H.I.P. sparks student discussion

On April 24 from 2:30-4:30 p.m. in the Gamut Room, Be H.I.P. (Highly Informed People) and Get H.I. (Highly Informed) will host an event featuring discussions on the current situation in the Middle East. The featured student panel, organized by student leaders Toby Israel ’14 and Mariam Boxwala ’13, will include 10-minute presentations focused on politics, geography, religion, history, economics and women’s and gender studies concerning the Middle East. The panel will be followed by an open question and answer discussion along with a more informal discussion.

Israel began the “Be H.I.P.” event series during Winter Term with a daylong discussion on different current events going on in the world. The idea for a student panel-led discussion came to her after she attended the J-street Youth rally in New York in November.

“We were driving back up to campus at one in the morning,” she said, “and we were all exhausted and we found ourselves talking about the  Israel and Palestine conflict.”

The organic dialogue between students who had a wide range of experience and knowledge about the conflict sparked her interest immediately.

“At the time, I didn’t see the event turning into a series,” Israel added. But with the new and recent developments in the Middle East, she found herself seeing the current events as a new opportunity for a Be H.I.P. panel to be beneficial and necessary. Be H.I.P., as Toby envisions it, will provide an open forum in which current events can be discussed among students.

The forum, Boxwala said, will be unique to the other educational events at the College.

“We have several opportunities on campus to attend lectures by professors, authors and researchers who are experts in their field,” she said. “However, these lectures can be daunting and often difficult to understand for those of us who have very little experience in the subject area.”

Be H.I.P. instead seeks to provide accessibility for students presented by students. The presentations are created with the assumption that the audience has basic knowledge at best in such areas.

“I think be H.I.P. is filling a void in the Middlebury community and getting students to interact and expand their knowledge with regard to current events,” Boxwala added. “I want people to be able to pick up a newspaper and be able to discuss the significance of the events.”

Israel established two “pillars” to guide the presentations and ensure they are as productive and informative as possible.

First, despite the politically-charged nature of many of the topics, Israel asked the presenters to minimize bias and personal opinion as much as possible.  Second, she wants the information must be presented in an “accessible manner” so that everyone can participate and feel comfortable asking questions.

The panelists on Sunday will include Charlie Arnowitz ’13, Peter Kaplan ’13, Mia Benjamin ’13, Anil Menon ’13 and Anna Mysliwiec ’11. The panelists either have a long-term interest in their area or are currently studying in the prescribed disciplines.

“As the women and gender studies panelist,” Mysliwiec said, “I’ll be speaking about where women fit into everything that’s been going on in the Middle East lately, exploring their participation and leadership in the revolutions and whether that involvement has transformed gender relations.”

Mysliwiec sees these events as important because “as enriching as it is to hear professors talk about these current events, it’s really cool to be able to learn from our peers … [who] have such a wealth of knowledge and experience.”

Israel hopes that the potential future H.I.P. events that can evolve into a series regarding current event topics from around the world and that the event will enjoy a similar popularity to that experienced during Winter Term.