A Collective of Middlebury Voices

We’re proud to announce beyond the green. Launching today, beyond the green is a collective of voices that will be represented in an online publication as the centralized location of our voices. beyond the green aims to provide space for voices that are not being heard on our campus. We chose the name, beyond the green, as a play on words: part of the Middlebury mission statement says that “the college also reaches far beyond the Green Mountains... [connecting] our community to other places, countries and cultures.” To us,  beyond the green represents the need to express a multitude of experiences at Middlebury that transcend physical space; the need to go beyond the agenda of Middlebury Inc.; and the need to imagine a space beyond “the campus green” which symbolically embodies institutional initiatives.

We will also publish a weekly column in the Campus. We think it is important to also publish in the Campus because we want to provide a counter-narrative directly alongside opinion pieces that promote post-racial, post-feminist, neoliberal politics. While we hope to carve out a consistent column in the Campus that represents opinions aligning with our politics, we must draw support from our online publication in order to do this. the Campus continues to be an important site of engagement, but we are creating our own publication because the Campus cannot provide enough space for our opinions without taking on our politics. We are also publishing in the Campus because we want the Middlebury College archives to document our opinions. Moreover, the Campus is a good way to advertise our efforts.

beyond the green: collective of middlebury student voices is a student run publication that aims to provide space for voices that are not being heard on our campus. We are motivated to create beyond the green because we feel marginalized and silenced by the mainstream platforms available, including the student newspaper, the Campus, and the online alternative paper, Middbeat. For some of us, not being able to express ourselves without invalidation represents a double marginalization, as our voices, bodies and experiences are already simultaneously devalued and hypervisible. We want to be proactive, not reactive, and use writing as a way to support and ultimately achieve structural and institutional change. We feel as though individually our voices are often ignored in the face of the hegemonic Middlebury discourse, but collectively we will be able to engage with the Middlebury community more effectively.

As a collective, beyond the green is grounded by politics that are radical, anti-racist, anti-sexist, anti-classist, anti-ableist, and anti-homophobic (as well as strongly opposed to all forms of oppression). We reject the structurally neoliberal paradigm that exists at Middlebury and also oppose the “liberal” politics often expressed in the Campus because these politics are not transformative. The reasons behind our formation are many, but the predominate one is a feeling that our politics are alienated within campus dialogue; the so-called free market of ideas on campus is an illusion, one which exists only to support one strong ideology. Within our collective, we may not always agree, and we will allow space to challenge each other; however, ultimately we share the same principles and intentions and are committed to moving forward on this ground with solidarity and purpose. Moreover, we acknowledge the potential and probability that the articles we publish may be messy and emotional because the things we write about will be so close to our lived experiences. Rather than espousing the idea that all written work in the public eye must be detached and hyper-intellectual, we welcome the fact that our articles will be written with passion, with love, with anger and overall, with purpose.  Instead of engaging only with those who devalue our voices, experiences and values, we are creating our own platform, unifying in the face of this disregard and rejecting the idea that we must conform to the dominant Middlebury narrative and forum.

 beyond the green will be accepting submissions on a rolling basis that align with our mission statement.  If you would like to contact or submit to this publication please email us at beyondthegreen14@gmail.com. We will be accepting pieces of writing (poetry, creative non-fiction, mini-essay, rants, lists, stories, commentary on campus events or “real world” topics, etc.) as well as photographs, video blogs, artwork (if already scanned) and event submissions. Check out our website at go/beyondthegreen, which will be updated weekly with regular columns (please contact if you would like to be a regular contributor) and submissions.