Vote Levine

Editorial: Unlocking the classroom

Every Friday afternoon this semester, 12 students have traveled to the Maine Correctional Center in Windham, Maine to attend class with 12 inmates. This week, the Orient features a story about Citizenship and Religion in America, taught by Associate Professor of Religion Elizabeth Pritchard. Initially proposed by students and spearheaded by Pritchard, the course was inspired by the Bard Prison Initiative and modeled after Temple University’s Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program.
According to a 2005 study by the Institute for Higher Education Policy, the recidivism rate for participants in prisoner exchange programs was on average 46 percentage points lower than the rate for the general prison population. If expanded, these programs could have a huge impact in the United States, which has the most incarcerations per capita. For those serving long sentences, classes shared with students from the outside offer respite from an otherwise grim environment. But perhaps more importantly, prison exchange programs help to put ex-convicts in a position where they can more fully contribute to society after getting out.
For college students, prisoner exchange programs provide an unparalleled educational opportunity. Our society marginalizes those who have committed crimes, yet in these classrooms, the opinions and insights of all students receive equal weight. According to this week’s article, Citizenship and Religion in America was designed to enable a discussion of what citizenship means to both inmates and Bowdoin students. Grappling with issues of freedom on a daily basis, inmates offer a radically different perspective. The subject material provides common ground, highlighting similarities—and not differences—between classmates. Reflecting on his experience in the course, one inmate wrote in a feedback letter, “When class ended, I found myself saying goodbye to strangers that I now considered friends. Crossing the yard, it took every ounce of self-restraint not to skip and whoop and punch the air.”
Yet this semester’s class was approved on a one-time-only basis. To ensure that there are similar classes in the future—as we believe there should be—the College needs to establish a more formal structure. Pritchard and the two students who proposed the idea have laid the groundwork for future classes and we hope the College builds on this in years to come. Whether this means appointing a faculty liaison or formalizing a semester-to-semester schedule for professors to rotate through teaching, we need support from both individual departments and the administration to meet continued student demand. Peer schools such as Amherst, Bard, Cornell and Dartmouth have had success with similar programs and Bowdoin should follow suit.
As President Joseph McKeen said at his 1802 inaugural address, elite institutions like Bowdoin are “founded and endowed for the common good, not for the private advantage of those who resort to them for education.” By allowing Maine inmates access to the wealth of knowledge that even one course can provide, the College increases the value of a Bowdoin education for students, whether they are behind bars or not.
The editorial represents the majority view of the Bowdoin Orient's editorial board, which is comprised of Erica Berry, Nora Biette-Timmons, Garrett Casey, Ron Cervantes, Marisa McGarry, Sam Miller and Kate Witteman.

Editorial: Rules of engagement

In October 1972, an Orient columnist quipped, “As most upperclassmen will readily agree, it requires a fairly strong issue to fire Bowdoin students up over virtually anything, with the possible exception of the hockey season.” For the most part, this sense of political apathy has continued within the Bowdoin Bubble. However, the past two years have seen student activism coalesce around a handful of topics more forcefully than at any point in recent memory. Bowdoin Climate Action (BCA), Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and the 2012 Yes on One initiative, among others, have involved students, faculty and staff in efforts that have produced meaningful conversations—even if they have not always met their goals.
Today, President Barry Mills plans to receive a petition from BCA that was signed by more than 1,000 students and asks Bowdoin to divest its endowment from the top 200 publicly traded fossil fuel companies. This weekend also features the College’s first Palestinian Film Festival, organized by SJP. These are only small steps toward addressing contentious global issues, but they have fostered lively debate among a historically apathetic student body. When Bowdoin students attend a lecture by an activist from the West Bank or a hearing at the Maine Public Utilities Commission, they are engaging with a community that lies beyond Brunswick.
These student-led efforts have not gone unnoticed by Bowdoin faculty. Last May, 24 professors emailed BCA a letter of appreciation for its efforts encouraging the College to divest. The note communicated that while the individual faculty members might not believe that divestment is the best solution for climate change, they “are grateful to the students for dramatically energizing the conversation on campus.” In opening up a critical space for dialogue on social, political or economic issues, students have earned the right to collaborate with their educators and administrators.
It can often feel overwhelming to navigate a Smith Union filled with event posters and tables of vocal activists. Many students blindly accept pamphlets and sign petitions out of a sense of social obligation or brush by without engaging at all. This is a disservice to peers who are pushing for change, even if that change comes incrementally. We do not have to sign the petitions if we disagree with them, but we should be willing to have a conversation and think deeply about our own beliefs. When our signatures reflect a genuine desire for change, the petitions will carry more weight when presented to the administration.
Activists at Bowdoin face a particular challenge because their goals may not come to fruition during their four-year tenure at the College. Though we might not agree with each component of what SJP, BCA and other advocacy groups fight for, it is detrimental to look down on student activism at Bowdoin as a whole and abstain from the conversation. These efforts should be respected, not derided.
The editorial represents the majority view of the Bowdoin Orient's editorial board, which is comprised of Erica Berry, Nora Biette-Timmons, Garrett Casey, Ron Cervantes, Marisa McGarry, Sam Miller, Leo Shaw and Kate Witteman.

Editorial

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

April 11, 2014

This weekend the student body will elect next year’s Bowdoin Student Government (BSG) president, the person responsible for setting BSG’s agenda and implementing changes—large or small—that improve the lives of students. The Orient believes that David Levine ’16 is best
suited for the job.

In his two years here, Levine has demonstrated his capability and competence through the leadership positions he has held with BSG. As an at-large representative last year, he helped organize a protest urging the faculty to adopt a week-long Thanksgiving break, a campaign that
we hope he continues to pursue. Levine has served on three College committees and is the current vice president for facilities. He is familiar with the obstacles BSG often faces and has established relationships with members of the faculty and administration that we believe will enable him to confront bureaucratic deadlock.

The other candidate for BSG president, Christopher Breen ’15—currently vice president of the 2015 Class Council and former vice president for Student Government Affairs—grasps the challenges and limitations of the job, but has not contributed to as many actionable initiatives
as Levine has in the same amount of time.

An underclassman has not served as BSG president since 2006, but we do not think that Levine’s class year is a disadvantage. In fact, pursuing ambitious goals like postponing Credit/D/Fail deadlines and extending Thanksgiving break requires effective long-term cooperation with the
faculty and administration. With the graduation of senior BSG leaders, there is an annual loss of institutional knowledge that inhibits BSG’s ability to effect change and speaks to a larger problem: the fact that there is not a large enough field of candidates with sufficient experience. At least two incoming members of the Executive Board will be rising seniors with no prior history on BSG.

In this weekend’s elections, four out of seven positions for the BSG Executive Committee will be uncontested. This has become a recurring issue for BSG leadership elections; two positions went uncontested last year and four the year before. Consistently uninspiring races suggest that we lack interest and faith in student government. We should be more invested in the organization whose mission it is to work on our behalf. Not only does competition between candidates demand more
passion from those running, but it engenders more interest and enthusiasm for BSG among the student body.

There are countless students with leadership experience on class councils or in student organizations that chose not to run in these elections. BSG cannot be an effective institution until there are competent and experienced candidates running for each Executive Committee position.

The editorial represents the majority view of the Bowdoin Orient's editorial board, which is comprised of Erica Berry, Nora Biette-Timmons, Garrett Casey, Ron Cervantes, Marisa McGarry, Sam Miller and Kate Witteman.

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