The Bowdoin Orient

Spencer Shagoury ’17 grew up in Maine, near Waterville. His high school was small, underfunded and mostly white, and people there saw Bowdoin as the gold standard. This was his normal, until he got here.

“It’s not like other people are saying things that are demeaning in any way, but there's this constant inside battle that's, like, well, other people went to this really fancy private school and they had SAT tutors and—not that my parents didn't give me what I needed—but I didn't have that,” he said.

He said he asks himself, “Do I belong here? Am I up to these people’s levels?”

“I think that's been a constant thing on my mind and finding my own personal confidence in the way of that has been challenging for sure. Like, proving to myself that I deserve to be at Bowdoin,” Shagoury said.

“My friends from home are what people here would call hicks and my friends here are what people from home would call elitist snobs,” he added. “When they met each other—all super nice people that I love so much—there's just such a huge disconnect between them.”

Shagoury straddles two worlds with drastically different expectations, and that puts pressure on him. Not only does Shagoury need to manage time between school and friends, but he also holds a job to pay for the things his friends can already afford.

“There’s a delicate walk for sure between working the right number of hours so you can afford some things that you might not be able to do—I got to go skiing last weekend—but also making sure you have enough time to, like, spend with friends,” he said.

Hanging out with friends is not always simple. There is a certain amount of capital required in order to go to a restaurant or ski slopes.

“You make a new friend and they're like, ‘Oh a couple of guys are going to Little Tokyo this Friday.’ And you're like, well, payday isn't till the Friday after that, but you don't want to say that to someone you just met,” he said. “You don't want to label yourself, because you're more than your bank statement. You're more than that. So, you don't want to say something that labels you as that, but at the same time—you just can't go.”

Ann Basu

Spencer Shagoury `17

When interactions or shared activities revolve around spending money, wealthy students have the upper hand. As long as capital-intensive social activities remain important, poorer students bear the burden of operating within the norms of a high-class world.

Sometimes, students find a balance. Poorer students work harder so that they can afford access to these activities. Most wealthier students do not have unlimited spending money. They too turn down dinners out of a desire to spend less.

Despite these instances, class underlies fundamental power dynamics in our social world. Class influences how people dress and what they do in their free time, how they view themselves at Bowdoin and how they plan their summers and vacations. It affects who interacts with whom and their common interests, experiences or preferences. But most importantly, it affects what we each consider normal.

**

Class can be easy to ignore at Bowdoin because the College is a powerful equalizer. Within our on-campus community, students have roughly equal access to a vast array of resources. Great financial aid and familiar amenities such as Polar Points and dining halls with really good food, as well as policies like mandatory underclassmen housing and first year car restrictions all level the playing field and work to create an environment where students face as few disadvantages as possible.

People, like Evan Montilla ’17, notice this.

“I feel like the school is really good at providing the things I would see, that I would notice. Back home, class was like what food people were eating, what clothes people were wearing. But here, if you’re not so great financially, the school helps out a lot, and that’s been so key,” he said. “Everyone gets to eat really nice here.”

Here, no one has to worry about where their meals are coming from or whether they can afford to go to parties on the weekends.

But they might be worrying about other details like how they will afford the cost of a spring break trip or a new pair of hiking boots—or how they’ll ask for financial assistance.

Ann Basu

Evan Montilla ’17

At Bowdoin, much of what is taken for granted is new for less wealthy students. This can be a difficult adjustment.

“While some students can afford to go skiing or drive to Portland every weekend, others have to work 10 or 20 hours per week to support themselves and their families. While some students regularly have hundreds of dollars on their OneCard accounts thanks to their generous and wealthy parents, others worry about being able to do laundry because you can't deposit less than $25 to a OneCard,” wrote Jesse Ortiz ’16, who organized a discussion about class last spring, in an email to the Orient.

If a poor student wants to have wealthier friends, overcoming these anxieties is not enough. They must strategize how to fit in.

**

Mitsuki Nishimoto ’17 dresses well. She’s on the smaller side and wears big glasses that make her look put together regardless of what else she has on, which is usually black—she is from New York. Her easygoing attitude belies how much effort she has put into her clothing choices.

Since high school, when a nonprofit program connected her with Spence, an all-girls private school on the Upper East Side, Nishimoto has understood the value of passing: the process of making your appearance match the norms of those around you, despite differences in class.

“Especially going to an all-girls school, I think people really looked at what everyone else was wearing, and I knew what was cool. I knew what could be seen as a marker of privilege,” she said. “I would make my mom go buy all these things—on sale, obviously—and I would tell her, ‘These are the things that are cool, and these are the things that you have to buy for me.’ I think, in those ways I was able to pass, because that wasn't fundamentally changing my financial circumstances. It was just something that I could wear to fit in.”

Ann Basu

Mitsuki Nishimoto ’17

Although she described her class as “lower-middle income,” her parents raised her in an apartment in a predominately wealthy area. “We didn’t live in the nicest apartment but we still lived in this neighborhood, so I would say that I could get by telling people that I lived on the Upper East Side,” she said.

“I grew up going to the Met and going to Carl Schurz Park and Central Park. That was my playground,” Nishimoto continued.

“I think I had immense privilege, despite my family circumstances, and I think they really made sure that I had those experiences, to make up for what they couldn't practically give me. So just being able to say that. Y’know, some people have never been to the Met before, and being able to say, ‘Oh yeah, I used to go there all the time.’ That just puts me at a different place with social capital, especially at a place like Spence,” she added.

Her effort helps her feel comfortable at places like Spence or Bowdoin, but it helps wealthier students feel comfortable as well. When students from lower-income backgrounds assimilate to upper class students’ norms, these norms get validated. Wealthier peers can avoid confronting uncomfortable issues of class.

**

Like many other wealthier students, Sophie Binenfeld ’17 wasn’t ever really forced to reflect on class before attending Bowdoin. While she was aware of conspicuous displays of wealth, she was more comfortable downplaying her class—she transferred to a high school that required uniforms because she felt they were equalizing.

Binenfeld is from Los Angeles and bought her first winter coat her senior year of high school. Once she knew she was going to Maine for college, her older sister took her shopping in New York City. At her sister’s suggestion, she purchased a Canada Goose jacket—a frequent touchpoint in class-related discussions at Bowdoin.

“We were at Bloomingdale's and she was like, ‘This is the kind of coat you need.’ And I was like, ‘Is it the warmest?’ And she was like, ‘Yeah, all your friends will have them,’” said Binenfeld, recounting her shopping experience.

“And I saw the price tag and I was like, ‘Jesus!’ But I don't know how much warm weather gear costs. And I was lucky enough to call my mom and be like, ‘Mom, Molly said to get this coat. Is that OK?’ And she was like, ‘Yeah, if that's what she said to get. You're going to be warm, it's freezing in Maine, and you'll have it forever.’ So I bought it,” she said.

Ann Basu

Sophie Binenfeld ’17

When a campus event last year drew attention to her jacket as a status symbol, Binenfeld's understanding of her class changed.

“It forces you to think about the money that you've had access to your whole life that you don't realize you did,” she said.

But for so many less wealthy students, awareness of class is not new.

“It’s shocking to me that a lot of students on campus don't know how much their parents make,” said Nishimoto. “Because as someone who's always had to fill out financial aid forms and just be mindful of that, I've always known how much my parents make.”

Henry Bredar ’19 shares a similar experience with Binenfeld.

He is on the rugby team and was also on the baseball team last year. Bredar describes these teams as fundamentally different in terms of class: he said that while the baseball team is “incredibly wealthy,” the rugby team feels more socioeconomically diverse.

The baseball team is predominately white and 74 percent of the 31 players on the 2016 roster attended private high schools. The rugby team does not publish the high schools of its team members.

Bredar is used to environments like that of the baseball team—he went to a wealthy, private all-boys school in his hometown, Washington, D.C. and said he was “middle of the pack in terms of affluence there.” Upon arrival at Bowdoin, he experienced more of the same.

“In my first year, really, class was completely irrelevant for me,” he said. “It was never a conversation I had. It was never something that came up with my friends. It was never something that came up with my teammates or anything like that.”

Ann Basu

Henry Bredar ’19

Class-skewed spaces like the baseball team are one factor among many that allow wealthier students to not address class during their day-to-day experiences at Bowdoin.

There are many similar groups and spaces at Bowdoin. Examples such as the equestrian team or the club ski team stand out. Though these are more accessible with assistance from the dean’s office—students receiving aid can ask for supplemental funding for expensive activities—students need financial means to participate in and even encounter these experiences in the first place.

Other class-skewed groups include tennis, field hockey and lacrosse—programs funded more often at affluent high schools. Seventy-seven percent of the current men’s tennis team attended private school as did sixty-six percent of the current field hockey team. But it is difficult to generalize.

“I can't think of a team where I can't also think of the exceptions,” said Associate Dean of Students for Diversity and Inclusion Leana Amáez.

The Orient is one such organization. The staff members of the Orient tend to be consistently wealthier and whiter than Bowdoin’s student body. Of the paper’s 10 top editors, seven attended private high schools and all are white.

Class segregation occurs in less affluent circles as well. Students spoke with the Orient about a number of spaces or groups on campus that tend to be composed of poorer students. Often these spaces address other forms of identity, like race or gender.

Kathya Marte ’18 spoke of how this process of segregation began with the start of her first year.

“It was the week of matriculation and they would set us up in groups of four or five different people about where you come from or whatever. But even in those conversations, sometimes I was the only Latina or the only poor person, and I would notice that the rich people would have more stuff to talk about,” she said. “Just because, ‘Oh, my dad also has a house in the Hamptons’ or something, or if they went to rival boarding schools or … they would have something to talk about and I couldn’t relate to it because I didn’t go through these experiences.”

**

Amáez has led approximately 15 students in an Intergroup Dialogue (IGD) program almost every semester for the past three years. During the introductory session with each group she asks every student to introduce themselves, addressing various aspects of their identities such as race, ethnicity, family and cultural background, sexual orientation and class.

According to Amáez, in every IGD introduction, it’s very rare that a student will describe their class status without using the word “middle.” Wealthier students refer to themselves as upper-middle class while poorer students say lower-middle class.

“No one wants to leave the middle – there’s something honorable about the middle and there's something really stereotyped about outside of it,” said Amáez.

Some students do come from the middle class, but for the vast majority of Bowdoin students, that is just not true. According to data from a report by the Equality of Opportunity Project republished in the New York Times last month, 69 percent of Bowdoin students come from families in the top fifth of the national income distribution. As of fall 2016, 44 percent of the student body received financial aid, meaning 56 percent of students pay the College’s full $63.5 thousand in tuition.

“That’s a lot of money! Right? And that's not to say that isn't a strain; that's not to say that some of those students don't have some loans that have to be taken out as a result,” Amáez said. “But 56 percent don't qualify for aid on a need basis. That means their parents are making good money!”

In Amáez’ opinion, students are not adequately acknowledging the exceptional nature of their backgrounds. She’s not alone.

Read a candid converstaion about class between four students

According to Walter Chacón ’17, who is performing research on the relationship between social norms and class at NESCAC colleges for an honors project in sociology, Bowdoin normalizes social customs and behaviors that allow us to not recognize our wealth.

Chacón offered the example of the meritocratic myth as an idea that contributes to this normalization.

“I think it kinda gives the impression that regardless of where you come from or your social background, we’re all on an equal playing field, and I think that’s a pitfall to attending a really selective elite college,” he said. “That everyone can come in and think that we’re all on the same page because we all worked really hard, and we’re all really talented and we really achieved. That’s the only way we got into Bowdoin. I think we should question that.”

“A lot of people at Bowdoin have lives that are very atypical. Whether that’s because they have a second home—for example, a summer home. People normalize that at Bowdoin. But that’s not normal—by any standards—if you look at the composition of the United States,” he said.

