letters to the editor

Author: [no author name found]

To the Editor:

I have been aware of the lack of socioeconomic diversity since the day that I arrived on the pristine green $50,000 a year campus. I support diversity on campus, but with all of this attention given to socioeconomic diversity within the ethnic and racial factions, the school leaves just the plain old poor kids in the cold. I am white and from Massachusetts, but I feel my working class background connects me more to a black or Hispanic student than the Deerfield students who study right down the street from me.

Academically, I have felt the same feelings of embarrassment and unpreparedness. I have felt the judgment of thoughtless professors and I have the same financial worries and woes. Yes, my life has been easy because my skin color has afforded me white privilege, but that does not mean that my struggles caused by a poor public school district and single working-class income make my financial worries any less. If anything, I am abandoned on this campus because, while minority students have solidarity within their own student organizations, the rest of us poor kids are at a loss because there is no "Financial Aid Club" or "First Generation College Student Club."

I love that the College is trying to diversify the campus, and this needs to continue, but the College needs to consider the needs of all financial aid students. Being socioeconomically diverse goes beyond race and ethnicity so if the College wants to increase awareness and the assistancwe for socioeconomic diversity, it can't ignore an entire part of it just because we don't show up on statistics.

Sincerely,

Nicole N. Conti '09
Firenze, Italy



To the Editor:

I am a Middlebury student and was very surprised to read Kay Tenney's op-ed in this week's paper. Middlebury's dining halls do a great job of procuring organic and local foods, even gathering some produce from Middlebury's own Organic Garden. It is true that Ross, for example, offers the option of pizza at both lunch and dinner, but there is always a healthful alternative in the hot bar as well as the salad bar stocked full of fresh and delicious veggies as well as various cheeses, tuna fish, hummus, pesto, etc. Proctor and Atwater have extensive salad bars and there is always a wide range of options in an attempt to suit everyone's tastes - two types of soup, homemade breads, sandwich fixings, a meat and vegetarian option in the hot bar as well as apple cider from a Vermont cider mill.

In addition, the dining halls do a great job of educating the students on what we are eating: listing the ingredients in every dish and, if local, what farm/producer they came from as well as providing informational materials on where we get our food. In fact, as you leave Proctor you are greeted by a huge poster with a map showing the location of the farms where we get our local foods as well as what percentage of our food comes from these places. In regards to an attempt to eat sustainably, many students, myself included, have participated in programs within the dining halls - such as measuring left over food in an attempt to raise awareness of food waste. In short, is your daughter going to the same school I am?

Sincerely,

Claire Smyser '08