The Bowdoin Orient

In April 2007, the Orient’s editorial board called upon Bowdoin to “find and hire professors who will be able to give students the instruction in Middle Eastern culture and language that they both want and need.” At the time, only one Bowdoin professor, Shelley Deane, specialized in the Middle East.

The following year, a group of students dissatisfied with the lack of Arabic instruction organized informal Arabic classes taught by fellow student Jamil Wyne ’08.

In 2008, the College responded to the growing demand for Middle Eastern studies classes by hiring Russell Hopley as a lecturer in Arabic and Robert Morrison as a religion professor. According to Professor of Religion Jorunn Buckley, hiring Morrison finally satisfied the religion department’s request for specialists in Islam and Judaism that stretched back two decades.But despite the progress, Bowdoin continues to suffer from a deficiency of classes focusing on the Middle East.

iPod advertisements would be more accurate if they depicted a solitary figure walking around, hands in pockets and head down.

Throughout the day I see a multitude of students ambling across campus with earphones dangling out of their ears. Like them, music accompanies me to class in the morning. I can control the soundtrack of the moment, and feel rejuvenated by the rhythm and verse. Music is genuinely what keeps me going on particularly difficult days. But this bliss comes at a loss.Listening to an iPod with headphones disconnects us from our external reality by replacing natural auditory inputs with electronic mesmerizing musical ones. We enter our own world—and it sounds great—but we do it by exiting another one. Wearing headphones around campus discourages other people from talking to you and discourages you from facing them.

What should I do when I’m listening with headphones and I see someone familiar? Should I take my headphones off and risk entering an insincere conversation? Should I take one half off and exchange some brusque prefabricated words? Or should I keep the “do not disturb” warning on my head and carry on?

A year of intense campaigning with more than five billion dollars spent, a million attack advertisements, and about 500,000 speeches culminated in Obama’s victory Tuesday night. Media attention leading up to election day focused almost exclusively on which wealthy male with orthodox beliefs and an inoffensive personality would rule the United States for the next four years.

Stocking up on food supplies is necessary for any Bowdoin student still awake by midnight. Inevitably, however much you devour at dinner will not last you more than a few hours, and the place to go for dorm snacks is invariably Bowdoin Express. Stocked with various foods including sushi from Little Tokyo and big bags of chips, the convenience store is an excellent place to furnish emergency provisions. Every time I gaze into the refrigerators in the small shop in Smith Union, I can’t help but notice how racks are stacked with dozens of Sabra hummus containers.

Last Friday, Edward Archbold died after taking part in a cockroach-eating contest in Deerfield Beach, Flor. The prize was a python. Thanks to the CNN website, I know that the very next day the brothers Brandon and Blayne Estes championed the inaugural Bentonville, Ark. squirrel cook-off with their squirrel slider recipe.

“Sweet baby Jesus,” I thought to myself while gulping down the last few drops of water I could find in my room last Sunday morning. With hands that felt as if they had dried into paper, I pillaged my room for something to drink. After a terrifying moment in which I thought I would die of thirst, I ran to the bathroom and filled a bottle with water, drinking it faster than the sink could refill it. After quenching my thirst, I returned to my grotto-like room, the shades were drawn and the light off. I burrowed into the hallowed covers of my bed, not to emerge until high noon.

I hold that the members of the Bowdoin administration and of the Judicial Board are guilty of breaching the College’s Academic Honor and Social Code. Their crime is one of coercion. They use the implied threat of dismissal from the College to force students into signing an agreement and—by making them sign in groups—to use social pressure to prevent dissent.