance; white for “dorm damage”), split up the jobs, determine priorities, and get down to business.

Before they head out into the field, the locksmiths handle the day’s key requests: keys for contractors working on campus, keys for new employees, keys for departments that need them for student-workers, and a constant stream of lost keys.

“With the lost keys, we always look at the security level of the area. Like what doors did that key open? If it opened just one door, then we’ll probably issue a replacement key. But if that key opened multiple doors, then maybe we will have to re-key the whole area,” Pixley explained.

On the day when a writer from middmag.com tagged along with Pixley, he went to the KDR house to cut a cable, to McCardell Bicentennial Hall to fix a door closer on the seventh floor, to the Peterson Athletic Center to help the general services crew remove a door frame, to McCullough Student Center to re-hang two mahogany doors, and to Munford House to fix a bathroom door that wasn’t closing properly.

He also worked in the shop on a lock and handle combination from Bi Hall that wasn’t retracting properly. As Pixley started pulling the faulty mechanism apart, he said, “There’s a $15 part in there that wears out and it happens purely because of manufacturer’s error. But these locks go for $250 apiece and they’re out of warranty, so if I have to put an hour of labor and a new part in it, then it’s worth it.”

Mike Pixley fills a work order for new keys.

Door closers – the devices that shut a door after you walk through it – are taken for granted everywhere. But walk into any building at Middlebury or through almost any door, and what happens next? The door closes behind you. It happens over and over: dozens of times a day, hundreds of times a week, thousands of times a year. That’s why door closers frequently need adjustment or replacement.

“Did you see how fast that door was closing?” Pixley asked while replacing some worn-out hardware on a door. “Someone could have lost a finger in there.” So he adjusted the door closer too.

As the Army veteran hopped into his green machine and started back across campus, a gaggle of students momentarily blocked the way. Ever patient, Pixley turned and said, “Our job is to provide a safe, secure environment for them.” It was the perfect sound bite for a day with the locksmiths, and then he added, “We never have a dull day.”

As night falls, the Observatory dome opens.

It’s Observatory Open House night at Middlebury College, and the stairs leading from the seventh floor to the dome are packed with visitors young and old, many of whom are speaking foreign languages owing to the substantial population of Language Schools students, faculty, and families on campus. The skies are remarkably clear for a mid-summer evening in Vermont, and looking through the eyepiece of the big telescope is going to be a major attraction tonight.

Frank Winkler, the Gamaliel Painter Bicentennial professor of physics, has aligned the instrument to view Epsilon Lyr, a “double-double star” in the constellation Lyra. (The College telescope can collect about 10,000 times more light than the pupil of the human eye.) After a few final words of encouragement to student assistant Edward Smyth ’15, Winkler hurries down the crowded steps to the roof deck where about 20 people have gathered.

“It’s going to be really good viewing tonight,” Winkler says as he checks the alignment of the smaller reflecting telescopes mounted on the roof of Bi Hall. Three more assistants—Adrienne Matunas ’13, Zijian Yao ’15, and Lucia Perez (a visiting researcher from Wellesley College)—have pointed the telescopes at Saturn, Mars, and the bright star Vega.

It’s now 9 p.m. and lines of people have formed at each of the three roof-mounted scopes; Stephen Ratcliff, the Jacob Abbott professor of natural sciences, keeps a watchful eye on the rooftop proceedings; and a Russian-speaking lad of no more than six or seven circles back on line for yet another (and another!) close-up look at the rings of Saturn.

To the visitors it all seems so seamless. About 150-200 people, including many residents of the town and surrounding area, will get a close-up look at the heavens tonight. They’ll chat with the student-assistants and learn a little about the night sky. They’ll marvel at the incredible view in every direction and get a glimpse into deep space.

But because of weather, things don’t always go so smoothly. The physics department conducts several observatory nights each year and weather is always the biggest concern, for without clear skies there is no viewing.  And since the planning for each Observatory Open House begins weeks in advance of the event, Prof. Winkler and his team never know what the weather will be like on the day of the event.

“We start by contacting the newspapers, radio stations, calendars, and websites to inform everyone about what’s coming up at the observatory,” Winkler explains.”We handle all our own publicity ourselves.”

“It’s going to be good viewing tonight,” said Frank Winkler.

There’s also the task of producing multi-language flyers (¡Las Estrellas! Le Stelle! Les Ètoiles! Die Sterne! etc.) and tacking them to bulletin boards on campus and around town – a job handled by the student assistants.

As the day of an Observatory Open House approaches, Winkler contacts his students to make certain they are available. He consults with Ratcliff, his able comrade-in-arms for these events since the 1980s. He advises the Bi Hall technical support staff of his plans, and he asks the public safety department to assign an officer to the rooftop in case there is an issue, which there rarely is.

Winkler, who has been at Middlebury for 43 years, checks the star charts for unusual celestial occurrences. He looks at satellite passes to see whether anything interesting, like the International Space Station, will be going by. He always produces a two-sided program specific to what people will see through the 24-inch telescope inside the dome and through the two 11-inch and one eight-inch telescopes on the deck. (The inches refer to the diameter of each scope’s objective mirror.) And then there is the weather: Winkler monitors the conditions, emails his assistants about the forecast, and by 7 p.m. updates the recorded message (443-2266) on the Observatory Open House telephone line.

If it’s a “go,” the team members meet at 8 p.m. at the spot where the elevator stops on the seventh floor. They boot up the computer that controls the big telescope and the rotating dome, and keeps them tracking accurately. (The telescope and the dome move in unison to account for the rotation of the Earth.) They also begin the process of aligning the three smaller scopes by fixing each one on two bright stars in the evening sky, such as Polaris and Arcturus.