“It’s easy to take that for granted, and think that that’s normal, but if we don’t question that then we kind of normalize the immense privilege that people have when they come to Bowdoin,” added Chacón.

Ann Basu

Walter Chacón ’17

Marte—who said she is currently taking a year off “to recharge”—spent some of her first few weeks at Bowdoin looking up her peers’ families on Wikipedia.

“I would Wikipedia people’s last name and I’m like, ‘Wow, their family is worth x amount of money.’ These are the people I’ve read about, but I actually go to school with these people and I interact with them—or, I just go to school with them, I don’t really interact with them,” she said.

“Before I went to Bowdoin I wasn’t ashamed to say, oh, you know, I live in a single-parent household, a low-income household, went to an urban, public, low-income high school,” said Marte. “However, I didn’t feel comfortable sharing that when I was at Bowdoin, because I didn’t want people to feel bad for me or thinking less of me because of my background.”

Although the wealth at Bowdoin came as a shock to Marte, money alone did not keep her from sharing her experiences with wealthier peers. Marte felt that she came to Bowdoin unprepared for its academic rigor.

Regardless of a student’s background, discussions about class are often characterized by discomfort and shame. When talking about class, there are assumptions that go along with class that are negative and reduce their experience to a class stereotype.

Attending Bowdoin comes with opportunities to access resources unavailable to students back home, but can also be accompanied by discomfort. Students like Marte worry about what happens when they fail to assimilate to elite standards.

“In terms of jobs, internships, I feel like I had ... I had to network with people outside of my community to get the jobs that I want, because they don’t have access to the opportunities that I’m interested in,” said Marte. “Although I know that sometimes it is hard to be at Bowdoin, I want to push through because I know that the networks that come from being a Bowdoin student, and also the resources as well, outweigh going to a school where I feel more comfortable.”

Wealthy students have different concerns surrounding stereotypes. Some of these students are afraid of coming across as being unaware of their privilege or being seen as inadequately working to address it.

“It's like … someone who is tangentially aware of how lucky they are but also really ... loves playing lacrosse like I do, or really ... loves going to ski like I do,” said Drew Van Kuiken ’17, describing his worry about playing into the stereotype of a typical student who attended boarding school.

Ann Basu

Drew Van Kuiken ’17

“I'm really apprehensive about doing [this interview],” said Binenfeld. “It’s super important to talk about, but it’s something at Bowdoin that we just don't talk about because you don't want to look like a rich asshole—and people don't know those things about me unless I tell them.”

Binenfeld feels like a fear of negative perceptions related to specific things like expensive jackets stops conversations about class before they happen.

“I often feel really judged for my coat. I know it's stupid, but I don't want you to judge me for it; talk to me about it. Let's talk about the differences in how we grew up, because I'm sure there were a lot of things that were the same,” she said.

“I think on both sides of the spectrum there are assumptions that go along with that that are negative,” Amáez said. “Once you label it, you're subject to the notions of everyone else about what that label means, and it takes your really personal story and relationship to class out.”

But nearly every student the Orient talked to said addressing class on one's personal level is where a productive conversation about class starts—especially for wealthier students.

“I think it is kinda like the conversations about race we've been having on campus where white students have to acknowledge their own whiteness and their privilege,” said Nishimoto. “And for the most part students who are not wealthy—this is something that they've had to think about. And it now has to come from the students who never had have to think about it to confront.”

Bredar and Marte echoed this sentiment.

“It's not people of lower classes’ job to teach people of higher classes about this issue,” Bredar said. “That’s where the responsibility really is, in a way, on the people of higher class.”

“Some of the friends you do make are in the classroom, I feel like people notice—people notice! They can tell people’s background from what they say, how they act, what they dress. Foster relationships there,” suggested Marte.

“I think that the burden doesn’t always have to be on the person from a marginalized group,” she said.

To accompany this week’s feature on class,“What Money Means,” I invited Drew Van Kuiken ’17, Jhadha King ’20 and Kate Berkley ’18 to have a candid, personal discussion about class. In my reporting, many students expressed frustration with a lack of meaningful discussion. I had spoken to each of these students individually, but they did not know each other before this conversation. The transcript below has been edited for clarity but not for content.-Harry

Harry DiPrinzio ’18: A great way to start is to just be super open about your class. Describe your class - where you're from - is there a story you can tell?

Drew Van Kuiken ’17: I'm from New Jersey. One of the reasons I wanted to have this conversation is because I...this is a caveat to end all caveats...this is something I want to think about but haven't done a lot of thinking about. I come from a very privileged background in more ways than I want to admit. But in terms of class I think I've been very lucky. So, more background: I grew up in a suburb of New York City and my dad works as a consultant at McKinsey. So, money wasn't really a problem for us. I went to private school, and then, I went to a boarding school, (which hadn't been in my family.) My dad was the first one in his family to not be squarely in the middle class. So, I went to boarding school, I went to Bowdoin and I've been really, really lucky. My mom never had to work, for example. Boarding school in particular made Bowdoin a place where, like, this is something that I'm really used to.

Jhadha King ’20: I grew up in West Palm Beach, Florida. I would say my class is definitely poor. I grew up with a single mom. I'm a first-gen kid. Until I was about in my sophomore year of high school, I had dreams to go to the local community college because college was the goal. And then suddenly I got a scholarship to go this high school my junior and senior year. It was a private school. It was founded by one of the Koch brothers, if that gives you any indication. He built the school ‘cause he was like “I don't wanna send my kids to boarding school.” He's a great guy – not politically –  but, surprisingly, it's a liberal school.

So, I grew up with my three older siblings, and my mom definitely worked very hard to support us. She used to be a cab driver, so there were no–– like, I go to work from nine to five, it was like 24 hours a day because we wanted to live places. It got to the point [where we were] moving, like, every couple months. We never stayed anywhere for very long. We lived in apartments. There was one point where we lost an apartment because my mom had health issues and shit going on. And then – so we were just staying in a hotel at that point, and hotels are ridiculously expensive when you think about it like, “let's stay for one more night”. And we finally got back on our feet: we found an apartment to stay in for two or three months. It was very “find a new place, live there till we run out of money,” and then my mom works twice as hard to find a new place. So, yeah, definitely struggled a lot.

I don’t know. Just going here is just honestly such an absolute privilege. I'm always just telling myself, “Who cares if the food is bad at Thorne? Because honestly, you know, mom is probably at home eating ramen noodles. She's probably having to eat Taco Bell for breakfast or some shit. So, just appreciate it.” This is honestly a dream come true. I only found out about it at the end of my junior year and this was completely my reach school. And then suddenly it was like – you got into your dream school. And they're not making me pay, like, anything to come here. Like, how the fuck am I coming here!? I got scholarships and shit so my mom doesn't have to worry about it. But when it comes to paying for Bowdoin I'm absolutely doing it myself because I can't expect my mom to pay for things like the phone bill and then you know, doctors appointments and then taking care of my step dad. Things wouldn't add up if I was like, then, “and suddenly I need money.”

Kate Berkley ’18: I’m Kate. I'm from Kansas City, Missouri. I would describe myself as coming from a very privileged upper-middle class background. My dad works, and my mom [worked] until recently worked, but she was at home with my siblings and I when I was little. I went to private school from the time I was in preschool. I lived within a district–– I think that where I live in Kansas City is really interesting because most of the kids who I went to school with were a lot wealthier than we were and lived in the wealthier suburbs on the Kansas side. And I lived in, like, an older neighborhood that was much less expensive and more diverse, but I still went to private school, and...that was something that my parents always valued over anything else––was like sending me to school and my brother and sister to school. But on my dad's side, we're all really privileged, and we've all been really well educated. My dad and his siblings all went to college and his--my cousins have [gone] to colleges much like Bowdoin. On my mom's side, it's different. She's from New Jersey. She's from northern New Jersey, and my grandparents––so my grandparents are from Harrison, New Jersey, outside of Newark, and their parents were immigrants. So, my grandpa is very much the stereotyped, typical American dream story – couldn't finish college but ended up getting a scholarship to Notre Dame and then worked his way up from a pharmacist working in this pharmaceuticals company and then sent all his four kids to school. So, my mom was a first-generation college student, but I don’t think that that necessarily– the expectation from the time that she was little was that she would go to college. And then that was always an expectation that was on me from the time that I was little.

Certainly, Bowdoin has been a place that I have had friends from backgrounds that are much more socioeconomically diverse than my own or the pool that I went to highschool with. I think I was in the middle of a small spectrum in high school, but I think that was juxtaposed with the people in my neighborhood. But I've never had to worry about money–– I work here, but if I didn't I would be okay. And that's just an enormous privilege for me.

HD: Definitely immense privilege. Growing up on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, on Central Park West. Going to a fancy private school through kindergarten that costs mind blowing amounts of money. When I think about it, I'm like, “Mom and dad, you know you didn't have to spend this much money!” And they're like, “Fuck you! we spent it!” You know?

It affects my – that type of privilege – the privilege I've benefited from and just have – affects my life in every way. And just affects everything – has everything to do with who I am. Every experience has something to do. So, I always thought I was going to go to college. Everyone at my high school went to college. And specifically in high school, or just Dalton in general, I had no idea what kind of a rarified environment it was. How incredibly, incredibly exceptional a place it is. And I still can’t distance its normalcy in my mind. I can't reconcile its normalcy, because it's what I know, with the fact that it's just not normal at all.

KB: I really remember having a conversation with my dad. We were just driving somewhere, and the thought occurred to me: how easy it would be to only interact with people within your social class or how easy that was for me. I was going to private school with people who had similar backgrounds to me, and I'm going to a private college, and I could only interact with people that all kind of have the same background or are as educated as I am. And it's sort of crazy. I think it's easy to blind yourself to your own situation or how unique your own situation is because it's easy to stay within your own people all the time or only interact with people that are like you in terms of your class.

JK: I think that Bowdoin is fantastic in that way. Because I feel like we are on the same level when it comes to academics when we first get here, and it’s really you taking the initiative to say, “Where are my peers coming from?” You know? Whereas, me and my group of friends, because we probably are minority or lower income,... say, “Wow, you're poor as fuck, and I'm poor as fuck, and that's cool.” But we haven't taken the initiative to say, “Now, where the rich kids at?” I feel like, inherently, we just assume that if we see kids in Patagonia vests, it's like, “Ahh, they're the rich kids.” We can just tell by the labels that it's like, “They're just the people that are in the same class.” I feel like we're just not taking the initiative to look for people outside of our class. But I don't think that's something that inherently you have to find at Bowdoin.

KB: Do you think that there are other labels beside clothing that indicate class?

JK: I don't specifically know because, apparently, I'm not well-trained in this because I don't know brands. Whatever you (Drew) said your dad's company – coming from a low income background and coming from the South and coming from the–– so I don't know the places. Like, “Oh, I lived in this part of New York.”  So, you lived in New York. Cool. And for other people that means something. They get the language of the upper class. So, it's definitely a language barrier.

DV: It's interesting that–– ‘cause obviously I grew up right outside of New York. For me, it goes a lot beyond clothing brands. You go into freshman year and it's like, “Oh, you went to a boarding school?” You don't even have to ask them. You know the 6’2” blond-haired guy with blue eyes went to boarding school. Or the small girl wearing the vineyard vines fleece. You know what that clothing brand means, but you know what the way that person is dressing looks like. I don't really hang out with any boarding school kids now, but it’s interesting how that was really clear to me, just being on a campus from like day one.

JK: What do you mean by that? What do you mean that you're not friends with boarding school kids? What does that mean to you?  Boarding school kids means, like, oh, rich kids who went somewhere in the Northeast, but to you it's probably, like, snobby kids.

