The Bowdoin Orient

The night after Thanksgiving, I visited a damp beach in Lisbon, Portugal with a huddle of Bowdoin study-abroad students.

If you’re stuck in continental Europe, this sand is just about the closest you can get to American soil. If you’re stuck in America, there’s a candy cane of a lighthouse in Lubec, Maine—West Quoddy Head, first built in 1808 for $5,000, about four hours north of Brunswick—that is just about the closest you can get to Europe. 

Another way of thinking about this is: from Portugal, you can often catch Europe’s last sunset. From Maine, you can often catch America’s first sunrise. 

I did not visit the Lubec lighthouse during my time at Bowdoin. Like babysitting for a professor, walking through L. L. Bean in the middle of the night, or joining an intramural team, it is something I thought I would do. Bowdoin after all was once the first college in America to see the sunrise, a fact I was reminded of every time I walked across the tired wax of Smith Union’s giant linoleum sun. 

But if I once longed for superlatives and hyperboles (being the farthest East! Seeing those first red rays!) I now longed for closeness—a collapse of time or space, a quick reunion with Super Snack. This beach was, literally, the nearest I could get. 

You have probably seen Lynchville, Maine’s “international” signpost, a 1940s-era sign displaying directions to—among other local towns—Paris (15 miles, turn right) and Peru (46 miles, left). I’m living in Italy for the year, in rural Sicily, and I sometimes find myself wanting to come upon a sign a like this: a real one though, with a neat list of mileages to my parents in Oregon, my sister in Rhode Island, my friends in Maine, Utah, China, Mexico. 

In the weeks after graduation, the first novel I read was “Mating,” by Norman Rush. It was worth the raised eyebrows I got on the airplane. The narrator is a wry female anthropology student working on her thesis in rural Botswana in the early 1980s. To say that I related to her isolation is an understatement. 

When I arrived in Sicily—working remotely for a woman I hadn’t met, living in an empty villa without a car, surrounded by hundreds of acres of vineyards and waves of 100-degree heat—I could go days at a time saying only a few sentences.

I didn’t speak Italian, and no one around me spoke English. Terrified of sounding like an idiot, I chose to feel like one instead, and I kept to myself. Before bed, I swatted mosquitos and read Rush in my basement room, which has one small, barred window and a wardrobe quilted in pink, floral satin. 

There is a great line in “Mating” where the narrator talks about her “lore package.” As I understand it, this is the narrative shield we carry to make sense of—and make safe of—the world. She chooses to believe that lions are “torpid during the day,” thus buying herself a break from fear. 

Since graduation, I’ve been assembling and dissembling my own lore package, trying to decide what myths I will hold onto. Some are easy to keep: things that I recycle will not end up in foreign landfills, my freckles will not become skin cancer, snakes do not come into houses. 

Others are harder. I tell myself that with May’s commencement anniversary, I will no longer catch myself imagining a walk across the Quad, or a Coles Tower party. Twelve months, and I’ll be cushioned by the new, raw post-grad state of the Class of 2015. I think of it almost on medical terms. Get through this flu season, and I’ll breathe easy for decades.  

And in reality, that Portuguese beach was a rare indulgence. I rarely let myself miss Brunswick these days. I miss friends, sure, but with Facetime and Facebook and facing emails, those ocean-miles can quickly feel insignificant. 

At dinner that night in Lisbon—after over-sauced fish, fluorescent lighting and a free round of port—a friend had interrupted the conversation to ask, point blank, if I felt lonely in Sicily. 

I surprised myself when I realized that, at the end of the day, I was not. 

This is one thing I am removing from my lore package, then: hyper-connection as a means of self-betterment. I hauled this aim through adolescence without questioning it.

Now, apart from the handful of people I work with every week, there is nobody to make me wonder if I should be connecting more, or if I’m connecting right. There is nowhere to go after 10 p.m., so there is nothing to FOMO. Sheer physical impossibility means social interaction can’t be my goal. Strangely, it’s a relief. It’s life off the hook.

I’m living a sort of grotesque caricature of the watered down “life per second” that Toph Tucker ’12 wrote about as a post-graduate on this same page last year. It’s glaringly obvious that my life here can’t approximate the density of college. I might be spared something in this. 

When I visited home for the holidays—flying both transatlantic and trans-America, across over 6,000 miles of salted water and frozen earth—I happily resumed my social rhythms. But on the days and nights when I stayed home, I let myself feel a flicker of satisfaction. 

I felt a thrill of self-sufficiency, a slight shock that I wasn’t trying to distract myself from myself. Bowdoin taught me lots of things—its people taught me lots of things—but I’m not sure I learned how to sit tight with my own heartbeat. I didn’t have to. 

