The Bowdoin Orient

Over Winter Break, the College converted the women’s bathroom on the second floor of the David Saul Smith Union into a gender neutral restroom. The renovations included installing new paneling to prevent anyone from seeing any part of the person in any of the stalls. All cracks in the stalls were covered up. The bathroom is designed to be inclusive for students who identify as transgender or gender non-binary. 

Discussions for the bathroom started last year, according to Director of Student Activities Nate Hintze. 

“For me it started last year when [the Latin American Student Association] brought trans activist Bamby Salcedo. In a conversation with her I asked ‘What can I do to support our trans students?’” Hintze said.

Salcedo suggested the College create gender-neutral bathrooms. 

Hintze started working with Katy Longley, former treasurer of the College, Director of the David Saul Smith Union Allen Delong and Director of the Center for Gender and Sexual Diversity Kate Stern to create a multi-stall gender-neutral bathroom on the second floor of the Union in addition to the single stall gender inclusive bathroom on the first floor. 

After speaking with Facilities, Hintze said the process was very quick. The women’s room was converted because the paneling was already in place and Facilities only needed to create new panels and to cover all the cracks in the doors. Elongated panels and bristles covering the cracks in doors make it impossible to identify the gender of an individual in a stall. 

“The concern really is privacy so the thoughtfulness really went into reconstructing the panels and doors,” Stern said. 

“We covered every crack in the door so you physically cannot see who is in the bathroom next to you unless they’re washing their hands next to you,” Hintze said. 

Several students voiced their support for the creation of the bathroom. 

Justin Weathers ’18 said that he has no problem with the bathroom. Because its use is optional, he doesn’t see it affecting his everyday life.

“It doesn’t bother me. I assume they’re all stalls so no one is paying attention to you,” he said. “It’s opt-in. If you don’t want to use the gender-neutral bathroom you don’t have to use it.”

A women’s bathroom is still present on the first floor of the union by the C-store. 

Weathers said that although he does not know many people who may have expressed the need for such a bathroom, he is glad there is a space for those who desire it.

“I’m happy that those people have a bathroom that makes them feel comfortable.”

Caroline Watt ’18, who has used the bathroom, says she likes it. 

“I kind of like it. For the fact that the lines will be less long—less of a wait.”

However, some students expressed concern about the fact that only the women’s bathroom has been converted. 

Hannah Karlan ’19 says that she fears only women will use the space because it is right next to a men’s room.  

“I’ve been in there a few times and I only noticed girls in there,” said Karlan. 

Hintze says the College does plan to convert the men’s bathroom as well. 

“Ideally, we would do the men’s bathroom at some point as well just so they were both gender-neutral so we wouldn’t have a men’s bathroom and a gender-neutral bathroom,” he said. “We’re figuring out how to work through the urinals. We wanted to do one and do it perfectly and then figure out how we can do that with the other bathroom as well.”

Stern and Hintze both said that the move was made to help trans and nonbinary individuals at Bowdoin.

“Many of our students who are either transgender or gender-nonbinary don’t go to the bathroom unless they’re in their room,” said Stern. 

She said that trans students and gender-nonbinary students might feel more comfortable not having to decide which bathroom to use. 

“It’s really making sure that our small trans population feels really comfortable on this campus,” Hintze said. 

Stern said that there is a desire by those in the trans and gender non-binary community for more inclusive spaces, although she is unsure what the College’s next steps will be.

On Thursday night, the Africana Studies Program, the Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies Program and the history department held a panel entitled “OK, ladies, now let’s get in formation…” to discuss the lives of three prominent black women in the black liberation and black power movements—Anna Arnold Hedgeman, Rosa Parks and Florynce “Flo” Kennedy. The panelists included Bowdoin’s Professor of Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies Jennifer Scanlon, distinguished Professor of Political Science at Brooklyn College, CUNY Jeanne Theoharis and Associate Professor of History at Georgia Institute of Technology Sherie Randolph. 

The panel was moderated by Bowdoin’s Associate Professor of Africana Studies Judith Casselberry. 

Many students attended the event as part of various Africana Studies courses they are currently taking. 

Lillian Saunders ’20 is currently enrolled in Introduction to Africana Studies. 

“I thought it was great. I had never heard of Flo Kennedy and [Hedgeman] so it was great to learn some new things,” she said. “I think it’s important because so few people know about them and I think we need to be aware of everyone that was involved in such a big movement in our country.” 

Other students came to supplement their classroom education. 

“I love these kinds of things that are learning experiences for me outside of the classroom,” said Kama Jones-El ’17. “This is stuff I don’t get in the classroom. I’m not an Africana Studies major or minor. I take some of the classes. Even some of the classes can’t cover everything so it’s a really cool thing to take advantage of.” 

The panelists have each recently published books on the women they discussed. Scanlon wrote about Hedgeman, Theoharis wrote about Parks and Randolf wrote about Kennedy. 

The panel opened with the professors detailing the lives of the women, each of whom had distinct legacies. 

Hedgeman was involved in civil rights efforts spanning the Jim Crow South and the 1960s. She was the only female organizer for the 1963 March on Washington, and was responsible for getting over 40,000 white people to participate in the march.

Kennedy was a black feminist who used intersectionality in activism and was involved in black and feminist protests throughout the 20th century. She was also a prominent lawyer who assisted activists like Assata Shakur and other Black Panthers.   

Although Rosa Parks is more widely recognized, Theoharis says that most know about only one small chunk of her much longer activist narrative. Theoharis talked about her own book, much of which centered on Parks’ life in Detroit after the Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955-1956. 

The panel also focused on the contributions of these women to the current narrative involving issues of race and social justice movements. 

Theoharis and Scanlon said that both Parks and Hedgeman showed an incredible amount of perseverance that can also be seen in modern movements. Randolph said that Kennedy was able to seize media attention and direct the narrative in a manner similar to the current strategies of Black Lives Matter activists. 

The panel was organized by Associate Professor of Africana Studies and History and Director of the Africana Studies Program Brian Purnell, following a panel last year that celebrated the launch of Scanlon’s biography of Hedgeman. 

Purnell shared his though process in an email to the Orient.

“‘Wouldn’t it be exciting,’ I said, ‘to bring together two other historians who, along with Dean Scanlon, have contributed noteworthy biographies to this dynamic field of history?’” he wrote. 

During the question and answer portion, Justin Pearson ’17 asked the panelists how individuals can deal with the erasure of these black women’s stories, which led Scanlon to encourage the audience to become historians. 

Scanlon said that the questions that students ask today differ from those that others have asked before, which creates a fuller picture of important movements.

“It’s about the questions you ask,” Scanlon said. “Keep asking.” 

Bob Waddle of Quahog Lobstermen’s Co-Op Inc. has been providing the lobsters for the College’s lobster bakes for 60 years. 

Waddle is a Mainer from Harpswell and has been involved in the lobster fishing business since he was young. 

“When I was a kid, I went with my uncle,” said Waddle. “He had traps and fished.” 

He remembers having to row an output, an electric boat, out to the traps with his uncle. 

“I bought an output. Sometimes it didn’t work and [my uncle] didn’t like rowing an output,” he said.

This meant that Waddle would have to row the boat. 

“That’s family,” he said with a chuckle. 

Waddle had a stint in the Marines from 1948 to 1952. Following that he moved to Boston with his wife, where he rented a place and fixed it up. After he had finished renovations, however, he decided that he wanted to return to Harpswell. 

“I told my wife, I said ‘We’re not gonna live here’. Pack up. And we came up,” said Waddle. He then bought a cottage in Maine from his father and has been lobstering there ever since. He lives five minutes away from the business and also has an inn on his property that is run by his daughter. 

Waddle says he delivers lobsters to a dozen college campuses from Maine to Maryland. 

Bowdoin was one of his first customers when he was just getting his business started. 

According to Ken Cardone, associate director and executive chef of dining, Waddle provides 1,200 lobsters for the annual lobster bake, and 2,300 to 2,400 each for Reunion Weekend and Commencement. 

