The Middlebury Campus marks 101 years
of headlines and deadlines.
By Sarah Tuff '95
Tuesday evening is waning on the Middlebury campus, and most students are quietly tucking in for the night, scurrying across the slippery paths to their dorms while a thin February snow swirls around them. But in the newsroom of the Middlebury Campus, it's crunch time.
The cacophony of an impromptu soccer match among the sports editors sends news editor Katie Flagg '08—on the phone with a source for a sensitive story that's set to run in the current edition—fleeing for cover in a quiet corner. There's still no sign of Vlad Lodoaba '06, the Red Bull chugging photo editor from Romania. And the pizza place no longer delivers late—or at least not late enough for the tastes of the two dozen staffers, many of whom will be here until 5:30 a.m.
"Wow," says managing editor Tom Drescher '06 as he snaps his cell phone shut, ending the call with Neil and Otto's Pizza. "My world just turned upside down."
Actually, it's always been a bit topsy-turvy in the world of the Campus. For 101 years, the College's paper of record has kept the pulse of Middlebury, often pulling emergency-room hours to puzzle the news together. From drafting ads for fountain pens in 1909 to covering Route 7 protests in 1969 to passing on editing advice to the class of 2009, the newsroom has been a hive of activity for generations of students. "It looks great on a rÈsumÈ, but that can't be the main reason to put so much time into this," says editor in chief Caroline Stauffer '06.
"It's about finding a balance between fun and hard work and pride in the product that we put out."
When the Campus debuted in 1905, it was a quarterly replacement for the Undergraduate, which was founded in 1837 but went bankrupt in 1902. The new Campus, declared the editors in Vol. 1, No. 1, would cover some alumni news, but it would focus primarily on, well, the campus. "In brief, we hope to cover the entire field of college activity," the editors wrote. By 1920, the paper had gone weekly, a frequency that has been maintained to the current day, save for student breaks and summer recess.
"The Campus was the first organized place I ever got into writing," says Walter Mears '56, the Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter who covered 11 presidential campaigns while working for the Associated Press for more than 40 years. "It was my journalism school."
Mears was editor in chief of the Campus his senior year and, like the current staff, labored on Tuesdays to close the paper—which had just eight pages. Today, it tops out at 28 pages, which requires more than two-dozen editors to cut and paste copy, fact-check stories, trim photos, and brainstorm headlines. Their newsroom actually consists of two adjacent rooms in the underbelly of Hepburn Hall, where exposed pipes crisscross the ceiling above a bevy of Macintosh computers. The walls are painted a robin's-egg blue, a color said to induce tranquility. But when you tack said walls with newspaper clippings, bottle caps, and "Top 30 Facts about Chuck Norris," well, anything goes.
The rhythm of interaction is oceanic, with cresting waves of laughter and deep troughs of silence. The clock ticks. Stauffer twirls her red pen, engrossed in the tone of an editorial.
Stauffer acknowledges that balancing the paper's constituencies—especially now that it's read online—can be challenging. "We recognize that we are funded to some extent by the administration," she says. "But we're still trying to keep our journalistic integrity, and we certainly will print stories that are more negative and critical of the administration."
The Campus has long been fundamental in inciting change—while sometimes igniting tempers. In 1954, the paper pushed for a coeducational student government;
a 1974 editorial applauded the Vermont Bar Association's vote to recommend the legalization of marijuana; in 1997, the editorial board challenged readers to think about how the new Commons system would alter Middlebury's character. Indeed, the newspaper has tackled a litany of difficult issues over the years—racial tension, student drinking, illegal drug use, and grade inflation, to name a few.
Having students' voices heard inspired Jake Kuipers '06, the current opinions editor, to join the staff during his first semester at Middlebury.
"I liked the idea of creating a forum for student discussion," he says, armed with an apple, a banana, and a raspberry Snapple for the task of fine-tuning the forum for print.
Kuipers eventually leaves to gather photos and quotes to illustrate the week's poll question—whether the men's swim team was justly punished for drinking violations (its season was canceled). Associate editor Andrea LaRocca '06 wanders in, spooning chocolate ice cream from a paper cup; fellow associate editor Dan Phillips has also just reappeared with Dunkin' Donuts coffee, Power-C Vitamin Water, and cold medicine. The ebb and flow of people—as many as 15 will fill the subterranean quarters at any point during the night—hardly impedes the progress of those staring at computer screens; in fact, the slight chaos amplifies the creativity.
"It can get crazy at night because people get tired," says sports editor Tom McCann '06. "So we try to keep it as lighthearted and entertaining as we can."
McCann and fellow sports editors Zamir Ahmed '08— writing a last-minute article on the men's squash team—and Ryan Reese '06 are all clad in sports jerseys; Reese also wears a batting helmet and baseball glove. Arts editor Joyce Man '06 wears heeled boots to go with her "Midd Girls Rock" T-shirt, gold hoop earrings, and pastel knit scarf. The snippets of conversation are just as eclectic, from children's book character Amelia Bedelia and
Olympic snowboarder Lindsey Jacobellis to nontransparent judicial hearings and the correct verb to go with abortion.
It's this unsupervised atmosphere, says Mears, that makes the Campus one of the best places to learn real-life journalism skills. "You're not dealing with theory—you can't get a faculty member to tell you how to do it; you just do it," he says. "There's no safety net, basically. It's tough in a way, but it pays off."
Only Drescher and Stauffer receive a small stipend for their work on the Campus; the rest of the staff will never see a nickel from their long nights in the newsroom.
So the payoff will come in the form of slap-happy camaraderie as the clock ticks past midnight, in the shared anguish of trying to stay awake during classes on Wednesday, and in the tangible feel of newsprint on Thursday, when the paper will come out and the process will begin again.
But for now, there is the pizza, which arrives too early. As always, the Campus will adjust.
Despite the allure of pizza, The Campushours were too late for Sarah Tuff '95, who focused on creative writing and got away with making up stories while at Midd.