DV: It's confusing because I don't mean to paint boarding school with a broad brush. One thing I think boarding school does really well is--my boarding school was like 50 percent kids on financial aid. So, like, it wasn't just all really wealthy kids from– It was predominantly– It’s half kids who can afford that. And that's a ridiculous subset of the country. Um...but I think to a certain extent, it's actually not necessarily true, for whatever reason, with the kids in my grade and the grade below from my high school, but there is a certain type of boarding school kid that come from boarding school and goes to a NESCAC school and––right? I don't know how to explain it without being offensive because it's a stereotype, and it's inherently offensive even though it's someone that we shouldn't be all that worried about offending. It's like, yeah it's someone who like is tangentially aware of how lucky they are but also really fucking loves playing lacrosse like I do or really fucking loves going to ski like I do.

HD: I think an interesting question to me is in what ways does social segregation– [JK] you were getting at this: your friends are all poor, and you haven't made the step to talk to the rich kids. In what ways does that play out in making friends? In interacting with people on campus?

DV: My friend group now is socioeconomically varied. I live with eight guys in the tower, and we range from kids like me to kids who are entirely paid for by the school. It’s interesting to think about it because I also lived in a social house, and the social house was very much not like that. It was a lotta kids who were very wealthy.

JK: I'm a first year, and I feel like the housing process probably did do a good job as far as mixing very diverse students together, except for my room: I room with three rich white girls from the Northeast. And I’ll see other rooms, and it's like we've got an Asian American from California and a poorer kid from New York and then this one kid, this one tall athlete from Massachusetts...and this kid from Minneapolis. So, it's very diverse, and I kinda wonder like, how did I get stuck in this room? So, I guess that’s an indication that I need to stop thinking down on rich people. But definitely, growing up the way I did, white people equates rich, which is this stereotype that I need to try to wash out of my head. But it's hard when you have like, “Oh, I'm thinking about buying new Birks because I saw how cute they were on someone else.” And seeing that constantly. Like, I know I go to Bowdoin, but really? Do I have to live in Bowdoin?

KB: It’s interesting when you come in as a first year, too because for me that was the first time I've ever lived outside of my own house. And I think in some ways there’s this lack of awareness of how you background might be really different from your roommates’. I had two roommates freshman year, and they were both white, but we definitely ranged in socioeconomic diversity. And it was more subtle things like someone wanted to buy a rug for our room, and we had debates about how much we were willing to spend on that. Or like, unpacking clothes into the closet. And it's like all of a sudden–I wonder if you guys can relate to this– but for the first time I was like, “Oh, there are differences in this room, and I've never lived with anyone else who hasn't been from this same background as I have.” And sort of adjusting and, like, I think it made me more self aware in terms of what are things about me that come off pretty quickly to others that they might perceive or be able to interpret about my class or where I come from?

HD: What came up?

KB: I had, like, multiple coats. I had a short down jacket and a long one and then an other jacket that I wore. But I don’t actually need three coats. I had stuff. Like, I bought new bedding that I bought for college specifically rather than bringing something that I brought from home.

JK: As far as assumptions about other people, I would say that I probably made some huge assumptions about people in my room. I would say that probably the richest girl in my room is probably the nicest to me. Stalking on Facebook I was like,“This girl is a fucking gymnast. Oh my god, she does sailing. She's from Manchester by the Sea, Mass. This is going to be the worst year of my life. I'm going to have to deal with some privileged-ass people.” And suddenly I get there, and--like, I refuse to be friends with people because of proximity; I want to be friends with people because of genuine interest--and legit, she's been just the most welcoming person.

And we've had probably one or so conversations about class. Because it happens very rarely, but when it happens it's probably me aggressively saying, “What were you raised like!? How poor were you!?”  She has talked to me and said, “I try to not act as privileged as I was raised because I know that's not my money.”  

But you just ignore it. I get that you don't want to acknowledge it but you do have– if you feel like ordering new bras and underwear, you can do that pretty much every week. So, I did make assumptions, but, at the same time, her personality has lived up to more than I thought it would be. But as far as her financial-ness, her personality isn't like, “Oh, I'm the rich snob.” But as far as thoughtlessly buying things, it’s like, “Oh, we've got new coats coming.” Or: Oh, you didn't like the old TV? You bought a new one. Or, oh the air mattress had a hole in it? You bought a new one.

HD: How do you reconcile... We're becoming our own people here. I think to varying degrees we had autonomy before, but certainly we're adults now, and we have our own money now as well. And to what extent... How do you reconcile your parents' money and your money?

KB: I have this memory... This just reminded me of something. I remember, in 7th grade, getting in a fight with my best friend, who was from… Her family had much less money than mine did. And she was like, “You're so spoiled.” And it really caught me off guard because whenever I heard the word spoiled up until that point I interpreted it as being a spoiled brat and being totally unaware of your privilege and asking for things and being a brat about it, and I didn't feel like that's what I did.

But I had never really thought about the idea that [I] was just spoiled no matter what, no matter how I behaved because the idea that I could get a new coat or new shoes when I wanted or need them, and I didn't have to think about it. And when I asked my parents for money to go to a movie, they would give it to me. I think that that has come up again—not in those terms—thinking about what does it mean for me to be able to work here, but then use that money for things that I want to have, not that I need necessarily. Like, I can save up money to go skiing or go on a trip or go out to eat or buy new clothes or something like that as opposed to having to pay my cell phone bill or save that for when I graduate and need some money. Because I'm so lucky that I have that safety net, that my parents provide for my needs and pay my tuition here. That's something that I've been trying to think a lot about: how do I think about my own money and what kind of privilege is attached to that.

DV: For years, my parents would yell at me like, “Drew, get the fuck over yourself.” To a certain extent because I was always being a little bit of a prick. Because [I would say] “I'm my own man, Dad. I don't need you,” while I was wearing my dad's own shirts and my dad's buying me—and sending me to this nice school.

It's like, “Oh, poor you.” But then there also is a certain sense of, like, what does it mean that I've been given this from my dad and from my mom? I don’t know. I guess for me it's always been recognizing that. You wouldn't—I wouldn't have done what I have done without what I've been given. But that doesn't mean that you want to not acknowledge that it exists. I think... I don’t know. That's where I'm at now. I'm just kinda owning it. But it took a lot to be at that point, basically.

HD: What do you think prevents people with privilege from recognizing it?

JK: Acknowledging it?

HD: Acknowledging. And I think the next step is really, like, owning it and really taking responsibility for—I think one, for me, my parents defined—in this world of New York City private school, my parents defined themselves as upper-middle class. Because, because the people who go to Dalton are insanely wealthy. And so that was something I internalized. “I'm not insanely rich, I'm just—normal.”

DV: I have a memory of playing lacrosse in my backyard with the son of, like, a guy who does surgery by putting a camera on a cord and going about your veins. Yeah, it's the wealthiest surgeon on earth, and he and I were sitting in our backyard saying, “Yeah, I think we're upper-middle class. Yeah.”

JK: It's crazy that you even think of that at that age. My parents were like, “Yeah, we're poor,” and that was the end of the conversation. So, it's interesting to see the other end of the spectrum.

My question is, like, even if you acknowledge your class and your wealth, what does it do if you don't create a conversation about it? You're still going to go home at Thanksgiving or whatever vacation you decide. You're gonna fly home, or “I'm feeling like I'm gonna take a trip to Spain.” You know? It doesn't—I don't feel like it does anything unless you do something about it. At the end of the day, your parents are probably giving you inheritance money or you know. I'm making generalizations. But at the end of the day what do upper class people think that they can do with conversations about class?

HD: Is there a responsibility that comes with having privilege?

JK: Is there?

DV: Speaking more generally, I have no idea. I have literally no idea. Part of the reason I came is that I'm, like, “I've got this. I have no idea what to do about it.” There are all these articles online that can tell me what to do about being white and being straight, but I have no idea what to do about this.

JK: I get being an advocate or something. If you're part of BQSA, you're like “I'm an ally.” Or if you're like, “Not all white people are bad!” But what are you going to do about class is my question. What? Are you going to donate all your money? That would just make you as poor as me. That doesn't do anything.

HD: Has this been a discussion for you [all] at Bowdoin? Have you had this discussion before?

KB: I've had this conversation a lot with my roommates because the four of us are from very different socioeconomic backgrounds and kinda extreme ends of the spectrum. And it's really nice that I have these friends that it's easy to feel comfortable talking about it [with]. But I feel like it's by far the most uncomfortable thing that I talk about with them, and I talk with them about everything, but talking about money can be really uncomfortable. But all of us are interested in working in the arts or in education or in public service of sorts, and at this point we're starting to think about, “Okay, well, what does that mean in terms of changing how we live?” For some of us, that might be improving how we grew up; for others, it's, like, living with less, certainly.

JK: I don’t know. Like I said, the conversation has probably happened once in my room. It was like, not everyone was involved. We didn't exchange perspectives, like, “What does this mean to you?” When I say rich, white girl from the Northeast, like, probably reflecting on it, two of them are probably middle class. But we don't have the conversation, so I just have the assumptions that I have not corrected because we don't have the conversation. And it’s like, even if I bring it up, it's kinda like, let’s not talk about it right now, and it's very awkward. Because it's crazy to me because the most extensive conversation about class [I’ve had] has been with Harry, who I met the night of, and we kept talking about it. So, it's just crazy to me. I'm supposed to room with these people and [have] these diverse experiences at Bowdoin. Bowdoin is supposed to be this, like, all-inclusive community where conversation and intellect is inspiring and that sort of thing, but then it's just so closed off in my room. I'll talk about it with my friends—with the friends of my choosing, I guess—but my friends talk about like, “One of her friends is gonna let her stay at her place when she goes back because she doesn't have a heater, and it's really cold.” Like those are the conversations that we have. It's just candid. It's not like, “Let's just sit down and discuss.”

KB: Sometimes I wonder the extent to which conversations where it's like, “We're all going to sit down and talk about this in abstract way," are easier to do than to, like, have really candid conversations with people who you know really well and are living with.

DV: In the context of your roommates, what would it look like to really have a discussion about class?

JK: The brief conversation that we've had was like, “I don't want to be as privileged as I am.” But that conversation had to last maybe five minutes max. I guess, I just want to learn about, like, ‘cause I've only seen, like, in the movies, “I'm gonna go rent a Porsche and go whip around the city.” That's what being rich means to me. In my head, being rich is like, “I don't like this dog. I'm going to buy a new one.” But then I realize that there are people that can, like, afford new cars pretty much every year if they wanted to . I'm sure I'm making this up, but I don’t know what it means! I've only known my perspective my entire life. Or I've known my friends who are like, slightly more poor or slightly less poor or are on the same level. But when I went to the new private school it was like we didn't talk about it. It was like I saw these kids pulling up in their cars while I was taking the city bus home. I guess I just want to learn about it. I'm not going to be like, “You're privileged. Shut up!”

DV: When your roommates talk about buying something from a new sale, what's to separate that from a conversation about class? Did that conversation actually happen, or did they just, like, show up with new clothing and you're like, “Oh okay, I guess this how rich people work?”

JK: I'll just walk in, and they're like, “OMG, Victoria’s Secret is having a new sale,” or “American Eagle is having a new sale. I just want to buy new underwear.” And then, like we've talked about, I'll walk in, and she’ll be like, “Oh I'm obsessed with the underwear.” I walk in the room, and this is Valentine’s Day or like a couple days before—this is just to give you—so, one of my roommates brings in a package, and I'm like, “Cool, you have a Valentine's Day package. That's so exciting.” And she pulls out a bouquet of roses, with a vase, with chocolates... Wait, no, not chocolates. It was, like, this herbal thing. And she's like, “Ugh, there are no chocolates in here. That's the best part.” And she, like, tosses the thing to the side and puts the flowers in the vase, and she's like, “Yeah, my dad buys them for me and my mom every year, but normally I eat the chocolates, and she gets the flowers, so this is just stupid.”

