Stereotypes Make It Worse

A wise friend once said, “The only thing more depressing than a stereotype is when somebody lives up to it.” I can’t imagine a better illustration for this than Tim Newcomb’s March 11 panel. Thanks so much, Mr. Newcomb, for your efforts to sledgehammer the wedge deeper into the stump of our democracy, because what America really needs right now is someone to shore up our dueling political stereotypes of ignorance and arrogance.

Sarcasm aside, I challenge Mr. Newcomb — and anyone else who yearns for more civility and less polarization — to attend “Beyond the Politics of Contempt,” a presentation on April 11 at the Brownell Library in Essex Junction by local authors and Braver Angels leaders Doug Teschner and Beth Malow, about their new book of the same name [“Striking Discord: Two Upper Valley Writers With Different Ideological Backgrounds Contribute to a New Book Aiming to Move Americans Past the ‘Politics of Contempt,’” February 18].

You have nothing to lose but your stereotypes.

#Unequal Reporting

Alison Novak’s article regarding Jeanne Hulsen suing the Burlington School District for $2 million omitted vital information [“Settling the Score: An Equal-Pay Lawsuit Against the Burlington School District Ends in a Nearly $500,000 Award,” January 28]. As a community member, parent of Burlington High School student athletes during Hulsen’s tenure, former teacher in the district and longtime member of Seahorse Pride, I must speak up. I absolutely agree that women should get equal pay for equal work, but we must not misuse #EQUALPAY to undermine its message and power.

1. Hulsen held a general contract and was never assigned the duties of head of athletics/district coordinator (for which she applied and was not chosen). The new BSD position takes a district-wide management approach to athletics, overseeing BHS as well as Hunt and Edmunds middle schools. Novak failed to mention that Hulsen was a hired tennis coach outside BHS and compensated for attending afterschool events at BHS.

2. BHS parent group Seahorse Pride supported Hulsen during her tenure and attempted to improve the athletics program starting in 2014. In 2019 Seahorse Pride presented a 17-page BHS Athletic Advisory report to the school board and superintendent Yaw Obeng. In 2020 the district established the new head of athletics/district coordinator position. No one from Seahorse Pride or the BHS Athletic Advisory was contacted by Novak.

3. Hulsen’s legal expert, Stephanie Seguino, was a school board member and chair of the DEI Committee during Hulsen’s tenure and requests for salary increase. Novak omitted this connection.

Our high school girls drove the #EQUALPAY campaign, with parent support, and Hulsen only spent $25 on a T-shirt. Now she has taken district money for a job she didn’t have. Hulsen was not paid the salary as head of athletics/district coordinator not because of her gender but because she did not hold that job nor perform those responsibilities; the position didn’t exist.

‘Cringeworthy’ Review

How strange and unnerving was Melissa Pasanen’s review that made constant reference and comparison to the tacky commercial food chain Olive Garden [“On Top of Spaghetti: Restaurateur Jed Davis Brings Italian American Comfort Food to Williston,” March 10].

This new Italian restaurant deserves a stand-alone review without smearing it with Olive Garden content.

Foodies look forward to Seven Days reviews of new eateries. This was cringeworthy and did a disservice to the creative Pascolo owner who is trying to offer a more casual, budget Italian dining experience than his downtown restaurant. Kudos to him!

And who in the hell is “Diane” to be criticizing the décor?

This was the worst-written review in the history of Food + Drink.

Fond Famiglia

What a lovely surprise to see Louis Giancola’s Remembering Mama and La Mia Famiglia among the Vermont books reviewed in [“Page 32: Short Takes on Five Vermont Books,” February 25]. In 1972, my then-husband and I moved to Rutland from Brooklyn and into the upstairs apartment of Catherine Giancola’s home with our toddler son. Catherine was a delight, the Italian grandmother I missed so much — so welcoming, kind and nurturing, both with the abbondanza in her kitchen, where something wonderful was always cooking, and with her warm, enveloping hugs and offers to help with our little boy.

