The College and The Campus

Katrina Drury, the first-year responsible for last week’s opinion piece “It’s Not Fair,” shows no remorse. Like her prior writings, Drury openly attacks Black and Brown people here in The Campus, the widest read medium for college voices past and present. At best, the op-ed’s social outlook is malign and untaught; at worst, it’s abjectly racist.

The author argues that America guarantees “equal opportunity” to all its citizens, irrespective of race. Following her logic, our uprising against bigotry in America, along with the repressions of its social-political systems, aren’t worthwhile. American systems are functioning properly; and, as Drury advises, we’ll just have to work harder, to “strive for excellence.” I’ve heard the adage before: “nothing worth having comes easy.” Still anyone who editorializes in 2016 that “the dream” is an equitable possibility for all people in this country is a racist. In a professed post-racial world, doctrines like Drury’s have spiraled into frenzy. And today, at Middlebury, racist denialism, beliefs and behaviors are seen in our schoolyards as often as spandex. I implore students, alumni, faculty and administration to act immediately; else, our community may as well endorse a White House with the Apprentice inside.

Since Drury’s piece “I’m Only Human” was published, I have received messages from concerned Middlebury parents, “prospies” and townspeople. A high school senior “prospie” wrote me a few weeks ago saying that, of all the opinions in student papers she’d read during her visits to New England colleges and universities, ours were “least impressing.”

Thousands of people have read this year’s editions of The Campus with opprobrium, and as a result, the oohs and aahs of our school – and significantly, how it’s reputed and remembered from the outside – are under critical review. Our learning community in the valley is weighed quite strongly by the writing and allyship conveyed in this venue. As Drury’s ink in this paper sets, our college is marred in permanent ways.

Zane Anthony ’16.5 is from Annapolis, MD