Clearly report

Editorial: Scheduling sabbatical

For the 2017-18 academic year, more than 50 professors are eligible to take leave. In the last five years, no more than 34 professors have been on leave at one time.
Sabbaticals are a key element to maintaining an intellectual community at any institution of higher education. A year of leave gives faculty the opportunity to conduct intense, high-caliber research and continue to refine expertise in their area. As a result of new research, faculty can become better professors and bring new ideas into their courses, which helps develop a more dynamic curriculum. Moreover, strong faculty research can bring more grants to Bowdoin, as well as attract distinguished faculty and more highly engaged students. Investments in sabbaticals pay off.
Sabbaticals provide a net positive for any learning community. However, they are not without negative ramifications for students. When professors go on sabbatical, the College has to replace them with visiting professors to fill the voids within departments. While visiting professors can provide the same quality of teaching as their full-time counterparts, it’s difficult for students to form long-lasting connections with them due to the temporary nature of their positions.
One of the advantages of a school like Bowdoin is the relationships students build with their professors, as both teachers and mentors. Since visiting professors cannot officially serve as advisors, the opportunity to be a formal mentor throughout a student’s Bowdoin career is lost. Even when informal mentor relationships are developed, a visiting professorship lasts only a few years at most.
Though such inconveniences pale in comparison to the overall benefits of sabbaticals, the disruptions are amplified if such a large number of professors are absent from campus. Small departments suffer when such a high proportion of faculty are away—it places a burden on both the students and the department as a whole.
The administration has a responsibility to better regulate sabbatical leave in a way that benefits everyone. At the very least, the College should make sure that individual departments do not disproportionately feel the impact of professors on sabbatical leave.
In addition, more regulations should be placed on the faculty with regards to delaying sabbatical leave. This academic year, 14 of the 45 faculty eligible for leave chose to postpone their sabbatical, which drastically increased the number of professors eligible for the 2017-2018 school year. The administration should place a cap on the number of professors that can postpone their leave in a given year and be more diligent about the future impact of the number of postponements.
Faculty and administration should be more transparent about long-term sabbatical plans. The administration is aware of the schedule for eligibility and there is no compelling reason why it is kept hidden from students. This would be valuable information for students planning their academic careers at Bowdoin. Releasing the information would come at no cost to those involved but would have a positive impact on both students and departments.
Sabbaticals help a learning institution thrive—there is no question about it. But the College should maintain as much stability as possible for students by trying to keep the number of faculty on leave at a consistent level and being transparent about eligibility for leave.
This editorial represents the majority view of the Bowdoin Orient’s editorial board, which is comprised of Marina Affo, Julian Andrews, Steff Chavez, Grace Handler, Meg Robbins and Joe Seibert.

