The Bowdoin Orient

While some people think that Bowdoin is a rather left-leaning institution, compared to many schools the community here is actually extremely accepting of varied points of view.

If you read the news media today, you're bombarded with stories proclaiming loudly that the dominance of the West is over, and that China and India already dominate the world economy. The papers trumpet the glittering office parks and high rises that house the corporate giants ready to steal American jobs. Well, last summer I worked in one of those glittering office parks. Within the walls of one of India's largest firms, the situation is just as the papers love to describe it.

In the days leading up to Ivies, some of my less party-oriented friends have started to grumble about the perceived waste of resources that is Ivies. The complaints usually go something like: "Why should we be paying for these bands to come, and why should Bowdoin allow students to use their land and money so they can blackout all weekend?"

The hate speech and its results, events that rocked the Bowdoin campus in the weeks before Spring Break, have definitely left a scar. I am hopeful that tempers have cooled in the intervening weeks, but we should not let the events be forgotten. Bowdoin is not a place of hate and intolerance, but there are definitely ways in which we as a student body can improve. The events should encourage us to work harder to understand each other, regardless of our backgrounds.

Quick, rush to the polls! Each time there is an election for anything, we are inundated with announcements. Last week, the Entertainment Board had an election. Fantastic, I thought when I first got the e-mails; finally I can really have some input into what musical acts visit the school. Yes, yes, we are given input in the autumn. Being allowed to pick which of seemingly dozens of obscure and almost unknown bands we have a dim recollection of hearing were good from a friend of a friend is nice, but getting to elect the people who make the real decisions is even better.

From our perspective, encamped in Maine under several feet of snow, the events occurring in the Middle East are a curiosity. The uprisings across the Arab world appear in many ways to be virtuous: classic cases of unhappy citizens rising up against unpopular and repressive governments. There are many trends that the protesters can rightly blame on their rulers: unemployment, lack of freedom, police brutality, corruption and demographics.

Throughout society, transparency abounds. That Facebook post you made about wanting to do terrible things to Paul LePage can be seen by hundreds of your nearest and dearest friends—not to mention hundreds, even thousands, of others if your privacy settings are too loose. And seeing as nothing on Google or Facebook is—as far as we know—really ever deleted, that crude snippet of text could be there for years to come.

Recalling the political fervor surrounding the gay-marriage issue last autumn, and with no desire to wait in a long line again this year, I requested that a Brunswick absentee ballot be sent to my Smith Union box early this year. Because I did not grow up in Maine, some would argue that it's undemocratic for me to send in my ballot to the town clerk. Perhaps they have a point, since it's true that I won't be paying taxes in Maine in the foreseeable future. Yet at the end of the day, the basic reason we have a republic—and that is what we have, democratic pretensions aside—is to the let the people decide who makes decisions on their behalf. However we define "the people," it is still the decision of whom to elect that matters.

So, there's fighting in Washington. All but the most rabid voters aren't happy with either party, and no one is expecting real change in the next Congress, save for those who have grown so confused that they think "change" and "obstruction" are one and the same. What can we to hope for, besides more gridlock?

It's old news that the Student Activities Funding Committee (SAFC) is hurting for money: The WBOR concert has been canceled for somewhat dubious reasons and clubs on the whole are having their budgets slashed. Clubs are responding by inflating requests for funding, creating a vicious cycle that will only result in the poor allocation of money. And yet, the Entertainment Board (E-Board) is still bringing three acts to Ivies. Granted, it's too late for any of this to be changed, but clubs have been hurting for funds since before the beginning of the year. Considering the huge wellspring of musical talent at Bowdoin, it seems ridiculous that we should use so much money to bring in three artists when we could make use of local talent, thus saving money and building interest in local bands.

Now that Delaware and Tennessee have been awarded the first grants from the federal Race to the Top Fund, education reform, and the corresponding assumption that American schools are abysmal, is back in the news.

During Spring Break I stopped in a café for a drink, and, being one of the only customers in the establishment, I struck up a conversation with the barista. We wandered through topics, eventually arriving at that perennial favorite: politics. The barista shook his head, and proceeded to lament to me that so many Americans lack the intelligence to understand anything about politics, and that American politics will remain obtuse unless the population magically gets smart enough to actually understand the world.

Just before 11 a.m. on Friday, February 19, the volume of equities traded on the New York Stock Exchange fell slightly. Fifteen minutes later, the backlog appeared in a burst, and for a short time the frequency of trading was more than double the day's average. Surely, an event which held Wall Street enraptured must have been critical to firms' profits. Given the events of recent weeks, it's not surprising that something suitably momentous could have come to light. Perhaps Greece finally acted upon its debt, or the Fed made an announcement which could determine a firm's future profitability. But no, the only event which occurred during that 15-minute period was rather less important to, well, everything: Tiger Woods's press conference.

In recent weeks this newspaper has run stories with titles like "Alcohol Use a Concern," and the growing atmosphere of worry has caused some people to fall back upon the argument that lowering the drinking age would help remove the motivation to binge drink, and thus save lives. Or at least trips to Parkview Adventist Medical Center. But espousing such a view without considering the consequences on a scale larger than Bowdoin is foolish.

So, Obama has lost his Senate super majority. I can't say I'm surprised. Yet, while many in the media are attributing the loss of the Massachusetts seat to popular disdain for, as the victorious Republican candidate Scott Brown puts it, "The Democratic Machine," I think that is only part of the reason for the outcome. Some voters undoubtedly voted to protest the Democrats' leftward leanings, but if the Party has become a machine, it is more akin to a rusty, sputtering pickup than some well-greased vehicle of war.

So, this is the week of Copenhagen, or, as it has been temporarily renamed, Hopenhagen. In light of the occasion, questions about sustainability have been flying around, both on campus and in the national media. What is it? How do we achieve it? How much will it cost? Why should I care? Whose side should I believe? What does it taste like?

With the recent release of the Bowdoin Blueprint for Carbon Neutrality, sustainability is again a buzzword on campus—or at least on posters and in the Student Digest. The College's plan is effective, but the methods it uses highlight a problem with many current modes of environmental thought: it is impossible for every institution and household in the U.S. to reach carbon neutrality using the same methods that Bowdoin plans to use.

Over the past few weeks it has been hard to ignore the fliers and posters which have saturated the walls of many campus structures. "No on 1" or "VOTE" say the signs' headers in vaguely hostile capital letters. These simple reminders to participate in the political process are all well and good, as Question 1 centers around one of the most polarizing issues in politics today.

The G20 has come and gone, and like its host city, Pittsburgh, such international summits are exemplars of a very 20th-century idea given new life. Since the founding of the G8 (forerunner to the G20) 30 years ago, the underlying political and economic structure of the world has shifted.

Recently, Der Spiegel, one of the world's most-read magazines, bore on its cover the message "The Red Light of Morning: How Left are We Headed?" Yet when one flips open its pages, there is nary a mention of Obamacare, town hall meetings, or even the Obama administration itself. Instead, inscribed in dense, heavily-umlauted text, lies an account of how the Left Party, a remnant of the old East German communist party, has been taking elections in Europe's economic heart by storm. At first glance, both these resurgences of welfare liberalism appear to be identical symptoms of the omnipresent global depression. When one digs down and examines the true shifts in power, however, it becomes apparent how shallow and confused the uproar over creeping socialism is, at least in the United States.