College Street

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I See You

A few minutes past 10 in the morning, Bill Clinton, the former president of the United States, began a series of stretches in front of Old Chapel. As the College’s faculty, resplendent in stately academic regalia, marched by on the sidewalk in front of him, Clinton smiled and nodded hello while stretching, first his left and then his right calf; his left, then right quad.

Former President Bill Clinton and Middlebury President Ron Liebowitz.

From a distance, it was easy to mark the former president’s progress. Cheers would rise and fall along the processional route, as if the crowds of people, standing at least 10 deep, were performing their own version of a stadium “wave.”

Though the forecast was for sun, the skies were a leaden gray, spitting rain at first before erupting into a downpour at precisely the time the graduates began their march to the chairs set out in front of the stage. And while many in the audience scrambled for shelter, the grads reveled in the sudden soaking; one young man stopped for a moment, raised his arms up in the air, palms skyward, tilted his head back and opened his mouth before proclaiming, “Refreshing.”

The Class of 2007 then began to clap, rhythmically—clap-clap-clap-clap-clap—as they took their seats, and when College President Ron Liebowitz introduced one of their own, Sally Swallow ’07, to sing the national anthem, they let out a roar. When she was finished, they cheered again, even louder than before, and one half-expected someone to bellow out, “Play ball!”

Yet almost instantly a respectful silence settled in for the invocation, and the rain slowed to a drizzle. By the time the designated class speaker—Vani Sathisan ’07, a Watson scholar and native of Singapore—took the podium, the sun was peeking out. Through it all—Sathisan’s speech, the conferral of honorary degrees—Clinton scribbled notes in the margins of his Commencement program, and when he strode to the dais after receiving his honorary doctor of humane letters, he took with him just a couple of note cards, and at those, he didn’t glance once.

For the next 20 minutes, Clinton spoke in such a conversational manner, it was as if he was chatting one-on-one about what is going on in the world today.

He spoke about his friend, Ron Brown ’62 (“He was an unbelievable human being and like a brother to me”); he spoke about Middlebury’s diverse student body (“This is a much more interesting student body than it would have been if I had come here 30 years ago to speak”); he spoke about many of the world’s problems (resource depletion, terrorism, economic inequality); and throughout his narrative,
Clinton wove a common thread: the importance of community.

Whether talking about Brown, “a kid who grew up in a hotel in Harlem [and] found a home here”; a South African custom of greeting people with the empowering words, “I see you”; or the Human Genome Project, which has determined that all human beings are genetically 99.9 percent the same, Clinton stressed that “our common humanity is more important than our differences.”

“If you see everyone,” he concluded, “if you believe that you are because others are, if you serve in that spirit, your grandchildren will be here 50 years from now, and it will be even better because you will have fulfilled humanity’s first obligation: to honor what is holy about us and to pass it on.”

And the sun shone brighter than it had all morning.

643: Graduates in the Class of 2007

65: 2007 grads who were Phi Beta Kappa

92: Number of economics majors in the class

74: Number of English majors

497: Number of grads who studied at least one foreign language

405: Number of grads who studied abroad

48: Number of countries where they studied

70: Percentage of class that volunteered in the community

3 and 2: The number of Watson and Fulbright scholars, respectively, in the Class of 2007

30: Athletic All-Americans in Class of 2007

50: All-NESCAC academic selections in the Class of 2007

8: National titles won at Middlebury during the past four years

25: NESCAC titles won during the same time frame

> Every successful community has three things: a broadly shared opportunity to participate, a broadly felt responsibility for the success of the enterprise, and a genuine sense of belonging.

> We have problems [in the world] because the world that is now yours to command with your imagination is beyond the reach of half the other people on this planet. Half the world’s people still live on less than two dollars a day; a billion people on less than a dollar a day.

> I believe questions of community and identity—personal identity—will determine our collective capacity to deal with all the problems.

> The most important thing you’ve got coming out of this Middlebury education is the understanding of the elemental value that makes all communities possible in an interdependent world, which is that our differences are really neat—they make life more interesting and they aid in
the search for the truth—but our common humanity matters more.

> So much of the world’s difficulty today is rooted in the rejection of that simple premise.

> The most important thing I learned from the stunning sequencing of the human genome was that, genetically, all human beings are 99.9 percent the same.

> Look at each other. Every difference you can see of gender, skin color, hair color, eye color, height, weight, you name it, is rooted in a tenth of one percent of your genetic makeup.

> And yet most of us spend 90 percent of our time focused on the one tenth of one percent.

