College Street

A Meadow Runs Through It

To the keen observer, Middlebury’s campus landscape looks a bit different this fall. In a move driven by both ecology and economics, the College is mowing about 20 fewer acres of its 75 acres of lawn, a move that will save an estimated 1,000 hours of labor and nearly 700 gallons of fuel annually. Yet while the prospect of dollars saved and carbon emissions cut are popular line items during this time of budget and carbon reductions, Middlebury horticulturalist Tim Parsons says that the initiative has as much to do with ecological soundness as anything else.

On his blog, The Middlebury Landscape ( http://blogs.middlebury.edu/middland ), Parsons writes: “While at Middlebury we pride ourselves in having beautiful grounds, ecologically [the campus] is a desert. Large shade trees and lawn give next to no habitat for pollinators, migrating songbirds, insects, amphibians, even what I call the ‘rotters,’ the worms, fungi, and other organisms responsible for breaking down dead plant matter. Having areas of campus grow up in meadow, albeit non native plants, increases diversity, and provides refuge and habitat above and beyond a green expanse of lawn.”

Parsons describes the following scene: “Picture stepping out of Bicentennial Hall, turning south and heading towards Pearsons. Immediately in front of Bi Hall is lawn, with some Adirondack chairs, a pollinator garden around a large pear tree, and [the] Smog [sculpture]. As you walk south, though, the lawn stops, and on either side of the sidewalk are large grass and wildflowers, with a break on your right, a  mown area around a pair of yellowwood trees, creating a little park, and another break at the top of the ridge, creating an overlook park with a magnificent view over Battell Beach looking east towards the Green Mountains. So now, we are highlighting one of the most spectacular trees on campus, and emphasizing a view that may have been so ubiquitous in the past that it was ignored.”

Parsons acknowledges that these “no-mow” meadows are populated with non-native species that were previously existing in the lawn and that the College’s master plan calls for many of these meadows to be populated with native meadow plants. Because of the expense—which would require removing what is there and planting plugs of native meadow plants—such an extensive undertaking probably won’t take place for a while. Still, with the current meadow initiative already underway, native plants can be emphasized in these areas, and nature, well, can take its course.

H1N1 Primer

A week into Middlebury’s first semester, Doctor Mark Peluso, the director of the Parton Health Center at the College, appeared as a guest on Vermont Public Radio’s noon-hour news program Vermont Edition.

The topic was swine flu, and at the outset of the interview, Vermont Edition host Jane Lindholm asked Peluso how Middlebury had been planning for a possible pandemic.

“We’ve been planning for a pandemic event for several years,” said Peluso. “We started by planning for a lethal pandemic event, something much more severe and something we’re not facing right now. And over the past year, we’ve been working on a nonlethal pandemic event. We’ve been working with the Department of Health and following the CDC guidelines to adapt our unique situation—with respect to housing our students—to those guidelines.”

Since it broke onto the global scene last spring, swine flu, or the H1N1 virus, receded from the front pages of North American newspapers and the lead spot of nightly newscasts this summer, but the story never really went away. Reports from the Southern Hemisphere, where it was winter and thus the traditional flu season, showed that H1N1 could, indeed, reach pandemic status. And with early reports of H1N1 outbreaks on campuses that opened their doors in August (more than 2,000 reported cases at Washington State University, 500+ at Cornell), H1N1 has become the hot topic this fall—on college campuses and beyond.

So, how has Middlebury planned for potential infections on campus?

As long as the virus remains a relatively nonlethal event, the College has instituted a self-isolation policy. If a student presents symptoms of an influenza-like illness, he is asked to contact both the Health Center and his Commons office. (Students can also contact the Health Center if they are very ill or have questions about how best to care for themselves.) In most cases, healthy roommates will be moved to separate living quarters, while the sick student is isolated in his dorm room, usually for about three to five days. The Health Center believes that social isolation will help limit the illness’s spread and reduce the number of infected people in the community. Limiting the spread of the virus takes on critical importance when thinking about protecting those who are considered at risk for complications of H1N1 infection.

Who is considered at risk for complications of H1N1 infection?