Cardone says the College likes getting lobster from Waddle because he always delivers the lobsters the day of the bakes and is a local vender. 

“We’ve had an excellent relationship through the years,” said Waddle. 

Waddle no longer goes out to check traps himself but rather employs other lobstermen who fish for him. 

“Rain doesn’t bother them. Fog doesn’t bother them,” said Waddle. “Lack of bait and price [are what bother them]. They are very independent lobstermen.”

Waddle said that he expects to continue delivering to Bowdoin. “They’re good people,” he said. 

Although off-campus housing is not a new phenomenon at Bowdoin, the number of students renting homes off-campus has been steadily increasing over the past few years—a phenomenon that presents new challenges for the College. Since the Office of Safety and Security has no control over privately-owned property, students in these homes must deal directly with the Brunswick Police Department (BPD) and with other community members, a process that can lead to some tension. 

According to Senior Vice President for Communications and Public Affairs Scott Hood, there are currently 165 students living off-campus this fall semester. This is the highest the number has been in the past six years and an increase from the 144 who lived off-campus in Fall 2014.

Some members of the Brunswick community feel the College does not do enough to regulate Bowdoin students living off campus. Professor of Cinema Studies Tricia Welsch, who lives on Cleaveland Street, criticized the lack of policies surrounding the issue.

“They need to seek to restrict more, guide more the students who live in the houses. And that’s not to say that individual people of good will like Randy haven’t done what they can do, but once students move off campus the College has essentially no jurisdiction, and so they really don’t get involved,” she said.

Since Bowdoin Security does not get involved at off-campus houses, Welsch and other community members cannot call upon them to regulate the students living there. Instead, they must rely on communications with residents—or on BPD—when there is an issue.

“I really, really hate that that’s all we can do. I don’t think of having an adversarial relationship with students. I don’t think of calling the police on neighbors. None of that seems any kind of normal to me,” said Welsch.

If residents don’t wish to invoke the police, Welsch said, the responsibility is on them to “provide guidance to the students about what it means to live in a quiet neighborhood as quiet neighbors.”

“There’s all kinds of things you need to teach the people who live there every year,” she said.  Students ask neighbors to call them instead of the police when there is a problem, said Welsch, “but, you know, that’s also not really our job.”

Senior Lecturer in Environmental Studies Jill Pearlman lives on Longfellow Avenue and is thankful that she does not have to deal with students, as she is not immediate neighbors with any of them.

Pearlman says that having her children grow up near the College was a rewarding experience and that there have been winters where students would help shovel her driveway, but she would not like to have them live next door.  

“Students can be incredibly nice, but I just don’t want to live next to them,” she said. She added that it is unfortunate that Bowdoin is buying a lot of property on Longfellow Avenue, a street close to campus. Currently there is one off-campus student home on Longfellow Avenue. 

According to Perlman, professors are “very unhappy” that they are not able to live on Longfellow because houses have been bought by the College.

Traditionally, certain houses cycle through groups of Bowdoin student renters every year. Some are unofficially affiliated with sports teams, while others are just passed between friends. Students choose to live off-campus for a variety of reasons—to get some distance from the Bowdoin scene, to have a space to throw parties and spend time with friends, to have more autonomy. However, with this autonomy also come certain challenges.

Jared Feldman ’16 lives in a house with 10 other Bowdoin students on Cleaveland Street. He described his and his housemates’ interactions with the Brunswick community as “fairly limited,” but added that “we definitely try to maintain as positive as possible neighbor relations.”

“We absolutely send emails to the neighbors if there’s going to be any large gathering, any noise. They have our numbers. The idea is to contact us if there’s a problem before the police,” he said.

Peter Yanson ’16 lives with five other students on Bowker Street, in a house that was rented to students for the first time this year. He expressed similar sentiments about community relationships.

“Most of our interactions with our neighbors have been at the beginning of the year. When we first moved in, we went around and introduced ourselves and gave them our phone numbers in case we threw any parties that got too rowdy or anything,” he said. “They were all a little apprehensive at first because there had been a family that lived there before and this was the first time that six college boys were going to live in a house together, so they were a little nervous about that, but on the whole it’s been super positive.”

Yanson said that he lived off campus on McClellan Street last spring semester and found that interactions with neighbors were more tense there, with neighbors that often called BPD with complaints of excessive noise. However, Yanson did not see these run-ins as too different from dealing with Bowdoin Security.

“What would Security do—they would come, they would tell us to calm down. And then the police just did the same thing last year. They would tell us to turn down the music, whoever was outside was 21 and showed their ID, it never amounted to anything else. So I never thought of it as a larger deal to deal with the police, just a different deal,” he said.

Feldman expressed more reservations about interactions with the police.

“It hasn’t been a large challenge for us yet, but I think it’s something that we’re all aware of,” he said. “Throwing [parties] off campus is certainly a larger responsibility and I think everyone in the house has felt that when there are people over. We don’t have Security as a buffer.”

Matt Rubinoff ’16 lives on Garrison Street with six other Bowdoin students in a house that has historically been traded between members of the hockey and football teams. Since the house has traditionally been a residence that hosts many parties, Rubinoff said he and his housemates met with both Randy Nichols and BPD before the year started.

“When something’s going on with students, [BPD] will contact Bowdoin Security, and they keep a good connection between those two. But first response in an emergency would be from the police,” he said.

Juliet Eyraud ’16 lives at 11 Potter Street with four roommates. It is Eyraud’s second year living off-campus. She lived on McClellan Street last year, and loves the experience. 

“I liked the idea of having cheaper housing and having neighbors, having a kitchen and being more connected to the community than I have been,” she said. 

11 Potter is next to the home of Senator Angus King. 

“He actually hit my roommate’s car and left a really nice note that was like, ‘I think I might have damaged your bumper please get in touch with my insurance agency. Signed Angus King,’” said Eyraud. 

Eyraud has not had any interactions with the police, but since one of the assaults that occurred earlier this semester was on Potter Street, Eyraud says Security has been very responsive and has communicated well since the incident. 

“Randy came to our house and gave us updates without us even asking,” said Eyraud.

Eyraud lived in the house for a week in the summer before her roommates and says there was a prowler in her yard, but when she contacted Security they told her it wasn’t in their domain. This changed as the semester went on.

“I think because it kept happening they were like, ‘We should make this our domain,’ which is nice,” she said. “I haven’t felt incredibly unsafe.”

Amina Ben Ismail ’17 lives at 84 Spring Street and the recent security concerns have not changed her outlook on off-campus housing either. 

“I’m scared now but it hasn’t changed my experience. I already knew that these things happened. It was scary that it was this close but I do feel safe driving—I never walked—and taking the shuttle,” she said. 

One critique Ben Ismail has of living off-campus is her house’s relationship with Security. Security has not visited Spring Street since she moved in, and Ben Ismail wishes that they would be more involved with the off-campus houses. 

“I wish Bowdoin Security would visit off-campus houses and see how much lighting there is and if it’s safe. They have students living off campus, they should make sure that everything is good,” she said. 

If they are not called by students, residents or BPD, Security often does not visit or communicate with students living in off-campus houses. 

“If the police ask us to respond and assist them, we will often do that,” said Director of Safety and Security Randy Nichols. 

This semester, Nichols has had to speak to students living in off-campus houses on Garrison Street and Harpswell Road because neighbors were upset that students were cutting through their lawns. 

Nichols advises students to get to know their neighbors and communicate with them if there are any problems. 

“When I meet with off-campus students I encourage them to get to know their neighbors and even exchange phone numbers, so if things get a little loud some night or there is some sort of a disturbance the neighbor can call. And that keeps things on an even keel and lays the groundwork for a relationship with the neighborhood,” he said.

With one year remaining until the presidential election, Bowdoin students went to Washington, D.C. on Monday to encourage candidates to speak out on issues of climate, race and immigration. 