Ever the tireless host, Winkler dashes off to post directional signs inside Bi Hall. “Many of tonight’s visitors will be making their first trek to the College Observatory,” he says. “We don’t want them to get lost.”

Then, without fanfare, Middlebury’s astrophysicist is back on the rooftop again. Now it’s time to enjoy the stars.

The Observatory Open House will be held again on August 1, August 8, and August 15 in McCardell Bicentennial Hall just off Vermont Rte. 125 in Middlebury, weather permitting. Call the observatory after 7 p.m. on the evening of an open house for a status report. Viewing is from 9 p.m. to 10:30 p.m. free of charge.

Whether it was the comfort of seeing old friends, the thrill of being back on campus again, or admiration for all that Middlebury has become today, the weekend stirred the emotions and the joys of its roughly 1,800 participants.

The campus takes on a different bearing during Reunion, one that helps alumni feel connected to their College again. The only undergraduates in sight are wearing navy-blue “Reunion Weekend Staff” t-shirts, so it’s easy for alumni to imagine themselves back on campus tromping to class again. With temperatures in the high 70s and sunlight streaming across the hills, graduates enjoyed a full slate of activities planned by the Office of Alumni and Parent Programs.

Friday morning the 50th reunion class was back together, with more than 120 members on hand. The septuagenarians spent time with President Ronald D. Liebowitz and his wife Jessica; heard a panel discussion; attended a memorial service; posed for their class photo; and many were heading up to the links for a round of golf—and it wasn’t even past noon yet!

Viewing the portraits in the Old Chapel Boardroom

During the afternoon Richard Saunders, director of the College Museum and distinguished college professor, presented an illustrated lecture about the presidential portraits hanging in the Old Chapel Boardroom.

As the alumni leaned back in the roomy chairs used by the College’s trustees, they learned about the portraits on the boardroom wall, from the oil painting of Jeremiah Atwater, the first president, which was commissioned years after his death, to John M. McCardell’s official portrait, which Saunders had a direct hand in arranging. An art historian, Saunders was masterful at providing context for Middlebury’s array of presidential portraits.

Sabra Field '57 (r.) chats with Meredith Wade '82.

The artist Sabra Field ’57 attracted a crowd to her presentation about the mural on the east exterior wall of Wright Theatre. Championed by Kate Lupo ’10 and commissioned by the committee on art in public places, the three-story mural illustrates the effects that spiraling, tiling, branching, and scaling have on nature, the artist said.

Alumni Achievement Awards on Saturday morning were presented to Army Colonel Mark Odom ’87, conservationist Denise Schlener ’77, and NFL kicker Stephen Hauschka ’07. There was also a 5K fun run, golf scramble, alumni of color reception, and tours of the Solar Decathlon house, dubbed “Self Reliance House,” which is now situated permanently on Porter Field Road.

The Solar Decathlon house

Alumni streamed through the house marveling at its interior design, concise use of space, energy efficiency, and solar-powered everything. Many were heard to comment, “I could live here,” and some wanted to know how the students who inhabit the house are chosen. There also was much discussion about Middlebury’s next entry in the Solar Decathlon, called “InSite,” planned for 2013.

Glenn M. Andres, the Christian A. Johnson professor of art and architecture, led a walking tour of campus with special attention given to newer structures like Davis Family Library and Axinn Center at Starr Library. But first Andres convened the tour outside Old Chapel (completed in 1836) and used the opportunity to present a brief history of the College and point out the critical role American colleges and universities play in preserving historic buildings.

Alison McGhee '82 read her new poetry.

In the Axinn Center more than 75 alumni attended an event held by the New England Review, the College’s quarterly literary publication. Alumni and faculty writers gave readings of their recent works, and the audience of loyal NER supporters was attentive and enthusiastic.

The Class of 1972, celebrating its 40th reunion, dedicated a maple tree planted along Storrs Walk between Davis Library and Old Chapel. Bruce Brennan ’72 said the sapling will probably outlive members of the class, yet it will always symbolize how the alumni (i.e., the branches) are all connected to the College (i.e., the tree trunk.) The class held a brief memorial service beside its maple tree.

The alumni and their families received respite from the whirlwind of activity (and the unyielding sunshine) at the traditional ice cream social held under the trees in front of Voter Hall. Grads of all ages devoured their “Hoodsies” (ice cream) with a wooden spoon, and kids, kids, kids frolicked in the shade: playing tag, standing on chairs, squirting water, cradling lacrosse sticks, wearing floppy hats, and leaning up against mom and dad. Like most events at Reunion, time stood still with not a single smart phone or tablet in sight!

Members of the 25th reunion class

The ice cream social is prelude to Saturday’s Reunion Parade and procession into Mead Chapel. The Class of 1947 was last in line, but its members were relieved when the 50th reunion class fell in behind them in the Middlebury tradition. One alumna looked over her shoulder, smiled, and said,  “They look younger than we do, but I sure am glad we’re not at the very end!”

On Saturday evening jazz musician Philip Hamilton ’82 performed in the concert hall. For the late crowd, members of The Grift (including Clint Bierman ’97, Jeff Vallone ’97.5, and Peter Day ’01) performed outdoors.

A different kind of music—songbirds singing—resonated on Sunday morning as the alumni packed their rolling suitcases and made ready for the journey home.

Meanwhile the Reunion Choir rehearsed in Mead Chapel with Emory Fanning, professor emeritus of music and College organist, in preparation for the Sunday Morning Christian Worship. As he played the Gress-Miles organ and conducted his impromptu 30-member choir, Fanning exclaimed: “This is the best time of my life when you, the members of the Reunion Choir, are here performing with me.”

