The snazzy orientation festivities have either made you feel like the specialest person alive or like there’s been some huge mistake in the admissions process. You’re rushing to find some flannels and lululemon so that you might start looking like a middkid (check the recycling center!) Or maybe you’re like, middkid wuuut? You’ve just been given a million things to read and you’re too busy meeting people to look at any of them. So, put this one somewhere safe and pull it out the first time you get that, “holy cowshit what am i doing here” feeling. Or, if that’s now, read on. If the glossy veneer of this elite college seems to be rubbing off, it might be helpful to know that there are Others trying to put on a new varnish, with drastically different colors.
This guide is a working-document written by a fluid collective of students committed to organizing, educating, learning, and building a transformative community. As students from diverse backgrounds and experiences, we critically examine Middlebury College as an institution and seek to honor it as a community of students, faculty, and staff with a long history of resistance to injustice. We’ve been part of many efforts to change this private college, which does not fit into our ideal of free education available to all. Some of our efforts have been through institutional channels, and others have not. We feel that no matter what methods people choose, it is important to know what has been done before and what is possible when we are organized. We think we can transform this place, or at least throw a wrench in the charge towards corporatization and whitefantasy-heterosexist-bleakification. This guide is a small effort to ask you to join us, or join with someone else, get creative, don’t wear salmon colored shorts, and if you feel like you have to sell your soul, don’t sell it to the wrong people. If you want to get in touch, contact disorientmidd@gmail.com.
For a print-ready PDF version of the guide, click here: DisorientationGuide
[Update! Meeting postponed from Friday to Monday! -]
[February 2015 Update: Meet us for a reading of the guide and a discussion in the Warner Hemicycle on Monday March 2nd at 5PM !]
Middlebury College Disorientation Guide 