Twenty Bowdoin students organized by Bowdoin Climate Action (BCA) drove down to march in the event, called Our Generation, Our Choice. An estimated 500 student activists from the East Coast and Washington, D.C. attended the action on Monday and events throughout the weekend. The group was able to shut down two blocks of Washington Avenue in front of the White House for an hour. 

BCA is directly affiliated with 350.org and the Fossil Fuel Divestment Student Network, two of the four organizations organizing the action. These organizations were joined by Million Hoodies for Justice, a racial justice group, and United We Dream, an immigrant rights group. 

“It’s really a historic thing. The climate movement hasn’t seen much intersectionality in the past, and this is really the first time these movements are coming together,” said BCA member Julia Berkman-Hill ’17. “It’s directly targeting our presidential candidates and forcing them to take action on the issues that are important to us as young people.”

This fall, BCA disrupted a Hillary Clinton rally, encouraging the presidential candidate to take a stand on the Keystone XL Pipeline. Clinton spoke on the issue five days later and denounced the pipeline. 

Berkman-Hill said that results like that are the goal of events like last Monday’s.  “It just goes to show how organizers, protesters and young people can actually move political candidates,” she said. 

Although the action took place on Monday, the event offered trainings and teaching opportunities for students throughout the weekend. Berkman-Hill and Jamie Ptacek ’17 led a panel on building a base for activism. 

Ptacek and Berkman-Hill emphasized an “act, recruit, train cycle,” that involves engaging in an action, going back to those who were not part of the movement to recruit them and training them to continue the cycle and grow the base. Ptacek said this can be used for any movement from climate justice to issues of race. 

BCA plans to incorporate what they learned at the protest into their actions on campus. “It taught us a lot about how to be intentional with coalition building moving forward on Bowdoin’s campus and how we can effectively reach out to different groups and make meaningful connections and work in conjunction to move forward on mutual interests,” BCA member Jonah Watt ’18 said. 

On Thursday, BCA screened “This Changes Everything,” a documentary that focuses on the links between capitalism, the global economy and the climate crisis. BCA hopes to create similar programing and events in the future to educate Bowdoin students on the climate crisis. For Watt, the conference met many of his goals he set for the trip. 

“I think it highlighted the importance of joining these three often separate movements, and I think we really found how difficult it was to build coalitions and make sure that they’re inclusive and representative of all factions,” he said. 

Despite initial debate about the event’s purpose and execution, Thursday’s teach-in, “Intersections: Making Connections, Moving Forward,” was met with generally positive reactions from organizers and participants alike.

The teach-in featured plenary panels at the beginning and end of the day, panels on various topics, open classes, a dance performance, slam poetry and a music performance. All the panels featured Bowdoin professors, students and staff talking about various aspects of the intersection between climate change and social justice. 

“I am overwhelmed with gratitude and joy. I feel really honored to have been able to learn alongside our students and to have been taught by both our students and faculty,” said Associate Dean of Students for Diversity and Inclusion Leana Amaez, who helped organize the event. “I hope the conversation continues because it has been remarkably meaningful for me and hopefully the rest of the community.” 

Echoing Amaez’s thoughts, Briana Cardwell ’17 said she was “very overwhelmed and happy that things went the way that they were planned. At first I was like, ‘Is this Bowdoin? What school am I at?’ because I was happy to see the different people that came.”

Earlier this week, A. LeRoy Greason Professor of Music Mary Hunter—an initial proponent of a teach-in—told the Orient, “My bar is that people learn something that they couldn’t have learned without the day, and that they converse in a way that they would not converse without the day.”

Some students’ responses mirrored this sentiment. 

“Initially I was skeptical about how valuable an event like this could be, but I think I went to a few interesting events and was exposed to topics that I hadn’t really thought about before and interacted with,” said Julian FrareDavis ’17. “I think the really good thing about discussions is that it makes you think about what’s being discussed and work within your mind instead of just being talked to.”

Though reactions have been positive,   some students and faculty did not or could not attend and the full extent of the event’s impact is not yet clear. 

“I think it was a start,” said Director of the McKeen Center Sarah Seames. “I think it’s hard in a one hour panel, with an audience that big, to be able to help people get into what their specific interests are, so that’s why it’s important that people continue talking and exploring how whatever they’re passionate about can relate to broader policy issues.”

Although introduced and proposed to faculty and staff last year, in December and February, respectively, the idea to have a day dedicated to climate change has been in the works since former president Barry Mills signed the American College & University Presidents Climate Commitment in 2007. Mills then organized a group of faculty, staff, students and alumni to come up with ways to be more sustainable here at Bowdoin. The committee announced in 2009 that the College had a goal to be carbon neutral by 2020. Following the announcement, Bowdoin had a festival that “rallied around issues of climate change,” according to a 2009 Orient article.

 Madeleine Msall, a professor in the physics department, was a member of that committee. Following the rally, Msall says that motivation lagged. “There was a sense, after some years into the carbon neutral commitment, that we kind of lost our impetus to make the harder choices.”

 According to Msall, then-President Barry Mills told her that he believed the best course of action needed to be faculty initiative. Msall rounded up a group of faculty and discussed what faculty leadership issues on climate issues would look like.  

 “One of the suggestions was that we should have a teach-in. We should make a moment where we took the idea of that this is so important that we need to focus lots of campus energy on it,” said Msall. 

The week the teach-in was presented was also the week police officer Darren Wilson was not indicted in the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. Student leaders of multicultural groups held a vigil in remembrance of Brown and the events happening in Ferguson.

 “On the faculty floor, it was very passionate when people said, ‘We understand you’re very active about climate change, but if we’re going to have a teach-in at Bowdoin we need to have a teach-in about racism and all the ways it affects all of us both on campus and the greater world,’” said Msall regarding the initial presentation in December.

Since its conception, the teach-in has been a point of contention among professors. The content, format and timing of the event were all fervently debated at faculty meetings as well as in private discussions.

“It’s creating divisions amongst people that really should be working together. It has created a certain amount of hurt feelings,” Associate Professor of English Ann Kibbie said before the event.

Chair of the History Department Dallas Denery was concerned about the politicization of the day.

“We’re here to challenge students, we’re here to improve critical thinking, we’re here to open up horizons,” said Denery. “But I don’t know if it’s our responsibility to use our position as faculty to push specific political agendas that often have nothing to do with our professorial expertise.”

Although the faculty supported the teach-in by a majority vote, they did not support a campus-wide cancellation of classes. In an email to the student body, Interim Dean for Academic Affairs Jen Scanlon and Dean of Student Affairs Tim Foster stated that the teach-in is not a “Bowdoin event.” Scanlon and Foster also stressed that “lack of participation in the teach-in should not be read as lack of concern for the issues of social, racial and climate justice that affect us all.”

Professors and staff who did participate in the teach-in seemed to be pleased with its outcome. Associate Professor of History and the Director of Africana Studies Brian Purnell, who co-taught a class about urban landscapes, says he was impressed with how engaged students were. 

“Students asked hard questions about urban inequality and what role they will play when they leave Bowdoin and they go out into the world and probably live or work in cities. They asked some pretty tough questions about what they should do or how they should think about experiencing urban inequality as graduates, workers and homeowners, and that was powerful.” 

 Purnell was also excited to have heard from his fellow faculty on such heavy issues.

“It was great to learn from other colleagues. It was exciting to feel alive and learning in such a dynamic way, and that’s how I felt participating.”

Many students who had been skeptical about the day’s events felt the opening plenary and the panels and classes that followed exposed them to ideas they had not thought about previously. First-year Emmett Ulian attended the opening plenary and felt that he left with a good understanding of the connection between climate change, race and social justice. 

“I was a little bit curious how those three issues related, and I thought that that opening was a good way to illustrate all the connections between the three issues,” he said.

Senior James Jelin also attended the opening plenary and was impressed with how well the issue of climate change and its intersection with other aspects of society was addressed.

“The idea of climate change intersecting with race is interesting because it’s like an exacerbating factor,” said Jelin. “We know that race affects every aspect of life and it affects people unevenly and I think just reminding us all that that is true a well for lack of resources due to climate change, like homes going under water, that that affects people differently based on race, income, et cetera.”