Emory Fanning (l.) with choir members (l. to r.) Renee Shellhaas '97, Jennie Meyer '91, and Diana Fanning '71

]]> http://sites.middlebury.edu/middmag/2012/06/12/emotional-ties/feed/ 0 http://sites.middlebury.edu/middmag/2012/05/09/things-that-happened-things-to-do-week-of-may-7/ http://sites.middlebury.edu/middmag/2012/05/09/things-that-happened-things-to-do-week-of-may-7/#comments Wed, 09 May 2012 16:35:04 +0000 Robert Keren http://sites.middlebury.edu/middmag/?p=8298 Our regular recap of goings on at the College and a look ahead to events on the horizon. As always, we hope to call your attention to items that captured ours and alert you to events that you won’t want to miss. If you have a news item that you think we’d be interested in, drop us a line at middmag@middlebury.edu.

• Julia Alvarez’s new book, “A Wedding in Haiti,” is resonating with readers and book critics alike. The Seattle Times called it “a touching, funny, eye-opening and uplifting memoir” that offers “an intimate look at our poorest neighbor in the Western Hemisphere.” The Christian Science Monitor said it’s “a love story that is many love stories.” And just last Sunday, NPR broadcast a poignant five-minute interview with Middlebury’s writer-in-residence for “Weekend Edition.”

• New England Cable News (NECN) network’s Jack Thurston ’02 returned to Middlebury last week to interview “Vermont’s Whistling Whiz,” Yuki Takeda ’14. You can watch the segment here, which includes Jack and Yuki’s rendition of the “Andy Griffith Show Theme Song.”

• Three Panther teams are still in the running for NCAA titles: women’s tennis and women’s lacrosse are hosting regional matches this week, and men’s tennis will be at Johns Hopkins on Saturday. Additionally, golfer Flora Weeks ’12 has qualified for the NCAA championship in Indiana, and members of the track and field team will compete at the Open New England Championships this weekend and at the ECACs and NCAAs later this month.

• Mother’s Day is next Sunday and—hurry!—there may still be time to send mom a card. And to honor mothers locally, the Middlebury College Community Chorus, directed by Jeff Rehbach, will present a “delightful mix of contemporary, traditional, and classical works” in a Mother’s Day Concert on Sunday, May 13, at 3 p.m. in Mead Chapel.

• What makes a healthy building? Middlebury’s visiting lecturer in architecture, Andrea K. Murray, will answer that question in an illustrated lecture on Thursday, May 10 at 7 p.m. in Room 304 of the Johnson Memorial Building.

• The 2011-12 performing arts season will reach a crescendo this weekend with a full slate of performances at the Mahaney Center for the Arts. Events include a choir concert, a musical-theatre revue, a woodwind quintet performance, and a piano recital. Check the arts webpage for details and don’t miss out because after this week things quiet down considerably at the MCFA. Until next September, that is.

]]> http://sites.middlebury.edu/middmag/2012/05/09/things-that-happened-things-to-do-week-of-may-7/feed/ 0 http://sites.middlebury.edu/middmag/2012/04/26/diplomacy-and-the-arab-spring/ http://sites.middlebury.edu/middmag/2012/04/26/diplomacy-and-the-arab-spring/#comments Thu, 26 Apr 2012 17:41:38 +0000 Robert Keren http://sites.middlebury.edu/middmag/?p=8185 Two visiting diplomats—a former U.S. ambassador to Israel and Egypt, and the Czech Republic’s ambassador to the United States—were in Middlebury six days apart in April to present their views on the Arab Spring for the Rohatyn Center for International Affairs.

Daniel Kurtzer

Daniel Kurtzer, who was ambassador to Egypt during President Clinton’s second term and ambassador to Israel during the first half of George W. Bush’s presidency, discussed the Arab Spring (or, as he called it, the “Arab Awakening”) from Israel’s perspective. But he also used the podium to voice his support for a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine question, and state his opposition to Israeli settlements in occupied territories.

Now a professor in Middle Eastern policy studies at Princeton University, Kurtzer is no longer expected to be a reserved, circumspect diplomat, and he certainly didn’t disappoint his standing-room-only audience in the conference room of the Robert A. Jones ’59 House on April 17.

The visitor said Israel is “one of the few nations in the world largely surrounded by countries that deny its existence diplomatically,” and he skillfully placed Israel’s Arab neighbors in three distinct “baskets: democratizers, repressors, and monarchies.”

On how Israel has responded (or not responded) to the Arab Awakening, Kurtzer said, “Most interesting in this respect is in a society where you normally can’t get people to shut up, Israelis have been uncharacteristically quiet because they have understood over the course of the past year that, to the largest extent, they were not the subject matter of Arab discourse.”

Kurtzer examined Israel’s strategic position in response to the Arab Spring using the three “core challenges” that the State of Israel has faced since its founding in 1947: security, economics, and immigration. And while the basic challenges haven’t changed, he said the Middle East landscape has been transformed dramatically: “The secular pan-Arab nationalism of the mid-20th century is now driven by Islamic fundamentalism.”

The major forces in the region aren’t states anymore, Kurtzer explained. “It’s regional players and non-state actors” that threaten Israel’s security, and he listed Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Palestinian Authority, among others. He also named Iran and Turkey as two countries beyond Israel’s border that now play a role in the region’s politics.

During his 40-minute lecture, which was initiated by Sarah R. Cohen ’15 of Middlebury’s Hillel chapter, the Princeton professor touched briefly on the second “core challenge”—the development and expansion of Israel’s economy—pointing to the country’s shift from an agricultural economy to a technological one.

