Students should learn to "hold it"

Letter to the editor: Please support divestment

Dear Bowdoin Students, Alumni, President Rose and Trustees,
This summer, I participated in a campaign of “kayaktivist” events here in the Pacific Northwest–nonviolent on-water acts of civil disobedience. I risked arrest, potentially negative consequences for my medical license and fines as high as $36,000. Why? Because every independent scientific assessment has made clear that the survival of our world is in extreme jeopardy due to climate change and global warming. We have been lied to by corporations like Exxon and their lobbyists for decades.
Our collective society urgently needs to shift our energy policies and practices, away from fossil fuels and towards immediate and intensive investment in an ecologically sustainable energy economy. In my senior year at Bowdoin (1980-81) interviewing for jobs on Wall Street, I never imagined that one day I would be forced to make a choice between making a stand for truth and justice or letting problems on a truly apocalyptic scale be someone else’s problem. Apathy and ignorance is a choice after all. My Bowdoin education gave me the foundational integrity and rectitude to make a choice based on compassion for all life. Please support divestment.
Jordan Van Voast ’81, L.Ac.

Letter to the editor: In support of Professor Bisbee

I’m writing in regard to the article about the student petition in support of Professor John Bisbee in last week’s issue of The Orient. I was instrumental in recruiting Professor Bisbee 19 years ago, and I have never wavered in my conviction that he is an exceptional and unusually gifted teacher, a generous and insightful mentor and a remarkably innovative artist whose creative and professional achievements have continued to flourish with each passing year.
A generation of Bowdoin graduates from many fields, as well as the arts, proudly trace their life’s work to his example of personal and creative integrity, and his inspiring presence will be greatly missed.
Sincerely,Mark Wethli, A. LeRoy Greason Professor of Art

Letter to the editor

Students should learn to "hold it"

November 20, 2015

Dear Editor:

Living nearby allows me to audit Bowdoin classes. I’m grateful to the professors and students who welcome me to their classes. Outstanding professors and bright, engaged and prepared students create a wonderful experience. I have a gripe, though.

In a class of 18 students, six regularly disrupt class to go to the bathroom. In 30 years of courtroom experience, never once did a judge, juror or lawyer leave the courtroom to go to the bathroom during a case. Adults don’t leave business meetings to go to the bathroom. At Pomona College and Stanford Law School, students never left class to relieve their bladder. Professors never abandon a class to go to the bathroom. As a college professor friend of mine in California told his students: it’s part of being an adult to learn to “hold it,” and leaving a class is disruptive and rude for the professor and other students. Shouldn’t college students know better?

Michael Wischkaemper

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