Senior Matthew Williams was skeptical about the intersectionality of the topics covered by the events. By the end of the day, however, he had attended three panels on a variety of topics from science fiction to portrayals of Hurricane Katrina in writing. 

“I thought the teach-in was really effective and something that was really powerful. It made me think about things that I would never have thought about before, like if the oceans get cooler it can change water currents which could change weather patterns which could change everything about the way we live in society. There were just so many great intersectionalities.”Marina Henke ’19 was also impressed by how the event came together in a cohesive manner. She attended the opening plenary and commented on how interesting it was to be discussing so many different, but related topics. 

“As I was sitting there and the people next to me were sitting there, we were talking afterwards about how it was a very unique experience to hear a discussion about polar bears and their social influence and commentary on the United States’s environmental understandings, sitting right next to a lecture on Ferguson and racial tensions in the Unites States, which was connected also to a climate change, science lecture,” she said.

Others were impressed with the dialogue that occurred throughout the day. 

During one panel, “Is the US Political System Broken?,” first-year Francisco Navarro and Consortium for Faculty Diversity Postdoctoral Fellow in Government Cory Gooding went head to head. 

Gooding recited a poem by Langston Hughes, “Let America Be America Again,” and argued that because America had historically only benefited certain individuals, it was never truly “great.” 

Navarro—a Cuban-American born in Miami and raised in Yucatan, Mexico—disagreed as someone familiar with multiple political landscapes. 

“You said, ‘When exactly was America great?’ That bothers me,” Navarro said to Gooding at the panel. “I can see how privileged and how unappreciative we are of our democratic system. My problem with Trump’s slogan ‘Make America Great Again’ is that America is already great.” 

Gooding replied, “What makes America great is our ability to keep trying to attain the greatness that we proclaim—but for someone who was just shot dead in the street by the law enforcement that was supposed to protect him or her, I’m not sure how much he would advocate for the greatness of the country.” 

“I caution us against beating our chests so boldly that we don’t recognize the work that still needs to be done,” Gooding added. 

“I was very appreciative of [Navarro’s] question,” said Emiley Charley ’17. “I really liked that dialogue. I felt as though that was what I came out to see. To see conversations start around people who don’t see eye to eye.” 

Franco Sasieta ’16, who attended a panel about public health and how it relates to issues of social justice, liked the broad range of perspectives present. 

“It provided a local, national and scattered global view of different public health issues which I was not fully aware of,” he said. 

Junior Jennings Leavell was glad to be a part of the teach-in.

“Events like these are important and I’m thankful that my professor cancelled class so that I could attend, because engaging a community on issues like this is important.”

The McKeen Center will be hosting a debrief of Thursday’s events over lunch at 12:30 p.m. today in Daggett Lounge. All are encouraged to attend to reflect on the teach-in and explore ways of continuing effective dialogue.

John Branch and Joe Sherlock contributed to this report.

This past Wednesday, Senator George Mitchell ’54, H’83 spoke to the community to commemorate 50 years of Upward Bound (UB) at Bowdoin. 

A federally funded TRIO program, UB was a result of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s “War on Poverty” Initiative. Beginning in the summer of 1964, the program was designed to provide low-income, first generation high school students the motivation to attend college and the skills needed to pursue higher education. Nationwide, there are over 900 programs.

To celebrate 50 years of UB, the College had several events, including a talk with Mitchell and a reception with past UB graduates and current UB students. 

In a speech Wednesday night in Pickard Theater, Mitchell talked about the work that UB has done and continues to do. UB graduates from every decade and current UB students attended the event.

“The single most important factor is not talent, they’ve got that. It’s not brain power, they’ve got it,” Mitchell said. “It is making sure that they have the self esteem, the sense of worth and the sense of being part of a community that enables them to unleash their talents.”

According to Bridget Mullen, director of UB at Bowdoin, graduates of the program are four times as likely to get their degree by age 25 as peer low-income, first generation students who did not have UB.

UB’s summer program allows students ranging in age from 13 to 19 to spend six weeks on a college campus taking courses in math, science, foreign language and English. Students also get college prep help and receive support from SAT tutors throughout the summer. 107 students participated in the program at Bowdoin this summer, residing in Stowe Hall and Howard Hall.UB Bowdoin draws students from 11 Maine high schools. Students from Washington County comprise about half the students; a Bowdoin UB counselor is stationed there.

Students have mentors and tutors who provide guidance throughout the six weeks. Not all summer UB staff are part of the Bowdoin community, but several Bowdoin students worked with the program this summer as well as other Bowdoin faculty and staff members. 

The support does not stop at the end of the summer. For the academic program, mentors from the College visit students who have participated in the program at their high schools to check on their academic performance, their study skills, their family and home life, job situations and to set up tutors and other mentors if need be. The counselors usually visit students once a month. 

Graduating seniors also have an opportunity to apply and participate in the Bridge Program. A separate program that involves 10-12 students, Bridge takes place the summer after students graduate and before they enter college. These students live in separate dorms—this summer the students lived in Ladd House—and engage in different courses and activities designed to help them even more for the fall. 

In Maine, there are seven other UB programs, which serve over 700 students. 

While in the Senate as a senator and the senate majority leader, and after he left the Senate, Mitchell has continued to support the program. 

“I think it is of critical importance, all of us, every American, do what we can to make it possible for programs like this that give opportunity to each child,” he said. 

“In America, nobody should be guaranteed success, but everybody should have a fair chance to succeed,” said Mitchell. “Keep in mind that genius knows no boundary, no language, no religion, no color. It can come from anywhere at any time.”  

Lewiston High School juniors Ilham Mohamed and Zahara Shidad both attended Bowdoin UB this past summer and both praised the program for helping them do better during the academic year as well as providing them with a network of people to turn to during the academic year. 

“The classes I took in the summer were intro classes to this year’s classes so they really helped me,” said Mohamed. 

Echoing the message of Mitchell’s talk, Mohamed said, “I have good grades now and I understand everything and I’m not behind. I have a lot of friends now so if anything happens I can talk to them.”

The changes in the UB program over the past 50 years are limited to modest adjustments in academics and student population.

“[The core curriculum] is a little bit more prescribed by the federal government than it has been,” Mullen said, “[but] within that I think we have a lot of leeway.”

Pam Bryer, Director of Laboratories at Bowdoin, has been part of the summer program for the past 31 years, teaching biology courses.

“We [now] have specific classes on college and taking the SATs,” Bryer said. “But the focus is still the same: on giving the opportunity to students who might not have the opportunity to go to college...just giving them a leg up.”

Through the academic program, these resources will continue until the student’s high school graduation, including financial aid counseling in the student’s senior year. In the coming months, the UB staff will be going back into their target high school communities to try to interest students in applying to the program.

“It’s a unique population [of students] to reach,” Mullen said. “They’re not necessarily…the students who are at risk of dropping out of high school [nor] are [they] already headed off to college...They’re kind of the quiet middle.”

This quiet middle has changed much over the years in response to fluctuations in the Maine population.

“Our student population has become more diverse in many ways,” Mullen said. “For example, in Lewiston, there are many families that have resettled from East Africa…Lewiston itself has become a more diverse community and our student population reflects that.

Steven Colin ’17 worked as the activities coordinator this summer at UB.  

“For me, it was a completely different perspective,” Colin said. “I came from a Latino/African-American neighborhood [in Los Angeles, California], so to see a different perspective in that poverty doesn’t really know the color of skin was very fulfilling for me.”

Parker Hayes ’17 also worked at Bowdoin UB this summer, working as a TA and RA.

“I felt like I could really be a part of their learning process, [to] really see their progress they would make from the beginning to the end,” Hayes said.

The beginning for Hayes started much earlier than this summer. In high school, Hayes, a Maine native, was a UB participant at the University of Southern Maine.

“It really helped me a lot to understand the college process and what I would need to do to be able to get into a school like this,” Hayes said.