And I'm just thinking.... There are just weird instances, of like, suddenly we have a new TV. I just realized, we have a printer mixed with a scanner sort of thing. And I'm like, “Crap, do you want me to pitch in for paper and ink?” And she's like, “Hmm—” and, like, pulls out a box filled with paper and ink and is like, “My dad likes sending them to us. It makes him feel like he's doing something.” And I'm like, “So that's a no...?”

It's just weird ‘cause pitching in is not really needed. Whereas, before with my friends it's like, “Yeah, could you give me five dollars?”

I feel like it would be more open to having conversations about class if it wasn't shut down in the paths. And it's like I feel like I can talk candidly with my friends, probably because I'm not living in the same space as them. But as far as broaching the subject, I feel like it's pretty much the duty of the minority, not minority as in black but because I'm the poor one. It makes me uncomfortable; I should talk about it. But it's kinda like, when you have two people at the extremes of wealth and poverty, how are you going to bring that conversation up, knowing that these people still have to go home to that?

DV: This is the problem I see here, right? It's nice to talk about it, but then your roommate still gets excited about the American Eagle sale right? Or I do—something—I can't think of what I do, but I definitely do something, right?

What does it mean to have had the conversation, but still have those same actions occur?

KB: Yeah, I think that might be one of the issues of these conversations never being that concrete. In like, we can talk about class abstractly, but maybe with your roommates… She has a general idea of her privilege but doesn't see the nuances of it that you are more aware of.

And I think some of that is [that] we can talk about, like, privilege and socioeconomic class and, like, two ends of the spectrum, but I don't think... I think it's much harder... And this is where these tough conversations about recognizing things that you yourself do...those conversations are a lot harder to have, but that's what makes you recognize more of those nuanced parts of privilege, maybe.

JK: I don't think privilege is a bad thing. This is coming from a poor person. Like, you have privilege. It’s gotten you here. We're all here. And I'm not saying that privilege should not be recognized or anything, and I'm not saying like...but I just feel like, yes, having a conversation is important, but at the end of the day, I'm still going to go back to my room, and it's still going to be awkward. You know? I don't know what we expect to come out of conversations about this. I don't know what you guys could possibly do with this privilege or what I could probably do to start conversations. I just don't know where the conversation is supposed to come from. Is everybody supposed to meet with Harry?

HD: A conversation is totally inadequate, I think....

JK: Keep talking...

HD: And I think what, Kate, you're getting at is, like, there's some form of real self-reflection that's required of, kind of, people with privilege, which has to translate into action. It can't just be, “I thought about it.”

DV: But what does that action look like? Especially when you talk about, like, part of the process is coming to terms with and acknowledging. Beyond recognizing abstractly that you have privilege, what is acknowledging in terms of action actually look like?

JK: Why would people in upper classes want to do that?

HD: I think for me, it's like...it’s part of a broader understanding of the kind of unjust ways in which the world works and the ways in which I benefited from those unjust ways. My privilege is not just me having more stuff than other people. It’s me actually benefiting from...potentially exploitative...systems that cause harm to other people. And then understanding that and actively, in my life, working to fix those systems.

JK: I like that. Quote it. Put it in the article.

KB: Right. And I don't just want to echo you, but I really think that it comes with deciding that you have… Because your voice is privileged, then it's your responsibility to use that for some sort of good. And fighting to change these systems or, like, putting that wealth or that educated voice out there because I think it ultimately it comes down to systemic inequalities that have to change.

JK: That's why I really like service learning trips, like the alternative spring breaks that I'm doing. We're actually learning while impacting communities, and I think that's a fantastic idea. And how can we apply that, not only with ourselves or at Bowdoin, but at home?

I feel like so many people are like, “Oh, Bowdoin! I'm gonna be an awesome student while I'm here. I'm gonna do community service.” And suddenly you get back to your own neighborhood, and that stops.

HD: I feel like it's important to be concrete—just as a follow-up—and, like, the ways in which I've benefited from exploitative systems feel abstract, but, for example, my mom works in the apparel industry or has. She works for a company (she has), that makes women's clothing that's sold at, like, Kmart and Bloomingdale’s. So, I don’t know. I think those kind of industries are problematic because we're relying on totally underpaid and exploited workers who are abroad, and they're bad for the environment. I was reading something today about how tons of clothing manufactures, textile mills, the runoff of dyes and things, it just goes right into the rivers, and that's very bad.

My mom is at the top of the system—not at the top of the system, but at the top of one enterprise within that system—that has benefited from exploitative processes, and that wealth has translated directly to me.

DV : So, I guess as a senior, for me the relevant question becomes, like, when you're picking your career, do you pick something where you're like, “Alright, this is an unqualified good. I know that what I'm doing is not tainted by these systems.” Do you believe that you can pick a job where you can… Speaking from experience, you’re, like, at job force and you're like, “Holy shit. I have problems with this, this, this, this, this and this.” And it's like, what does that mean to me in terms of what I'm trying to do with my life? That's a question I don't have an answer to, but it's like when you make that judgment call, how do you? Is it just, you pick the unqualified good? Is there an answer there?

KB: What do you mean by unqualified good?

DV: So, if you're a teacher... I'm relatively... I'm worse at the education debate, but maybe it's you're working for a charter school, and you think charter schools are bullshit. But, with teachers, there's less of a thing like that. But take my dad as a consultant, for example. Is it that now he's the kind of person that can pick his own clients so he can find companies that he believes are really serving the world and serve them? Is that okay? Or is the fact that he had to serve whoever the fuck who he was told to serve a long time ago… What does that mean?

DV: And then, is every good Bowdoin student a teacher?

KB: It's such an interesting dilemma because it's the idea of what do you want to do versus, what… My dad's a businessman, but he loves his job. He's so passionate about envelopes. That's what he sells. And that's very cool, but I'm not genuinely interested in that. I'm interested in teaching.

But you're right. There's also the dilemma of, like, do I teach at a private school and teach kids who are, you know, coming in well-fed and have parents that are really good advocates for them? I think there's benefit to that because you're also hopefully instilling really good values in kids that have voices that are automatically empowered and elevated. Or do you teach in an inner city or lower-income community school, where you're much more burnt out by your own job and have much more trouble controlling the classroom and it's less...it's less immediately rewarding? In the long term, you're hopefully helping these kids that need it more, and they don't have kids that are helping them, but there's sort of this issue of your own happiness and your passion even if you're helping others.

JK: You don't always have to be morally conscious though. Does that make any sense? Even if you decide to go with the private school, you're still like helping these kids and doing a great job. We're still ignoring the fact that there are other ways that you can help communities or low-income people.

KB: Take Stan Druckenmiller, right? He's a hedge fund guy. He's probably not doing the most moral work ever, but he made billions and billions of dollars and he's an outstanding philanthropist. He backed the Harlem Children's Zone and all of these organizations that are doing really great things.

JK: It doesn't even have to be like, “Let's donate all this money.” It can be like, “I'm going to be a big buddy or a big brother or big sister or some…” Like, you know I'm not saying that you, because you're rich or because you made this much money per year, you automatically have to sign up for a program or do a good deed or some shit, to get rid of the bad karma or bad juju. I'm just saying, like, if you have the initiative, I'm not saying you should throw away your career plan, your passion, your hard work. There are other options. You don't have to suddenly devote your life to charity and becoming this amazing person. You're amazing if you want to have the conversation.

HD: I think it's a really hard question to answer. But I think there's a lot of work that could be done in finding those answers. We don't talk enough about those options, those career paths that are both really rewarding and really good. Those alternative visions... Our ideas are limited, I think, but I don't know.

JK: How do you feel that conversations about class can be improved at Bowdoin? Should this be small group discussions? Should we have like this huge... bring everybody into the school, sit them down in the auditorium, let's talk about class? How do you feel like this can go forward? I mean like the article is a really great idea. It's very intimate. Nobody feels threatened. But when you get people on the stage, and you're like, "Now talk about how much money you have," it can be very awkward. It puts people in this very awkward place. Do you feel like this is the responsibility of the students that want to have this conversation?

KB: I think that's one of the things that... I think about this a lot, just in general. Like, the three of us are here because we're willing to be here, and we've thought about this before, maybe. I think that it can be hard. I don't know. I guess I wonder how do you make someone have a conversation, or can you make someone have a conversation that doesn't want to think about it, doesn't want to have it? I personally really think that there should be more built into freshman orientation about class because those are conversation that you literally have to have or listen to. But I think that they have to be more concrete like the one that we're having where we're really thinking pretty explicitly about what our classes are. And I think that that's a conversation that happens outside of the classroom, too.

I think that there's a certain element of this hesitance to out yourself. I can personally attest to being uncomfortable talking about where I come from and not wanting to reveal my socioeconomic class, and I'm sure that happens on all points on the spectrum. With the privilege walk, I feel like that was a really cool thing, and I didn't feel uncomfortable about that, but I guess I'm just wondering how private does this need to be? Should this be maintained as something that's very personal and very private?

JK: I have a really harsh stance on this, but I feel like I constantly have to confront how uncomfortable I am, every day of my life. Being a bisexual black woman from the South from a low-income house, from first-gen...I've got it all. So, if people are rich and privileged and are like, “I only have this one thing that I have to overcome.” That makes me upset that they don't wanna be uncomfortable for one instance. I know that that's a simplification of it. I know that they're gonna have to deal with people knowing that, “Oh, I'm this kid,” every time they're at Bowdoin. I just feel like, if you can't be uncomfortable for more than five minutes, what are you gonna do with the rest of your life? It makes me upset.

KB: I really agree.

JK: I know there are bigger implications than that, but if you have the courage to have the conversation, people are gonna respect you more for that than saying, “Wow, this kid grew up with money.” At the end of the day, that's not your money. Yes, you're benefiting from it, and yes, you may inherit it, but that's not concrete either. Something may happen. You may get robbed. And at the end of the day, you're still on your own two feet right now. As long as you're on campus, you have to deal with being a Bowdoin student first and your privileged background second.

DV: My somewhat cynical take on it is to really have the conversation, like the privilege walk is...yeah, that's helpful. It's kids poking a little bit of fun. But to really have the conversation, you need to go out and have someone just start throwing firebombs. Get people riled up on both sides of the spectrum when they're alone in HL and looking at the Orient and thinking, “Shit, what is this person saying about me?” You need someone in the opinion section to say like, “If you're rich, you fucking suck.” And then all the rich people sit to themselves and are like, “What does that mean?” I don't know because being a flamethrower is awful, and I wouldn't wish that on anyone.

President Clayton Rose, along with 48 other college and university presidents, signed a letter that was delivered to to President Trump on Thursday urging a re-examination and reversal his the executive order executive order on refugees and immigrants. 

On Monday, Rose sent an email to the campus that expressed concern about the executive order and its potential to harm Bowdoin community members. He rearticulated the College’s commitment to safeguarding the confidentiality of information about students and staff. The message also announced that the College is providing affected community members access to legal assistance.

Across the country, college presidents have taken similar responses. Wheaton College has perhaps gone the furthest, establishing a scholarship that will cover the full cost of attendance for a student from “a war-torn nation” and giving preference to applicants from one of the seven countries—Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen—targeted by Trump’s executive order. Cornell University, like Bowdoin, has promised to provide legal counsel for affected students and assistance in the event they are detained. Robert Zimmer, president of the University of Chicago, wrote an open letter to Trump outlining the ways in which the order could negatively impact the country and affirming the value of immigrants in America.

The events that have occurred since President Trump’s inauguration are an indication that such policies and decision making will continue raise the question of how colleges and universities should respond to political controversies, particularly when students and faculty are affected or taking action themselves.

At Bowdoin, the 1970 student strike demanding the end to U.S. activities in Southeast Asia offers a historical perspective on the potential extent of institutional activism. 

In the midst of the U.S. invasion of Cambodia and an escalation in the Vietnam War, Bowdoin students were galvanized after the shooting of unarmed student protesters at Kent State University in Ohio. On May 4, 1970, 300 Bowdoin students who had gathered in Moulton Union voted to initiate a strike. 