On the assimilation of immigrants, the former ambassador said there are now 10-plus million people living between the Mediterranean Sea and the River Jordan including the non-Jewish residents of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Demographers project that the population of the region will shift to an Arab majority sometime about the middle of this century, which prompts Kurtzer to advocate for a two-state solution. “The crux of the issue [is] whether the two sides really believe in partition, in sharing this land they both claim exclusive control over.”

Ambassador Petr Gandalovic of the Czech Republic addressed the topic of “The Velvet Revolution and Lessons for the Arab Spring” as the guest of Middlebury’s Rohatyn Center and the Vermont Council on World Affairs on April 23.

Petr Gandalovic

Gandalovic, who ascended to his diplomatic post in 2011, delivered 10 minutes of prepared remarks and took questions from Middlebury students and faculty for the rest of the hour. Comparing the events of 1989 among the Warsaw Pact nations to current actions in North Africa and the Middle East, the ambassador noted these similarities: the geographic scale of events, the unpopularity of existing regimes, the “powerful will of the people” demanding democratic change, and the unlikelihood that unrest will stop once it has started.

Similarities aside, he acknowledged that there are numerous historic, cultural, religious, and economic differences between the region where Communism fell and the Arab countries where totalitarianism is being challenged today. Two major forces that shaped the course of the Velvet Revolution—the emergence of popular leaders and support from western Europe—appear to be less influential in the Arab Spring.

During the Velvet Revolution “intellectual leaders played a very prominent role,” he said. “Thinkers like the late President Václav Havel helped provide a unified vision and became symbols for the people. Havel steered the revolution in a civil direction, much as America’s founders. He envisioned a civil society and his writings have become a source of inspiration for other pro-democracy movements around the world.”

The Arab Spring does not have charismatic leaders like Havel or Lech Wałęsa, the ambassador explained. It is a revolution “driven by social media,” which Gandalovic recognized to be a “powerful platform” for organizing uprisings and for communicating both inside and outside the region, but social media itself will never “offer the vision and sense of direction” like strong leadership.

In 1989, “the countries of central and eastern Europe could rely on support from the rest of Europe, which was keen for them to return to the family of democratic European nations. Existing European and trans-Atlantic structures served as a great incentive for further reforms in Czechoslovakia and elsewhere. In the case of the Arab countries now undergoing transition, the situation is different,” the ambassador stated, and the relationship between Arab nations and the EU countries is more “complex.”

Nevertheless, the Czech Republic’s foreign minister just returned from an official visit to Egypt, and Ambassador Gandalovic asserted that his country “stands ready to work with the newly elected representatives who want to respect human rights and take their [Arab] nations in the direction of freedom and democracy.”

Photo of Daniel Kurtzer courtesy Jon Roemer.

When Tony Jackson first heard that the College was getting 10,000 pounds of avocados this spring, he wondered, “How the heck are we going to go through all of those?”

When most people see avocados, they think: guacamole.

A veteran chef with 29 years in Dining Services, Jackson knew he’d have to come up with something more than basic guacamole, so he started scouring the Internet for avocado recipes. There were avocado salads, avocado soups, avocado dressings, avocado dishes galore. And for a chef like Tony Jackson with access to a vast array of fresh foods, the possibilities seemed endless.

He was not alone in the quest; all the other chefs on campus have been digging into their recipe boxes because a tractor-trailer load of refrigerated Ettinger avocados arrived in Middlebury direct from southern California on March 30. There were 400 cases of avocados with about 25 avocados per case, or about 10,000 avocados in all.

The avocados are a gift from a Middlebury parent who wishes to remain anonymous. Suffice to say that the parent’s business interests include the sourcing of avocados in large quantities. “I see it as a win-win,” the parent told middmag.com. “The Ettinger is not as marketable as the Hass avocado, which is really the coin of the realm among avocados today. So we are pleased to put some smiles on the faces of the students at Middlebury, and introduce the uninitiated few to the pleasures of eating avocados.”

Pleasures indeed. How about avocado cheesecake? Yes! Avocado frittata? Absolutely! Avocado coconut frozen yogurt? Delicious! Avocado fries with chipotle dipping sauce? Mmmm! All of these dishes have been served in the dining halls this month.

The Ettinger avocado is a large, green, pear-shaped fruit with smooth skin and a big seed. Weighing about a pound each, the Ettinger is not to be confused with its more-popular first cousin, the Hass avocado with its black, pebbly skin. High in Vitamins B, C, and K, and rich in potassium, the Ettinger is just as nutritious as the Hass, with a slightly milder flavor.

Last Thursday morning Tony Jackson was putting the finishing touches to the lunch he prepared for the language tables in the Redfield Proctor Room. The first course would be avocado crab soup made with chicken stock and cream, and for the entrée students could choose from three dishes, two of which featured avocado. There were grilled pork chops with avocado black bean salsa, and tofu avocado sauté with broccoli and red onion. Within minutes the room was filled with students speaking Italian and Portuguese and Chinese and German—a Tower of Babel with avocados on the menu.

They're great in Mediterranean salads

Since then the dining staff has served avocado cream cheese with smoked salmon (for Passover), Mediterranean avocado salad with artichokes and dill (an original recipe by Dawn Sumner in Proctor), avocado and tomato wraps (a big hit in Ross Dining Hall), and baby spinach salad with smoked salmon (and, you guessed it, slices of fresh avocado).

Yes, the sky’s the limit when it comes to avocados, especially when you have five tons of them to work with.

