May 2008

Body found believed to be missing student Nicholas Garza burlingtonfreepress.com The Burlington Free Press: “Police tentatively identified a body pulled from the Otter Creek on Tuesday night as that of missing Middlebury College student Nicholas Garza.

“Search-and-rescue teams from state and local police agencies pulled a male body from a logjam at the base of the downtown spillway about 8:40 p.m last night. A wallet found on the body belonged to Garza, a 19-year-old freshman from Albuquerque, N.M., who went missing Feb. 5, said Tom Scanlon, a public information officer for the Middlebury Police Department.

” ‘It’s not good news, but it’s closure for the family,’ Scanlon said.

” ‘It was Nick,’ the student’s mother, Natalie Garza, told The Associated Press.”

Vermont Public Radio Interview: Meg Young on surviving the China earthquake: “Last week’s earthquake in China had a direct impact on one Middlebury College graduate. Meg Young has been living and working in Sichuan Province for a Vermont-based international development group.

“She was in the city of Chengdu when the earthquake hit, sending her running from the building crumbling around her.

“VPR’s Neal Charnoff spoke with Meg Young by cell phone about the earthquake. “

Frost Scholar to School Vandals in Creative Sentence Seven Days: “For the Frost 28, it will be a case of poetic justice. For the scholar, it’s a chance to fill a gap in the educations of the youths who sacked Robert Frost’s summer home.

” ‘My instinct was that if the schools had taught these people about Frost,’ Jay Parini, a professor at Middlebury College, said, ‘this wouldn’t have happened.’

“The author of an acclaimed biography on Vermont’s first poet laureate, Parini will teach two court-ordered classes for the young men and women charged with vandalizing Homer Noble Farm in late December. “

The West Side, featuring work of Middlebury alums, wins Webby for best drama series: “The West Side is an urban western, featuring actor Damian Washington ‘03, and created by Ryan Bilsborrow-Koo, also Middlebury ‘03, and Zachary Lieberman. Set in a unique, alternate universe, it melds elements of two disparate film genres: the grit of an urban setting with the tradition of the American Western.”

The West Side Web site

Damian Washington’s site

Webby Awards site

Allison Stanger – Your Tax Dollars at Work, If You Can Find Them: washingtonpost.com: “It was something everyone could agree on: a user-friendly Web site showing how much money the government spends — a very literal display of ‘your tax dollars at work.’ The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) even partnered with one of its banes, the nonprofit watchdog OMB Watch, to devise the software. But something appears to be clouding all this much-trumpeted transparency: The numbers don’t add up.

“The new site, known as USASpending.gov, was unveiled ahead of schedule last December, and its basic design is true to its mandate. Its welcome screen boasts: ‘Where Americans Can See Where Their Money Goes.’

“Well, not really. …”

Forget fear, go for fun, UVM grads told by Middlebury’s Julia Alvarez The Burlington Free Press: “The sun shone brilliantly over University Green on Sunday, and the sky was blue, but the day’s dim forecast pushed the University of Vermont’s 204th graduation ceremony indoors.

“The circumstance proved a fitting analogy to the advice Julia Alvarez [Middlebury class of 1971 and a writer in residence at the College] had to share as she returned to address the Class of 2008 in the Athletic Complex Multipurpose Facility.

“Asking students to embrace their passion and hope in the midst of fear and uncertainty, the author of ‘How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents’ and ‘In the Time of the Butterflies’ offered her own experience as an example of coming full circle, by returning to the place her successful journey began.”

How members of the Middlebury community can help in China and Burma: “The recent tragedies in China and Burma and their heartbreakingly high number of casualties have many of us wondering how we can do our part to help alleviate some of the suffering. The Middlebury College Chaplain’s Office Web site has a list of disaster relief and development agencies that are working to provide food, water, shelter, medicine and equipment to these most recently devastated areas and to other places in the world where people are suffering and in need.

“Please go to the disaster relief page to see a list of links you can click on to learn more about each organization.

“In addition, Middlebury College’s Alliance For Civic Engagement is working with local organization Ecologia to provide aid to China.”

VPR Interview: Middlebury Police Chief Tom Hanley on the search for Nick Garza: “Middlebury College Freshman Nick Garza has now been missing for three months. Middlebury Police Chief Tom Hanley says a plan including land and river search was developed shortly after Garza was reported missing. But investigators weren’t able to turn their attention to Otter Creek until April because of high water conditions.”

350 is the message, writes Bill McKibben: Rutland Herald Online: “It’s been a year and a half since Vermonters helped kick off the activist phase of the climate change movement, 18 months that have seen fairly remarkable progress in jump-starting an issue that had been politically dead in this country for many years. Now, again with Vermont in the vanguard, a new attempt at winning meaningful international progress is under way.

“Now the seven of us who organized … StepItUp demonstrations last spring – myself and six recent graduates of Middlebury College – are putting together a new campaign, this one aimed at the even more difficult goal of winning a strong international treaty in the years ahead.”

– Bill McKibben, scholar in residence in environmental studies at Middlebury College

Middlebury alumna’s documentary chasing the truth in Chile: “When a former bishop was democratically elected president of Paraguay last month, it signaled the end of another ’southern-cone’ dictatorship in Latin America.

“Elizabeth Farnsworth, in her North Beach office, was exultant. ‘The priest won!’ she said of Fernando Lugo. Her roots in Latin American history run deep. On Sunday, her latest project, ‘The Judge and the General’ – a documentary about the man who tried Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet – will premiere at the San Francisco International Film Festival.

“For Farnsworth [a Middlebury alumna], best known as senior correspondent of PBS’ ‘NewsHour,’ the film is the culmination of more than two years’ hard work. She first met Judge Juan Guzmán in 2003 at a dinner party in the home of Bay Area philanthropists Herb and Marion Sandler, attended by a few local journalists and federal judges.”

See trailer for the documentary: http://links.sfgate.com/ZDFY

America’s Greenest Colleges – Forbes.com: “Long a hotbed of environmental activism, America’s campuses are blooming green. Schools are committing to reducing their carbon dioxide emissions, they’re funneling endowment money into renewable-energy investment funds, and students — the engine behind much of this growth — are pushing for more.”

“… In the Sustainable Endowments Institute rankings … six schools — Harvard, Dartmouth College, Carleton College, Middlebury College, the University of Vermont and the University of Washington — earned an A-, the top grade in 2008. “

Slide show including Middlebury College: http://www.forbes.com/2008/05/02/college-harvard-uvm-biz-energy-cx_bw_0502greenu_slide_6.html?thisSpeed=15000