> I met Rush Limbaugh the other night. And I was tempted, after all the terrible things he said about me, to tell him that we were 99.9 percent the same. I was afraid the poor man would run weeping from the restaurant, so I let it go.

> On the other hand, a few weeks from now I’m going to South Africa…[for] Nelson Mandela’s birthday. I can’t believe that he and I are 99.9 percent the same because he’s so much greater in every way than I could ever be.

> So on the one hand, what you do with that one tenth of one percent makes all the difference. But if you think that it’s more important than what you have in common then the problems that bedevil the world are likely to overwhelm all the wonderful things that you might do otherwise.

> In South Africa, in Mandela’s tribe’s language, Xhosa, people discuss the idea of community in a fundamental, almost existential way, with a word: Ubuntu. It means, in English, “I am because you are.” Our differences cannot be as important as our common humanity because we couldn’t even exist in any meaningful sense without each other.

> A little north of there, in the central highlands, when people meet along a path and one person says, “Hello, how are you, good morning,” the answer is not, “I’m fine, how are you?” The answer, in English, is “I see you.”

> The bigotry we all have to work hard to avoid is not seeing everyone else.

The Hillcrest Environmental Center has received a major face-lift; one befitting its function as the home to one of the oldest environmental studies programs in the country.

The skinny on Middlebury’s Green House:

• Groundwater well will be used as a heat pump to assist in cooling part of the space for summer school use.
• Locally produced wooden window frames and high-efficiency windows, with low-E glass and argon-filled double-glazing, replaced single-paned windows.
• Occupancy sensors will regulate lighting in all rooms and hallways.
• About 20 percent of the building’s power comes from cogeneration at the College’s central heating plant. The center also is participating in the local power utility’s green power system, which is fueled from methane processed at
  local dairy farms.
• All plantings are native species.
• Dedicated parking for an alternative fuel vehicle.
• The majority of the millwork, trim, and wood flooring comes from College forests or Vermont Family Forests.

By 2016, Middlebury College will be a carbon-neutral institution. But what exactly does this mean?

In a nutshell, the College will be reducing and/or offsetting carbon dioxide emissions so that the net emissions level is zero. It will do so through a combination of measures, including the use of a biomass plant that will be powered by wood chips; operational adjustments, such as energy efficient lighting and facility upgrades (see “Extreme Makeover” above); and, after all other economically feasible efforts have been made, by purchasing carbon offsets. (Offsets are achieved when a person or institution invests in a carbon-neutral energy technology such as wind turbines, biofuels, and solar panels.) Middlebury’s Board of Trustees approved the student-driven proposal to achieve carbon neutrality at its May meeting, and President Ron Liebowitz was one of 207 college and university presidents to join in a national commitment to neutralize greenhouse gas emissions at their respective institutions.

A 2006 energy audit determined that Middlebury’s carbon emissions equaled 30,000 metric tons of CO₂.

Where does it come from?
Fuel oil #6: 79 percent
College-related travel: 10 percent
Fuel oil #2: 5 percent
Liquid propane gas: 2 percent
Electricity: 3 percent:
Landfill methane from waste disposal: 1 percent

Pardon Tillinghast, professor emeritus of history, passed away on May 13, at the age of 87.

Mr. Tillinghast taught at the College for more than 40 years and by the time he retired, he had become a larger-than-life figure for many generations of Middlebury students. Whether holding court in his Monroe Hall office, inviting students over to dinner at his Adirondack View home, or simply pedaling his bike across campus, Mr. Tillinghast was a fixture at Middlebury and will be greatly missed.

When I heard Pardon Tillinghast had died, I went to the attic and found my History 12 notes. They brought it all back:

Mr. Tillinghast (we never called him anything else) pacing in front of the class, eyes twinkling, talking too fast for us to take good notes. When he was finished—silence. He made us dizzy, and it took a while to recover.

How did he do it? What spell did he cast to make us care about Nicolas of Cusa, Frederick Barbarossa, and the Defenestration of Prague?

How did he make us passionate about the past?

I think the answer is: he was a great entertainer. Yes, he was brilliant and had a broad knowledge of medieval Europe and philosophy, but Middlebury had other brilliant professors, and few inspired such devotion. Mr. Tillinghast had a storyteller’s gift, an actor’s charisma, and he could take an audience where he wanted it to go, however distant in space or time.

He also demanded a lot. His toughness of mind and spirit made us rise to the occasion. Not everyone liked him, of course, but most students seemed grateful for the respect he showed us. One of his colleagues in the history department told me after class one day that I was “wasting” his time, because, as a woman, I’d never amount to anything in the working world. Pardon Tillinghast seemed to believe that most of his students—women and men—had great potential, and he pushed us hard. It made the experience in his classroom memorable and deep.