“Now, when students walk into the dining halls, they are on the lookout for the latest way that the staff has presented the avocados,” explained Robert “Bo” Cleveland, Middlebury’s executive chef.

“To say we are pleased with the efforts of the staff would fall far short of our feelings,” he added. They have “rallied around ways to present the fruit beyond the obvious” uses of avocados, and that has made it fun for everyone. “It has been a pleasure for us to work with such a prized commodity.”

Inside Proctor Dining Hall located right next to the apples, oranges, and bananas is a self-service station (below right) to peel and slice raw avocados. And although the Ettingers have been “on the menu” for barely a week, hardly a minute goes by before another student steps up, selects a ripe avocado from the basket, cuts it open, and goes back to a seat.

Avocados, like bananas, mature on the tree but ripen off it.

The director of dining services, Matthew Biette, worked directly with the donor to effect the shipment of avocados, which were harvested in mid-March, packed, cooled, and shipped straight to Middlebury.

“It is one of the most novel gifts I have ever heard of,” said Biette, “but avocados are such a valuable food source and so nutritious, how could we turn them down?”

The College has donated several cases to the high school culinary arts programs in Middlebury and Rutland, and is considering donating a few cases to the area food shelf for low-income families.

Meanwhile back in the Proctor kitchen, chef Richard O’Donohue and his staff are busy peeling and chopping avocados by the dozen. Will it be another gourmet dish, a grilled avocado with sweet relish perhaps? No, not this time. Thursday is Mexican Day in Proctor and—in addition to fajitas, refried beans, and vegetarian chili—guacamole will be on the menu.

Update: In response to questions raised by some readers of this story (below), the donor of the avocados explained that most major avocado packers, including Calavo, Mission Produce, Del Rey Avocado, IndexFresh, West Pak Avocado, and others, do not market “pollinator varieties” like the Ettinger. Instead, the pollinator varieties, called “Type B” avocados, are grown in fields with the more popular “Type A” avocados (such as the Hass) to increase production. When they mature, Ettinger and other Type B avocados are harvested and generally sold at California farmers’ markets and are not shipped great distances.

Before accepting the donation of avocados, Dining Services looked into the source of the fruit, researched uses for Ettinger avocados, and received a few cases so its own chefs could determine whether they would be of value to the College. Satisfied that the avocados from the anonymous donor would keep for weeks under refrigeration, that the chefs in Dining Services could create dishes using them, and that they would be well-received by students, the College accepted the 10,000-pound donation, which included the harvesting, packing, and shipping of the fruit.

• Last weekend you could have made history by skiing at the Snow Bowl and playing 18 holes at the Ralph Myhre Golf Course on the same day. Due to the unusually warm weather, the golf course opened on March 16—more than two weeks earlier than its previous tee-off date of April 2. The Snow Bowl, meanwhile, stayed in operation through Sunday, March 18. The manager of the Bowl, Peter Mackey, thanked everyone “for sticking with us through the tough winter,” while Jim Dayton and his golf course staff hustled to get the course ready for its earliest opening ever.

• On a more international note, recent graduate Jahd Khalil ’11 interviewed associate professor Febe Armanios for Egypt Independent in response to the recent passing of Pope Shenouda III, the charismatic leader of Egypt’s Coptic Orthodox Church. An authority on the Coptic faith, Armanios is the author of the book Coptic Christianity in Ottoman Egypt (Oxford University Press, 2011) and teaches courses in Egyptian history and politics, and women and gender in the Middle East.

• In commemoration of the first anniversary of the devastating earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan on March 11, 2011, Middlebury College joined forces with performing artists around the country for Shinsai—a global showcase of music, theatre, and discussion. (Shinsai means “great quake” in Japanese.) Our student newspaper, The Campus, gave extensive coverage to Middlebury’s collaborative Shinsai event coordinated by the theatre department.

• Eric Davis, professor emeritus and secretary emeritus of the College, is doing regular commentary about national and local politics for Vermont Public Radio throughout the 2012 election season. His five-minute segments can be heard on alternating Saturday mornings at about 9:35 a.m. during VPR’s broadcast of “Weekend Edition.” Here is Eric’s most recent commentary in which he discussed Republican challenger Randy Brock’s chances to unseat Vermont’s incumbent Governor Peter Shumlin. (Brock, by the way, is a 1965 graduate of Middlebury while Shumlin graduated from Wesleyan.)

• When MiddPoints was published in hard copy, over 71 percent of staff and faculty said the classified section was their favorite department in the publication. Now with the spring-cleaning season upon us, here’s your chance to unload your used merchandise again—this time using the new online MiddPoints Weekly classified advertising section. It’s easy to post a new listing or scan down the list of items—such as theatre tickets, used furniture, and computer gear—for sale.

• Since its founding in 2009, the Center for the Comparative Study of Race and Ethnicity (CCSRE) has focused its yearly programming on a different theme, such as citizenship, environment, and education. Next year the CCSRE will be looking at race, ethnicity, and immigration. Be a part of the planning process, let your voice be heard, or just observe the inner workings of the center on Thursday, March 22, from noon to 1 p.m. in Carr Hall Lounge when the CCSRE steering committee and friends convene in an open meeting. All are welcome.

Problems of gender violence, which include sexual violence, domestic violence, sexual abuse of children, and sexual harassment, are viewed by society as “women’s issues that some good men help out with,” rather than seen as men’s issues.

Men and masculinity “have been rendered invisible in much of the discourse” around gender violence, Katz said. This is not surprising since “dominant groups often go unchallenged in society, and their power and privilege goes unexamined.”

