Stop overusing text alerts

Letter to the editor: BCF Advisors

To the Editor,
I read with horror the article “BCF advisors refuse to sign policy, vacate role at College” in the Orient (February 14). First, the attack on religious freedom is picking up steam in American and now has landed full force at my alma mater. Second, the article is so deviously slanted against Rob and Sim Gregory that I must write to defend them. Are we really supposed to believe the monster from Penn State, Jerry Sandusky, should be used as any example, a connection or even anywhere in the same article as the exemplary Christian leaders Rob and Sim Gregory? Also, it is obvious that the Gregorys were effectively banned from their role and that they did not “vacate” their leadership at Bowdoin.No one from Bowdoin thought up a new document for people to sign just to protect the kids from the next Jerry Sandusky. Monsters like Sandusky would have signed the document!
Rather, they conjured up a way to get Christians off the campus. They knew that Rob and Sim Gregory could never sign it, as they have their Bible, not the director of “religious and spiritual life” for counsel.
Thank you Rob and Sim for bringing so many people to Christ. I only wish you both were at Bowdoin in leadership positions when I was a student!
The religious war on Christianity is picking up speed in America and we better get prepared to fight back.
Sincerely,Stephen P. Laffey ’84

Letter to the editor: XL Dissent

To the Editor:
On March 2 I will march from the campus of Georgetown University to the front gate of the White House with one simple demand—that President Obama fulfills his promise to the people of the United States and its future generations and blocks the approval of the Keystone XL pipeline. I will demand that our government find courage in the face of adversity.
But I will not be alone. Instead I will be one voice among hundreds or thousands, including 15 Bowdoin students, as part of what will be one of the largest single demonstrations of civil disobedience by youth at the White House in over a generation—and all of it organized by students.
Keystone XL is an issue that has turned into a shouting match. There are even those who argue within the ranks that this is not the battle to be fought. We say this is not the battle to lose. For my generation, we have no choice. Ignorance is no longer an excuse. A failure to block this pipeline would be aiding and abetting a crime against humanity.
Although we may not speak with checkbooks or massive campaign donations, we are armed with our disobedience and our message: We will no longer sit at the sidelines as our future is squandered.
Bowdoin does XL Dissent.
Sincerely,Hugh Ratcliffe ’15

Letter to the editor

February 20, 2014

To the Editor,

I am writing to draw attention to what I see as an egregious abuse of power and an important resource. Every time it snows, I, like most other Bowdoin students, have been receiving texts notifying us of parking bans and cancellations of the Shuttle and Brunswick Taxi services. This is in addition to emails containing the same information and is unnecessary and annoying as shit. My main bone of contention, though, is that my understanding of the purpose of Bowdoin Security’s text alert system was that it was to be used to swiftly contact students in the event of an emergency. A parking ban is emphatically not an emergency, and as such, using the text system to notify students of parking bans is a serious misuse of the resource. The first time I received one of these texts, I assumed it was related to a campus emergency (why else would I have gotten such a text?) and my blood pressure ratcheted up, only to slink back down upon my discovery that the text was about parking. I have gotten enough of these texts over the course of the semester—I’m starting to get more texts from Randy than from my mom—that now when I see that I have received a text from Bowdoin Security, I assume it’s parking related, and ignore it.

A text from Randy has lost any urgency it may have originally carried and as such has seriously damaged the efficacy of the text alert system as a way of notifying students of an emergency. What’s the point of having a text alert system for emergencies if you have, through vacuous messages, conditioned students to ignore them? Damn, Randy, stop abusing the text alert system to tell me about parking.

Cordially,
Laurel Mast ’14

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