2020: Pretentiousness and Hypocrisy

Published on October 22, 2020, this article features the first major incident of insulting Middlebury's appearance as an environmentally-conscious school, but is instead filled with privileged students who go into careers in finance and economics: “Considering this campus already thrives on a facade of eco-friendliness, this is a perfect breeding ground for the next generation of Earth’s perverted mutilators!” It further targets these students, who they assert to be sociopathic: “In the interviews with applicants, Exxon is looking for well-composed students who have perfected the nonchalant assertive gesture: push back their chair, cross their legs, and gaze into their personal pit of sociopathic tendencies.” 

Also published on October 22, 2020, this article makes fun of Environmental Studies majors for their pretentiousness for not golfing due to the golf course being the largest consumer of water. Now that the golf course is back open, the ES majors can continue to boycott the golf course, even though their actions won't affect the hours of the course. The article also eferences “An Inconvenient Truth” (a documentary covering Al Gore's presidential campaign, particularly his environmental stances) by calling ES majors “an inconvenient group”.

The October 22, 2020 issue of The Local Noodle proved to be one filled with environmental articles. This one was also published in that issue and tells a story of students claiming to find red wire leading from solar panels. When they unplugged the wire, they were swarmed by men in suits from a helicopter. The story is relatively unimportant but the piece makes a reference to Middlebury’s likely false claims of being a carbon neutral campus at the beginning: “A small group of amateur sleuths investigating Middlebury’s assertion of being a “carbon neutral” campus have recently claimed to have stumbled upon an unbelievable data breach.”