“[Gender violence issues] affect women at every level, but I am here to say that the very fact of just calling these issues ‘women’s issues’ is in itself part of the problem.”

Jackson Katz (c.) enjoyed dinner and conversation with students in Chellis House before his talk.

The guest speaker, who is an educator, author, filmmaker, and cultural theorist with a PhD from UCLA, offered powerful examples to support his argument that language reinforces social norms that place women in jeopardy today.

“The first problem with using the term ‘women’s issues’ when talking about gender violence is it gives men an excuse to not pay attention. A lot of men hear ‘women’s issues’ and they tend to tune it out and think, ‘Hey, I’m a guy,’ and they literally don’t get past the first sentence.”

Another way that people discuss gender violence is through the use of the passive voice.

“We talk about how many women were raped last year, not about how many men raped women. We talk about how many girls in a school district were harassed last year, not about how many boys harassed girls. We talk about how many teenage girls in the state of Vermont got pregnant last year, rather than how many men and boys impregnated teenage girls.

“So you can see how the use of the passive voice has a political effect. [It] shifts the focus off of men and boys and onto girls and women. Even the term ‘violence against women’ is problematic. It’s a passive construction; there’s no active agent in the sentence. It’s a bad thing that happens to women, but when you look at that term ‘violence against women,’ nobody is doing it to them. It just happens to them…Men aren’t even a part of it!”

Next, Katz used a whiteboard on the platform at Mead Chapel (giving credit to author Julia Penelope for the exercise that followed) and wrote:

The first sentence, Katz explained, “is a good English sentence: a subject, a verb, and an object.” The second sentence is the first sentence written in the passive voice, and according to Katz “a whole lot has happened. The focus has shifted from John to Mary. John is now at the end of the sentence, which means that John is very close to dropping off the map of our psychic plane. So it’s not just bad writing to use the passive voice, it’s also political. And the political effect has been to shift the focus from John to Mary.”

In the third sentence John is gone. In the fourth, the term “battered” is substituted for “beaten,” and in the final sentence of the sequence “you can see that Mary has a new identity. She is now a battered woman and John is no longer part of the conversation.”

How language holds victims accountable, rather than their perpetrators, is demonstrated by the way the word “accuser” has supplanted the term “alleged victim.”

“This,” Katz stated, “is a very big shift in the conversation about sexual violence. People who come forward to allege that they have been sexually assaulted are now referred to routinely as ‘accusers.’ There’s a lot going on here with the use of this word. The public is generally positioned to identify sympathetically with the victims of sexual assault or other forms of abuse. So when you hear about a sexual assault you think, ‘That’s horrible. That’s too bad. Or that could have been me or someone I care about.’”

But using the term ‘accuser’ reverses the process, because it turns the victim into an accuser. “So we as a public are now positioned to identify sympathetically with him as the victim of her accusation, rather than with her as the victim of his alleged perpetration. This is subtle but deep, isn’t it? It’s another instance where victims are being told to sit down, shut up, and don’t come forward because if you come forward you are going to be an accuser, and then people are going to be questioning your motives…it’s just another way that we in society keep people from coming forward.”

The intensity of Katz’s one-hour presentation—one “aha moment” after another about society’s skewed language for the treatment of women—had his audience exhausted but inspired. But the creator of the Mentors in Violence Program, a gender-violence prevention system implemented by professional sports teams, NASCAR, and the U.S. Marine Corps, wasn’t finished yet.

Katz took four or five questions from the audience, answered each one thoroughly, and then screened a clip from his film “Tough Guise: Violence, Media, and the Crisis in Masculinity,” and a segment from Byron Hurt’s documentary “Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes.” Katz spoke pointedly about the obligation men have to model the respectful treatment of women. And he closed with a quote from Frederick Douglass, the 19th century orator and activist, who said, “It is easier to build strong children than repair broken men.”

Postscript: In addition to his talk in Mead Chapel, Jackson Katz also conducted a day-long workshop for members of the community. His appearances at Middlebury were sponsored by the Women’s and Gender Studies Program, Office of the Dean of the College, Athletics Department, Parton Health and Counseling Center, Academic Enrichment Fund, WomenSafe, and the Addison Council Against Domestic and Sexual Violence.

]]> http://sites.middlebury.edu/middmag/2012/03/15/gender-violence/feed/ 4 http://sites.middlebury.edu/middmag/2012/03/08/track-and-field-on-the-upswing/ http://sites.middlebury.edu/middmag/2012/03/08/track-and-field-on-the-upswing/#comments Thu, 08 Mar 2012 18:23:04 +0000 Robert Keren http://sites.middlebury.edu/middmag/?p=7716

Patrick Hebble (r.) and Anthony Lee

The 2012 Middlebury indoor track and field team epitomizes the adage that records are made to be broken.

Sixteen school records have been set during this winter season, including junior Jack Davies’ 4:10.31 clocking in the mile and the women’s distance medley relay (DMR) team’s best-in-Division III time of 11:39.56. Juliet Ryan-Davis ’13 set school records in two individual events, the 400- and 800-meter runs, as did Michael Schmidt ’12 in the 3,000- and 5,000-meter events.

Davies, Ryan-Davis, Schmidt and five of their record-setting relay teammates—Margo Cramer ‘12, Rebecca Fanning 12, Patrick Hebble ‘13, Peter Hetzler ’14, and Addie Tousley ‘14—have also qualified for the NCAA Division III indoor track and field championships this weekend (March 9-10) in Iowa.

Few Division III schools send as many as eight athletes to nationals, yet it’s been business-as-usual for the indoor track squad during practice this week.