On January 30, Brazil celebrated Saudade Day, in honor of the Portuguese word that imbues Lisbon’s blue-tiled alleys and seven hills. Saudade connotes a state of deep nostalgia and, often, a repressed knowledge that the object of longing will never return. 

In 1660, Portuguese writer Manuel de Melo described the feeling as “a pleasure you suffer, an ailment you enjoy.”

The sentiment seems an inevitable part of growing up, taking stock and looking back. I dare you to stare across the ocean and not feel a tinge of it. But if I sometimes feel this way—a loss of community or childhood or dream—it’s on de Melo’s terms. 

After all, there is a quiet pleasure and enjoyment in realizing you have something to miss. And when it feels lonely, you have your lore.

Erica Berry is a member of the Class of 2014.

Updated 12:31 p.m.: A previous version of this article did not include the interview with Hugh Ratcliffe ’15.

Seven Bowdoin students stood by or zip-tied their arms to a White House fence and were consequentially arrested for “blockading passage” last Sunday. In the 1200-person, student-led protest opposing the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, 398 students were arrested and 80 colleges represented.

The bill approving the $5.4 billion TransCanada pipeline is currently awaiting President Obama’s signature. It would transport crude oil from the Alberta Tar Sands to refineries on the U.S. Gulf Coast.

Thirteen Bowdoin students—five first years, two sophomores, and six juniors—traveled to Washington D.C. for the protest. Most were members of the Bowdoin Democrats or Bowdoin Climate Action. Many wished to remain anonymous to the Orient.

According to Matt Goodrich ’15, one of the student organizers of the national XL Dissent protest, the students each posted a $50 fee to be released after a few minutes in jail. They face no court date and were not technically charged or convicted.

“If I was asked if I’d ever been convicted of a crime, the answer would be no,” said Hugh Ratcliffe ’15, another protest participant. “It’s an infraction, so legally speaking, it’d be the same thing as me getting arrested for failing to walk my dog with a leash. But the political statement transcends the charge.”

Goodrich agreed.

“I think we sent the message to President Obama that the youth of this nation are going to hold him accountable and we voted for a climate change champion and not for a pipeline president,” said Goodrich.

The protest began with a morning rally at Georgetown University and then moved past John Kerry’s house, where students unfurled a huge mock oil spill tarp urging for the pipeline’s rejection.

Once in front of the White House, students planning to face arrest either tied themselves to the fence or lay on the tarp in biohazard suits splattered with black paint to stage a “die-in” on Pennsylvania Avenue.

“The police gave us a few warnings, saying ‘You’re going to get arrested if you don’t move’ which we knew. There was a lot of chanting, a lot of goodwill,” said Goodrich. “People were clearly dedicated.”

Ratcliffe said that the scope of the protest was inspiring.

“I was surprised by the passion that a lot of people seemed to share on this issue, because until now it’s been mostly a personal feeling that I’ve had, so to gather with over a thousand kids who feel the same way about something that I feel is very important," he said.

Goodrich said the arrests of hundreds of students took a few hours, as the police methodically moved first female participants and then male participants from the scene in police vans.

The protesters were given six warnings to vacate the premises, and after no one moved, the police began arresting about five people every 15 minutes, according to Ratcliffe.

“The police were respectful, it took a long time—you don’t really think about how long you’re going to be on the fence when it’s raining," Goodrich said. "On the whole it was simple.” 

Bowdoin students each paid $10 for a chartered bus, traveling with over 50 student protestors from Colby, Bates, U-Maine Orono and the College of the Atlantic. The remainder of the $7,000 bus cost was paid for with a $2,000 donation from 350Maine and a $5,000 donation from a source that Goodrich would not identify. They also raised $2,050 in a crowd-sourced fundraising campaign that ended last night, which they will use to pay back some donations.

After the all-night bus ride from Maine, students arrived the morning of Saturday, March 1 and spent the day in breakout training sessions with activists from other colleges.

“We learned the details of the action the next day and agreed to compose ourselves and act with dignity and respect to everyone involved and to not do anything crazy,” said Goodrich.

The chartered bus was committed to a 7 p.m. departure on Sunday evening due to weather forecasts, but arrest proceedings took longer than expected. As a result, Goodrich said that he thinks fewer students sought arrest than might have otherwise. Though 13 Maine students were arrested, he speculated that the number might have been 20 in better conditions.

XL Dissent organizers reached out to Goodrich in January to help play a planning role. He joined their media team, participating in weekly phone conferences about the scope of the protest and relying on the recently formed Maine Students for Climate Justice network to recruit student-activists across the state. 

