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Editorial: Help yourself

As the Orient reports this week, Counseling Services has seen a 40 percent increase in student visits over the past nine years. This figure does not indicate the rapid decline of our collective mental health—rather, it signifies the growing number of us who are willing to seek out and accept help when we most need it.
Roughly 27 percent of Bowdoin’s student population has utilized individual therapy, a figure that has led Counseling Services to place renewed emphasis on group options and preventative programming this year. This is, in part, a simple response to increased demand, but it also represents a conscious decision intended to prevent Counseling from ever having to turn students away. Ensuring that more intensive care remains an option for students in crisis—as well as those with complex, long-term diagnoses—is a laudable and important goal. This is not always the case at other schools where student counseling visits are capped at five or ten, regardless of the student’s level of distress.
The College’s dedication to preventative mental health programming extends beyond Counseling. Services like those provided by the Center for Learning and Teaching—which opened its Writing Project Workshop on Tuesday—can help students learn to manage academic stress and avoid becoming overwhelmed as workloads intensify.

Editorial: Party foul

For some students, this week’s federal government shutdown may not mean much more than a cancelled weekend trip to Acadia National Park. But not all Mainers are as insulated, and the spending freeze will be felt most acutely by those who are already vulnerable.
According to the Portland Press Herald, funding for Section 8 housing subsidies for low-income residents is only guaranteed through the end of the month; if federal funds aren’t restored, landlords will have grounds to evict tenants. Similarly, money for Temporary Assistance for Needy Families and Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children is likely to dry up if the shutdown is not resolved before the end of the month, leaving the more than 26,000 Mainers who receive assistance through those programs unable to cover their basic expenses. The Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program that subsidizes utility costs—which will only increase as the weather gets colder—needs federal confirmation before November to be able to help underwrite heating bills.
The previous shutdown, which lasted for 26 days between November 1995 and January 1996, cost the federal government $1.4 billion. Bloomberg projects the current shutdown will cost the federal government about $300 million a day. The results of an extended shutdown will be enormous, and a swift agreement seems like a tenuous hope. We will hit the debt ceiling on October 17, and if the government surpasses it, the Treasury will not have the authority to borrow funds to close the gap between spending and revenues. Though Speaker of the House John Boehner has publicly stated that he wants to avoid defaulting on our loans, the shutdown is an unnecessary crisis and his egregious mishandling leads us to question his ability to navigate another critical fiscal vote.

Editorial

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

September 27, 2013

By the time you read this, the online polls will be open for the 2014 and 2017 Class Council elections. With four qualified candidates in each presidential race, the competition will likely be close, and we encourage you to peruse the candidacy statements printed in our Opinion section before you cast your vote. But beyond the newsprint, check out our video Q&As with presidential candidates on bowdoinorient.com.

Including this video on the front page of our website marks a change in the Orient’s approach to web-based material. This week, we shuttered the Orient Express, our three-year experiment with blogging. We found that the multimedia pieces we ran on the blog complemented our regular print content, so we have consolidated everything onto our main website with the hopes of cultivating a general forum for news. Print is still the Orient’s primary focus, but we realize that much of the student body is plugged in seven days a week; we hope to reach you beyond the confines of the physical Friday paper.

But as we post online content more frequently, it is important to note that our web non-removal policy has not changed. Interviewees frequently ask to make their remarks anonymous or to preview quotes before articles are published, even on banal topics. The Orient’s policy states that anonymity will be granted only in situations when the paper would not otherwise be able to include reliable or pertinent information; previewing quotes prior to publication is allowed only in very unusual circumstances. Additionally, we hear regularly from alumni, students and former contributors who would like us to remove comments or quotes from articles online. Our policy is to decline these requests. The Orient is public record, and its content does not change to suit individual needs; this policy was created under the ethical premise that history will not be revised to fit private interests. It also safeguards against editorial staff making highly subjective decisions about which removal requests to grant.

Our archive was once merely a collection of yellowed newspapers in Hawthorne-Longfellow Library. Now it is much more easily accessible with a few clicks of the mouse. In the Q&A videos, the 2014 and 2017 presidential candidates laid out their goals for the year. Navigating an expanded digital presence is one of ours, and we hope you will join us.

The editorial represents the majority view of the Bowdoin Orient’s editorial board, which is comprised of Erica Berry, Nora Biette-Timmons, Sam Miller and Sam Weyrauch.

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