Editorial: Two-way teaching

Last year, in the wake of the “tequila” party, a group of students interrupted one of the monthly faculty meetings in order to urge faculty to participate in conversations about race on campus. These students wanted their professors to be involved in issues that exist outside of their classrooms—and they were not the only ones expressing the desire to engage.
Assuming a student jumps through all the necessary hoops in order to speak at a faculty meeting—which most students do not even know is an option—an opportunity for faculty to respond and engage with that student does not currently exist. Since that meeting last year, a group of faculty has been discussing whether to allow unannounced students to speak at faculty meetings. In addition, at this week’s meeting, a number of professors voiced a desire to engage with what students had expressed in the past. Creating opportunities for this to happen is a valuable pursuit for students and faculty alike.
When students or faculty do have concerns, there should be a forum where students and faculty can talk to one another on a larger scale. Having a monthly meeting—separate from the faculty meeting—where students and faculty are invited to converse and express any concerns would be a step in the right direction. Meetings like this would help bridge the gap that currently exists between students and faculty when it comes to non-academic issues.
In order to make these meetings as effective as possible, it is important for faculty and students to cultivate personal, non-academic relationships. For both parties to feel comfortable expressing themselves in forums like this, there needs to be a degree of familiarity and openness, which is built through engaging one-on-one outside of class. While students and faculty can individually work with one another to strengthen such relationships, the College should be more involved in encouraging these interactions.
For example, having a planned dinner that students can directly invite their professors to takes the pressure off of students to bridge the gap on their own. Formalized events like this bring large groups of students and faculty together in a comfortable setting and facilitate the type of bonding that would make participating together in larger meetings more accessible. Events like “Pints with Professors”—a Senior Week event where students can invite their professors to get drinks—is an example of this, but it comes too late in our Bowdoin careers for us to take full advantage of the opportunity.
Outside of the classroom, connecting with faculty helps Bowdoin feel more like a place students can call home. Constantly surrounded by other people our own age, it can be refreshing to have close relationships with a different age demographic as well as helpful to have advice from people other than our peers.
Schools like Bowdoin attract faculty that want to cultivate strong relationships with their students. Instituting monthly meetings for students and faculty would accomplish this. These meetings will be the most effective if students and faculty can build strong enough one-on-one relationships so that when they are in larger groups they feel comfortable speaking openly and honestly.
This editorial represents the majority view of the Bowdoin Orient’s editorial board, which is comprised of Marina Affo, Julian Andrews, Meg Robbins and Joe Seibert.

Editorial

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

October 19, 2016

On Friday, September 30, Director of Safety and Security Randy Nichols released the 2016 Annual Security Report, issued in compliance with the Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act of 1998. Among other things, the Clery Act requires the College to disclose reported sex offenses over the previous three years, defining sex offenses as rape, fondling, incest and statutory rape.

Bowdoin’s policies in regards to sexual assaults have consistently been forward-thinking compared to those of other institutions of higher education. In 2014, the White House Task Force to Protect Students from Sexual Assault issued a report with recommendations to bolster sexual assault policies at colleges and universities. When these recommendations were issued, Bowdoin did not have to amend its policies in order to comply with the task force's counsel—the College had policies in place that met the standards set in every area of the report.

Given that the College has independently set progressive reporting policies (where ‘reporting’ means the College’s disclosure of the number of incidents in a formal report) relative to those of peer institutions, the College should continue along this vein and further improve its formal reporting of sex offenses in its Annual Security Report.

We believe that the College has an obligation to go beyond the guidelines established by the Clery Act. The Security Report should include a broader range of sex offense classifications in order to reflect a more accurate review of sex offenses. Students have a right to know about incidents that may continue to pose a risk to the Bowdoin community.

Since the Clery Report has a limited definition of sex offenses, some occurrences are not officially mentioned. For example, the “Peeping Tom” incidents of last fall are not included in the Security Report because they don’t fall under one of the four aforementioned categories of sex offenses. A person unaffiliated with Bowdoin committed a crime by invading the privacy of Bowdoin students in their residences, which posed a direct risk to student safety, and should have been formally included in the annual report.

In addition, Bowdoin’s Security Report states that it includes statistics “concerning reported crimes that occurred on campus, in certain off-campus buildings or property owned or controlled by Bowdoin College, and on public property within or immediately adjacent to and accessible from the campus.”

This language is inherently limited. Any crimes, including sex offenses, that occur outside this scope, including those at or near off-campus residences, are not accounted for in the Annual Security Report—and neither are instances involving Bowdoin students farther than the areas “immediately adjacent” to campus.

Not reporting incidents such as these is an oversight. They are relevant to all students, and can directly affect their safety. Formally acknowledging such incidents as part of the College’s reported statistics is necessary. Bowdoin should be a leader among its peers and demonstrate a willingness to go beyond the minimum requirements for officially reporting sex offenses.

This editorial represents the majority view of the Bowdoin Orient's editorial board, which is comprised of Marina Affo, Julian Andrews, Steff Chavez, Meg Robbins and Joe Seibert.

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