50 Things To Do Before You Graduate

Orientation: On the house: the College House affiliate experience

“So are there fraternities at Bowdoin?” Get ready—people are going to ask you this question over and over during the next four years, and probably long after. There is no Greek life at Bowdoin, and the student handbook explicitly prohibits fraternities and sororities. Bowdoin phased out its co-ed fraternities in the 1990s and the College Houses (or, as they’re more commonly called, social houses) were instituted to replace the Greek system.
There are eight social houses on campus—Ladd, Baxter, Reed, Macmillan (“Mac”), Quinby, Helmreich, Burnett and Howell—and they are primarily inhabited by sophomores.
After much discussion and deliberation, the Office of Residential Life has instituted some substantial changes for the College House system this year. In the new system, each floor of a first year brick is affiliated with a different College House; your friends on the floor below you will be affiliates of a different House and your fellow affiliates will all live in different dorms. (Refer to the inset for a full list of floor and House affiliations.)

Orientation

50 Things To Do Before You Graduate

Essential activities for every Bowdoin student (according to the Orient)

September 9, 2013

   1. Go to an igloo party
   2. Tour the Bliss Room in Hubbard
   3. Streak the Quad
   4. End the night at Brunswick Diner
   5. Find your way into Bowdoin’s network of underground tunnels
   6. Visit the glow-in-the-dark rock room in Druckenmiller Hall
   7. Go to Frosty’s when it opens at 4 a.m.
   8. Pull an all-nighter in the Chamberlain Room
   9. Eat at all of Brunswick’s Asian restaurants (10 and counting)
10. “Win” dinner at Thorne—be the last to leave
11. Hang out with Security at a College House party
12. Throw a College House party
13. Attend office hours with President Mills
14. Tuesdays at Joshua’s
15. Charter a club
16. Get drunk off coffee brandy
17. Do an independent study
18. Be mentioned in the Security Report
19. Find the red spoon in all the art in the Gelato Fiasco
20. Climb Mt. Katahdin
21. Be retweeted by @bowdoincollege
22. Write your name on the chapel bathroom door
23. Go squirrel fishing or ice fishing
24. Visit Professor Morgan’s office
25. Go to a concert in Portland
26. Win an intramural championship
27. Skip a class
28. Write a Letter to the Editor
29. Spend a night at Colby or Bates
30. Attend a naked party
31. Take a class on the 16th floor of Coles Tower
32. Find the Brunswick commons, then explore
33. Dance floor make-out
34. “Hit the cycle”—hook up with someone from every class year you overlap with (ex: ‘11-’17)
35. Get drinks with a professor
36. Go to four Brunswick bars in one night
37. Go to Crack House (even if you pledged you never would)
38. Get a lobster roll from Libby’s Market
39. Get your recipe used at Thorne or Moulton
40. Go polar-bearing
41. Pee on every social house
42. Befriend a Brunswick resident
43. Do something inappropriate at the Inappropriate Party
44. Get invited (and go) to a professor’s house for dinner
45. Have an ice-skating date on the quad
46. Swim in the bioluminescence at the Coastal Studies Center
47. Become real friends with someone you meet at Ivies
48. Attend a Bowdoin Film Society screening
49. Go on an Outing Club trip
50. Be (mis)quoted in the Orient

Adapted from a list created by Bowdoin Student Government and the Office of Residential Life.

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