The Bowdoin Orient

A peer-facilitated group designed to develop a community for students who have struggled with alcohol or other substances will begin holding meetings today. The group is led and organized by Anna Reyes ’15 and Patrick Toomey ’17, two students who have struggled with alcohol themselves and were looking for others with similar experiences. 

“We are trying to find students who have gone through some sort of realization that their prior relationship with substances or alcohol, or both, didn’t satisfy them,” said Reyes. 

Reyes struggled with alcohol as a first year, which led her to take a year off. 

“Coming back, it made me realize, at least for me—dealing with depression as well as just being a bit of an introverted person—that finding a social scene around campus that didn’t make me want to me drink really heavily or do anything else was difficult,” Reyes said. 

Reyes and Toomey came together with the help of Whitney Hogan, associate director of health promotion. 

“My hope is that the group will be really fluid and be really welcoming to people who are kind of all over the spectrum in terms of their drinking habits, but the common denominator will be people who are looking to have weekends that are really fun and fulfill their social needs without necessarily being emotionally or physically disruptive,” said Hogan. 

It is different than other more educational groups on campus such as Peer Health or the Alcohol Team because it is more social and is structured around a community of like-minded individuals.

“I think this group is going to be really helpful for students to find other students who are thinking critically about what the alcohol scene is on campus and finding peer support and camaraderie with other people,” Hogan said.  

Unlike some other services on campus, the vision for the group does not focus on counseling or professional guidance. 

“We don’t want it to feel like its a group therapy session,” said Reyes. “We decided we wanted to focus on the social scene.”

The hope when creating this group was to get away from the stigma which can be associated with groups like Alcoholics Anonymous (AA). Bowdoin’s group is not designed to encourage total abstinence from substances. 

“We are not an AA group, but we are a group that you can come to and we can hopefully connect you to an AA group if that’s what you want to do, or just discuss things pertaining to alcoholism,” said Toomey.

In order to create a comfortable and relaxed environment for discussion there will be no faculty present at the meetings.

“There is definitely a heavy drinking culture at Bowdoin and a heavy party scene and it’s easy to get sucked into that, but there is also a lot more to college than just that. It will be strengthening to myself and hopefully to Anna to know that we are not alone in that and to other people who are struggling with similar issues.” Toomey said. 

The group is still in the early stages of development, meaning there is a lot of room for adaptation and change. The needs of the group will change depending on who attends, which could call for more or less structure and also the possibility of working with other similar groups on campus. 

“Pat and I didn’t want to make it too strict of a setup as of yet because for us we want to create a community that we can also interact in,” said Reyes.

While Friday meetings are designed to be very informal, there are plans to have a more facilitated discussion once a month with a member of Counseling Services or Geno Ring, a licensed drug and alcohol counselor that often works with Bowdoin students. 

“I think that being able to help other people with similar issues is just another way of helping myself, and being able to create that healthy dialogue regarding substance abuse in its many forms. It can only help,” Toomey said.

Over the past several weeks, Bowdoin students were invited to voice their opinions on proposed changes to the College’s sexual misconduct policy in order to improve compliance with the federal government’s Title IX requirements. 

Title IX is a section of the Higher Education Amendments of 1972 that prohibits sex discrimination at educational institutions that receive federal funding.  

Benje Douglas, Bowdoin’s new director of gender violence prevention and education, has been working closely with students to craft these changes. 

“We have taken recommendations from students and put them back into the policy. Now we are reviewing it with the College council and then other members of the professional staff,” said Douglas. 

According to Douglas, the changes fall under three main categories: revisions of formal policy and the panel review process for misconduct cases, confidentiality, and the addition of a gender-based violence category. The gender-based violence policy responds to federal requirements to specifically target dating violence, domestic violence and stalking. 

These types of misconduct were were covered under the previous policy, but there was no formal pathway for reporting sexual assault. The policy changes dictate a more specific process under provisions of Title IX that is proportional to the seriousness, according to Douglas. 

In his new position, Douglas not only creates new policies, but also counsels students who have been victims of sexual misconduct and works with student organizations like Safe Space, Bowdoin Men Against Sexual Violence (BMASV), and V-Day on educational programming.  

Douglas expressed enthusiasm for working on sexual assault prevention at Bowdoin.

“There were already so many powerful things already going on campus, that, as a professional, made it exciting to come to a place that was already doing a really solid job on these issues.”

Leah Alper ’17, co-leader of Bowdoin’s chapter of V-Day, an international organization to stop violence towards women, said that sexual misconduct continues to be a pressing issue on campus.

“Sexual violence is often not talked about in our society, and it’s also talked about in one image,” she said. “There is a very stereotypical idea of what a sexual assault is, and that’s not really true, People who have experienced sexual assault—it changes them—but not always in a negative way.”

Alper believes the proposed changes greatly to Bowdoin’s commitment to the issue. She said  that although the College is doing a satisfactory job in regards to sexual violence, there is always room for improvement. 

Alper also said she supports an evolving policy that is not a one-size-fits-all approach. She believes the changes will bring more clarity to sexual misconduct victims, giving them more power and the ability to act and take control of their situations. 