She and Louis had a special, wonderful relationship, and when she passed away, he gave the loveliest eulogy for her. I have never forgotten her or the great kindness she showed to me as a new mother and to our family as Vermont transplants. I am glad that others will now be able to read about her sweet but indomitable nature, her always tantalizing Italian kitchen and the odds she overcame to be able to raise her own lovely family. (By the way, the book is available on Amazon; the review did not mention this.)

Grazie, Louie, e congratulazioni!

Safety First

[Re “A Question of Competency: Lawmakers Are Again Considering Creating a Secure Facility for Mentally Ill People Accused of Crimes,” March 25]: As lawmakers debate S.193, Vermont is having an important conversation about mental health, competency and constitutional rights. But one perspective often seems missing: the rights of victims and the public to safety.

Civil liberties must be protected. At the same time, Vermont’s current system leaves a significant gap between voluntary mental health treatment and meaningful forensic supervision. When someone is repeatedly found not competent to stand trial, the system often cycles through arrest, evaluation, release and repeat incidents.

Communities live with the consequences.

Competency restoration and the creation of a forensic facility would not eliminate civil rights protections. Instead, they would recognize that treatment, accountability and public safety can coexist. Many states have systems designed to balance these priorities. Vermont currently does not.

S.193 represents an opportunity to begin addressing that gap.

Transparency during these discussions also matters. When legislative hearings experience live-stream failures, late agenda changes or other barriers to public access, it undermines confidence in a process that should be open and accountable.

Vermonters deserve policies that protect civil liberties while also recognizing that victims, neighbors and families have rights, too — including the right to basic safety.

School Choice Is a Rural Issue

As lawmakers debate changes to Vermont’s town tuition system, families in the Northeast Kingdom risk losing educational opportunities that have supported our students and communities for generations. Recent Seven Days reporting on the politicization of education policy makes it especially important that lawmakers listen to families directly affected by these decisions [“Learning the Hard Way: School Leaders Say State Officials Are Politicizing Education, Fraying Their Relationship With the Scott Administration,” March 11].

As a Waterford resident, parent and business owner in St. Johnsbury, I see every day how school choice supports both students and the long-term health of our rural economy.

Three of my four children attend or have graduated from St. Johnsbury Academy. They are diverse learners with different strengths and needs. Some have thrived academically, while others required support through an individualized education program. In every case, St. Johnsbury Academy met them where they were and helped them succeed.

Our youngest child hopes to follow the same path as her siblings. Like many NEK families, we are not asking for something new. We are asking to preserve the opportunity that already exists.

For towns without a public high school, the town tuition model ensures that rural families have access to educational opportunities available elsewhere in Vermont. St. Johnsbury Academy and Lyndon Institute are among the largest employers in our region and help attract families and workers who choose to live here.

Students in independent schools represent roughly 4 percent of Vermont’s student population, yet removing school choice would deeply affect rural communities.

Weakening school choice will not solve Vermont’s education spending challenges. It will only take opportunity away from communities that depend on it.

What About Israel?

It was refreshing to read that Iran is “one of the more liberal countries in the Middle East,” where there have been “genuine competitive elections” that “the reformers have won” in the recent past [“Fighting Words: Former Diplomat and Vermont Senator Peter Galbraith Is Not Optimistic That the U.S. War in Iran Will Go as Planned,” March 11]. Hardly the caricature painted by liberals and conservatives alike, Iran indeed is “not monolithic” and is, in fact, a “diverse, sophisticated country” that is the “most pro-American in the Middle East,” as former U.S. diplomat Peter Galbraith correctly states in your interview with him. Sadly, President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s unprovoked, illegal war of military aggression may change all that.

While your interview provided some needed nuance, you failed to ask burning questions related to Israel, which is referenced only in passing in the interview yet is on the minds of many former U.S. diplomatic, military and intelligence officials.

Namely: 1) Are U.S. soldiers being sent to die for Israel and Netanyahu’s lifelong ambition of destroying Iran, and are they enabling more stealing of Palestinian lands for the “Greater Israel” project? 2) Is Trump being influenced by “Israel-firsters” close to him, like billionaire Miriam Adelson and other rich, arch-Zionist donors? 3) Was Trump tricked by Netanyahu and Israeli intelligence into carrying out an assassination of the Ayatollah — the equivalent of the Pope of the Shia Islamic faith across the world — by claiming that his death would topple the government?

