Dear Middlebury,
Welcome back to the college’s only student-run weekly newspaper, The Campus!
The three of us are writing to you as the new Executive Team for this year, and we’re excited as ever to be among the incredible group of student journalists and editors that comprise The Campus’ staff.
After many members of our staff who had been here for four years graduated last May, we have hired over a dozen new editors to fill their shoes. Our talented and enthusiastic staff has worked diligently the past week through move-in and the start of classes to bring you this first issue.
We’ll be hiring even more this fall — any student can email campus@middlebury.edu to apply to work on our layout, online, photography and visuals, or communications teams.
We hope you’ll join us this year on staff or as readers as the newspaper continues its coverage of major events and cultural shifts. Last year, our paper reported on how large world events made their way to our corner of Vermont. We wrote about the shooting of three Palestinian students in Burlington and later on the Gaza Solidarity Encampment on Middlebury’s own McCullough lawn and its accompanying student protests and eventual dissolution.
We were also busy investigating unprecedented spending of the Middlebury College Activities Board (MCAB), the events of the stabbing on College Street that occurred during spring break, and the resignation announcement of college President Laurie Patton and the launch of a search for a new president to take her place. Our goal is to bring you reliable, accurate information about everything from misused student funds to local businesses.
It was a defining moment in Middlebury history as we chronicled how students, staff, locals and travelers watched and celebrated the Great North American Eclipse in April from our sought-after path of totality. The paper recounted the journey of the group of students that climbed the Snow Bowl enough times to reach Mount Everest’s distance above sea level to raise money for humanitarian aid in Gaza and record-breaking alumni who dominated athletic competitions.
We enter into this academic year in the midst of several major transitions, ranging from our physical environment — the construction of a new first year residence hall, fresh tennis courts and the upcoming renovation of Proctor Dining Hall — to a changing student demographic, the final semester of President Laurie Patton’s tenure here and the arrival of her successor in the spring.
As a newspaper, we will monitor and report on these developments regularly and with precision, and we also hope to serve as a fixed point of constancy and direction for Middlebury throughout these changes. We will also be covering the presidential election in November by running a special election issue, similar to our staff issue last April which highlighted the voices, frustrations and talents of college employees.
A crucial component of The Campus as a publication is accepting and publishing op-eds from members of our community. Last year, our peers and classmates submitted op-eds on topics including the impending powers of AI and their implications for higher education, Vermont’s quiet culpability in preventing smoother transitions to renewable energy, the need for supporting a local bond vote on the Ilsley Public Library renovations and the ever-alluring, ever-vexing specter of what to do once graduation has come and gone. We encourage you — whether you are a student, staff member, faculty member or an alumnus — to submit op-eds to The Campus, and to think of our opinions section as a space for respectful and robustly constructed arguments.
The Editorial Board allowed us to speak with one voice on the defining issues of last year: student protests, staff compensation, housing shortages and student death, among others. Where else on campus can a group of 25 students with wide-ranging interests and experiences meet to debate controversial issues at Middlebury? We plan to focus on continuing news stories such as the search for Middlebury’s 18th president (see above for our thoughts on that this week) and breaking news as it unfolds this fall. We will stand by our editorial decisions, even when controversial.
Our annual Zeitgeist survey allows the Middlebury community to see beyond what’s observable on the surface and into the real experiences of the people that comprise the college. In last year’s survey, Zeitgeist 6.0, we found that 65% of survey respondents admitted to breaking the Honor Code, and that 48% of respondents felt like they didn’t exemplify a “typical” Middlebury student; we (and all of you, we’re certain) are curious to see how these results change after this year’s survey.
Though The Campus intends on sustaining the coverage of pressing, serious and transformative events within our college and the broader Middlebury community, we hope to keep the pages of this paper equally receptive to fun, lighthearted journalism of all stripes. Maybe you’ll weigh in on your favorite musician’s latest album, review a Middlebury Discount Comedy performance in the Hepburn Zoo, do a deep-dive on a new local cafe or let us know what your favorite films are for geology majors.
And if you’re not so keen on writing for us, we hope that you will continue to pick up print copies of our paper at the entrance to Proctor or on the way to class on Thursday mornings. After all, what is a newspaper without its readers?
Cole Chaudhari ’26 (he/him) is a Managing Editor.
Cole is a managing editor at The Campus, where he has previously served as a news editor, copy editor, and staff writer. He is a junior, and is studying history and literature.
Ryan McElroy '25 (he/him) is the Editor in Chief.
Ryan has previously served as a Managing Editor, News Editor and Staff Writer. He is majoring in history with a minor in art history. Outside of The Campus, he is co-captain of Middlebury Mock Trial and previously worked as Head Advising Fellow for Matriculate and a research assistant in the History department. Last summer Ryan interned as a global risk analyst at a bank in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Madeleine Kaptein '25.5 (she/her) is a managing editor.
Madeleine previously served as a staff writer, copy editor and local editor. She is a Comparative Literature major with minors in German and Art History. In Spring 2024, she studied abroad in Mainz, Germany, from where she wrote for the Addison Independent about her host country. In her free time, she enjoys journaling, long walks and runs, and uncomplicated visual arts projects.
