The Bowdoin Orient

When senior Kristen Gunther peruses the U.S. travel section in a bookstore, she usually notices that one section is conspicuously missing. "You get down to Philly, and it skips right down to D.C.—there's nothing on Baltimore," she said.

Last Friday, Director of Residential Life Mary Pat McMahon and Director of Student Life Allen Delong sent a letter to the Bowdoin community regarding the content of the March 27 Orient editorial, "Free speech." The message was written to thank the Orient for calling attention to a mistake, as well as to point out an error in the content of the editorial.

Although there are more buildings on campus than ever, the College expects to pay less to heat them this winter than last.

If you want to date, don't come to Bowdoin. At a school where hook-ups out number dates more than three to one, students looking for a dating scene may be sorely disappointed. First year Branden Asemah expected to come to Bowdoin and date a lot of people, but so far "it's just not happening." From what he has seen, the drunken hook-up has taken the place of the date.

For the 2007 fiscal year, Senior Vice President for Investments Paula Volent surpassed President Barry Mills as the highest-paid employee at Bowdoin. While Mills' salary increased, it remained lower than that of all but one other NESCAC college presidents. Information concerning Bowdoin employee salaries was obtained from Form 990, a report that non-profits must file with the Internal Revenue Service. The latest report reflects Bowdoin's spending for the 2007 fiscal year, which began on July 1, 2006, and ended on June 30, 2007.

For spring 2009 course registration, which began Thursday, students will no longer be bumped from first-choice classes in order to increase the enrollment of under-enrolled second-choice classes. Such a policy was implemented during registration for Fall 2008 courses, which took place in May for upperclassmen. It aimed to prevent some courses from being canceled due to an enrollment of fewer than five students, and it affected 23 students' course schedules.

"Yes we can! Yes we can!" These words were chanted by a spontaneous rally of some 200 students that formed on the Quad after president-elect Barack Obama's victory speech on Tuesday night. Shortly after 11 p.m. on November 4, when the networks began to announce Obama as the projected winner, screams of joy reverberated across campus.

As soon as 2010, traveling to Boston could be as easy as crossing Maine Street and hopping on a train. On Tuesday, Governor Baldacci joined members of the Brunswick community and others for the official groundbreaking ceremony of Maine Street Station. Even in spite of the dire state of the economy, construction for the $25 million development is scheduled to begin next week.

Bowdoin's endowment has increased for the sixth-straight year?though not by very much. During the last fiscal year, which ended on June 30, the endowment earned a 1.3 percent return, raising its value to $831 million, from $827 million last year.

In the open dress rehearsal of "Black Comedy" last night, actors clumsily tripped over furniture and ran into each other in almost every scene.

For the first time in years, more students have applied to live in College Houses than there are spaces available. The exact number of applicants applying to each of the eight houses has not yet been tallied, but overall, 218 students turned in applications for the approximately 200 vacancies next year.

'Tis the season to buy chicken—as long as you don't want wings. Ken Cardone, associate director of the Dining Service, recently discovered that because so many chickens are produced for their wings during Super Bowl season, other parts of the bird are less expensive than usual this time of year.

At 3 a.m. on December 27, 2007, a man and his dog entered an unlocked apartment in Brunswick Apartments where two students were sleeping. The students were woken by the dog, and sighted the man in the doorway before he exited.

Marine Corps Captain Anthony King presented a slideshow on Thursday in Searles Hall of photographs he took during his two deployments in Iraq. The event was sponsored by the College Republicans in honor of Veterans Day. King, who has been in the Marine Corps for 17 years, currently works as a recruiter for the service. While in Iraq, King was part of the initial invasion of Baghdad in 2003 and the recapture of Fallujah in 2004.

It is not every day that Bowdoin actors and dancers perform shows in unconventional venues on campus like the Quad, library, and academic buildings. But for this week, it is every day.

In the four weeks since the semester began, more than 175,000 sheets of paper have been printed in Hawthorne-Longfellow Library (H-L) alone. With such heavy use, the printers in the library and other locations frequently malfunction and prompt exasperated students to wander around campus in search of a working machine.

Bowdoin was greener than usual yesterday. Informed by a campus-wide e-mail from the African American Society, a number of students donned green and black all day to show their support for the "Jena Six." The "Jena Six" are six African American teenagers who were arrested and charged with crimes that were connected to an event involving the assault of a white student at their high school in Jena, Louisiana in December 2006.