In the days immediately following, Bowdoin President Roger Howell actively solicited student opinion and let it determine the public actions of the College. At an all-campus meeting he initiated the following day, Howell spoke out against actions of the Nixon administration and condemned the government’s actions in Cambodia. 

“We should deplore the events at Kent State and we should deplore the climate which has led to their possibility,” he said.

As the students voted overwhelmingly to strike (73 percent for), Howell expressed skepticism about the efficacy of such an action. But he allowed the strike to proceed and was quoted in the Orient the following day saying, “Our voice will have its maximum impact if it is spoken as the voice of the community.” 

Following the all-college vote on May 5, the majority of the College’s activities shut down for the remainder of the academic year. 

Howell’s actions stand out for the degree to which they differed from responses to student activism around the country. Many administrators across the country were not as receptive to their students, actively resisting student protest or paying it no attention. 

According to a Bowdoin-sponsored report by Luke McKay ’07 and Elyse Terry ’11, Howell’s “actions were crucial in establishing a sense of trust and unity, allowing the strike to progress peacefully until its conclusion at the end of the academic year.” 

They also allowed students the space to make the most productive use of the strike as a learning experience. McKay and Terry quote Director of Moulton Union and Director of Career Counseling Harry Warren who said that “for many students this was the first realization that ‘if they care enough’ about a cause or challenge, ‘they can … see some changes made.’”

In recent history, Bowdoin presidents have been reluctant to respond to student activism with institutional action. 

In an email to the Orient, John Rensenbrink, a professor of government emeritus at the College who was active in founding the Green Party of the United States and the Maine Green Party in 1984, said that, during his interactions with the College, “no president has actually welcomed [student political activism].” 

“Many [presidents] were skeptical of the actions proposed and, even more so, of the actions taken—and became almost distraught when the action included sit-ins,” Rensenbrink wrote. “Some, a very few, responded in an acquiescent mood. Some responded in a guarded mode of (‘I so hope we can weather this, wish it were over!’). Some were definitely opposed. Some got very defensive, feeling fenced in and angry.  Some found ways to rationalize saying “no” so as not to further upset the apple cart with too much overt negativity. Some, in the end, bowed down to pressure. But, no one readily or ever really welcomed it.”

Rose is the only president of the College since Howell that Rensenbrink has not interacted with on the subject of student activism.

In an email to the Orient, Rose explained his philosophy for institutional political response. 

“There is too much uncertainty about what specific policies and legislation could come from the new Administration and Congress to be able to speculate about what I may or may not say or do,” Rose said. “Any actions or statements on my part will be motivated, in the first instance, by those things that challenge our educational mission and/or our [sic] threaten members of our community.”

Despite having a significantly larger endowment and spending more on financial aid, Bowdoin is not admitting significantly more students who receive financial aid. This has been the status quo at Bowdoin for the past 15 years. In 2002, roughly 40 percent of the student body received aid. In 2006, it was still 40 percent. As of the fall of 2016, 44 percent of the student body receives financial aid, meaning that over the past 15 years, the percentage of the student body receiving financial aid has increased by only 4 percentage points. 

A study from the Equality of Opportunity Project republished in the New York Times last week laid bare the socioeconomic composition of the Bowdoin student body. The report shows 20 percent of the Bowdoin student body comes from the top 1 percent of the income spectrum (family income greater than aprox $630,000 per year,) which is more students than there are in the bottom three income quintiles combined. 69 percent of students' family incomes fall in the top quintile of the national income distribution, meaing their family made more than aprox. $110,000 per year.  Only 3.8 percent of students come from the bottom 20 percent (families who made less than aprox. $20,000 per year). 

The study also revealed that the financial composition of the student body did not change significantly over the period it addressed (between 1998 and 2009). According to data from the College’s common data set and Office of Institutional Research and Consulting, the percentage of students receiving financial aid remained at roughly 45 percent of the student body from 2008 to 2015. 

Since 2008, Bowdoin’s endowment per student has increased at an average rate of 3.8 percent per year reaching $1.5 million per student in 2015. Its average financial aid grant has increased at an average rate of 3.2 percent per year, but the College’s comprehensive fee increased at a similar average rate of 3.2 percent per year. 

These numbers raise significant questions about the effectiveness of the College’s need-blind admissions policy (which has been in place for over 15 years) in actively creating socioeconomically diverse classes. They also indicate that the school’s ever increasing comprehensive fee is at odds with this mission. 

Bowdoin regularly talks about diversity as a priority and socioeconomic diversity is a big part of this. The College has made real steps over this period, such as eliminating loans as an aspect of financial aid packages in 2008 under former President Barry Mills and dropping the application fee for first-generation and financial aid-seeking applicants in 2016. 

President Clayton Rose confirmed this mission and his desire to build more socioeconomic diversity, but argued that maintaining a roughly steady level of financial aid recipients itself has taken work. 

“The steady state of students who are attending elite schools who come from the low economic strata suggests that there’s been some real work that’s kept that number at that level and I think that our experience bears that out. I think we’ve worked really hard to make that happen and a number of our peer schools, perhaps all of them, have as well. And I think the fruit of that is that we’ve been able to keep that steady.” 

Both Rose and Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid Whitney Soule defended the College’s need-blind admissions policy. 

“I would say that being need-blind is a huge opportunity for this college,” said Soule. “To put the emphasis on going out to find the students who have the qualities that we’re seeking and look at them as people and to be going through a recruitment and selection process that is separating them from need. And I think it’s an incredibly important value.” 

Soule also said that the need-blind process actually does create socioeconomically diverse classes. 

“We are not placing investigation or emphasis on [socioeconomic diversity] on a particular application. How much does the student need? But by being need-blind, it naturally is setting our admit decisions across the array of the socioeconomic strata.”

While the College does enroll students from across the socioeconomic spectrum, the newly published data indicate that it enrolls a disproportionate number of students from the high end of the income spectrum. 

Rose emphasized the structural factors that prevent Bowdoin from creating socioeconomically diverse classes. 

“Our challenge—and we know this is true and the study reinforces it—our challenge and every school’s challenge is that the number of low income students that apply to elite schools is lower than it should be.”

Soule added that often, students lower on the income spectrum are not thinking about and not prepared for elite schools like Bowdoin. 

“If you think about the country at large and much of education ... there’s public funding in every state that educates most of our young people,” she said. “And the disparity of the quality of education, across resources—that also plays out in preparation for higher ed and who’s thinking about going to a school like Bowdoin and how we find those students.” 

Soule and Rose both emphasized that admissions outreach and recruiting has a big effect on who applies to Bowdoin and is the primary tool the school uses to attract lower income students. The more lower-income students that become aware of Bowdoin, the more that apply and the more the College is able to admit.  

Every year, Bowdoin sends its 14 admissions officers across the country to meet with prospective applicants at high schools and college fairs. Last year, they visited 450 schools. Sending them to areas of socioeconomic diversity is a priority. 

Admissions employs various methods to attract lower-income students including partnering with community based college-prep organizations so that more lower income students are aware of Bowdoin and traveling with groups of admissions counselors from other peer schools like Pomona and Swarthmore.

Soule said that for the past three years she has abandoned the practice of taking a two-week trip to New York City where she would hold a series of information sessions with students at specific schools, many of them private. Instead, for the past three years, the admissions team has held a few information session nights and invited students from across the city. 

She says this gets prospective students who are lower on the income spectrum in the room with a more diverse range of applications and helps them see themselves in the context of a more diverse Bowdoin rather than the more limited applicant pool that might show up to an information session at any given school. 

“What it does is it brings a lot of people into a room, often with a lot more kids and their parents from all over the city from different boroughs and from completely different kinds of high schools. And when you sit in that room and look around at the people who are interested in Bowdoin, that’s what our prospect pool is, so that’s been really effective.”

This is a strategy Soule hopes to employ in other cities in the future. 

The steady increase in the cost of college is a factor that works against its ability to provide access to lower-income students. As the cost of college goes up, so does the amount of financial aid required to send a student to Bowdoin. If rate of growth of financial aid grants does not exceed the rate of tuition growth, the financial aid dollars available to distribute will only cover roughly the same number of students.

Addressing the increasing cost of college is a priority for Rose. 

“We’re going through serious exercises to understand our budget, to take out whatever fat—fat isn’t even the word because there’s no fat in it—but really making tough choices about where we’re going to spend our money,” he said.

Currently, roughly 64 percent of the budget goes to payroll and 36 percent of the budget goes to operations. Rose said touching payroll is not an option and that the focus of his budget review will be on the 34 percent that is dedicated to operations. 

According to Senior Vice President for Finance and Administration and Treasurer Matt Orlando, the budget office has implemented a new practice this budget season that requires departments to justify every expenditure in their budgets and presumes a 0 percent growth rate rather than the traditional 2-4 percent increase. 

Orlando said the practice is aimed at slowing the growth of departmental budgets and identifying areas of spending that may no longer be priorities. 

Still, some of the increasing cost is tied to inflation—around 2-3 percent currently—and is likely inevitable.

Bowdoin’s performance in admitting students from lower on the income spectrum does not compare poorly to its peer schools.

Jordan Richmond ’16, who worked on the Equality of Opportunity project as a predoctoral fellow with Stanford economics professor Raj Chetty, said that one of the study’s key findings is that across the board, the percentage of poor students at elite schools has remained the same over the course of the study, from 1998 to 2009.

Despite expressing support for a socioeconomically diverse class, Rose believes that a student body that reflects an equal distribution across the income spectrum of the country is not realistic and is not Bowdoin’s mission. 

“The idea that we should look like the country—I think that’s unrealistic in that not every student is prepared for Bowdoin and many students from low-income backgrounds are engaged in educational experiences in junior high and high and grammar school which leave them ill-prepared. Our job is to find all those great students, if we can, that have the ability to do the work here and get them to apply to Bowdoin,” he said. 

“The real thing, I think, to take away from all of this is that how you interpret your results totally depends on what you think the goals of a college are and what our model of education should aim to accomplish,” said Richmond. 

Gideon Moore contributed to this report.

In the early hours of a typical Friday morning, the Orient staff emails PDF files of the paper to a Brunswick printer. A few hours later, printed newspapers appear in buildings across campus. In between, the intricate art of newspaper printing unfolds just a few miles from Bowdoin. Dick Lancaster, sales manager at Alliance Press, has been in the newspaper-printing business for nearly 30 years. His company was already printing weekly editions of the Orient when he joined in the mid-1980s.

The physical printing process relies on both old and new technology. Once the Orient sends completed designs to Alliance Press, pre-press employees check that the files are sized and formatted properly. 

“No RGB images. [We use] CMYK,” Lancaster said. “[Then] they’ll paginate it and put it in the correct order for sixteen pages.”

Order is especially important because the printing press is configured to only print certain pages in color. All images that appear in the Orient are combinations of just a few colors of ink. “You have four different inkwells. You have yellow, magenta, black and cyan,” Lancaster said. ”You [put] your colors all on [pages] one, eight, nine and 16. If you wanted more color, it would go on two, seven, 10 and 15.” 

Once the employees have ensured that the paper is in proper order, they use a special printer to burn the design directly onto metal plates. They then bend the plates to fit into the printing press.

When it’s finally time to print the paper, an operator switches the printing press on. Sheets of newsprint pass through the machine, picking up ink as they come into contact with the metal plates. The machine then cuts and folds the sheets so that they come out the other end looking like typical newspapers. 

Alliance Press has multiple printing presses, so they can print up to three publications simultaneously. The quickest of these presses prints 15,000 papers per hour. For a publication like the Orient, which prints roughly 1,600 copies, the process is relatively short. “Once we’re up and running, it probably takes 15, 20 minutes, to print the [Orient],” Lancaster said. 

