In the wake of the study published by the New York Times earlier this year about economic diversity and class mobility at colleges in the United States, the Orient interviewed a number of students on campus about their experiences with class and how it has impacted their time at Bowdoin. Though voices represented in this article spanned from every point on the socioeconomic spectrum, many expressed a similar sentiment: honest discussions about class are difficult, but critical.

With a topic as charged as class, before any productive conversations can take place, all students—regardless of background—must be honest and open with themselves about their own class standing.

Earlier this year, during the first-year Orientation events, students were asked to stand up in response to statements with which they identified. “Stand up if you’re lower class.” A few students stood. “Stand up if you’re middle class.” Many students rose. “Stand up if you’re upper class.” At this point, only a few students stood up.

This exercise reflects a broader misunderstanding of our class identities. The data from the aforementioned study clearly display a different reality than this self-selecting portrait. We understand the inclination to identify as middle class—all of us have done it. That being said, know what it means to be middle class. It is imperative to recognize the reality of one’s actual socioeconomic class.

If you are unaware how much money your family makes, call your parents and ask them how much they made last year. Figure out where this places you on the national economic spectrum, as well as Bowdoin’s own spectrum.

We must constantly acknowledge that Bowdoin has many very wealthy students. Fifty four percent of students pay $63,500 per year to attend this school. That is more than the median household income in the United States. At Bowdoin, the median household income is $195,900 annually, which means that half of the student body is in the top six percent nationally, according to 2014 census data. This can come to feel normal, but we have to remind ourselves it is not. It is immediately obvious that most of Bowdoin’s population is not middle class.

If everyone tries to identify as such, they excuse themselves from participating in a conversation in which they have to acknowledge their wealth. A situation in which the only people talking about class are those whose financial realities inhibit them from maintaining the middle-class illusion is unhealthy. Misconceptions of class at Bowdoin exacerbate class inequality on campus and are equally harmful to every student.

Just as with issues of race and other social hierarchies, productive conversation and change need to stem from those with privilege and power. Talking about class is uncomfortable no matter who you are, but if you are on the wealthier end of the spectrum, it is your turn to understand your financial reality and how it affects those around you.

This editorial represents the majority view of the Bowdoin Orient’s editorial board, which is comprised of Julian Andrews, Harry DiPrinzio, Dakota Griffin, Jenny Ibsen, Meg Robbins and Joe Seibert.

What is the common good to you? This a question that is asked of Bowdoin students to the point of exhaustion, at panels like the one on Wednesday night and in every-day dining hall conversations. But the question persists for good reason. Bowdoin is an institution that is dedicated to educating students who serve the public good; it has a responsibility to help students understand how this can be done.

We feel that Bowdoin is inadequately fulfilling this responsibility. At Bowdoin today, there are very few ways that we engage with the common good outside of the McKeen Center for the Common Good. As a result students lack a conception of how they can truly serve the common good in ways other than direct community service. 

The McKeen Center does an incredible job organizing community-based work that both has real and positive impacts on communities and educates students about their roles and ability to serve the common good. The McKeen Center recognizes that common good means more than just community service and there are a number of programs they put on that demonstrate this broadened understanding, from alternative break trips to What Matters discussions to the Leading for the Common Good program. 

However, we believe it is critical to translate that understanding to the larger campus community.

The McKeen Center organizes a Community-Engaged Courses program incorporating a community-learning component into classes each semester. This program provides a vital opportunity to teach students different ways in which community engagement can lead to the common good, beyond merely community service. They provoke reflection of personal responsibility and address intersectional issues through working directly with local groups or municipal governments.

For example, in the past, students in earth and oceanographic science classes have applied their in-class learning to studying nearby Maine environments, and environmental studies courses have collaborated with non-governmental organizations to make maps using geographical information systems (GIS). 

This semester, there are eight such courses, but half of them are in the education department. This program should be expanded to include more courses and more departments. 

However, our dedication to the common good should surpass our academic careers and the local Maine community. Fulfilling our responsibility to the common good means keeping it as a priority in our lives even as we leave Bowdoin. This means factoring it into our career choices, what we choose to do with our income, how we spend our free time and our day-to-day decisions as citizens. If the College serves the common good, it has a responsibility to follow through with the ideals it promotes and help students transition from a common good defined at Bowdoin to one that is applicable to the greater world. 

Learning about our individual roles and responsibilities within the greater communities we inhabit is critical to discovering how we as students can have an impact beyond Bowdoin. This means moving the message beyond the walls of the McKeen Center and into classrooms, dining halls and dorms—and then into our workplaces, homes and families. 

This editorial represents the majority view of the Bowdoin Orient’s editorial board, which is comprised of Julian Andrews, Harry DiPrinzio, Jenny Ibsen, Meg Robbins and Joe Seibert.

In an email on Monday, Dean of Student Affairs Tim Foster notified the campus of the formation of a working group focused on developing a policy for off-campus housing and improving upperclassmen housing options. The email included a demographic breakdown of students living off campus.