Hayes spoke highly of the feedback he got on his college essay and the experience of living on a college campus away from home before attending college.

“I felt like I could give back to the program that I thought had done a lot for me,” Hayes said.

Though UB helps students to prepare for college and apply for financial aid and scholarships, the program cannot aid students in actually paying for college. With the rising cost of college in recent years, more students are going to two year colleges and planning to transfer than in the past, according to Mullen.

“It troubles me because students’ aspirations are for four years and they’re feeling financially pressed to take the two year path,” Mullen said. “That gap between financial aid and college has widened so much that we have many students that have gotten into four year college, [but the financial aid is not there, as it would have been in the past].”

When financial aid offers come in senior year, UB helps students and their families to advocate for the money that they need.

“We have a system in many, many cases where that extra step of advocacy loosens up more money from the institution,” Mullen said.

With the occasion of the 50th anniversary, Bowdoin UB is fundraising to establish an account of emergency funds for students through Facebook and other means. The fundraising will continue through the year.

“Frequently, just really basic needs—[books, eyeglasses, transportation to a college interview]—are hurdles,” Mullen said. “Our goal is $50,000 for the 50th…we’ve reached over $15,000 already.”

UB has not done private funding before, since the federal grant mainly funds the program. The cost per student for the six week academic session as well as academic year outreach is $4,200. Bowdoin College also helps to fund the program by subsidizing room and board costs and offering full health benefits and vacation time to UB staff employees.

“At other institutions, UB programs really struggle with these costs [particularly room and board],” Mullen said. “There’s no way Upward Bound could be thriving the way it is if we didn’t get that subsidy.”

At the end of 2016, UB will have to apply for a new grant, part of a four to five year cycle.“Even though we’ve had it for 50 years, it’s a competitive process,” Mullen said. “I know an Upward Bound that had been as old as we were and in the last cycle got defunded.”

When UB makes their rounds at their target high schools in the upcoming months, they will determine what can be strengthened. Financial aid remains one of the primary issues.

“People say more people are going to college and completing college,” Mullen said. “Well, more people are going to college and completing college in the upper income quartile. That’s why 50 years later Upward Bound is a federal investment that still has to happen.”

“I love what I do, but I wish Upward Bound wasn’t needed,” Mullen said.       

Correction (September 18, 2015 at 11:20 a.m.): The article incorrectly stated the Mitchell was a graduate of Upward Bound himself. That information has been removed from the article.

The College has hired multiple new staff members this fall, four of whom will be working closely with students in order to improve the student experience.

Brandon Royce-Diop joins Bowdoin as Assistant Dean of Upperclass Students, replacing Assistant Dean Christopher Dennis. He will focus on working with students with last names beginning with A-L, and will also serve as alternative Judicial Board Advisor. Royce-Diop served in an number of leadership roles in Minneapolis, most recently as Dean of Students at the Fair School in Crystal, Minnesota.

Royce-Diop’s experience includes leading and co-founding the Kente Summit for Collegiate Black Males at Macalester College and the New Lens Urban Mentoring program through the St. Paul Public School, two leadership and mentoring programs. 

Currently earning his Master’s in Education at the University of St. Thomas, Royce-Diop holds a bachelor’s degree in Psychology from St. John’s University. 

Chicago native Ben Harris is Bowdoin’s new Director of Multicultural Life. He is tasked with creating positive experiences for students from a variety of backgrounds. Harris said his attraction to Bowdoin stems from the small size and warm student body.

“It’s an opportunity to have some impactful learning and to work with folks,” Harris said. “It’s such a small and intimate place.” 

Before spending four years as assistant director of the Center for Black Culture at the University of Delaware, Harris earned his masters degree in English from Illinois State University and a B.A. from Elmhurst College. One of Harris’ primary goals at Bowdoin is to generate discussion about issues of race, diversity, education and privilege. 

“I think it’s important that we create opportunities for students of diverse backgrounds who have this Bowdoin experience and also to provide [them with] resources to be successful,” Harris said.

Other new staff members are already familiar with campus. Recent Bowdoin graduate Laurel Varnell ’14 stepped into the role of Associate Director of Student Activities this fall. 

Varnell’s primary task is to oversee a variety of campus-wide events, along with programming for Jack Magee’s Pub & Grill and the Craft Center. Additionally, she will act as a staff liaison to the first-year class council. As a student, Varnell served in numerous leadership roles on campus, including positions for Residential Life (ResLife), Relay for Life and the Women’s Resource Center. As a staff member, she aims to translate the desires of students into a College-funded reality. 

Varnell said that her attraction to this position stemmed from her past work in ResLife.

“As an RA and proctor, I loved helping students navigate their path while at Bowdoin,” Varnell said. “I am able to continue do that in a professional way. [This job] is the perfect fit for me.”

Following graduation, Varnell worked at the Urban Justice Center, a nonprofit legal firm in New York City. In her one-year fellowship position, Varnell represented clients in administrative court to claim public benefits.

Varnell said that her past Bowdoin experience will allow her to better address the needs of current students.

“When I was a student here, I had always dreamed about doing Student Activities,” Varnell said. “To be able to work in a department where [planning events] is their job is something I am very excited about.”

Varnell hopes to incorporate student artwork in her mission to revamp study spaces on campus, such as David Saul Smith Union. She also aims to reinvigorate the Craft Center through student-instructed courses and a reduced membership fee.

Also new to the college is alum Khoa Khuong ’04, who will be the new Assistant Dean of First-Year Students and Advisor to International Students.

“It feels really weird,” said Khuong. “I remember back when I was a student and I had this impression of the dean’s office as this place where you don’t want to go, but now that I’m in this job, I’m like ‘Wow, we do so much more than discipline people.’"

Khuong started on August 3 and has since been working closely with the first-year class. Before returning to Bowdoin, he taught math for 11 years, most recently at North Yarmouth Academy. 

“At first I wasn’t sure about this job because I didn’t have any experience with higher education, but I really enjoy advising international students because I consider myself international,” said Khuong, who grew up in Vietnam. “So I’m looking forward to working with international students and helping them.” 

Khuong is looking forward to working with all first-year students to help them feel welcome at Bowdoin by connecting them to the College’s resources. 

“There are a lot of new things I am taking on in terms of this job and this new position, and my goal is to do this job well,” Khuong said. “For me, [it’s] to make sure that I know faculty and what the resources are here. I feel like I am a liaison for my first-year students.” 

Dean for Academic Affairs Cristle Collins Judd will leave the College at the end of August to become the Senior Program Officer in the Higher Education and Scholarship in the Humanities Program for the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation in New York City.

The Foundation offered the position to Judd over Spring Break, and after careful consideration and discussions with President Barry Mills and President-elect Clayton Rose, Judd decided to accept the position, beginning on September 1.

“This is an opportunity that came to me unbidden,” said Judd. “The foundation reached out to me at the start of Spring Break.”

Judd said her new position will have a lot in common with her current role at the College.

“One of the things I love, have loved, and continue to love at Bowdoin has been the creative thinking and big program thinking about broad issues in higher education and that’s the essence of this new job,” she said.  

Judd has been the dean for academic affairs and a professor of music at the College since 2006. Her duties include oversight and support of all the academic departments as well as responsibility over faculty, libraries and the museums. Judd is also responsible for much of the communication that comes out of the academic affairs office.

Judd has been instrumental in many of the College’s enhancement initiatives, including the Digital and Computational Studies initiative.

President Mills informed the student body and faculty of her departure in an email sent out on Wednesday.

Mills stated that Judd, in her role as dean, is responsible for hiring almost 40 percent of the current faculty. She has worked hard to enrich the College’s arts programs, environmental programs and coastal studies programs.

“It is difficult to overstate Cristle’s accomplishments and her contributions to Bowdoin,” wrote Mills. “She has led efforts to secure important grants; to introduce new support and opportunities for faculty development; and to foster a culture of engaged intellectual inquiry among students through focused work on our curriculum, academic advising, and student fellowships and research.”