The Orient typically prints at around 8 a.m. Since pressroom employees work in three shifts, the printing facilities are well-populated no matter the time of day.

While printing presses themselves haven’t changed much since Lancaster first entered the printing business, the advent of computers has substantially affected the industry. Before email existed, the Orient staff would paste words and images onto physical boards, which they would deliver to the press room. Printing employees would then take pictures of the boards and use their negatives to develop the metal plates. 

“You’d go into the dark room. You’d put the boards on the camera. You’d shoot the camera,” Lancaster said. “The negatives would be burned on the plates.”

While technology has made the printing process more convenient, it has also impacted the nature of Lancaster’s job. 

”Everything pretty much comes to us in InDesign PDF files now,” he said. “As a salesman, I would be driving five to six hundred miles a week, going to different locations, picking up boards and bringing them back to print. I don’t go anywhere anymore.”

But despite technological advancements, the physical printing process isn’t perfect. Lancaster noted that in printing the Orient, Alliance Press will typically waste 300 to 500 copies because sheets weren’t aligned properly. He added that the staff recycles these wasted copies.“Everything we do here, we recycle,” he said. “All of our newsprint is post-consumer recycled newsprint.”

Lancaster said that printing the Orient has typically been a fairly smooth process. He did note, however, that the Occident, the satirical version of the Orient published the last week of each year, once caused problems. 

“It was a little over the top, and a couple of employees were offended by it,” he said. “[But] that was a long time ago.” 

For Lancaster, printing the Orient helps him stay connected to Bowdoin, where he occasionally works as a bartender for campus events. His grandfather—for whom Lancaster Lounge is named—was a member of the Bowdoin class of 1927, and his mother also worked at the College. 

Alliance Press headquarters are located in Brunswick, only a few miles from Bowdoin’s campus. Despite the small-town location, the company not only prints the Orient but also many other publications, including the Times Record, the Bangor Daily News and student newspapers from the University of Maine-Orono, the University of Southern Maine and Colby.

While Lancaster isn’t usually mentioned in the headlines that his company prints, he nonetheless takes pride in the work.

“This is kind of like meat and potatoes. This is the bottom line basic newsprint color printing,” he said. “We have a really good niche here in the state of Maine.”

Last night Ladd House hosted a panel and small-group discussion entitled, “Why do the College Houses Feel so White?” Topics of discussion ranged from how music and dancing at College House parties affect the whiteness of the spaces to what it feels like as a student of color applying to a house.

Organized by President of Reed House Diana Furukawa ’18 and Programming Director of Reed House Victoria Lowrie ’18, the panel was moderated by Assistant Director of Residential Life Mariana Centeno and featured Hayley Nicholas ’17, Sarah Lim ’18, Hannah Cooke ’18, Justin Weathers ’18, Osakhare Omoregie ’18, Maya Reyes ’16 and Paola Maymi ’18. The event was attended by about 40 students.

While each panelist had different experiences and understandings of why and how College Houses are predominantly white spaces, the majority of the panel agreed the music and dancing culture at College Houses reinforce the feeling of whiteness that pervades the houses.

Reyes suggested songs that are the main culprits for her, particularly “Mr. Brightside” and “Stacy’s Mom.”

“There’s no denying ‘Stacy’s Mom’ is a white, suburban song,” she said. “It’s a fun song, but now as a senior every time I hear that song I think ‘that wasn’t my life experience.’ So just knowing now that every time it plays in a College House it’s just a reminder that this is the culture I’m in, and I can’t forget that.”

Centeno noted that statistically, the racial composition of College Houses is about the same as the rest of the college. Maymi spoke to this point.

“For me the College House system hasn’t felt that white because I went to middle school and high school in Tampa, Florida at a school that was 95 percent white, which felt much whiter than Bowdoin,” she said.

Maymi added that she felt the most uncomfortable with her race when applying to a College House as part of a block.

“Maybe this wasn’t my friends’ intention[s], but I felt like I was always being singled out as someone who would make the block better because I’m Puerto Rican,” she said. “And that felt uncomfortable to me because I didn’t want to be living with people who saw me as just someone that would help them get in [to a house].”

However, in light of increased attention being paid to diversity on campus, the application process seems to be changing. Centeno has seen a shift in the focus of programming suggestions for College Houses.

“A lot of the programs [first years are] bringing up are programs speaking about diversity,” she said. “That’s a trend that I haven’t seen before in reading applications.”

These programs—along with events like last night’s panel—could help usher in a shift in the role College Houses serve on campus.

The lowest approval ratings are significantly higher this fall than they were last fall. Fall and spring approval rating responses differ significantly. View the Orient's Spring 2015 Approval Ratings to compare.

In response to recent attacks by the Islamic State (ISIS) and its affiliates in Paris, Beirut and elsewhere, the Bowdoin Muslim Students Association (MSA) organized a panel discussion of students and professors to address the question, “How Islamic is the Islamic State?”

The event on Monday evening offered Muslim students an opportunity to renounce the actions of the ISIS and emphasize the distinction between their Islamic views and those of ISIS, while also offering an academic explanation of ISIS’s actions and ascendance.

Students walked away with a decisive response: that ISIS is a political movement that uses a perverted version of Islam to justify many of its actions.

The conversation takes place amid a broader conversation about the role of ideology in the Islamic State’s actions. Concerns about Islamophobia have surfaced in reaction to the attacks in Paris and Beirut.

A well known example of this discussion is a March 2015 cover story in The Atlantic titled “What ISIS Really Wants.” The panel members discussed and criticized elements of the story. 

In a question, audience member Emmett Ulian ’19 referred to the piece directly, explaining it argues ISIS’s ideology “derives from coherent and even learned interpretations of Islam.” Professor of Religion and Qur'anic scholar, Robert Morrison said that the story’s author, Graeme Wood, is completely off base and that generally, the response among the academic community to the piece has been overwhelmingly negative.

Assistant Professor of Government Barbara Elias, a scholar of Insurgencies and Middle Eastern politics offered a political explanation, saying that that ISIS’s rise is a direct result of American actions in the Middle East, specifically the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Many students felt the most valuable aspect of the event was the opportunity to hear Muslim and Middle Eastern students offer a personal take on an urgent issue.

“Mariama and Irfan gave a whole new perspective and when there's a personal touch to it, it really quantifies the issue,” said Liam Nicoll ’18.

In her closing remarks Lilian Gharios ’18, a panel member from Jordan who is not Muslim, said “If we begin to think that all Muslims are terrorists because of the actions of this one group, we are letting them win.”

MSA spokesman Irfan Alam ’18 explained that he believes ISIS’s claim to have established a caliphate is illegitimate because the group is not doing what the Qur’an says a caliphate is supposed to do.

When asked about instances of prejudice against muslim students at Bowdoin, both Muslim student panelists, Alam and MSA president Mariama Sowe ’18, said that though they are weary, they had not experienced any instances of explicit prejudice at Bowdoin.

The event, held in Macmillan House, was well attended and was the final event in Bowdoin Student Government’s No Hate November Initiative.

The managers at Bowdoin Dining Service have decided to embrace one of the hottest trends in the food world. If all goes according to plan, the bar in Jack Magee’s Pub & Grill will be transformed into a fresh juice bar as soon as the end of October. Upon opening, the bar will serve a menu of  about 7 fruit and vegetable juices that will be made to order on a commercial centrifugal juicer.

On Wednesday afternoon, Manager of Dining Retail Operations Adeena Fisher, who conceived of and designed the project, held a tasting of a preliminary menu of juices behind closed doors in the Pub.

The initial hours will likely be limited to weekday mornings, but Fisher said she expects to expand to include afternoon shifts and possibly evenings as she gauges the student body’s response. Fisher said that the bar will offer only one size of juice, 16 ounces, which will be priced between $3.50 and $6.50 depending on the blend.

Facilities will conduct some minor renovations to transform the Pub’s bar into the juice bar during the weekend of fall break. The wood paneled wall behind the bar will be painted in bright colors, the placement of the television will change and a sign and chalkboard will be installed. Fisher said she expects the changes to add life to a currently dull space.

The bar has yet to be named but among the options in the running are “Jack’s Juice Cave”, “We’ve got the beet”, “Fresh Start”, “Just Juice it” and “Polar Press.”

While the bar will operate as a juice bar during the week, it will transform back into a pub bar and continue to serve beer on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights.

One aspect driving the bar’s creation is the minimal revenue from alcohol sales.

“We were sort of looking for a way to increase revenue in this area. The bar is only open on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights so for a large period of time the bar is not in use,” said Fisher.

Fisher readily admits that much of the impetus for the bar is very personal. “The idea came about because I like to juice,” said Fisher. “The idea was noodling around in the back of my head and a student actually approached the administration and said ‘hey, how about a juice bar?’”

Fisher also noted that the juice bar fits nicely with Dining’s desire to be “veggie centric” and promote healthy eating. She acknowledged concerns that juice of this type contains very high amounts of sugar and no fiber (because the plant matter is discarded by the juicer) and said that, in the long run, the bar will be responsive to students’ demands.

“There are some people who like the fresh juice because it is absorbed instantly into your system. There are some people who like the smoothie juice where you grind up the spinach. That is not to say that the we cannot evolve into something like that,” she said.

Some students at the tasting were enthralled about the coming bar but other expressed concerns about quality of the current menu of juices. “No one should have to drink celery,” said Stephanie Sun ’18. Others expressed concerns that the bar would conflict with the cafe.

“The juice bar could be really cool but the cafe does almost the same thing and that’s confusing,” said Leah Alper ’17.

Correction (September 25 at 9:30 a.m.): Each student will receive their own unique link to vote via email; voting will not take place at bowdoin.edu/vote.

The College has transitioned this year from selling textbooks through an on-campus textbook center to using Chegg, an online book retailer and renting service. Although the switch was designed to save money and increase efficiency, some students report negative experiences with the platform.This was the first year that the College shut down the Textbook Center, formerly located in the basement of Coles Tower, and required that students purchase textbooks from online platforms. 

“We changed the model that had been there for so long,” said Michael Tucker, course materials and general book manager, regarding the transition. Director of Dining and Bookstore Services Mary Kennedy cited the College’s 50 percent reduction in Textbook Center purchases over the past six years as part of a larger trend for book purchasing on college campuses across the country. 

While some students were able to find cheaper options through Chegg, particularly when choosing to rent science and math textbooks, many students used other platforms due to cost savings or negative experience with Chegg.

“[Chegg] told me, ‘Oh, it’s a used copy but it’s in great condition,’ but I got it and the first 30 pages rip out and I’m missing chapters,” said Chase Savage ’16.

On Wednesday, Savage had to call Chegg because when he ordered two books for his Theravada Buddhism class, he actually received two books on taxation policies for corporations. 

Savage noted that Chegg had helpful customer service who refunded him all shipping charges for his purchases. However, he characterized his overall experience as negative.

“I ordered books in the middle of August and some of them still haven’t come,” said Savage. “I’m definitely using Amazon [not Chegg next semester].”

Kennedy explained that while the College considered Amazon during the process of selecting the new textbook platform, Amazon prefers to work with large institutions that are near their distribution centers. 

According to Tucker, the College has been working on the transition with Chegg for the past 10 months. 

“As a small college, our limited buying power made it difficult to procure books at competitive rates,” said Kennedy. “We spent the entire summer working with Chegg—they’re committed to making this work.”

While the transition to online-only textbook purchase and rental may be a more efficient choice for the College, some students wish that the Textbook Center still existed.

“I get the whole ‘have an online textbook service’ and that there is an efficiency aspect to it, but I still don’t understand why we don’t have a textbook place on campus to deal with these questions,” said Savage. 

Not all functions of the Textbook Center have been made obsolete; periphery materials for science labs, art materials and certain textbooks—usually written by Bowdoin professors—which are not yet available for public purchase have been moved to The Bowdoin Store in the David Saul Smith Union.

