Chris Wedeman
Number of articles: 5First article: September 7, 2012
Latest article: November 15, 2013
Popular
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The Way It Should Be Sabra hummus supports Israel’s human rights abuses
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J-Board breaches honor and social codes
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Only Charcoal to Defend From Guy Fawkes to Black Friday: Reconciling November’s holidays
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The Way It Should Be Bowdoin’s alcohol policies are disproportionate in relation to other narcotics
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The Way It Should Be Cockroaches, squirrel sliders, and the decline of useful news
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Only Charcoal to Defend: From Guy Fawkes to Black Friday: Reconciling November’s holidays
November is the month when we descend into winter. Each holiday takes us a little deeper. The sun shone when the month was young, and Halloween parties peppered the campus. I got giddy when I saw a couple Guy Fawkes masks—a symbol of the internet hacktivist group Anonymous, of Occupy Wall Street, and of other anti-government and anti-establishment movements around the world. “We are legion!” yelled one masked Halloweener at one point, echoing the mantra of Anonymous.
I managed to remember the Fifth of November when it came. It received very little news coverage, but Twitter was full of pictures of protestors with Guy Fawkes masks in front of Buckingham Palace, the White House, and other symbols of power around the world. In 1605, Londoners lit bonfires all over the city to celebrate the foiling of Guy Fawkes’ gunpowder plot to blow up the House of Lords. To more and more people now, November 5 is a revolutionary day waiting for Fawkes’ reckoning.
But before I can romanticize a gunpowder plot, with November comes a day that is beautiful for many reasons, and would not tolerate more destruction. Kurt Vonnegut described how on November 11, 1918, “millions upon millions of human beings stopped butchering one another” and the First World War ended. The day was named Armistice Day, and never again were we supposed to have another war like the one that cease fire ended. The day is now known as Veterans Day—and we have had many wars since. Had Vonnegut and I been friends, we would have celebrated our birthdays together on this day, and maybe we would have talked about how we were never supposed to have such wars again.
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The Way It Should Be: Sabra hummus supports Israel’s human rights abuses
Stocking up on food supplies is necessary for any Bowdoin student still awake by midnight. Inevitably, however much you devour at dinner will not last you more than a few hours, and the place to go for dorm snacks is invariably Bowdoin Express. Stocked with various foods including sushi from Little Tokyo and big bags of chips, the convenience store is an excellent place to furnish emergency provisions. Every time I gaze into the refrigerators in the small shop in Smith Union, I can’t help but notice how racks are stacked with dozens of Sabra hummus containers.
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The Way It Should Be: Cockroaches, squirrel sliders, and the decline of useful news
Last Friday, Edward Archbold died after taking part in a cockroach-eating contest in Deerfield Beach, Flor. The prize was a python. Thanks to the CNN website, I know that the very next day the brothers Brandon and Blayne Estes championed the inaugural Bentonville, Ark. squirrel cook-off with their squirrel slider recipe.
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The Way It Should Be: Bowdoin’s alcohol policies are disproportionate in relation to other narcotics
“Sweet baby Jesus,” I thought to myself while gulping down the last few drops of water I could find in my room last Sunday morning. With hands that felt as if they had dried into paper, I pillaged my room for something to drink. After a terrifying moment in which I thought I would die of thirst, I ran to the bathroom and filled a bottle with water, drinking it faster than the sink could refill it. After quenching my thirst, I returned to my grotto-like room, the shades were drawn and the light off. I burrowed into the hallowed covers of my bed, not to emerge until high noon.
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J-Board breaches honor and social codes
I hold that the members of the Bowdoin administration and of the Judicial Board are guilty of breaching the College’s Academic Honor and Social Code. Their crime is one of coercion. They use the implied threat of dismissal from the College to force students into signing an agreement and—by making them sign in groups—to use social pressure to prevent dissent.