Apart from her duties as dean of academic affairs, Judd currently teaches Introduction to Music Theory. She has taught the course throughout her tenure at Bowdoin.

“I don’t think any dean at a place like Bowdoin should stop being active in their research and their classroom…that’s what the heart and soul of the place is about,” she said in a 2013 Orient article.

Judd says that this new position will allow her to continue the work she has been most passionate about at the College.

“I love Bowdoin. Bowdoin is so completely in my bones that this is all about the common good. In the same way that we talk about the right and the peculiar obligations,” said Judd. “What better way to see the common good than to be working with a foundation that does so much tremendous work to support the arts and humanities?” 

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation donates about $250 million every year in the form of grants to enrich and enhance the arts and humanities across college campuses, including that of Bowdoin. The Foundation is responsible for the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship program and the Mellon Humanities Initiative that the College utilizes. It also funds part of the College’s post-doctoral program. 

“The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation is an extraordinary organization,” said Judd. “I’ve done a lot of work with them on the receiving side. I’ve also been fortunate to work with them and to be invited when they were hosting some round tables.”

Judd said she is also looking forward to working with places like Bowdoin in a greater capacity. 

“I’m thrilled at the opportunity to take all of the things I’ve learned at Bowdoin and to take all of the things that I learned before that at Penn [University of Pennsylvania]and be able to work with presidents, liberal arts colleges and big universities both nationally and internationally,” she said. 

Before coming to the College, Judd was a professor at the University of Pennsylvania for thirteen years. She graduated magna cum laude from Rice University and received a master’s degree in musicology from the same university. She received a second master’s degree in music and her PhD from King’s College, University of London.

An active scholar, Judd’s many writings include the published the award-winning book “Reading Renaissance Music Theory: Hearing With The Eyes.” 

President-elect Rose will be in charge of finding Judd’s successor. Judd said she will remain at Bowdoin until August to help with the transition. 

As a part of Undiscussed’s new lecture series, Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life of America (SFLA), came to speak at the College last night. She delivered a presentation about the merits of being pro-life. The presentation was followed by a question and answer session.

Before Hawkin’s presentation,  a group of about a dozen students lined the steps of Sills Hall holding pro-choice posters and  messages about Hawkins’ visit.

Hawkins lecture was funded by the Student Activities Funding Committee (SAFC). According to Director of Student Life and the David Saul Smith Union Allen Delong, the funds the committee allocates are made up of student contributions including tuition and the student activity fee all students pay at the start of every semester.

Although Delong was unable to provide exact prices, he did acknowledge that the amount of money used to bring Hawkins was more than SAFC is planning on using next week to bring the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) speakers to campus.

“We did pay a disportionate amount to Kristan,” said Quinn Rhi ’15, co-president of Undiscussed.

Delong and Rhi both said that this was due to the structure of the organizations.

“She’s the president of a national organization; she’s flying around. The ACLU has a Maine chapter,” said Rhi, “I think the circumstance of the two speakers are different and the appeal, or lack thereof, is different.”

Although the SAFC reports funding allocations for every student organization, no records of the funds distributed for this event could be found by press time.

Hawkins said she was interested in the College beause of its “rich history” and good reputation and reached out to the College about speaking on campus.

“We looked at Maine and we said, Bowdoin, we want to go there. It’s an academic institution. It has a great reputation. We can get a group started there,” she said.

Hawkins also said that her main reason for coming to the College yesterday was to educate and spark discussion.

“I didn’t really come here to convert,” she said. "I came here to make people think tonight.”SFLA is currently looking to spark a similar discussion at Bates and Colby.

Rhi said that she was approached by Delong about Hawkins. She and Undiscussed had already been thinking about starting a lecture series.

Some students said that Hawkins viewpoint is extreme even among pro-life activists, adding that Undiscussed could have chosen someone more moderate and less expensive.

“I do think there is something to be said about whether the Undiscussed could have done a better job of picking a pro-life speaker that would have appealed to Bowdoin students,” said Rhi.

Rhi said Undiscussed may have been approached by Student Activities about hosting the event because of the recent controversy with former Bowdoin Christian Fellowship.

“I think my interests in the Undiscussed aligned well with [Student Activities’] interests,” said Rhi, “They were interested in bringing this controversial, conservative viewpoint to campus to show that Bowdoin could accept conservative values.”

Rhi said that she thought the administration was interested in bringing Hawkins to campus to broaden students’ perspectives.

The students who held signs outside the lecture said that they wanted to respectfully share their own opinions about abortion and reproductive rights.

Marisa O’Toole ’17 held a sign stating “I can’t believe we are still debating this.” She said that the students were “here to peacefully express our points of view on this.”

“[We’re] not trying to do anything but let people know how we feel about it and that we stand with all women about the choices they make about their own bodies,” she added.

The protestors said that students were not unwilling to hear what Hawkins had to say.

“I think it’s good to represent both sides of these things so I commend Bowdoin for bringing someone of a different viewpoint than my own,” said O’Toole.

Jonah Watt ’18 said that he agreed with O’Toole.

“I think that it’s important to bring up diversity in our beliefs,” he said. “I think sometimes we take for granted how liberal our campus is and it’s really important to not only see the views of the other side but also engage in more open discussion.”

Hawkins framed her presentation around three ideas: biology, circumstances, and bodily rights/autonomy.

She said that all unborn babies are human and therefore have rights, and asked students in the audience when they felt humans rights began.

Hawkins used popular culture, including a reference to the movie “Up” to explain various aspects of the pro-life movement.

Following her presentation students had the opportunity to write down questions for Hawkins to answer.

Students asked questions ranging from what a woman should do in the instance of rape to whether making abortion illegal could be more detrimental to the health of many women.

Hawkins said that she understands that rape is a terrible thing, but countered with the question “Will abortion un-rape her?” She said that the right person to punish was not the unborn child but rather the rapist.

Hawkins also said that the SFLA believes abortion should only be allowed in the event of an ectopic pregnancy, which puts the mother’s life in danger.

The presentation was followed by a reception at Burnett House. Students were able to sit down with Hawkins and have a conversation about her views.

Although they may not have agreed with her, many students approached Hawkins at the reception and thanked her for sharing her views with them.

David Hunt, a retired U.S. army colonel, gave a lecture on the War on Terror on Tuesday night in Kresge Auditorium, prompting protest from a small group of students who chanted, “Bowdoin students are not used to hearing racist rhetoric like this man has just presented. Our problem is not terrorism from Islamic extremists but racism and fear-mongering dividing our country.”

Hunt is a military analyst who regularly appears on Fox News. He lives in Scarborough and often uses the College’s broadcast studio in Coles Tower.

During his lecture, Hunt said that the counter-terrorism strategy used by four presidents over the course of 26 years has not worked and offered a fresh take on the matter.

“We have to go after state sponsorship,” said Hunt, who believes that the United States cannot continue to bomb nations in the Middle East like Syria. He said that the best approach to fighting terrorism is “multi-operational.”

During the question and answer portion of the presentation, Christopher Wedeman ’15 challenged Hunt’s view that Islam is closely tied to terrorism.

“To suggest that the Muslim faith is not a part of the fight on terrorism is ignorance. It is absolutely a part of it,” Hunt said in response.

Wedeman is one of the founding members of Bowdoin’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), a student group that, according to its Facebook page, “promotes the self-determination of Palestinian people and their liberation from Occupation.”

“It’s interesting that Bowdoin gave him a platform to speak like this,” said Wedeman. “In a speech about the War on Terror, not a single word was spoken about the biggest state sponsor of terror in the Middle East. Which would maybe be a tie between Israel and the United States.”

Other audience members questioned Hunt on the definition of terrorism and whether America was a terrorist nation, a point that Hunt emphatically denied.

Hunt shared his thoughts on ISIS during the question and answer portion of the talk. Members of the audience wanted to know what would become of Iraq and the Middle East if the United States left the region and let ISIS take over.