Bowdoin Dining Services purchases and receives a startling amount of food every week. According to Associate Director of Dining Kenneth Cardone, Bowdoin serves 23-24 thousand meals per week, consuming a quantity of meat, fish, produce, fruit and dry goods that weighs thousands of pounds.

 To provide such a huge quantity of food, Bowdoin relies on a range of suppliers. Sourcing and Menu Manager Matt Caiazzo said that approximately 80 percent of the total food purchases are from the Performance Food Group (PFG) NorthCenter distribution facility in Augusta, Maine. 

PFG supplies Bowdoin with an enormous range of products. Almost all meat that is not ground beef comes from PFG, as do eggs, non-milk dairy products, dry pantry goods, fruit besides apples and many paper products and supplies. PFG is a satellite location of a national distribution company that contracts with some of the biggest players in the food industry including Tyson, Kraft and ConAgra among others.

 The other 20 percent of the food budget is spent at a variety of mid-sized sources. Bubier Meats, in Greene, Maine supplies primal cuts of locally raised beef that Bowdoin grinds in a meat cutting room in Thorne Dining Hall. All of Bowdoin’s ground beef is local and ground in-house. Bowdoin sometimes buys processed meat from GoodSource Solutions, a California based company that purchases discounted surplus product from industrial processers immediately after a client discontinues an item or changes its production specifications. 

 PJ Merril Seafood and Harbor Fish, both based in Portland, Maine, as well as Maine Shellfish Company from Kennebunk, Maine provide Bowdoin with seafood, much of which is caught off the Maine coast. Each company is a small distributor with national connections. 

Similarly, Bowdoin’s farm produce comes from multiple sources. In addition to a small amount of produce from the Bowdoin Organic Garden, Dining also purchases from the Crown O’ Maine Organic Cooperative and Farm Fresh Connection, both aggregators and distributors of produce from small to midsize producers in Maine.

While Cardone and Caiazzo identified these businesses as suppliers to Bowdoin, they were unable to provide any information about the respective quantity of food purchased from each. Bowdoin’s Controller’s Office was also unable to provide any information about payments to each vendor.

In recent years, awareness about the provenance of food has increased significantly, as has awareness of the steep external cost that many methods of food production carry. The cost is manifested in harsh conditions for migrant farm workers, as well as in the outsized environmental impact of the industrial livestock industry, which accounts for 15 percent of global carbon emissions. 

This cost also appears in the ecosystem-damaging runoff of chemical fertilizer and pesticides from croplands not to mention the public heath threat posed by widespread antibiotic and hormone use in animal feed.

Others have taken issue with cruel and inhumane treatment of animals, including confining pregnant and nursing sows in gestation crates and confining laying hens in battery cages. The widespread use of genetically modified organisms (G.M.O.s) in the food system has also become a target for activist consumers, though there is not yet a definitive consensus that they pose any risk to consumers.

The food system is so complex and opaque that it is nearly impossible to understand and account for all of its externalities. For instance, an Associated Press investigation recently found that slavery is widespread the Thai fishing industry, which supplies fish to many large retailers and distributors in the U.S. and Europe. 

Some of the food Bowdoin serves avoids the external costs of the industrial food system but Bowdoin may be guilty of complicity with many of these practices. PFG supplies antibiotic and hormone free meat but it is unclear how much of it Bowdoin buys.  

“I think a lot of the products we purchase are antibiotic free,” said Caiazzo. 

Caiazzo was unable to provide the Orient with any data about which and how many products are free of the drugs. 

With respect to chicken, Bowdoin may soon benefit from shifts by some of the market’s biggest players. McDonalds recently announced that it will begin to limit antibiotics in its chicken over the next two years. 

“[McDonalds] is changing the industry, because they have such tremendous buying power and that’s good for us,” said Cardone.

One of the most difficult aspects of sourcing is deciding which factors are important and balancing costs. Almost any alternative to the industrial food system comes at a higher cost. A primary benefit of organic farming is that for crops, organic certification places limits on the use of potentially harmful synthetic fertilizer and pesticides. However, many chemicals can still be used, as long as they’ve been deemed ‘essential,’ by the USDA. According to Cardone, Bowdoin occasionally buys organic foods, but they are not a priority. The PFG order guide shows an availability of some organic produce but not a significant amount.

“Organic isn’t on top of the list—local’s on top of the list,” said Cardone. “Some products that we buy are organic but that’s not what we’re focusing on, we’re focusing on local.”

Buying locally produced food has become one of the most well-known and effective ways to avoid the external costs of the industrial food system. According to the Bowdoin Dining Services website, “Bowdoin sources approximately 34 percent of food purchases from local vendors.” Caiazzo said this percentage is calculated as a percentage of the dining services budget. The primary items included in this calculation are ground beef, milk, some seafood, apples, tomatoes and some produce.

However, buying locally in Maine is not easy. 

“You always want to be able to plan to use more local food as it becomes available,” said Cardone. “The issue in Maine is that it’s very seasonal, so you need the ability to process and store [food].”

The local food economy in Maine is not large or diverse enough to support Bowdoin entirely. Many farms are simply too small. Even if a farmer is able to produce enough livestock to satisfy Bowdoin’s high demand, all of that meat has to be processed. While meat production in Maine has increased, a lack of meat processing facilities in the region has hindered significant growth of the market. According to Cardone, some producers in Maine have shipped their cattle out of state to be processed then shipped back. At that point, its financial and environmental costs rise dramatically. 

“Think about the volume,” said Cardone. “We used 30,000 chicken breasts from March to the end of April. Think about the state of Maine and these small farms that produce poultry and pork. They’re raising 15 hogs—it’s just not there yet.”

Farm size, the short growing season and greater cost are the three biggest obstacles to local sourcing in Maine. 

“A lot of it depends on the season, a lot if it is market driven,” Cardone said. “If we get an opportunity to jump on something, we watch it closely; we’re going to do that. You have to.”

Caiazzo said that in the future, he hopes to work with local farms before the growing season so that farms can match their production to Bowdoin’s needs and specifications. 

“[We hope to] look at ways we can work with local growers and farmers to help grow their businesses,” he said. “Because they need to scale up to be able to provide to us at a reasonable cost and if we don’t do anything about it, they’ll never hit that next scale.”

Bowdoin currently freezes some local produce at its peak availability and lowest cost in the summertime, but Caiazzo hopes to do more of this in the future. This could significantly increase the amount of local produce and even seafood that Bowdoin uses, however Dining is  limited by a lack of freezer space. 

“There isn’t a food service that I know that food storage isn’t an issue,” said Cardone.

Dining is also faced with the difficulty of what to do when student tastes and ethics collide. For example, bananas are Bowdoin’s most popular fruit, with Dining bringing in around 51,000 pounds every year. However, Bowdoin Amnesty has recently been bringing discussion of the problems surrounding the harvesting of bananas in South and Central America to campus. Caiazzo confirmed that Bowdoin’s bananas are from that area. Cardone said it would be very difficult to stop offering the fruit because of its popularity.

“It’s a matter of educating your customer base,” he said. “Eat an apple, eat a pear. They’re local. It’s a juggle and it’s a balancing act.”

Despite the difficulty and complexity, Cardone said that Dining works hard to stay responsive to student’s requests and current food trends. 

“It’s a changing landscape,” he said. “What we did last year doesn’t work this year and what we’re doing this year won’t work next year. You can’t sit on your laurels.”

Student opinion and conviction about sourcing ranges, but many seem to be aware of local and organic foods in Bowdoin’s dining halls. However, at the end of the day, everyone has to eat. “I always pay close attention to when it is local or organic,” said Alice Jones ’17. “But it doesn’t necessarily mean I’m more inclined to eat it.”“[I] wish we knew more about where we get meat and things like that,” said Kayla Kaufman ’18. 

“What could be cool is a little bit more transparency or a little bit more knowledge of sneaky things that have huge carbon footprints,” said Clare McLaughlin ’15. “For example, things like almonds are just not good for the environment but we don’t think about that and no one talks about that and it’s not advertised.”

McLaughlin added that she thinks sourcing could be more sustainable if Dining used its resources more effectively. 

“I think you could decrease the extravagance on some things to make other things more sustainable,” she said. 

Bowdoin Dining’s massive operation is one of the most well-known aspects of the College, and making food on such a large scale is no easy task. 

Sixty eight percent of respondents to a recent survey conducted by a class taught by Associate Professor of Government Michael Franz indicated that they believe that political correctness is a ‘problem at Bowdoin currently.’ 

The respondents represented an even distribution of class years and genders, and were numerous enough to represent the broader Bowdoin community. 

Students’ individual definitions of political correctness vary, but the survey indicates that students are unhappy about the level of political correctness on campus. Some students the Orient spoke with argued for political correctness, while others said that it has become difficult to voice a minority opinion on campus.

“It seems to me that people have this idea that there is this pervasive force among Bowdoin students that is the language police,” said James Jelin ’16, who writes a column for the Orient. “And if you say anything that doesn’t gel with the currents of appropriateness that you’re suddenly going to be exiled from the Bowdoin community.”

The survey also asked about Cracksgiving and the Inappropriate Party, two recent events that have sparked discussion about the necessity of political correctness. Twenty seven percent of respondents approved of the way the College handled Cracksgiving, 47 percent did not approve, and 25 percent felt they did not have enough information to say. Thirty eight percent of respondents indicated that “students in Ladd House unfortunately caved to pressure from Res Life,” 17 percent believe the Ladd house residents “made the right call,” 37 percent said that they “see the merits of both sides” and eight percent said that they did not have enough information to decide.

Director of the Resource Center for Sexual and Gender Diversity Kate Stern feels that the limited discussion surrounding these events is the bigger issue.    

“I think people use the term political correctness like a stop sign and then we don’t go past that,” Stern said. “We don’t talk about what the impact was of Cracksgiving on our Native American students. We just talk about the administration being politically correct.  But we’re not getting to that next step.”

Yet many students, divided on whether political correctness is a necessary roadblock, find it difficult to get to this next step. Since Cracksgiving and the cancellation of the Inappropriate Party, students have debated whether political correctness protects people or stifles them, or whether it does both.

“[I think it’s] everyone’s responsibility to engage in conversation and to promote a space where political correctness doesn’t inhibit, but also protects those it is meant to protect,” Michelle Kruk ’16 said. “I don’t think that being politically correct necessarily means censorship.”

Debate about Yik Yak mirrors the debate about political correctness, particularly in regards to censorship. Some believe that Yik Yak provides a platform for students to speak their minds freely and voice potentially unpopular opinions. 

“People feel more inclined to speak their minds when you don’t have to sign your name after it. If you feel comfortable speaking up for yourself there, then I would say go for it,” said Ned Wang ’18.

Stern agreed that the lower stakes of anonymous forums can make them attractive to students. 

“I think part of the PC backlash—which I agree with—is that if we just don’t say it because we’re not allowed to say it, it doesn’t change how we’re thinking,” Stern said. “That feeling of I can’t say it, but I’m still thinking it, drives the conversation to Yik Yak.”

Some people however, believe that Yik Yak too easily allows for hurtful comments to be made. In a recent column in the Orient, Vee Fyer-Morrel ’15 warned that Yik Yak has led to particularly harmful comments with regard to body image, allowing people to “lash out from behind the anonymous comfort of a screen.”

The anonymity of Yik Yak is lost in the classroom, and some believe that political correctness is a problem there. Associate Professor of English and Africana Studies Tess Chakkalakal encourages “lively debate” in her classes, yet often finds political correctness hindering discussion.

“I think that disagreement, debate, argument, is an important part not only of an academic institution like Bowdoin College but also of a democracy,” Chakkalakal said. “I encourage disagreement and I worry that political correctness forces us to all agree, which I believe, and according to that survey, we do not. We have differences of opinion that I believe should be voiced respectfully—but voiced and not stifled.”