Goodrich said that President Barry Mills was supportive of the students’ plan to travel to D.C., a sentiment echoed by many members of the student body.

“I totally support what they did and I wish that I had known more about it, because I would have been interested,” said Sara Hamilton ’16.

Other students questioned the protest’s effectiveness.

“I’ve heard the counter-argument that people seem upset that they go and do that, spend five minutes in jail, and think they can tweet about it as if they’ve been through some hardship, but I don’t think that’s what their goal was,” said Eduardo Jaramillo ’17. “It was to raise awareness.”

Hamilton agreed that the power of the protest was not necessarily in its potential for immediate change, but rather in in its empowerment for oft-disillusioned American youth.

“I don’t feel like I can do anything, but I know you’re not supposed to have that feeling,” she said. “At least [the protestors] are standing up for what they care about."

After an environmental review by the State Department that estimated the XL Pipeline will not have a “significant” effect on greenhouse gas emissions because the oil would likely reach the market in other ways, the pipeline has undergone a 30-day public comment period, which ends this Friday.

John F. and Dorothy H. Magee Associate Professor of Government Laura Henry said that at a time when both international and domestic attempts at climate change legislation have floundered, the impetus for change via civil disobedience is large.

“Do I think Obama would walk out of the White House and meet with these people? No, but there’s the chance that he would call someone like the Environmental Defense Fund, some more moderate group, and say, ‘Hey, what can we do here? Do some research for me, brainstorm, give me some policy options,’” she said, citing what political scientists call the “radical flank effect.”

Whether or not this surge of student-focused pressure on Obama will sway him to reject the XL Pipeline will remain unknown for a few months.

“His standing in the environmental community has already been affected by the inability to move ahead with significant climate change policy initiatives,” said Professor of Government Allen Springer.

Though Henry said she is “not entirely optimistic” about Obama rejecting the XL Pipeline, she said that the move would dovetail with his restated commitments to fighting climate change.

“The students are right in thinking about how Obama wants to think about his legacy," she said. "He is the youth president.”

- John Branch and Matthew Gutschenritter contributed to this report.

Student drivers will lose weekday access to 63 parking spaces in lots at the Maine Street College Houses when they are converted into spaces for visitors, faculty and staff this August. 

Senior Vice President for Finance and Administration and Treasurer Katy Longley announced the pending shift in an all-campus email yesterday afternoon. The changes come as part of the College’s evolving plan to provide more central parking spaces for visitors and staff and to cut down on the long-term storage of student cars close to campus. 

The email also announced that nine spaces on North Campus Drive will be transferred to the Dayton Lot behind David Saul Smith Union as part of this summer’s construction at North Campus Drive and Hyde Plaza. In her email, Longley said that the North Campus Drive construction is “designed to improve pedestrian safety; to create new ADA-compliant parking spaces and a sidewalk; to slow traffic; and to increase green space in this area adjacent to the Bowdoin Quad.” 

When President Obama cold-called Richard Blanco and asked him to be the 2013 inaugural poet, he gave the poet three weeks to write three potential poems. Working from his home in Bethel, Maine, Blanco said he circled and circled until he landed on the first line of “One Today,” the poem he read to over one million people at Obama’s inauguration last January in Washington, D.C.

“I kind of compare it to tuning an instrument, where you hear that right chord and something amazing happens—and, for me it was that first line, ‘When the sun rose on us today,’ which was when I was watching the sun rise over Bethel and the mountains, or the pines actually,” he said. “From there, the poem sort of started writing itself.”

Blanco visited campus last Friday, October 25, headlining Family Weekend with a day that included a student poetry workshop, public book signing, and an evening reading that filled the seats of Pickard Theater. His visit was funded by the Office of Student Life, Office of Multicultural Student Programs, the Resource Center for Sexual and Gender Diversity, and the Latin American Studies Program.

Despite the termination of nonessential government funding after Tuesday’s budget deadlock, Bowdoin expects no direct financial impacts.

“The College has drawn down the funds it needs for student loans and grants so we don’t expect any financial issues in the near term,” wrote Senior Vice President for Finance and Administration & Treasurer Katy Longley in an email to the Orient.

Though the National Science Foundation is currently closed to funding requests, campus research on grants already procured will continue, according to Longley. For these grants, the College pays research expenses up front and seeks reimbursement later.

When Robi Hutchinson left his job as a producer in Hollywood and moved home to Brunswick two years ago, he knew he had to find a good breakfast haunt.

"I got on the Internet and the only place that had any kind of ratings was Jen’s Place," he said. "This was the spot."