On Tuesday afternoon in the Bubble, the atmosphere around the indoor track is relaxed as the athletes loosen up. First-year students mingle with track and field veterans; school-record holders and NCAA champions jog around the oval; and everyone stretches their muscles while conversing with coaches and each other.

Every thrower, runner, and jumper has an individualized workout to complete. And since winter track runs right into spring track, and as there are more than 100 students on the team, and because everyone has a lab to complete or a thesis to write or a paper due tomorrow, the athletes tend to be conscientious about their training and work independently.

Martin Beatty '84

College track and field is like one big extended family, and the leader of Middlebury’s pack is Martin Beatty ’84, who has been the head coach for the past 24 years.  Soft-spoken and self-effacing, Beatty surrounds himself with some of the top coaching talent in Division III and together the coaches motivate their athletes with hard work and understanding.

“We have a really balanced team this year,” Beatty said. “Some years the men do better than the women, or vice versa, but this year it’s pretty even and I like that! It’s a wonderful thing to have both genders doing well, especially with a combined program like we have, so I am really happy that we have had almost an equal number of records broken on both sides of the spectrum.”

Nine men’s and seven women’s school records were toppled this winter. (It’s safe to say that’s more records set than in any other year of indoor track, except maybe the first season.) Team Middlebury was in the thick of every meet it entered in 2012, bookended by the season’s opener at NYU in January at which 39 Panthers competed, through last weekend’s ECAC Championships in which the men finished 9th out of 62 teams and the women were 11th out of 51 teams.

“When both the women and the men do well, it makes everyone feel good about each other and about the team as a whole,” said Beatty. “This has been a really good supportive team this winter. They really care about each other, from the coaches and captains on down.”

It should come as no surprise that the 2012 indoor track season has been a banner year for Middlebury College. Both winter and spring track has been on the upswing in recent years. Athletes who finish in the top eight at the NCAAs (winter or spring) are considered All Americans, and since the year 2000 Middlebury has produced 25 All Americans: 18 women and seven men. And some—like Kristy (Laramee) Kerin ‘01 in the high jump or Bryan Black ’02 and Khristoph Becker ’06 in the javelin or Alexandra Krieg ‘09 in the 5,000 and 10,000 meters or Kaitlynn Saldanha ‘11 in the 800 meters—have achieved All American status in multiple years.

Vaulters and their poles

At this year’s NCAAs, Vermont’s attention will be on Middlebury’s women’s and men’s distance medley relay teams—that combination of speed, endurance, and baton-passing in which the first runner covers 1,200 meters followed by teammates who do 400, 800, and 1,600 meters. The women’s relay team of Tousley, Fanning, Ryan-Davis, and Cramer dominated the competition this year, capped off by its best-in-Division III clocking of 11:39.56 at the Boston University meet. The men’s DMR team of Davies, Hetzler, Hebble, and Schmidt also won at BU en route to recording the fourth best time in the nation, 9:56.07.

Track and field athletes often enter multiple events at meets, and elite athletes occasionally qualify for national championships in more than one competition. And when they qualify in two dashes or two field events, it’s generally not an issue. This year the Middlebury team had an interesting problem: Margo Cramer, a 4:51-miler, qualified in both that event and the DMR, and Michael Schmidt, who knocked nearly 16 seconds off his best time in the 5,000 meters this year, qualified in his specialty and in the men’s DMR. Both Cramer and Schmidt’s individual times were tops in Division III this winter, so would they compete in their individual events and the DMR at the NCAAs?

Fortunately the men’s 5,000 and the finals for the mile are on Saturday, the day after the DMR, so the coaches and athletes decided that Cramer and Schmidt could double at the NCAAs.

Meanwhile three other Middlebury runners in the distance medley relays also qualified for individual events at the NCAA championships—Ryan-Davis in the 800 and both Davies and Hebble in the mile—but they resolved to focus solely on the DMR, a premier event in which Middlebury College has a legitimate shot at two gold medals.

Of their choice to forgo individual races in favor of the relays, Beatty said, “It was a very unselfish decision on their part, but they decided that their individual races could affect the success of their whole relay teams, and they want to help each other become All Americans together.”

The women's distance medley relay team (l-r): Margo Cramer, Addie Tousley, Rebecca Fanning, Juliet Ryan-Davis, and assistant coach Nicole Wilkerson

Update: The women’s distance medley team took first place at the NCAA meet in a record-breaking time of 11:37.35. The men’s DMR team was fourth in 10:01.38. Margo Cramer was fourth in the mile with a 4:55.83, and Michael Schmidt was sixth in the 5,000-meter run at 14:25.55. Overall, the Middlebury women placed 10th out of the 63 teams that scored, and the men finished 23rd out of the 60 Division III schools that scored.  

Filmmaker Daniel Houghton ’04, a visiting lecturer in film and media studies, had the idea for a Winter Term class, and when he met with playwright Dana Yeaton ’79 of the theatre department faculty to discuss it, they agreed to adapt a full-length play by Yeaton into an animated short film.

The duo emerged from that meeting with a rough sketch illustrating what would become the narrative arc of the story, a story about a Vermont farmer’s recollections of the flood of 1927. Meanwhile a third alumnus, Anais Mitchell ’04, agreed (along with her collaborator Michael Chorney), to compose, perform, and record original music for the project. Thus was born the animated version of “Mad River Rising.”

The missing element was the animation itself—the hundreds and hundreds of hand-illustrated images that would make up the film. Nine Middlebury students labored for four weeks, from January 9 through February 3, creating every scene in the film, often re-drawing portions of the same scene over and over (with only the slightest variation) to convey motion in the film.