Between Bowdoin Climate Action’s (BCA) sit-ins and the Ferguson die-ins, activists on campus have been busy, and their visibility has perhaps increased attention on issues of open discussion. Some students attributed the problem of political correctness to campus activists.

“I think a lot of the activists on campus are the biggest offenders,” Nick Mansfield ’17 said. “The people who think they are the most liberal, free-thinking people are the most intolerant ones. Most of the ones I’ve encountered have no desire to negotiate or understand the opposing viewpoint at all.” 

Mansfield cited hostility toward people who take a pro-life stance as an example of liberal students taking an intolerant position. 

“If you’re pro-life at Bowdoin you would get shot down in a hailstorm of bullets,” he said. “No one would really respect that viewpoint even though you’re perfectly entitled to it and you might have your reasons for it.” 

Hayley Nicholas ’17 said she believes such a sentiment is a result of a lack of communication on campus.

“I don’t think it’s the activism itself [perpetuating this divide]. It’s the lack of communication,” she said. 

Nicholas referred to BCA as an example of a group failing to communicate.

“The only problem that I have with BCA is that they realize that there’s a huge disconnect on campus between students who want to divest and students who don’t, and I feel like they haven’t been trying to bridge that gap,” she said.

Yet Nicholas was careful not to attribute political correctness to activism.

“I think people confuse the terms activism and political correctness,” she said. “They think they’re one and the same.”

Jelin said he thinks the lack of communication can be characterized differently. He believes that campus discussion has become too one sided and that opposing voices are plentiful but simply hesitant to engage. 

“I think that all of the people who disagree with this primary dialogue, they’re just not talking about it. Nobody else is writing letters to the editor in the Orient, nobody else is holding rallies,” Jelin said.  “I think that there’s this fallacy that everyone at Bowdoin believes these things when really it’s just a small but vocal minority.” 

The survey’s results seem to support Jelin’s theory, since the majority of students declared themselves unsatisfied with the current state of discussion. Chakkalakal said that the discourse should be elevated, but not by the administration.

 “I don’t think it’s the administration’s responsibility,” Chakkalakal said. “I think it’s the students’. I put it on you.”

Editor's note: The story originally stated that 69 percent of students think that political correctness is a problem at Bowdoin. That number was in fact 68 percent.​

Local family-run restaurant Jen’s Place announced in late January that it is having trouble meeting tax and upkeep payments and will likely close if it is not able to raise $26,000.  

Jen’s Place, known for its friendly service and homelike decor, serves breakfast food on Stanwood Street, just north of the Harriet Beecher Stowe Elementary School. 

Owner Jen Burton said in a phone interview that the restaurant has been strapped for cash for years, and the only way she can keep operating is to make structural changes to increase revenue in the future. 

The renovations she plans include increasing the restaurant’s capacity and various minor improvements such as new plumbing, heating windows and decorations. Burton hopes the increased capacity and comfort will draw more customers and keep the restaurant operating for future years. 

Burton created a Plumfund to raise the money. Plumfund is similar to Kickstarter, except the campaign receives any donations, even if the goal is not reached. Thus far she has raised $2,845 from 41 contributors in 55 days, and has received multiple offers for pro-bono work from local contractors and friends.

Burton is hoping the local community, especially Bowdoin students, will pitch in to keep the business above water. 

Some Bowdoin students are concerned about the possible closure and are helping support the campaign. 

“I know this has happened before where they’ve been struggling financially and have asked the community for donations. I’m optimistic that they will be able to raise the money,” said Torey Lee ’15, who photographed Burton for a class project. “It’s a large goal, but hopefully Bowdoin students will pitch in if they like the place.” 

The restaurant is almost entirely family run. Burton’s sister and parents are the primary staff while her son, brother and friends help out on weekends. Recently, the restaurant has faced setbacks due to complications with Jen and her sister Cori’s health. Jen recently had two brain tumors and now suffers from complications resulting from multiple spinal-tap treatments and is often unable to work. Cori recently recovered from a brain tumor as well. 

These problems have been a strain on staffing and used up much of the family’s financial resources. 

In 2013, the Orient reported that Jen’s Place was likely to be featured on a reality TV show. Burton said that she has since turned down the offer, despite its potential financial benefits, because it would have caused unnecessary and harmful tension within her family.

Based on a recent influx of pro-bono offers, Burton said she is feeling optimistic that the restaurant will be able to reach its goal in the final 33 days of the campaign, but she stressed that she needs Bowdoin students and families to help her get there.

Total fundraising for the College declined in fiscal year 2014 (FY 2014) but the alumni participation rate increased. During President Barry Mills’ final year, FY 2015, the College is hoping to raise $153.5 million to fund three specific initiatives. 

Total fundraising declined from $46.1 million in FY13 to $41 million in FY 2014, while the alumni participation rate increased from 59 percent in FY 2013 to 59.3 percent in FY 2014, the highest rate since FY 2008.

Of the $153.5 million goal for FY 2015, $100 million is part of the financial aid initiative that President Barry Mills announced last May.  

According to the Senior Vice President for Development and Alumni Relations Rick Ganong ’86, the College is also seeking $21 million for the development of a new Coastal Studies Center and $21 million to expand its Digital and Computational Studies Initiative.

Ganong explained that Mills identified these initiatives as opportunities to make a final impact before he steps down this July.  

“Out of the $140 million, we’re over halfway there and we still have a lot of lines in the water,” said Ganong. 

Fundraising may shift when President-elect Clayton Rose takes over, but Ganong is optimistic about the new president. 

“He built a global equities business at J.P. Morgan. He’s raised money. He’s met with hundreds if not thousands of people. He’s going to be fabulous and we’ll hit the ground running. That having been said, he’s got some big shoes to fill,” Ganong said.

Bowdoin has had incredible fundraising success under President Mills and its endowment has grown substantially. At the end of Mills’ first year, FY 2002, the endowment was valued at $430,623,000, according to the National Association of College and University Business Officers and at the end of FY 2014, the endowment was valued at $1.216 billion. 

Bowdoin’s most recent capital campaign raised a total of $293 million between 2004 and 2009 and was the largest capital campaign in the College’s history.

“We will do another capital campaign; it’s probably a few years out. I think President-elect Rose needs to get to campus first and understand Bowdoin,” said Ganong. “When he, with the Board of Trustees, identifies certain projects or initiatives or a vision for Bowdoin and we know what we need to raise the money for, then I think we’ll structure the campaign and go do that.” Annual Fundraising

Of the $41 million raised in FY 2014, approximately $11 million was classified as annual giving and the other $30 million was designated as capital gifts. Annual gifts, usually unrestricted, are spent each year and comprise approximately six percent of the College’s operating budget. Capital gifts include contributions to the general endowment or to specific funds or projects such as a new building or an endowed scholarship or faculty position. 

The alumni participation rate is calculated based on a total of 16,583 reachable alumni. Some living alumni are not included in the College’s calculation because they request to be put on a do-not-solicit list. The College's alumni participation rate, which was 59.3 percent in FY14, is one of the highest in the country according to a U.S News and World Report list from December 2014.  

The College’s goal for alumni participation was 60 percent in FY 2014 according to an Orient article from last February. According to Ganong, 60 percent remains the goal for FY 2015. He explained that in addition to being symbolic, alumni giving rates are critical because they affect rankings such as those published by U.S. News and World Report and Forbes, as well as the college’s bond rating. 

Getting alumni to return to campus has proved to be an effective technique for increasing giving. According to Ganong, alumni who return to campus are more likely to give (and give more) than those who do not visit. Consequently, class reunions are an important part of Bowdoin’s strategy.

In 2013 Bowdoin began an annual one-day campaign to increase participation. During last year’s Bowdoin One Day campaign the College received 1,520 alumni gifts. 

Additionally, strategic targeting and cultivation is a factor in fundraising.

“When you throw your hook in the water, you want to catch a big fish right? When we fundraise, we recognize that the college has needs and if we can get an extra zero on the check that’s very important for us,” Ganong said. “I think cultivation takes time. We’ve had meetings with many alumni, many parents, and sometimes its the second, third, fourth, fifth meeting where they say, ‘Ok, this is a great idea.’”

While an increasing number of philanthropic organizations and causes solicit donations from Bowdoin’s giving network, Ganong believes this has not detracted from their enthusiasm for giving to Bowdoin.

Giving to Bowdoin increases the value of a Bowdoin degree, he said. 

“If we stop investing in Bowdoin, the value of that diploma is going to stay the same or could even drop.” 

Editor's note: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that the Polar Bear Athletic Fund was a capital initiative. It is, in fact, a largely unrestricted annual fund designated for use by the athletic department.

The women’s volleyball team built upon this season’s early successes last weekend with its eighteenth consecutive win against Colby, followed by a win and loss in non-conference matches against Eastern Connecticut College and Keene State College, respectively.

 The victory over Colby last Friday helped the team bounce back after losing its first home game in two years against Connecticut College on September 19. The win also brought the team back over .500 in conference play.

  “The NESCAC is very competitive,” said Erika Sklaver ’17. “And so every game is a fight for us.”

 The team was able to gain an early lead against Colby in the first set, and beat the Mules in straight sets. Sklaver led the Polar Bears’ offense with eight kills. 

 “Colby was an extremely important game for us, ” said Assistant Coach Kristin Hanczor. “Our goal for the season is to win the NESCAC tournament because that guarantees us to move on the NCAA tournament. We put a lot of extra emphasis on our NESCAC matches to make sure that goal can stay on track.” 

 The team followed that victory with two tournament matches at Keene State on Saturday. The Polar Bears beat Eastern Connecticut handily in the morning but were less succesful in their afternoon match against the hosts—falling in three sets due to a number of errors, injuries and complications.

 “[Keene State] is typically one of the teams towards the top of the list in New England,” said Hanczor. “We fell behind by about 10 points and then started to stick with them but we made a lot of errors in the beginning that put us in a hole we couldn’t get out of."

 The team was also hurt by its lack of attentiveness.

 “I think we didn’t have a consistent focus,” said Sklaver. “We would have moments of greatness and moments of weakness. We played really, really well for 5 or 6 points and really poorly for 5 or 6 points.”

 “Every one was working very hard, but when you’re not working towards one goal it doesn’t work out,” said Christy Jewett ’16. “You all have to be on the same page to be able to get good plays over.”

 The Polar Bears are also working with a handicap right now—two of their 12 players are currently concussed, and only having 10 players available has put them at a clear disadvantage.“It’s hard to plan an entire game because we can’t even fill the court,” said Jewett. “Also Saturday was just a little bit of a trial run—a learning experience. We started off with our alternate system and we’re trying that out.”

 The team’s roster is also young. There are no seniors, only two juniors and six first years.“It’s always tough when you have a young team,” said Hanczor. “You have to rely on underclassmen to step up as leaders, but I think our two junior captains have done a great job.” The first years do not see this as much of a challenge, however.

 “The freshman class has great talent and potential, and I think that’s going to add to the team,” said Sarah Trenton ’18. 

“The enthusiasm of the first years, their excitement and dedication, rejuvenates the upperclassmen who are used to getting in the gym and working hard, but maybe have forgotten how to have a bit of extra fun doing it,” said Jewett.

 This week, the team is focused on preparing for two NESCAC matches against Trinity and Wesleyan. They are working on establishing a more cohesive focus by refining their defensive positioning strategy.

“That [defensive positioning strategy] includes where our passes are when the other team is hitting and where our blockers will be, and making sure we’ll be able to read the other side and get to our defensive spots,” said Sklaver. 

 “[We’re] looking to press forward with a lot of our NESCAC matches,” said Jewett. “I would say that we definitely have been working very, very hard this season. I think we’re a bit inconsistent right now but we’re definitely getting better.”

The team must get into form today for its 8:00 p.m. match against Trinity at Morrell Gymnasium.