These questions and others related to Israel’s role are being hotly debated in alternative media on the political right and left, but you’d never know it if just reading Seven Days.

Councilor Objects

[Re “Mud Season: For the Third Consecutive Year, a Burlington Election Campaign Gets Personal,” March 11]: I knew when I entered public service (serving on Burlington’s Special Committee to Review Policing Practices, the police commission and now as a city councilor in my second term) that I would be expected to talk to the media or the media would use recordings from various meetings to quote me. I have been, at times, badly quoted out of context, had crucial information left out, been the subject of sound bites from hell and been relentlessly attacked on social media. I realize these things come with the territory, but I doubt you can imagine my surprise and deep disappointment when I read the following statement about me in a Seven Days article: “Councilor Melo Grant (P-Central District), who often puts herself at the center of spats with her colleagues…”

I find this statement to be very demeaning. I’m a sitting city councilor; there is no need for me to put myself at the center of “spats,” as I already have a seat at the table. I have the right to represent my constituents. Your use of the words “spats” and “bickering” only serves to devalue important conversations about being truthful with Burlingtonians; tackling tough policy decisions; protecting democracy, including the rights and concerns of our residents; and working as a team for the city. If you think I’m outspoken, then say I’m outspoken. Otherwise, please ask more questions. I can back up what I say.

Dishing It Out

[Re “A Hater’s Guide to Small Plates: Small Plates Are Everywhere. The Joke Is on Us,” March 18]: Thank you for Chelsea Edgar’s hilarious, blisteringly accurate condemnation manifesto re: small plates. I fully intend to clip it out of Seven Days and savor the clippings … less than 250 calories on a plate, topped with microgreens or some such nonsense.

I will flip the table. Or I will fantasize about flipping the table.

Either way, I love her work.

[Re “A Hater’s Guide to Small Plates,” March 18]: Small-plate-style eating is perfectly common in other parts of the world (tapas in Spain, omakase in Japan, etc.), but unless you are a food writer, wealthy, a “foodie” or in the service industry like myself, that style of eating is uncommon here in the States — especially for the many blue-collared folk living in these parts. An introduction to the small-plate dining experience might be required. I think it’s uncultured and elitist to think otherwise.

Additionally, small-plate-style dining can reduce the amount of food waste at restaurants. Speaking from personal experience, it’s absurd how many diners can’t finish their plates and opt out of to-go bags. The smaller the plate, the less food waste.

Besides, how boring could you be to want a single main course for yourself when you can have a plethora to share with your tablemates? Perhaps try Olive Garden instead.

Hats off to the sheer comedy of “A Hater’s Guide to Small Plates” by Chelsea Edgar. It was the first piece I read in the March 18 issue, and she had me chuckling, then laughing out loud, then so hard I had to stop to breathe as I read. She captured the preciousness of small-plates places: the attitudes, the info from the servers. The last line that “Not every chip can become an astronaut” caps it off beautifully.

In a week of hard news, this was one of the funniest short works I have ever read. Thank you!

Thanks for the big plate of funny [“A Hater’s Guide to Small Plates,” March 18].

ICE Breaker

Seven Days covered the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement raid in South Burlington on March 11 and every related newsworthy development since. On March 18, we published “ICE at the Doorstep: A Federal Immigration Raid in South Burlington Would Lead to a Violent, Daylong Confrontation With Protesters and the Detention of Three Immigrants. Here’s What Happened.” Writers here are also responding to “Burlington City Council Grills Chief Over South Burlington ICE Raid,” March 24; “Judge Releases Second Ecuadorian Sister Detained in ICE Raid,” March 20; and “Vermont Law Enforcement Leaders Defend Actions at ICE Raid,” March 19.

So many questions after the ICE raid on Dorset Street. If it was the purpose of South Burlington police to ensure the public safety of their town’s residents, why did they not question ICE agents as they left the house with three people, two of whom were women, when the warrant was for one male? In a legislative hearing, Burlington’s interim police chief answered this question by saying something about collateral: If you go in to arrest someone but there’s a pound of cocaine on the table… But we’re not talking about cocaine. These were innocent people who were judged unlawfully detained and subsequently released. Where is the protection all Vermonters can rely on?