When Meredith Segal '08 sat down to dinner in August with presidential hopeful Barack Obama and 13 Capitol Hill big shots, she fit right in. While many of the other guests at the D.C. dinner had names preceded by "senator" or "representative," Segal shared one title with them all: National Co-Chair of "Obama for America." The guests had been invited to share a meal with Obama to discuss his efforts in becoming the next president.

In its 207th academic year, Bowdoin was shaped by a spirit of revising and revamping. From the countless construction projects that spotted campus to the rethinking of policies, the year left the College changed both in its landscape and mindset.

For their final semester of college, eight seniors went back to high school. As the culminating part of their teaching minors, these men and women traded their flexible college schedules for a post that required them to be professionally dressed and in the classroom of a local high school every morning before many of their peers had rolled out of bed. Two weeks ago, these students completed the required 14 weeks of classroom instruction, thus making them eligible to teach in Maine and some other states.

Teach for America expects to be the No. 1 employer of 2007 graduates at Bates, Colby, Amherst, and Williams, but not at Bowdoin. While Bowdoin's size and student body resemble those of these four NESCAC schools, it produces fewer applications to the program. At this year's final deadline on February 18, Teach for America had received 24 Bowdoin applications—about half as many as it received from Williams and Amherst.

More than 30 years after competing on Bowdoin's lacrosse fields, Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian Affairs Christopher Hill '74 still believes in the importance of teamwork.

At Common Hour today, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill '74 defended the agreement with North Korea reached just three days ago at the six-party talks in Beijing. According to Hill, while the current pact does not provide for the complete denuclearization of North Korea, it is an important first step.

Six Bowdoin students went on a 10-day excursion to Israel during Winter Break, and now they wonder why any Jewish student would not take a vacation like theirs. After all, the trip is free.

In her senior year, Sonia Alam is still conducting research that she originally began for a paper that she handed in three years ago. For her first-year seminar in public health, Alam wrote a paper comparing the AIDS epidemic in Thailand to that of Malaysia. Now, Alam, a sociology major, is doing her senior honors project on the institutionalization of AIDS in Malaysia, and she points to the paper she wrote for her first-year seminar as the origin of her interest in the subject.

Nancy Pennell does all her reading and rarely skips class, but she has no interest in graduating from Bowdoin. After all, she already received a bachelor's degree in 1964 from Wellesley College. Now she's back in school, and this time, she is here just for fun.

Before a race, junior Phil Shaw, 21, is not worried about how he will feel three hours into the competition. Nor is he focused on how he will be holding up after six, or even 10 hours of running. Instead, Shaw says, "It matters how you feel 20 hours in."

Director of Residential Life Kim Pacelli can expect to receive between 30 and 40 calls from parents during the housing lottery each spring.

Sophomore Willy Oppenheim lives off-campus in the single of his dreams, and he does not pay a cent for housing fees or rent. Granted, he does not have access to running water, electricity, or even a bed?but commodities such as these are not to be expected in a tent.

Since its creation earlier this semester, the Advisory Committee on Darfur has been formulating a course of action to recommend to the Board of Trustees regarding college investments potentially linked to the situation in Darfur, classified by the U.S. government as genocide. Several peer institutions have recently announced divestment from companies that do business with Sudan.

Below the poverty line. Upper class. Lower class. These are among the terms with which students chose to publicly identify themselves at a retreat sponsored by the Posse Foundation.

If you're looking to shell out a little cash for a new polo shirt, you don't have to look any farther than Bowdoin: Since 2005, a little red lobster has begun to replace the traditional Polo horse and Lacoste alligator logos all over Maine and beyond.

The men's basketball team captured five victories over break. The team defeated University of Maine-Farmington 84-71, Plymouth State 74-68, Tufts 84-70, Husson 80-74, and Colby 62-47. They lost to St. Anselm 97-71 and Bates 57-54.

At the premiere of the December Dance Concert last night, the performers fused a diverse collection of dance numbers to create one cohesive show. The Bowdoin College Department of Theater and Dance presented the first of three performances of the concert?the others will happen tonight and tomorrow night at 8:00 p.m. in Pickard Theater.

Under a lifeless disco ball in Helmreich House, roughly 20 members of the Bowdoin and Brunswick community sat quietly in rows Tuesday evening to listen to poet Aimee Nezhukumatathil's sprightly, melodic voice. The bar was temporarily transformed into a display table for Nezhukumatathil's latest book, Miracle Fruit, along with a sampling of coffee, coco, and cider.