Alper added that she believes the College can improve its response to sexual misconduct by making sure students are aware of the numerous resources that are available to them.

No official changes to the policy have been made yet. Douglas said that instead of having the administration unilaterally change the policy, he wants to give all students the chance to share input before the new policy is finalized.

Quinby House’s luau-themed campus-wide party was prematurely shut down last Friday when the Brunswick Police Department (BPD) showed up to investigate a 911 call made from the residence.

At around 11:45 p.m., an unknown student made the call from a phone in the Quinby common room. Officers from the Office of Safety and Security informed house residents, who then began to shut the event down. By around midnight the house was cleared out and the event was over. 

“The house was very responsive,” said Quinby House President Reed Fernandez ’17. “I was impressed with them.”

As police pulled up in front of Quinby, Fernandez and Vice President Anisa LaRochelle ’17 greeted the officers and apologized for what had happened. At the same time, Security swept through the house to make sure everyone was out and that everything was in order before BPD entered.

The police assumed the call was accidental, but were obligated to search the house. After  the officers found nothing wrong, they thanked house members for their cooperation and left.

“The whole night was blown out of proportion because of their presence,” said Fernandez.

At the time, it was unclear why BPD had arrived, and some students expressed concern about what was happening.

Cole Burkhardt ’18 was at the event when BPD arrived. He was informed by a Quinby resident that the police were coming and was told that he needed to leave as quickly as possible. 

“He started saying, ‘Everyone needs to go right now. We need to get everyone out of the house,’” said Burkhardt. “As I was leaving I saw the two cop cars.”

The incident is not being investigated further. 

“If we receive some information, we will act on it,” said Director of Safety and Security Randy Nichols.  

Fernandez said that he thought the call was probably not intentional because the phone used to make it was an “old land line that looks like a toy.” The caller likely did not think it was operational, according to Fernandez.

“Each year we have several 911 hang-up calls that come from the campus,” said Nichols. 

The incident at Quinby was not the only emergency response this weekend—there were also two alcohol-related transports, one on Friday and one on Saturday. Both transports were due to the use of hard alcohol. These were not the first transports of the year. On September 21, a male student living in Helmreich House was transported to Mid Coast Hospital.

The number of transports is one higher than it was at this point last year. However, two years ago there were seven transports by this time, four of which were related to Epicuria. 

This Sunday, 90 Bowdoin students will travel to New York City to participate in the People’s Climate March, a massive event designed to put pressure on world leaders to address climate change.

The trip, spearheaded by Bowdoin Climate Action, was also made possible by the coordinated efforts of Sustainable Bowdoin, the Green Bowdoin Alliance and the Joseph McKeen Center for the Common Good.

The rally will draw crowds from across the nation, and may end up being the largest protest against climate change in history. While the weekend’s highest-profile march will take place in New York, there will be over 1,500 demonstrations happening in over 130 countries around the world.

“I don’t know if we will see the likes of it any time soon,” said Kenny Shapiro ’17, who helped organize the group of Bowdoin students travelling to the march.

“The march is unprecedented. There has been nothing like this,” added Michael Butler ’17, another organizer of the Bowdoin group.

The march will be held two days before a United Nations summit on climate change hosted by U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. 

The cause has drawn widespread support from the Bowdoin community. Over 250 students expressed interest in attending the event. In addition, many members of the Brunswick community and students from other Maine colleges, including the University of Maine, Colby and Bates, will attend the march.

“We really are drawing from a diverse network of people,” said Shapiro. 

Many Bowdoin students expressed a personal connection to the issue of climate change.Allyson Gross ’16 grew up in Deer Park, Texas, a town she described as being heavily dependent on fossil fuels. 

“Climate change is hugely personal,” she said. “There are about seven refineries within a two-mile distance from my house, and my community is within the first percentile of worst air toxicity in America.”

Gross also helped organized the group of Bowdoin students who are travelling to New York for the march.

“What excites me a lot,” said Shapiro, “is the prospect of 90 people going to New York and being really energized and inspired by the 100,000 people that are there and bringing that energy back to Bowdoin.”

Shapiro said he hopes that this energy will be a way of “catalyzing more change on campus.”

With the march quickly approaching, the logistical arrangements are being solidified. For months, Gross has been organizing transportation and housing for Bowdoin students. Due to the lack of available transportation, there are still many students on the waitlist. 

“We have been speaking with some faculty about our dilemma of wanting to bring as many students as possible, but being constricted by one bus because every bus in Maine has been sold out for about a month now,” said Gross. 

Transportation will be split between a 55-passenger bus and multiple student cars. Once in New York, the group will be staying at the homes of Bowdoin students.

Subsidies by the organizers of the march—as well as donations by faculty members, community members, alumni and five College Houses—have made the trip economically feasible. In addition, Dean of Student Affairs Tim Foster and the Office of Student Affairs has given Bowdoin Climate Action $1,500 towards transportation. At the moment, the cost of a round-trip bus ticket is $35. 

Gross said she is grateful for the financial assistance, which she said has made the trip affordable for countless students. 

“It has been really exciting having a really giant intersectional mobilization of the climate movement,” she said.