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Editorial: Walk it out

Many upperclassmen with cars on campus have abided by the new student parking restrictions with frustration over the past week. Now that Bow- doin has reserved College House lots for faculty, staff and visitors, and the Town of Brunswick has designated all of Park Row as two-hour parking, students have mini- mal access to any central parking locations on campus. The administration’s “park once” philosophy—suggested by an independent parking consultant in 2012—encourages drivers to park at the beginning of the day and not use their vehicles again until leaving in the evening.
The new restrictions require most students with cars on campus to park in the Farley Field House and Watson Arena lots for extended periods of time. For some students driving from off-campus houses, that means walking a distance that is al- most equivalent to their original commutes. But while new restrictions may be espe- cially inconvenient for those who drive frequently, they are necessary steps toward improving the experience of all those who share Bowdoin’s limited space.
The College regularly attracts visitors for whom it must provide convenient parking. Both the Bowdoin College Museum of Art and the Peary-Macmillan Arctic Museum draw tourists, and prospective applicants and their families can be seen wandering campus throughout the year. It is worth sacrificing some parking con- veniences to ensure that these guests have easy access to all that our campus has to offer. We may not have the same degree of mobility that we used to, but with a main campus that is less than a mile in diameter, students do not need to have constant access to their vehicles.
This editorial represents the majority view of the Bowdoin Orient’s editorial board, which is comprised of Garrett Casey, Ron Cervantes, Natalie Kass-Kaufman, Sam Miller, Leo Shaw, and Kate Witteman.

Editorial: Figuring economic diversity

Last week the New York Times’ data-driven blog, The Upshot, published an index of “The Most Economically Diverse Top Colleges” in which Bowdoin performed only slightly above average. The index was based on two statistics for each school—the percentage of students who receive federal Pell grants and the net price paid by students whose households earn between $30,000 and $48,000 per year.
According to the index, 13 percent of Bowdoin students recieved Pell grants betweeen 2012-2014. Since students who come from households that make less than $60,000 a year usually qualify for the Federal Pell Grant Program, examining the percentage of students who are Pell recipients helps measure the number of low- and lower-middle class students that colleges enroll. Despite having the 17th highest endowment-to-student ratio of schools in the index, Bowdoin is tied for the 66th highest percentage of students who are Pell grant recipients. The Upshot index, however, ignored the distinction between colleges like Bowdoin, which meet 100 percent of demonstrated need without loans for all students, and schools that include loans in their financial aid packages. David Leonhardt, a creator of the index, acknowledged that giving so much weight to Pell grants minimizes the impact of middle incomes on economic diversity. Bowdoin is more attractive to middle class students than most other schools in the country, since it provides financial aid to a wider spectrum of students.
Since 2009 Bowdoin has not included any loans in the financial aid packages it awards to the approximately 48 percent of students who receive aid. This means that while the College may not enroll as many Pell grant recipients as say, Susquehanna University, it makes a Bowdoin education affordable for students from households that earn too much money to qualify for Pell grants, and too little to pay full tuition. Susquehanna scores in the top-10 of the index despite billing low-income students (as defined by The Upshot) $9,100 more per year than Bowdoin does. The index shows that dozens of schools enrolls more students who qualify for Pell grants than Bowdoin. However, it obscures Bowdoin’s commitment to making college affordable for students at all income levels.
The Upshot points out that applicants from the lowest-income households are not making their way into Bowdoin’s student body. This is largely a problem of outreach. Talented students from low-income communities often do not realize that elite schools can be affordable, or that places like Bowdoin exist at all.
The College made a brave decision to do away with loans in the depths of a recession and has continued to prioritize aid in difficult economic circumstances. The Presidential Search Committee recently reiterated that Bowdoin “believes firmly that it must offer opportunity to talented students across the entire economic spectrum, including first-generation college students.” Many talented students, especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds, never receive that opportunity—and often it is simply because they do not know to apply. We commend the College for making Bowdoin tuition more affordable for students across the economic spectrum, but ask that it expands its efforts to recruit applicants from that spectrum’s lowest end.

Editorial

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

September 12, 2014

Before students arrived on campus this fall, Information Technology (IT) was hard at work making adjustments to the campus printing system. Up until this semester, students could easily print any items in the queues at public printers, even those that did not belong to them. The updated system requires students to enter their usernames and only allows them to print their own documents.

These changes represent significant improvements in terms of electronic security and privacy and were long overdue. The rollout of the new system was not flawless, however, and it has left many students frustrated, confused and inconvenienced. Certain printer kiosks display documents in the queue as random numbers, and the College failed effectively to inform students that they would have to provide their usernames when printing.

We understand that employees at IT have been working for several weeks to fix the glitches plaguing the new system, and we appreciate their efforts. We wish, how- ever, that the College had explained the new system and its problems to the student body. Awareness of the problems, at the very least, would have enabled students to budget more time for printing and thus avoid a frantic scramble before class.

This editorial represents the majority view of the Bowdoin Orient’s editorial board, which is comprised of Garrett Casey, Ron Cervantes, Natalie Kass-Kaufman, Sam Miller, Leo Shaw, and Kate Witteman.

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