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention define at-risk, college-age students as being those who have chronic pulmonary, cardiovascular, hepatic, hematological, neurologic, neuromuscular, or metabolic disorders; students who have immunosuppression; pregnant women; and students younger than 18 who are receiving long-term aspirin therapy.

Will students be able to get vaccinated?

What happens if the virus mutates and/or turns lethal?

At the conclusion of the VPR interview, Peluso was asked if thoughts of H1N1 were keeping him up at night. His response was reassuring: “Not at all. It used to. But not anymore. We have well-thought-out plans in place for the disaster that we don’t think will happen, but we’re ready for if it does. That would be the more lethal pandemic event. And we have a good plan in place for the nonlethal event. Being prepared is a nice place to be in.”

On College Finances

Early this fall, the ratings agency Moody’s Investors Service updated its outlook for higher education, revealing that cost cutting at colleges and universities—along with stable enrollment numbers, improved access to credit, and an uptick in endowment performance—has helped many institutions in dealing with one of the harshest and most challenging economic climates seen in nearly a century.

On the heels of the Moody report, Middlebury President Ronald D. Liebowitz wrote to the College community and echoed that sentiment, while cautioning that work still remained as the institution attempts to reach “a balance between what we do and what we can afford to do beyond this coming year.”

Liebowitz announced that for the 2009 fiscal year, the endowment lost 15.9 percent of its value, a decline of $190 million (and a drop of nearly $250 million from its all-time high of $986 million in 2008). And while the 15.9 percent loss would place the College within the top quintile among colleges and universities (Harvard reported a 27 percent loss, Brown 21, and Williams 18), the impact has been sobering.

“The impact of the endowment’s $190 million decline in value this past year deepens when you consider that until very recently we had planned our future spending and program enhancements (e.g., salary increases, improvements in our financial aid program, new positions, enhancing existing programs) with the expectation that the endowment would grow by 9 percent each year rather than shrink as it did the past two years,” Liebowitz wrote. (Middlebury’s endowment shrunk by one percent in FY’08.) “Because we depend on the endowment for much of our operating budget (23 percent), the gap between what we have at our disposal on the one hand, and what we expected to have based on our planning model, on the other, solely as the result of the decline in the value of the endowment, is approximately $12 million per year, which has great consequences for what we can and cannot do in the coming years.” Dollars raised through fund-raising also dropped off—nearly 20 percent—the president noted, even though a national record of Middlebury alumni (62 percent) contributed to the Annual Fund this year. “This decline is no surprise,” the president wrote, considering that “the turmoil in the markets has clearly affected our donors’ ability to make large gifts.”

Still, as reflected in the Moody’s report, Middlebury has made progress in meeting targeted budget reductions. Because of measures outlined in earlier issues of the magazine (these include reductions of program budgets by 5 to 10 percent, reduction of 90 staff positions through attrition, a salary freeze for those earning more than $50,000, and a reduction in salary for members of the president’s staff), Middlebury began this current fiscal year with a balanced budget, and, Liebowitz wrote, “If our assumptions about projected revenues and expenses for next year hold, next year’s budget will also be balanced.”

However, the endowment losses during the past two fiscal years will still be felt in FY’12 and beyond; the amount of money the College’s draws on the endowment to support the operating budget is based on a three-year average value of the endowment. “Although this formula is designed to smooth out the market’s volatility,” Liebowitz explained last year, “the impact of a steep endowment decline is significant.” Which is why Middlebury continues to seek out cost-cutting measures. This summer, the Staff Resources Committee conducted an institution-wide staffing analysis, with the objective of further reducing staff positions to sustainable levels without resorting to layoffs. Liebowitz wrote that he had confidence that, through normal attrition and by offering staff optional programs, such as early retirement or voluntary separation, the College would hit its target staffing goals. That, along with continued fiscal prudence, he wrote, would keep Middlebury on solid ground. Thinking back to a year ago, when anxiety and uncertainty were just beginning to grip both the nation and the community, that is a welcome thought, indeed.

