op-ed Firing Essig was a mistake

Author: Nick DeSantis

I am writing to express my deep concern over a recent recommendation made by the College's faculty reappointments committee. At the end of the fall term, I completed my English senior essay with the help of two academic advisors. One of those advisors is not a member of my department, and she chose to take me on anyway because of her interest in my work. She slogged through Cormac McCarthy's horrifying and difficult novel "Blood Meridian" in order to better understand my project, and she helped me refine my essay and provided me with crucial support.

Considering that she works as the program advisor for all of the Sociology Department's thesis writers, she could have easily declined to take on another advisee, given her already heavy workload. However, she stuck with me in order to help me write a senior project that I could be proud of. My advisor was Professor Laurie Essig, and at the end of the term, the College's reappointments committee decided to show its appreciation for her hard work by recommending that the College fire her as of this spring.

The committee's recommendation to fire Laurie on the basis of her supposedly poor teaching is a grave mistake. Every Middlebury student should be as lucky as I was to have such a dedicated and effective professor. The committee took issue with Laurie's teaching methods, and their complaints are baseless. She engages her students in ways that make the classroom material fascinating, and she successfully translates course material into information that will be meaningful away from the confines of Middlebury. These skills are the hallmark of a great professor, and such skills are a rare find on this campus. Her commitment to engaged, real-world scholarship deserves high praise and stands in stark contrast to the world of tweed jackets that is traditional academia.

Having taken two courses with Professor Essig, I can say confidently that it is impossible to enter her classroom and not emerge with a wider understanding of the ways that power and identity operate in the world at large. Professor Essig also embraces technology like few of her colleagues, and her lectures demonstrate the potential of the new media classroom to deliver information that would be difficult to access otherwise. If the College administration chooses to uphold the review committee's recommendation, Middlebury will lose a professor who challenges her students to use what they learn in their lives away from Middlebury every day.

The reappointments committee also took issue with the fact that Laurie's classroom is a politically charged environment. However, this is a positive characteristic and I can testify that it is not detrimental to a student's educational experience. Indeed, a completely apolitical classroom is a fiction of outdated political discourse and is impossible to actually achieve. While the nature of class discussions can make some students uncomfortable, these situations allow us to grow in ways that would be impossible in less challenging environments. The huge chorus of support from Laurie's students and colleagues in the Sociology Department indicate that she should be applauded for her willingness to tackle difficult and controversial issues.

Perhaps more importantly, Professor Essig is engaged with the student body away from the classroom in ways that few of her colleagues are. She is a major source of support for Middlebury's various minority communities. She was also given Middlebury's Feminist of the Year award last spring, and achievements such as these indicate that she provides Middlebury with some of the much-needed diversity that the administration claims to want. The College should be scrambling to retain such an engaged professor. Her potential firing indicates to me that the College's commitment to diversity borders on politically correct lip service. If the recommendation is not reversed, the reappointments committee - made up of three professors entirely unfamiliar with Laurie's unique areas of expertise - will have dealt a painful blow to the diversity and political engagement of the Middlebury community.

Professor Essig's value to the Middlebury community is clear to anyone who knows her, and I urge the reappointments committee to immediately reverse its reprehensible recommendation. Ultimately, if Professor Essig is fired, the students will be deprived of one of the College's best professors. Please understand that the reappointments committee suffers nothing by recommending that Professor Essig be fired. Instead, if the recommendation is upheld, the students are the ones who will bear the overwhelmingly negative consequences of this decision.

Over the course of my Middlebury career, I have met many students who have expressed a desire to take one of Professor Essig's classes. If you count yourself as a member of that group, I urge you to come to Chellis House at 4:00 on Friday afternoon. Together, we can fight to save Professor Essig's job before it is too late.

Nick DeSantis '07.5 is from Diamond Point, NY.