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Posts tagged ‘powershift’

Mar 5

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The Campus 3/5

t_r1kgk1baIn an effort to deepen MiddBlog’s coverage of campus issues, this is a recurring column that comments on selected Campus newspaper articles, published most Thursdays of the school year. This allows a place for the Middlebury community to comment, expand, and discuss important issues in a dynamic way.

This Week in The Campus:

  • 12,000 students lobby for change: Professors back here at Middlebury were getting a bit antsy when rumors were that Middkids would be arrested and might not make it back for class on Tuesday. But fear not, no Middkids or any other protesters were arrested. In fact, Scholar in Residence Bill McKibben writes how Poweshift “pre-won our main victory anyhow, when Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid preemptively cried uncle last week and announced they weren’t going to burn coal in their plant any more.” Oh and recently, a conspiracy theory surfaced: Michelle Obama organized Powershift to rid a coal plant from her backyard.
  • Distrust leads to H.C. Vote / Editorial: The issue of the honor code has been brewing for months. It’s time to show your cards on this issue. Where do you stand on this? I’m a little bit tired of the wishy-washy opinions that, while interesting and “subtle,” aren’t going to help much when this comes to a vote. Better get talking about this now because it’s not going to be long before students will be asked to weigh-in. I am in favor of keeping our current honor code language and taking the hard route of trying to reform our academic culture, in particular for test-taking. It’s far too easy to give up and say, “well, we don’t trust ourselves so let’s just let professor proctor the exams.” Other thoughts?
  • Liberal dining may disappear: I know this is just The Campus raising a ruckus over some small comment from Director of Dining Services Matt Biette. But I’ll indulge in the argument anyway. I’m about 97% sure students will fight to the bitter death to keep dining halls free-and-open. By now, “liberal” dining is embedded in our school culture. It’s one thing to close Atwater, it’s another to set up a meal plan system. Oh wait, maybe this is the way toward establishing the famously-promised-by-SGA-Preseidents “MiddCard”? No. I wouldn’t trade a universal “MiddCard” for liberal dining ever.

Mar 2

Climate Action

Share photos on twitter with TwitpicPowershift Middkids and Middadults (Bill McKibben, above and Prof. Jon Isham, below pictured) are protesting the Capital Coal Power Plant down in D.C. The huge demonstration has already totaled 3-5,000 people according to initial reports. It’s happening right now…

Live video feed of the march and more

Twitter-feed of live updates via cellphone of what’s going on the ground in DC

Scholar in Residence at Middlebury Bill McKibben explains “Why I’ll Get Arrested to Stop Burning Coal“

Photos via teleskichick on twitpic.

Share photos on twitter with Twitpic

Feb 8

Why Middkids Should Work on Enviro Campaigns

Making its way around the interwebs recently is a call for “the new liberal arts” — the idea that “a generation of digital natives” has not only new “responsibilities as employees, citizens, and friends” but also “new capabilities” which must be expanded upon to create a new type of liberal arts degree. In wide-ranging web articles, bloggers and others make pitches for “new liberal arts that are smart, provocative, insightful, surprising, and/or funny.”

This is my pitch.

Middlebury teaches old school liberal arts: critical thinking, writing, reading, etc. That needs to stay. Those skills still matter and will always matter. But the new liberal arts can be found bubbling up in the various environmental campaigns of Middlebury. Under the wings of Bill McKibben, Jon Isham et al., grassroots web-centric environmental projects (starting with Step It Up!, most recently with Powershift and 350.0rg) have provided opportunities for Middlebury students to develop the new-school skills that layer on top of the traditional liberal arts background. These skills include: web activism, collaborative , social networking, finance, political activism, web design, creativity, media arts (photography, video, etc.), and digital communications. Chatting with one of the Midd organizers of Powershift ’09, I quickly realized the effort needed to 150 Middkids in DC on Feb 27, 2009. Scale that up: what would it take to put 150,000 people there? What would it take to get 1.5 million people to pay attention?

These new liberal arts skills are not being taught in the classroom and maybe shouldn’t be taught in the classroom. But Middlebury needs to consciously create and push opportunities for students to learn these skills before hitting the job market. Environmental campaigns are a start, but why shouldn’t Middkids be the ones starting companies while still in school or penning foreign language magazines?

To train students, we need to rethink how we reward credit. Why aren’t adequate summer internships awarded credit? We’re not talking about giving academic credit for being a golf caddy, but just like we give credit for J-term internships, why don’t we reward experiential learning? Rewarding and promoting experiential learning should be at the centerpiece of a new liberal arts degree.

Can a Middkid be successful post-grad without working on a environmental campaign? Yes. But these new liberal arts skills are what will enable the Millenial generation to move from thinking about getting a non-cubicle job to actually getting a non-cubicle job. Conveniently enough, Middlebury is creating for itself a community of environmental alumni that go to work for the likes of 1sky.org and brighterplanet.com.

MiddBlog wants to know: what do you think should the new liberal arts at Middlebury look like?

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