The Bowdoin Orient

For many students, the faculty's rejection of the proposed expansion of Thanksgiving break served as a jarring introduction to the considerable influence that professors have in the governance of the College. Though the initiative received the support of 57 percent of students in a survey, professors voted 47-28 against the proposal at a December faculty meeting, effectively killing the plan for the time being.

On a cursory glance, The Three One Cafe could pass as a greasy spoon on any main street in small town America. The walls are a shabby pastel yellow, the booths linoleum, and the tableware is all plastic. A TV tuned to "Cops" plays in the background, and a sign that says "Mom's Diner" hangs beneath the cash register. But the Three One Cafe in Lewiston is not a middle-American diner: it is the town's only Somali restaurant, a cultural oasis where some of the area's 3,000 Somali immigrants can congregate and see their countrymen over the food that reminds them of home.

Bowdoin students may be expressing their opinions on the internet more than ever, but they are not doing it on Curia (bcuria.com), Bowdoin's life and culture blog. On the website, which is described on its "About" page as "a place to gather and discuss timely issues," there have been no new posts since November 30, 2011. Five posts have been created since the current editors—who wrote all five—Jimena Escudero '13 and Ursula Moreno-VanderLaan '13 took over this year.

As I'm sure you all know, the Bowdoin College Republicans placed nearly 3,000 miniature American flags on the Dudley Coe Quad this past week to memorialize the 9/11 attacks. Frankly, I was shocked.

This week, I attended a lecture by Writer-in-Residence Jane Brox on imagining place. She discussed the delicate interplay of time, space and memory that goes on in our minds as we develop a sense of place. Brox's topic seemed poignant to me in light of the juncture we find ourselves at. As spring returns to Maine, we rediscover our feeling of space as we reinhabit the campus and the town.

The Vancouver Winter Olympics opened on a sad note last week when Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili crashed on a practice run and died of his injuries. Despite this tragedy, the track at the Whistler Sliding Centre was quickly reopened, and the luge competition was completed without further incident on Sunday. Hurtling down an ice chute on a fiberglass board at 90 miles an hour is an inherently risky proposition, but it seems to be one that these athletes were willing to undertake. Precautions can be taken and safety measures enforced, but at the end of the day, men will do what men do, despite—or rather, in spite of—danger to life and limb.