I went to graduate school in history because of Pardon Tillinghast, but I also left academia and became a journalist because of him. Academic life elsewhere seemed anemic compared to his classes, and the world outside beckoned. The questions Mr. Tillinghast posed of history are the questions I ask when reporting from the Middle East or Asia or Latin America, and though he often complained that journalism is topical and superficial, and thus inferior to history, he was responsible for sending me along the path I chose. For that I am forever grateful.
—Elizabeth Farnsworth ’65

Pardon’s Gift
Pardon E. Tillinghast. What an inspiring and gifted teacher he was! You didn’t want to come in late to a Tillinghast class. You wanted to be in your seat, notebook open and writing implements ready, when he strode in the door and began writing his lecture outline on the board. As he finished he would turn to the class and begin his rapid-fire delivery. We would take notes feverishly, as every word, every idea was important. It was some years later when I realized what a profound effect he had had on the way I was living my life.

As I write, images of Professor Tillinghast flood my mind. He’s lecturing; leading a discussion; riding his bicycle; striding across a frozen campus in his stocking cap. No one else before or since has called me Di, but I hear him saying it now.
—Diana Cotter ’63

History Lessons
As a recent graduate of Middlebury, I never had the pleasure of having Mr. Tillinghast as a professor. I only knew him after the fact, during my time as a volunteer at Elderly Services in town, where he would attend once or twice a week for “social interaction” and a weekly game of chess.

Though others found his nature a bit gruff, I found him an amazing fount of historical information. From the Renaissance to the history of the College, he would always teach me something new each time I saw him. I know from my conversations with him that his students meant the most to him, and when a former student came to see him, it would make his week; he would talk about it constantly. That is the mark of a true teacher, a man who lived for his students and the matter that he taught.
—Douglas Campbell ’06

Barbarossa, Etheldreda, and God
I met Pardon Tillinghast shortly after I arrived at Middlebury when he invited his advisees on a picnic. It was a beautiful fall afternoon. All I remember is that there were liverwurst sandwiches, that it was the first time I saw grass turn silver when the wind passed by, and that this comical little man had an infectious love for Vermont and for my favorite period in history.

Fortunately, I had signed up for his world history course that semester, and I (and a couple of hundred other students) sat and listened to story after story: Barbarossa standing in the snow doing penance for some sin I can’t remember, Popes misbehaving, English saints with names like Etheldreda. He talked so fast I decided on the first day not to take notes, just to listen and soak it up.

It wasn’t long before the gloom of the (pre-global warming) Middlebury fall and winter began to eat into my joie de vivre. I was as gloomy as the weather and got into the habit of dragging myself up to Pardon’s office for long chats about life and history. He, behind his desk and never without his pipe, would listen patiently while puffing himself a halo of smoke and then ask for the umpteenth time if I were coming to breakfast after church at St. Stephens on Sunday morning. No church, no breakfast. By that time I had completely given up a belief that required me to think that God was at any particular place on any given day, but after a week of mystery meat and unidentifiable vegetables, the thought of fried eggs and bacon and pancakes, real food and real conversation, was irresistible, so I was one of the regulars at these legendary meals—Ellen cooking, Pardon telling stories and asking uncomfortable questions, and the Scottie sniffing for crumbs.

Years later, when I was married and living in Switzerland, Pardon came to visit and proceeded to show me—really show me—my hometown, which had been a center of learning during the Middle Ages.

Eventually things came full circle. In the fall of 1990, I was taking my younger daughter on college visits, and Middlebury was the last stop on our list. She had seen nothing she really loved, and as we were driving into Middlebury she said to me, “Mom, I just want to go somewhere where people will know who I am and care about me.”

We were headed for the Middlebury Inn, but I made a quick decision to go see Pardon before we checked in. I told her what I wanted to do, and she said, “Oh Mom, he’s not going to remember who you are.” I didn’t answer and just drove through the campus and pulled up in front of 6 Adirondack View, wondering if it had been such a good idea after all to turn up unannounced. As I was getting out of the car, I suddenly heard Pardon’s voice booming, “Julie, is that YOU?” I turned and saw an expression on Mara’s face that left me no doubt at all that she was going to be applying to Middlebury. Early decision. And now she and I share reunion years.
—Julie Emerson ’65

Middlebury Giants
Pardon’s signature course was Intellectual History of Europe, which showed to great advantage the wonderful sense of excitement about the interplay of ideas and events he could convey, in history classes as well as one-on-one.