Hunt acknowledged that the Middle East would not be in good shape, but said the U.S. should let Iraq and Syria burn. He expressed a similar sentiment on Fox News in June.

Hunt said he believes that “we have done enough” in the Middle East and does not want any more American soldiers killed in the region.

Vice President for Communications and Public Affairs Scott Hood said that Hunt delivered the presentation free of charge in the hope that students would take more of an interest in politics and government.

Hood said that the College welcomed Hunt as a speaker because his viewpoint is not often heard at Bowdoin, and because foreign policy in the Middle East is so important.

“Terrorism is clearly an important topic, and Colonel Hunt offers a perspective based on a long and distinguished career in the military,” he said. “His point of view is one that we don’t often hear firsthand at Bowdoin.”

Las Décimas del Amargue & Other Songs of Love, a touring music project, visited campus on Wednesday to teach students about Puerto Rican and Dominican music and to give a public performance.The band, Raquel Z. Rivera & Ojos de Sofía is made up of six members: Raquel Z. Rivera, her sister Anabellie Rivera, Bryan Vargas, Yasser Tejeda, Jonathan Troncoso and Nelson Matthew González.The project, also known as La Décima Project, is meant to inform students and the public about the origins and types of music that share Puerto Rican and Dominican Roots.Before their performance, the band sat down with students in a workshop where they discussed the roots of their music and their musical journey so far.Assistant Professor of Music Michael Birenbaum Quintero had all three of his classes—the Afro-Latin-American Music Ensemble, Sound Travels From Mozart to the MP3, and CuBop, Up-Rock, Boogaloo, and Banda: Latinos Making Music in the United States—attend the workshop and the concert. The event was sponsored by the Latin-American Students Organization (LASO) and many students and community members outside of these classes attended.LASO board member Ernesto Garcia ’17 said that the group was not only talented and emotive, but also very knowledgeable about the history of the genres they were playing, as well as the technical aspects of the music.Many of the band members grew up listening to the type of music they are now making.All the band members are either from Puerto Rico or the Dominican Republic, or are the children of people from these countries.“What’s different about this group is that they didn’t just come to entertain the audience, but actually to educate them about the different kinds of music and how they were derived,” said Garcia. The band, created in 2007, is based in New York and was able to come to campus with the help of Quintero. At the workshop they explained how their music is heavily influenced by many different styles of music like Afro-Caribbean and Afro-Latin music.Other students who went to the event were impressed by both the group’s knowledge and skill level. They were excited to see the concepts they spoke about in class brought to life.Logan Jackonis ’17 said the workshop and concert directly related to things he and fellow students were learning in both his Afro-Latin-American Music Ensemble and Latinos Making Music in the United States class. “We covered musical sounds like bomba, so this sort of ties into what we learned,” said Jackonis.Walker Kennedy ’15, who is in Latinos Making Music and Sound Travels: Mozart to MP3, said he enjoyed listening to “the mixture of different music and realizing that the [genres] foundationally have the same origins and roots.”The band played 20 songs, all in Spanish, at the concert.

On Tuesday night, master printer Greg Burnet talked about his experiences collaborating with printmaker Richard Tuttle to a receptive audience of students, faculty and community members. The prints that Burnet worked on are currently on display at the Bowdoin Museum of Art as part of a larger exhibition, “Richard Tuttle: A Print Retrospective.”  As a part of the Gallery Conversations hosted by the Bowdoin Museum of Art, Burnet spoke about his past as both an artist and a master printer, and how he came to work with Tuttle.As a master printer, Burnet is responsible for printing the physical images created by printmakers such as Tuttle. The individual printmaker comes up with the ideas and helps with small details, but the majority of the actual printing process is the work of a master printer like Burnet. This job requires him to “jump through a lot of hoops and be able to be technically 100 percent proficient,” Burnet said. “But [it also helps to] have a good idea of what the artist is about within a couple days of working with the artist.”“[Tuttle] really pushes the envelope of prints to look deceptively simple,” said Burnet. Burnet also went into detail about the various methods used in making some of the pieces. He and Tuttle used material ranging from sandpaper and Tarleton—a mesh-like material—to acid and plastic barbed wire to create many of the more intricate designs. Tuttle and Burnet primarily use a printmaking technique called a la poupee, meaning “of the doll” in French. The technique involves applying different colored inks directly onto the etched surface of a copper plate before running it through a printing press. During his lecture, Burnet elaborated on the procedure behind specific prints and was able to pass around the original copper plates he and Tuttle used.Before becoming a master printer, Burnet, a native of Australia, was an aspiring painter. After art school he moved to London where he started looking for work. While in London, he was able to get a job reprinting Australian botanical flowers, a project he worked on for four years. He moved to New York City in 1991, he met Tuttle, and their collaboration began.Burnet and Tuttle have worked together on five of Tuttle’s pieces: Line, Edge, Edges, Gold and Cloth, all of which are currently on display at the Bowdoin Museum of Art. Line, Edge, Edges and Gold each took a year to create, and Cloth took four years. Each is a series of prints that range from 13 to 16 individual pieces.Burnet currently owns his own studio in New York and has worked with various printmakers from Robert Mangold and Inka Essenhigh to Kiki Smith and Carroll Dunham. Burnet says he is always working with at least two or three artists at a time. Many of their prints can be viewed on his website burneteditions.com.  Many students attending Tuesday’s lecture were taking Printmaking I. Garreth Helm ’18, a student in Printmaking I, said the lecture was interesting and thought-provoking and noted how much work goes into printmaking.Lizzy Takyi ’17, who is also in Printmaking I, said “what he was saying, I could almost picture happening because we have been talking about using some of these materials,”Associate Professor of Art Michael Kolster also attended the lecture. “I didn’t know what to expect before I came, so it was nice to see a master printer talk about process and have some insight as to how the pieces were made,” said Kolster.Kolster said he also found the relationship between a printmaker and a master printer to be very intriguing.“Tuttle is working in a way that is very gestural and also very inspired in the moment by what he discovers,” he said. “Then the master printer has to, in essence, respond to that and be able to create a series of that spontaneity,” Kolster said.The Richard Tuttle: A Print Retrospective exhibition will be on display in the Museum until October 19.

This fall Bowdoin is offering a landscape painting course, in which students will have the opportunity to work in the open air at various locations. One of just a few courses at Bowdoin that takes students outdoors, it is taught by professional landscape painter James Mullen. The fall course is offered every two to three years.

“The weather in Maine is never more beautiful than in September and early October,” said Mullen.

Although there are other visual arts classes that spend time outside, Landscape Painting focuses specifically on the unique setting of autumn in Maine.

In fact, that was the main reason Mariah Reading ’16 took the course. 

“I’ve grown up in Maine my whole life and fall is my favorite season,” she said. “I thought, ‘how cool would it be to go outside and paint.’ It sounded like a dream.” 

Tess Hamilton ’16, an Earth and Oceanographic Science major, is also looking forward to the course. 

“Being able to communicate [the outdoors during this time] through a different form is really cool for me,” she said.

A visual arts background and the Painting I class were prerequisites for the course.

Mullen says that students will be going outside for the first few weeks. After that they have the option to continue to paint outside or move their work inside. If they move inside, they will have the opportunity to work from photographs they take, images from their imagination or smaller landscape pieces they will create in the first few weeks. 

“We’ll talk about a range of things and my hope is that everybody has got that thing that they respond to,” he said.

Mullen hopes to have each student complete six projects during the semester. The first project was to take a famous piece of landscape art and recreate it themselves. These pieces can be seen on the walls of the Robert H. and Blythe Bickel Edwards Center for Art and Dance. 

Next week they will be going to the Bowdoin College Museum of Art to view famous works of landscape art as inspiration. 

Another project will have students heading to Bowdoin’s Coastal Studies Center on Orr’s Island. Students will be hiking the trails and creating landscape paintings from what they view.Hamilton expressed her excitement about the “nuances that you wouldn't think of” when working outdoors. 

All of the students’ landscapes will be on display during the open house in the Edwards Center at the end of the semester. 

