No experience necessary

Editorial: A house divided

Whether you can put a name to it or not, every college house has a personality. Are you going on the Katahdin trip tomorrow? Sean is leading it, you know, the one in Reed. Were you at Baxter at all last night? The basement was lit post 1 a.m. See you at Ladd after the hockey game? I wish I could go to swing dancing at Howell, but I have an essay due. Year after year, the college houses embody somewhat similar characteristics, and this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but the College seems committed to convincing students that the houses are interchangeable.
Over the last several years, Residential Life (ResLife) has made many adjustments to the college house system in an apparent attempt to homogenize the culture between houses. Three years ago, first years’ house affiliations were changed from dorm-based to floor-based. Two years ago, the application was modified to encourage more upperclassmen to submit their names to the mostly-sophomore applicant pool. Last year, the application became binding so that students could not decline acceptance to a house even if they were not placed in a house they specifically applied to. Even more restrictive, first years can only apply to the houses that members of their block are affiliated with, or relinquish their right to list preferences.
We question the efficacy of ResLife’s social engineering attempts to shift the college house culture by adjusting house application requirements and questions. If the College really wants to address exclusivity within the College house system—as demonstrated by the “Why Do College Houses Feel So White?” panel—shifting around blocks and mandating that students apply to houses that they are affiliated with seems superficial.
In each of these tweaks to the college house system, ResLife has attempted to counteract the personas each house has developed over time. But the houses’ personalities are often among the most celebrated, important and positive aspects of the college house system. College houses can have unique identities and have a close-knit group of residents without inheriting the negative characteristics of fraternities. Though the College House system was designed to be a healthier space on campus than fraternities were, it is still a necessarily exclusive system—not every student can live in a house, and not everyone wants to, either.
Because there are eight houses on campus, each with a slightly different atmosphere, most students are likely to identify with at least one house, though it is inevitable that no student will connect with all of them. Bowdoin can work on making the houses more inclusive and open to all members of campus without sacrificing the character of the individual houses. It is absolutely important that every student feel safe in every house, but for students lucky enough find a house they connect with, ResLife’s rules should encourage, not prohibit that.
This editorial represents the majority view of the Bowdoin Orient’s editorial board, which is comprised of Julian Andrews, Jono Gruber, Matthew Gutschenritter, Meg Robbins, Nicole Wetsman and Emily Weyrauch.

Editorial: Vote.

This year, we have seen the power that Bowdoin Student Government (BSG) can enact. The organization’s actions and responses have become a visible part of campus culture, and BSG frequently shows up on our front page. BSG has been redefining itself and its role on campus. It has released statements of solidarity with the victims of racist attacks at the University of Missouri, as well as two statements of solidarity with students at Bowdoin following the “gangster” party and the “tequila” party. In the fall, students voted in overwhelming support of adding the seat of Multicultural Representative and throughout the year BSG’s “public comment” time has proved itself a heated platform for airing grievances and debate. This has led to an increase in discussions about the role of BSG in representing the student body and the standards it holds itself to. For instance, it has adopted new, more comprehensive procedures for the impeachment of its members and introduced a Good Standing Amendment that allows the BSG Executive Committee to review previously confidential disciplinary records should members fall out of good standing with the College.
In past years, during the week of BSG Executive Committee elections, we have written an editorial endorsing a candidate for president. This year, though, we think it’s more important to use this space to urge you to vote and to make sure you have all the information you need to make an informed decision. While we used to use our interviews with the presidential candidates to inform the position we took, this year we are posting clips of these interviews online for you to evaluate. We are also presenting you with all of the candidates’ candidacy statements in the Opinion section and we have extensive coverage, both in print and on Twitter, of last Tuesday night’s debates, if you were unable to attend.
Ballots were sent by email to all students this morning, and voting will be open until Sunday night. While we realize BSG has its limits, its position as a governing body nonetheless makes it the face of our student body. If the laws it enacts and statements it makes reflect our campus, it should do a good job of representing us. So, be aware of the information you have available to educate yourself about the candidates. If you have opinions on what BSG should be next year, then you should vote for the candidates you think best represent your interests. If you choose not to vote, know that abstaining is tacit agreement with whatever decisions are made on BSG next year. Seniors, too, can vote in this BSG election, as well as students who are abroad, facts that are often overlooked. Voting in this election—like any other election—is a privilege that we have in deciding what our governing body looks like and how we are represented as students and citizens. This year has shown us that BSG’s actions affect our lives, which makes our decisions as voters all the more important.
This editorial represents the majority view of the Bowdoin Orient’s editorial board, which is comprised of Julian Andrews, Jono Gruber, Meg Robbins and Emily Weyrauch.

Editorial

This piece represents the opinion of The Bowdoin Orient editorial board.

April 15, 2016

We know there is a byline at the bottom of this editorial, but here are the people who write it each week. Our names are Julian Andrews, Jono Gruber, Matthew Gutschenritter, Meg Robbins, Nicole Wetsman and Emily Weyrauch. All of us are white. All of us come from high schools that had the resources to support a student newspaper and four of us worked on that publication. Five of us grew up in a state touching the Atlantic Ocean. All of us are liberal-leaning. Our goal is to represent the entire student body, so we are falling short if our staff does not reflect as many of the perspectives, experiences and interests of Bowdoin’s students as possible. This week we will send out applications for next year’s Orient leadership and we would like to reach out to people who do not necessarily fit the current mold.

We are proud of the weekly paper that we produce. We think our stories are well-reported, we stick by journalistic ethics and we cover topics that are important to the campus. We are happy that we’ve been a forum for discussion on campus and that our opinion section has included a diverse range of perspectives.

We are also lacking in some key areas: writers who don’t have experience writing journalistic articles before college often fall through the cracks because we don’t do enough to train them, and some avoid approaching us in the first place out of fear of being under-qualified. Because our article topics are generated by a group of students that represents a relatively small community on campus, we miss some potential stories from groups we don’t have connections to, and our newspaper doesn’t include as many conservative voices as we would like. While we have strong women members of leadership, there is very little representation of racial and ethnic minorities on our staff, especially in leadership.

These are not new problems, and they are not ones that are exclusive to our campus. As Margaret Sullivan, Public Editor of the New York Times wrote on the importance of newsroom diversity this year: “When the group is truly diverse, the nefarious groupthink that makes a publication predictable and, at times, unintentionally biased, is much more likely to be diminished. And that’s a good thing.”

We want to let all students—not just those who seek us out and come into our house (which is notably removed from the most trafficked areas of campus)—know that the Orient can be a place for them if they are interested. We are looking into the factors—social, cultural, political and financial—that discourage students from joining our staff and we are committed to doing our best to break down these barriers.

We want to share the opinions and experiences you bring to the College. We want to hear the stories that you think are important and want us to cover. We’d like to talk to you about how to make the Orient better and more inclusive. Most importantly, if you’ve ever wanted to contribute to the Orient, we’d love to have you. No experience necessary.

This editorial represents the majority view of the Bowdoin Orient’s editorial board, which is comprised of Julian Andrews, Jono Gruber, Matthew Gutschenritter, Meg Robbins, Nicole Wetsman and Emily Weyrauch.

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