“Mad River Rising” premiered to a packed house of students and faculty in Dana Auditorium on March 1. The director, Houghton, introduced the film and explained how the project came together. He showed the rough sketch from the first meeting, introduced the student-animators in the audience, and revealed that he taught them just two basic facts about animation. “The rest was just a swamp of personal discovery for them,” he said, as the lights dimmed and film came up on the big screen.

The production schedule for a 13-minute animated film was ambitious; some might have even called it grueling. But there is no denying the emotional appeal of the finished product.

Ryan Kim '14

That’s because some townspeople will be busy chatting with neighbors they haven’t seen since last year. Others will be studying the town budget trying to figure out how much money the town saved on road salt this winter. While the rest will be waiting patiently for the moderator, Jim Douglas ’72, the former four-term governor of Vermont, to gavel the proceedings to begin.

Town Meeting Day in Vermont is more than a state holiday; it’s a New England institution. And for Ryan Kim ’14 in the bleacher seats, it will be another chapter in his Middlebury College education. And not just because the California native will witness the centuries-old democratic process for the first time, but because Kim had a direct hand in shaping two of the articles up for consideration in 2012.

This year Middlebury town officials, in conjunction with the College and the business community, are looking to create a Business Development Fund and hire a full-time director of business development to attract new businesses to Middlebury, expand the tax base, and create jobs.

If passed by the voters at Town Meeting, Article 5 will establish the Middlebury Business Development Fund, and Article 6 will empower the town to add one cent to the municipal tax rate for the next five years to support the fund. The fund is envisioned to generate $180,000 per year with 40 percent ($72,000) from the town, 40 percent ($72,000) from the College, and 20 percent ($36,000) from the business community, grants, and/or private investors. The director of business development’s compensation would be in the $70,000-per-year range (plus benefits), with the remaining expenses going toward travel, research, and costs related to business recruitment.

“If the Middlebury Business Development Fund (MBDF) helps attract a single company like the Vermont Hard Cider Company that builds a new facility in town, the position will pay for itself and reduce Middlebury’s tax rate,” said Ben Wilson, a local attorney and vice president of the downtown business organization known as the Better Middlebury Partnership. “The MBDF is not a bridge to nowhere—it is a sound, fiscally sensible investment in our community and in ourselves.”

Before the Town Meeting articles were drawn up, before there was a concrete plan on the table, and before there was a spate of op-ed pieces in the local newspaper, there was an idea. A simple idea. That the College and its alumni network should be able to work with the town to attract new resources from outside the region to create high-quality jobs in Middlebury.

To advance their idea, officials of the town, the College, and the business community needed data to support their assertion, and that’s when Ryan Kim entered the picture.

Last summer the town retained Kim to do a feasibility study for the proposed business development fund and its director position. Kim interviewed 27 people in the Middlebury area, such as the president of the local bank and owner of the Middlebury Inn. He talked to town officials and college administrators. He walked up and down Main Street frequenting businesses, speaking to residents and visitors, and observing commerce. He catalogued Middlebury’s chief assets for future business development, and the top three were Middlebury College, Porter Medical Center, and the capacity of the town’s existing water and sewer system.

As part of the research, Kim also conducted brief case studies on 10 communities in the Northeast that have adopted a business-development model, including Hanover, New Hampshire; Killington, Vermont; Adams, Massachusetts; and Oneonta, New York. Kim concluded that the key ways to enhance economic development in Middlebury are to a) leverage all existing assets, b) coordinate the activities of existing organizations (chamber of commerce, the regional economic development corporation, etc.), and c) hire a point person with experience in business recruitment.

The sophomore from Newport Beach is the second of four children. “Birth order is very important to me,” Kim says. “I am all about making my own way and being independent.” While his older sister stayed in Orange County for high school and later matriculated at Harvard, Ryan went to the Putney School in Vermont and made Middlebury his first choice of college, even though its rural location had certain disadvantages for him.

At Steve's Park Diner and elsewhere, Kim mixed with the locals.

“I knew coming in that I was giving up a lot by not being in an urban area. I was giving up opportunities for networking with big corporations or doing corporate work while I was in school. But the closest thing to a corporation here is the president’s office, so that’s where I decided to work—in the president’s office.” And so he did.

As a first-semester freshman Kim worked on economic development projects under the direction of Dave Donahue ’91, special assistant to the president. “When Ryan came into Old Chapel and said he wanted to work in the president’s office, we didn’t take him too seriously at first. But when he came back a few weeks later, and then returned a third time, we all realized he was serious about learning about college administration and organizational behavior, and so we put him to work on some projects.”

Donahue later recommended Kim for the summer research position with the town and asked him to participate on a panel with trustees and alumni during a daylong leadership summit directed at cultivating the next generation of leaders for the College.

Now three-plus semesters into his Middlebury education, Kim is still interested in the corporate world. He is a candidate for an internship this summer with the Walt Disney Company in Burbank because, he says, “Corporations are in the best position to benefit society and effect positive change. I wish the world were more like Vermont with its small businesses and small communities, but it’s not like that.”

Meanwhile he’s doing everything he can to gain corporate experience, Vermont-style, from majoring in economics to serving on the finance committee of student government. He is also vice chair of the student investment committee that controls a portion of the College’s endowment, and is both treasurer and marketing director for Middlebury Quidditch. And on Monday at Town Meeting, he will have more than a passing interest in the future of business development in his college town.

Update on March 5: The Middlebury Town Meeting debated about the creation of the Business Development Fund and the new director position for nearly two hours before accepting the proposal on a vote of 125 to 64. Ryan Kim not only watched the proceedings; he spoke convincingly in favor of the issue.