Platform & Plans

Middlebury College promotes itself as an institution that provides an immersive education designed to prepare students for lives of engagement, consequence, and creativity. Yet, it is often the students that both hold the institution accountable and advocate for change. Every day, students do incredible things in response to the ideas and systems they encounter. Every day, faculty show up to the classroom to share their knowledge and to challenge our understandings of the world around us. Every day, staff and administration put immense amounts of work into keeping our campus alive and well. We all breathe life into this place, are inexplicably connected by it, and are simultaneously impacted by the environment and institutional culture that we share. The Community Council has the power to look at not only what it means to be student here, but also what it means to live and work here.

I’m running to be the Co-Chair of Community Council for Fall 2021. As Co-Chair, I’d like to:

Increase the visibility, trust in, and use of Community Council as a legitimate body through which students, faculty and staff can 1) communicate their concerns, 2) get the input of relevant non-CC stakeholders who are directly impacted, 3) deliberate in a focused and intentional manner, and 4) execute and achieve actionable outcomes. This is a process that takes time, attention, care, and revision.
Create a functioning Community Council website complete with information on membership, priorities, agenda items, meeting minutes, and progress updates.
Improve campus-wide internal communications practices beyond just emails to increase convenience and clarity of information distribution between administration, faculty, staff, and students. This could include establishing more common practice of campus-wide Zoom panels with Q&A sessions, in-person Town Halls, “office” hours, and utilizing regular audio and visual announcements through social media and College websites.
Work with the incoming SGA President and their team to create a Common Agenda where we can delineate roles, responsibilities, and timelines for shared projects.
When supplies are confirmed by the Governor’s office, ensure that Middlebury students, faculty, and staff are supported in their obtainment of the COVID-19 vaccine.
Collaborate with the incoming SGA President to establish annual fundraising campaigns with the Office of Advancement that could include advancing justice and equity for BIPOC, queer, low-income, and first-generation communities both within and outside Middlebury College.
Support DEI efforts and advance Anti-Racist frameworks in accordance with and beyond the College’s 5-Year Plan.
Continue current Co-Chair Christian Kummer’s work into examining campus safety by investigating the use of Public Safety and their practices, as well as the use of two private security firms: Green Mountain Security and Chocolate Thunder.
Continue promotion and implementation of new Title IX policies and complementary College policies recommending the use of restorative practices.
Explore the possibility of creating mandatory, interactive anti-bias and anti-discrimination trainings for faculty and staff. Also, review current processes for responding to incidents of bias and/or discrimination.
Review College policies and procedures to ensure that survivors of sexual assault and harassment, stalking, and dating violence are supported at least as much as offenders are protected.
Extend the availability and variety of mental health resources—especially for those who have experienced trauma, have an eating disorder(s), and for those who identify as LGBTQIA+ and BIPOC.
Initiate a comprehensive review of the College’s resources, support, infrastructure, or lack thereof for those who identify as having a physical disability and/or impairment, mental disability, developmental disability, or learning disabilities and difficulties.
Expand opportunities for outdoor exploration and education for those who have historically been denied the ability to safely experience nature.
Work with the Land Acknowledgement Steering Committee to advance initiatives honoring Indigenous culture and native lands.
Help to initiate a long-term fundraising campaign with the Office of Advancement for the creation of a new student center.
Promote and allocate resources towards the visual and performing arts.
Support the Better Middlebury Partnership and their efforts to support local businesses and stimulate the local economy.

You’ll notice that many of these initiatives are aimed at making this campus and this community a more just, equitable, accessible, and welcoming place. An immersive education necessitates the exploration of one’s internal and external environments, identities, and locations within systems of power. While the institution and its students’ passions to engage in critical issues are its strengths, it is also Middlebury’s weakness. Higher education has historically been occupied by larger structures of white privilege and supremacy that implicitly (or sometimes, explicitly) contribute to oppression of marginalized peoples. Middlebury, as a small, liberal arts and sciences college in New England, is still working to increase the student body’s diversity of experience—racially, economically, geographically, etc.—and still grappling with what it means to go beyond being a predominantly white institution.

To make something better is to improve upon and surpass what is already there. What a “better” Middlebury looks like will be up to us as a community. It will be up to our collective ability to communicate and listen to each other with empathy and grace. We must talk across difference, acknowledge the harm we may cause one another, and hold ourselves accountable to one another. Building community is not simple but it is an endeavor well worth the effort. I’m committed to engaging in conversations, making strangers into familiar faces, and celebrating the individuals that make up our community.

Want to endorse me?