Correction, May 2, 2014: An earlier version of the article stated that some of the reasons for higher costs were the rental of a food tent and stage for the indoor concert; the article has been amended to say that the tent was already budgeted in and the stage belonged to the College. 

For the first time since 2007, rain forced last Saturday’s Ivies concert indoors. Yet Director of Safety and Security Randy Nichols called the move from Whittier Field to Farley Field House “seamless,” a testament to the general success of the College’s 149th Ivies. 

The notice about the updated concert location came in an all-campus email on Friday morning, when Allen Delong, director of student life, announced that Mat Kearney and Timeflies would perform indoors on Saturday afternoon.

Nichols noted the advantages of a show in Farley.

“We can control access better than we can at Whittier Field,” he said. 

The original rain contingency plan stated that no guests would be allowed due to space concerns, and though a follow-up email on Friday amended the policy to allow two registered guests per student, there was still a decrease in visitors from prior years, Nichols said.

While the rained-out concert in 2007 was in Morrell Lounge, E-Board member Peter Kringdon ’14 stated that, “Having the event in Smith Union might have felt like a non-Ivies E-Board concert.” 

Though using Farley Field House allowed the College to keep the atmosphere at the concert similar to what it would would have been outdoors, it brought a few extra costs, including using a forklift to bring tarps and the rental of a food tent, though some budget had already been allotted for these contingency plans. These factors contributed to a slightly more expensive concert than in previous years,  according to Director of Student Activities Nate Hintze. 

He added that the primary price increase this year was due to the heightened rates of Moonlight Production Company from artist requests, and added equipment costs from the bands. Hintze declined to tell the Orient specific budget information. Though Farley required a different stage than is usually used at Ivies, the College already owned it.

The weekend also brought three alcohol-related student transports—one on Thursday, one on Friday, and one on Saturday. “One was particularly serious, the other two less so,” said Nichols.

“As you have more people drinking more alcohol, the level of risk rises exponentially,” said Nichols. “Ivies is a marathon for Security.” Throughout the weekend, there were three to four times as many Security guards on duty as normal, and they were not allowed to take time off.

There were no arrests or court summons issued by the Brunswick Police Department, and only a few neighborhood noise complaints. Though three students committed two thefts, all stolen items were returned, according to Nichols. 

In other instances of alcohol-related vandalism, three to four doors were kicked in at Brunswick Apartments and one door was kicked in at Harpswell Apartments. The lending library box at the intersection of Longfellow Avenue and Coffin Street was “smashed to smithereens,” said Nichols. The College is planning to replace it. 

Despite the College’s concerns about harm to the floor, there were no damages reported in Farley. The College hired Servpro, a company that specializes in water and fire restoration, to clean up the field house. 

Although the bulk of planning for each year’s Ivies begins during winter break, Student Activities and Security are already looking to next year. Hintze has already booked the stage for the concert.

Other improvements are also on the drawing board. 

“I think we’ll bite the bullet and put some porta-potties on the Brunswick Quad next Ivies,” said Nichols. “The hedges will appreciate it.”

Three Bowdoin students are celebrating the recent announcement of several fellowship awards. The Fulbright Program has awarded two Bowdoin seniors, Mollie Friedlander and Megan Massa, its national fellowship, while a junior, Margaret Lindeman, received a Udall Scholarship and an honorable mention from the Goldwater Scholarship Program. 

Friedlander won a Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship (ETA) in Madrid, Spain.The ETA will give her the opportunity to teach subjects ranging from biology to history at a secondary school. 

She will also participate in a community-based side project that will focus on exploring the health care system in Madrid.

“Spain is ranked seventh in the world for health care,” she said, “so I’m trying to see how their universal health care system functions at such an outstanding level, and my proposal is how can I take that back to the States.” 

The fellowship has awarded Friedlander a grant in the amount of  €13,905 (roughly $19,270) to cover expenses while in Spain. 

Friedlander will leave September 15 and will return in June 2015. 

Senior Megan Massa was awarded a study/research opportunity through Fulbright. Massa will be travelling to Bochum, Germany to work in a Multiple Sclerosis lab. 

While there, she will study the mechanisms by which cells induce their own death, and how those mechanisms change in the presence of sex hormones like estrogen and testosterone. 

She will also be looking into the culture of young people in Bochum, specifically their thoughts on the Holocaust. 

“I want to talk to the kids there in our generation and talk to them about, in tactful ways, how they’re dealing with it, seeing as it’s a more recent memory,” she said.

Massa will be leaving in late July to participate in an intensive German language program before her research program begins in September. She will return in July 2015.

Junior Margaret Lindeman won a Udall Scholarship for the upcoming year. 

The Udall Scholarship is awarded to sophomores and juniors who have demonstrated strong commitments to environmental careers. Juniors Matt Goodrich, Bridgett McCoy and Courtney Payne received honorable mentions for this award.

Lindeman will receive a $5,000 scholarship and all-paid attendence at a conference of winners in August. 

The Goldwater Scholarship Program awarded Lindeman an honorable mention. Students can apply for it their sophomore and junior years. 

“It is designed to recognize the people who are most likely to be at the forefront in the STEM, the science, technology, engineering and math fields, in the next generation—people who are committed to research,” said Director of Student Fellowships Cindy Stocks. 

Lindeman proposed a long-term monitoring system for glaciers in Greenland. 

“The question that I’m interested in overall is about the interaction between the ocean and the ice that is on land,” she said.

Although Lindeman did not win a Goldwater Scholarship, she was able to connect with one of the scientists whose research she used when writing her proposal. This summer, she will be going to Greenland to work with him. 

Current Bowdoin alumni abroad on Fulbright programs include six members of the class of 2013: Kacey Berry, Daniel Ertis, RaiNesha Miller, Emma Cutler, Uchechi Esonu and Adam Ragone. Fulbright Fellowships are released based on the region in which applicants hope to work, and several more Bowdoin students could receive Fulbright awards in the coming weeks.

Seniors Alex Marecki and Rodrigo Bijou are among the national winners of the 2014-2015 Watson Fellowship, a grant that awards $28,000 to graduating seniors to travel the world for a year working on self-designed projects. This is the first year that more than one Bowdoin student has received the fellowship. 

Bowdoin is among a group of 40 colleges and universities that can nominate up to four students for the national fellowship. Of those roughly 160 nominees, only the top 40 are selected for the Watson Fellowship. 

Director of Student Fellowships Cindy Stocks said Marecki and Bijou both underwent an intense application and interview process to earn Bowdoin’s nomination back in October and November. They were then interviewed and selected by the Watson Fellowship’s committee.Eleven students applied from the College this year, which Stocks says is lower than average. “Usually, we have [numbers] kind of in the high teens,” she said. 

Stocks explained that Watson Fellows are students who show “unusual promise” and whose projects are “tied tightly to the person’s history, their passions.”

Now that they have been selected, both students have to leave the country by August 1 and remain abroad for a full year.

Marecki plans to go to Brazil, Colombia, Ghana, South Africa, Scotland and various parts of Europe. He will be looking at how soccer creates opportunities for children that they may not have had without the sport.

“I’m basically exploring psychological development through sport—soccer in particular—and how children gain agency and improve their character through the sport,” said Marecki.Though Bijou is thinking of going to Brazil, Argentina, Spain, France, Germany, Czech Republic, Poland and Russia, he acknowledged his plans could change.

“They want you to be really flexible and not really planned,” he said. 

He will spend the year visiting with as many internet hackers as he can, possibly working with them to find ways to improve internet privacy.

“The purpose of the project is trust in technology,” said Bijou. 

When asked what would best describe their band, NARPs members Charlie Fogarty ’14 and Andrew Roseman ’14 agreed on “passion. Sweet, sweet passion.” 

One of the many student bands on campus, the NARPs is comprised of Roseman, Fogarty and Aggie Kelly ’13. The group formed when Fogarty and Roseman were first years and Kelly was a sophomore. 

For Roseman, the band’s birth was inevitable.