Jen’s Place is tucked inside a low one-level corrugated metal building on Brunswick’s Stanwood Street. It is neighbored by the Northern Chi Martial Arts Center, sidelined by the railroad tracks, and across the street from a fleet of lawnmowers parked on the grass outside of the Brunswick Home and Garden Shop. The restaurant serves breakfast seven days a week and opened its doors four years ago this month. It is frequented by Bowdoin students, but tucked just far enough from campus that most of them come via car or bike.

Bowdoin has decreased its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions ahead of schedule, putting the College on track to pass the benchmarks of its 2009 Carbon Neutrality Implementation Plan, according to a Sustainable Bowdoin report released by last week. The 14,467 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent that the College released in fiscal year (FY) 2012 was 17 percent below the predicted level of 17,437 metric tons. Since FY 2008—when 19,153 metric tons were released—the College has decreased its emissions by 24 percent, and has surpassed expectations for emissions reductions since 2010.

New student-run environmental initiatives on campus aim to give students the chance to stand behind more than just their ballot votes next week.

The day before this year’s annual back-to-school lobster bake, Michael Rodrigue single-handedly cut and trimmed 440 steaks for the meal. Rodrigue is Bowdoin’s designated meat cutter, responsible for ordering and preparing the pork, beef, chicken breasts, and sausage served at Thorne and Moulton dining halls.

The talk of the Quad is different in the summer, when the lines that separate Bowdoin and Brunswick, tourist and town resident, student and visiting scholar, become even more blurred.

College students propelled Facebook to popularity, and at Bowdoin, they are now experimenting with deactivation en masse. Last Monday, Tyler Patton '12 and Ruiqi Tang '13 launched massdeactivation.blogspot.com, the site of their self-proclaimed "social experiment" that urges Bowdoin students to disable their Facebook profiles from February 8 to March 8. During this time, profiles will not be deleted but dormant, allowing students the option to resume their presence on the social network after the trial period.

Bowdoin students may recognize newly-elected San Francisco mayor Ed Lee '74 from his flashy web campaign ad, which featured rappers M.C. Hammer and Will.i.am, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone, and Giants closer Brian Wilson, among others. Lee's November 9 victory made history: he is the city's first mayor of Chinese descent. A third of San Francisco's population identifies as Asian American.

The international Occupy Wall Street movement hit the College Tuesday night when posters advertising "Occupy Bowdoin" appeared in Smith Union. Robbie Benson '15 is the self-proclaimed "kid behind the posters," the driving force for a group that he hopes will heighten discussion about social class and socioeconomic inequality at the College.

In the Independent Film Channel show "Portlandia," Fred Armisen of Saturday Night Live fame said anything can be art if you just "put a bird on it." He was referring to art in that other Portland, my hometown, that "alternative universe" somewhere north of California where "young people go to retire" (thank you again, "Portlandia").

The Orient checked in with some recent alumni to see what they have been up to since leaving Bowdoin. For Nathan Chaffetz '08, the Bowdoin Cable Network segments he sent in with his resume landed him his first job post-college. "I primarily rant[ed] about things I didn't like at the school," he said, but it "definitely got me my first job, and I'm very thankful for it." This first job was in Los Angeles, where he booked people and organized shoots for Showtime's "Penn and Teller Bullsh*t!" a libertarian-leaning documentary television series that aimed to debunk misconceptions, popular fads and pseudoscientific ideas.

The School Street apartments will live up to their name beginning next fall, when the College will absorb the property as campus housing. The School Street building is a freestanding house that is currently organized into four apartments and rented by Bowdoin students as off-campus housing, but the change will allow the College to offer the units in the Residential Life housing lottery.

In a city where one-third of the population is of Asian descent, Edwin M. Lee '74 made history when he was sworn in as San Francisco's first Asian-American mayor. Elected by the city's Board of Supervisors, Lee will serve out the remaining 11 months of former mayor Gavin Newsom's term. Newsom left office after being elected as Lieutenant Governor of California.

Flu immunization is not high on the to-do list of most Bowdoin students. The Health Center reported that an uncommonly low number of students sought vaccinations this semester. Typically, by Thanksgiving Break, 500 to 600 students request the shot; only 200 students have been vaccinated so far this year.

Eight Bowdoin students and three faculty contibuted to Larry Bock's effort to "[bring] science back to center stage," with the College's delegation manning both robotics and neuroscience booths at the festival in Washington D.C. last weekend. Executive Director Larry Bock '81 founded the first-annual US Science and Engineering Festival with the firm belief that "society gets what it celebrates."