No doubt the situation on March 11 was difficult for all involved. My concern, though, in what I heard from law enforcement at the legislative hearing is that they are tending to protect each other rather than looking at how they may have contributed or not stepped in when they should have. My concern is also how we as activists ensure that our protest maintains integrity. I don’t find that expressing my anger in dehumanizing ways expresses our desire for humanizing justice.

What can we learn? My hope is that there is a full and honest investigation. I believe that only by all of us taking responsibility for our actions and humbly admitting our human mistakes will we build trust and hold the line as a community in the face of the unscrupulous forces of ICE.

I take police at their word that they deployed to Dorset Street on March 11 to protect citizens of Vermont. Given ICE and U.S. Customs and Border Protection actions elsewhere, the goals of Vermont State Police and of South Burlington Police in this case would have been to de-escalate and prevent death.

Perhaps that’s what they did. Our state and local police were in an agonizingly difficult position that day. ICE has filled its ranks with brutal, lawless and ill-trained agents. There was every reason to believe that these thugs hired by the feds would create chaos and violence. I believe our local cops’ efforts were to keep the thugs from shooting and maiming Vermonters.

One nagging question, though: Is it true that South Burlington Police Chief Bill Breault had federal agents in his command post that day? The Seven Days article “ICE at the Doorstep” [March 18] describes Breault in South Burlington City Hall accompanied by “a local FBI official and an agent from Homeland Security Investigations.” Highly disturbing if true.

The record is ample and clear: The current U.S. Department of Homeland Security staff would greatly prefer not to be constrained by the U.S. Constitution. If Chief Breault thought cooperating with the feds would help defuse the situation or maybe give him a chance to talk ICE officials into going away, that seems like a poor calculation, to put it mildly.

If Seven Days’ reporting is accurate, each municipality in Vermont needs to adopt a statute banning DHS or FBI officials from their command post.

Many of the comments regarding the March 11 ICE confrontation suggest that if we allowed law enforcement to do their job, the problems would disappear. According to leaders of state and local law enforcement agencies, a significant part of the problem is that ICE wouldn’t let them do their job of protecting and serving the people of Vermont and following Vermont law.

The day began with ICE chasing and attempting to detain an innocent man, causing accidents right outside South Burlington schools. They did this without any communication or coordination with local police. ICE then surrounded a house and attempted to enter a residence. The man they wanted to detain was not there.

Police worked to keep community members separate from the more aggressive members of ICE. Police say they asked ICE to end the siege, and ICE refused. They said if they did not give ICE access to the house, then ICE would enter in a much more aggressive and possible life-threatening manner. They also said they asked ICE to leave a vehicle on the property rather than continue the conflict, and ICE refused.

Local and state law enforcement leaders wanted to do things differently, but ICE ran the show without willingness to compromise in the interest of public safety.

When you suggest that we need to support the law, please clarify whether you support ICE or you support Vermont law enforcement. They are not the same.

Many people played a role in the ICE assault on Dorset Street, but only a small handful could control the outcome, including the United States attorney for Vermont. In 2021, he wrote in the Brattleboro Reformer: “Throughout Vermont, communities have been having necessary and overdue conversations about police reform … We want reasonable and rational police officers dedicated to serving their communities for the right reasons.”

Don’t those same expectations apply to ICE? If so, when you applied for a judicial arrest warrant on March 11, did you consider the threat to community members of an armed incursion on a busy street, near a high school and middle school?

Did you consider ICE’s dangerous behavior in conducting a vehicular stop at rush hour on a busy street?

Did you reach out to the South Burlington Police Department that had actively encouraged ICE to leave Dorset Street, to de-escalate and to pursue other avenues of arrest?

Did ICE tell you there had been three children in the home you authorized them to invade?

Weren’t you aware there were hundreds of community members on Dorset Street trying hard to protect a vulnerable family? Did you decide the apprehension of one nonviolent immigrant was worth the risk? What if the ICE flash-bang discharge in the house had injured a human?

It is not too late for all of us to honestly assess this travesty, to take a fair share of responsibility, and to offer both restitution and system change.

This article appears in Money & Retirement Issue • 2026.

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