Observed

» An unseasonably wet summer gave way to exquisite autumn weather during the first weeks of the 2009-10 academic year. And while summer would not officially end until the autumnal equinox on September 22, nobody was complaining about the early shift to crisp temperatures and cloudless skies. The College’s Convocation occurred on just such a day, as sharp blue skies accompanied robed faculty and administrators in welcoming more than 600 first-year students to Middlebury. In his Convocation address, President Liebowitz advised ambitious students to study deeply and broadly, while resisting the myth that more is better. “Not trying to do it all is sometimes a good thing,” he said. » The provocatively titled talk “Conservation Cowboys in Africa and Latin America: Can the Private Sector Be Trusted to Protect Nature?” kicked off the yearlong Middlebury/Monterey lecture series. Delivering the inaugural address was Jeffrey Langholz, a leading conservation expert and an associate professor of international environmental policy at the Monterey Institute for International Studies. » Speaking of MIIS, the Institute was home to a congressional town hall discussion about the national healthcare system during Congress’s August recess. The host was Congressman Sam Farr, a MIIS alumnus. Unlike other town hall meetings across the country, this one was a cordial and civil affair. » The Classical Theater of Harlem brought its production of Waiting for Godot to Middlebury for two nights of soul-searching and thought-provoking theater. In this production, Samuel Beckett’s seminal work was transported to New Orleans in the days after Hurricane Katrina devastated the city. » Charles Darwin was the focus of the 2009 Nicholas R. Clifford Symposium. “Celebrating Darwin’s Legacy,” featured lectures, panel discussions, artistic performances, workshops, and a series of addresses that were designed to coincide with the 200th anniversary of Darwin’s birth and the 150th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of Species. » The Emerson String Quartet returned to Middlebury and conducted a free performance before a capacity crowd in Mead Chapel. The visit was the quartet’s 31st to the College, and they did not disappoint the welcoming audience, performing works by Beethoven, Mendelssohn, and New England’s Charles Ives. » Nature magazine was the latest national publication to give Middlebury kudos for its “green”-ness, citing the College’s new biomass gasification plant as a notable environmental initiative.

[Syllabus]

So, what’s the course and why the hubbub?

Course Title The Economics of “Sin”: Sex, Crime, and Drugs

On the Air

—Rebecca Gould, an associate professor of religion and an affiliate in environmental studies at Middlebury, recently spoke to Vermont Public Radio’s Steve Zind about the influence of homesteading pioneers Helen and Scott Nearing. The Nearing’s book, Living the Good Life, figured prominently in Gould’s own work, At Home in Nature: Modern Homesteading and Spiritual Practice in America.

Excerpt

“Knock on the door of the federal government in 2008, and chances are that you will find nobody home. The U.S. government’s impulse to exploit the comparative advantage of the private sector, and the private sector’s responsiveness to demand for its services, have combined to replace Big Government with a staggeringly large shadow government. In this new world, the private sector increasingly handles the everyday business of governing.”

—From One Nation Under Contract: The Outsourcing of American Power and the Future of Foreign Policy by Allison Stanger, the Russell Leng ’60 Professor of International Politics and Economics and the director of the Rohatyn Center for International Affairs, at Middlebury.

Proscription

In the July/August 2009 issue of the Atlantic, Middlebury President Emeritus John McCardell Jr. contributed to the magazine’s “Ideas Issue: How to Fix the World,” writing a short essay on underage drinking.

In the piece, McCardell outlined what is at stake: “Underage drinkers now consume more than 90 percent of their alcohol during [underground] binges. . . . each year, underage drinking kills some 5,000 young people and contributes to roughly 600,000 injuries and 100,000 cases of sexual assault among college students.” And he outlined what stands in the way of reform: “Any state that sets its drinking age lower than 21 forfeits 10 percent of its federal highway funds.”

• License 18-year-olds to drink, provided they have a high school degree, have attended an alcohol-education course, and have a clean record.
• Mandate alcohol education at a young age, with programs modeled after driver’s education.
• Enact zero-tolerance laws and severe penalties for drunk drivers, regardless of age.

Concluded McCardell: “Binge drinking is as serious a crisis today as drunk driving was two decades ago. It’s time we tackled the problem like adults.”