I visited him several times in recent months, and though his physical powers were greatly diminished, the old ring would come into his voice as he revisited a familiar idea, event, or historical personality from his vast store of memory. (My senior year, Pardon also co-taught—with Thomas Reynolds, later President of Bates College—
a seminar on philosophy of history. I later learned, from a classmate and fellow history major who went on to earn a Ph.D. at Columbia, that the Columbia history department considered this subject too advanced for first-year graduate students.)

The Middlebury of 50 years ago was smaller, and perhaps of lower profile, than the Middlebury of today. But there were giants on the faculty. As I think back, about Pardon, D.K. Smith, and so many others, I think of Hillaire Belloc’s paean to his Oxford college:

The best of Balliol loved and led me,

God be with you, Balliol men.

I like to think that Pardon, a confirmed Anglophile, would have appreciated the reference.
—David J. Klock ’60

At its May meeting, the Board of Trustees approved a plan that would make Middlebury a carbon-neutral institution by 2016. (See “Net Zero,” p. 19.) According to the proposal, the College will seek to reach this goal through a combination of efforts, including the 2008 completion of a biomass plant powered by wood chips, operational adjustments such as energy-efficient lighting, and—after all other economically feasible efforts to reduce carbon have been exhausted—the purchase of carbon offsets.

In other green efforts, the Class of 2007 earmarked their class gift—totaling $92,000—for environmental initiatives. A record 89 percent of the class participated in the fund-raising effort.

A team consisting of three Middlebury students captured first place at the 2007 Consortium for Computing Sciences. The Middlebury trio—Anna Blasiak ’07, Kevin Chirls ’07, and Jeff Wehrwein ’08—was the only contingent to successfully solve all seven problems during the allotted three hours.

Seven varsity teams advanced to NCAA play during the spring season. The women’s lacrosse team reached the national semifinals for the 14th consecutive year; the men’s team won its seventh straight NESCAC crown (and earned its 10th straight NCAA appearance); both the men’s and women’s golf teams recorded their first NCAA appearances.

Middlebury’s rugby club captured its first national title, beating Arkansas State in the Division II national championship match, 38-22. Middlebury coach Ward Patterson was profiled in a subsequent issue of Rugby Magazine, and in the Q&A he was asked who he considered to be rugby’s best referee. His answer? Miguel Fernandez. And yes, that is the same Miguel Fernandez ’85 who is an assistant professor of Spanish at the College.

Former United States president Bill Clinton spoke to a record crowd of more than 7,500 people—including 600-plus graduates—at Commencement this year. It rained off and on most of the morning, but most people didn’t seem to mind. Olivia Bailey, a philosophy and French double major from Londonderry, Vermont, was the class’s valedictorian; Astri von Arbin Ahlander, a film and media culture and English double major from Stockholm, Sweden, was the salutatorian. Sathyavani Sathisan of Singapore delivered the student speech.

Mike Mommsen ’10 took an unusual mode of transportation home after the conclusion of his first year at Middlebury: he rode his bike—to Minnesota. Mommsen, who is a member of the Nordic ski team, biked nearly 100 miles a day and was home by Memorial Day (he left Vermont on May 22). The Minneapolis Star Tribune learned about the trek and ran a story on Mommsen’s journey in June.

Language Schools students started arriving on campus in mid-June. By the time six-week sessions for graduate-level French, German, Italian, Russian, and Spanish began in early July, more than 1,300 language scholars were in attendance. New to the 92-year-old program this year is a master’s degree track in Chinese.

A Middlebury chef’s quartet of Jim Logan, Brad Marsden, Hank Stowe, and Matt Laux captured a gold medal in a cooking competition at the annual Chef Culinary Conference held at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst.

In June, nine journalists learned that they were chosen as the first recipients of the Middlebury College Fellowships in Environmental Journalism. Directed by College Scholar in Residence Bill McKibben, the fellowship program is designed to support yearlong reporting about environmental issues by journalists at the start of their careers. Two of the recipients were Middlebury grads: Carolyn Kormann ’04 and Els Van Woert ’05.

Amy Roche ’07 learned that she’d be the NESCAC’s nominee for the 2007 NCAA Sportsmanship Award. A tennis standout, Roche was the NESCAC Player of the Year this season.

High school graduates are deciding where they want to go to college, and midsummer projections indicate that nearly 50 percent of those admitted to Middlebury have decided to enroll. The 47 percent figure exceeds the College’s traditional applicant yield of between 44 and 45 percent.

A pair of beloved emeritus faculty members passed away in May. Pardon Tillinghast, a professor emeritus of history, died on May 13. Hiroshi Miyaji, the C.V. Starr Professor Emeritus of Linguistics and Languages, died on May 24.