The data presented by Foster reveal inequity between students who live off campus and the student body as a whole. The numbers indicate that these students are more likely to be male, wealthy, white or a member of a varsity team. Of the students living off campus, only 28 percent receive financial aid, which is considerably lower than the 44.7 percent of the total student body that receives aid.

The College is right to be transparent about these statistics (and we encourage the same degree of transparency with respect to other spaces on campus, such as the College Houses and the athletic department). The data presented in Foster’s email confirm many of our suspicions about the skewed demographics of off-campus housing, and they highlight a need for a proactive off-campus housing policy that remedies the demographic imbalance among students living off campus. 

As this group moves forward there are important dynamics it should be aware of.

An inclusive off-campus housing policy would ensure that students who receive financial aid have an equal opportunity to live off campus as those who do not. In most cases, the College factors the cost of living off-campus for students receiving financial aid into the total billed expenses meaning students who receive financial aid and live off campus don’t pay the college room fee. However, many students receiving financial aid are unaware of this policy and assume that living off campus is not a feasible option for them. Just as the College holds information sessions for students who want to study abroad, the College should hold information sessions for students who express interest in living off campus, where information about financial aid is transparent. 

The off-campus lottery, as it was implemented this January, is biased towards accepting large groups. According to an email from Director of Housing Operations Lisa Rendall, a student who is accepted to live off campus will be able to “pull” the rest of their group into their house. This means that the larger a group, the more entries it effectively has in the pool. These large groups have the ability to create exclusive social spaces that dominate campus culture.

Finally a cap on off-campus housing has the potential to inadvertently cause off-campus rent to rise, perpetuating the bias of off-campus living toward wealthier students. If there is a constant demand for students to live off campus, coupled with the limited 200 available spots, it is possible that landlords will raise rent prices to match or exceed Bowdoin’s housing fee. 

Moving forward, the College has to recognize that students will continue to live off campus. If Bowdoin intends to regulate the off-campus housing policies, it is the College’s responsibility to develop a policy that makes off-campus housing as accessible as possible to prevent further social divide.

In the wake of the election, some professors have confronted our political landscape in and out of the classroom, modeling healthy discussion, writing letters to President Trump and incorporating current events into their curricula. 

Last Friday, Professor of Government Paul Franco moderated an event where attendees discussed the value of ideological diversity on campus. This Thursday, a panel of professors from the government and legal studies department offered their perspectives on Trump’s election and its implications. 

In January, Professors Mark Battle and Madeleine Msall partnered with physics professors across the country to pen a letter to Trump advocating he take widely accepted ideas about climate change into account when making policy. 

In an Orient op-ed this week, Professor of History Patrick Rael argues that a fierce commitment to politically neutral yet discerning academic values is more important now, in an era of alternative facts.

In addition, we have noticed some of our professors are integrating discussion of current political events into classes, giving an example of how the knowledge and skills we are learning can be used to analyze, understand and influence the world.

For example, Assistant Professor of Government Maron Sorenson’s Judicial Politics course has left parts of the syllabus open to address the nomination of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court in the coming weeks. A class in the gender, sexuality and women’s studies department has routinely been leaving time at the beginning of class to discuss news and current issues. A few classes addressing executive power and political regimes have highlighted historical connections with the present. 

In discussing the recent actions of our professors, we have been reminded of the oft-repeated alumni line: “Bowdoin taught me how to think.” Likely, our professors have been teaching us “how to think” since we stepped foot on campus, but the immediate link between current events and professors’ actions has made that much more apparent. We are learning to confront and evaluate ideas that oppose our own, to use our knowledge to encourage political action and to use information and methodologies from the classroom to solve problems other than those posed in homework assignments. 

While we have enumerated several positive examples, there’s a sense on campus that many professors aren’t engaging substantively with current issues. Making time for this type of learning is especially important in this new age. Professors should find a way to connect academics and current events, whether it be in or out of the classroom. Doing so shows us that our learning is relevant, giving us the intellectual tools to engage with the world using deeper frameworks of knowledge. 

This editorial represents the majority view of the Bowdoin Orient’s editorial board, which is comprised of Julian Andrews, Harry DiPrinzio, Dakota Griffin, Meg Robbins and Joe Seibert.

In an email to the Bowdoin community on January 30, President Clayton Rose wrote that President Donald Trump’s executive order banning immigrants from seven Muslim-majority countries and all refugees “has the potential to harm students, faculty, and staff at colleges and universities across the country—including here at Bowdoin—and also to put their family members at risk.”

The immigration order immediately affected Bowdoin students, faculty and staff from the seven implicated countries, and on Monday Rose wrote that the College is working to provide these community members access to legal counsel.   

In an email to the Orient yesterday, Rose said that, with regard to Trump’s policies, “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.” 

Rose’s statements and the actions the College is taking to support its students are valuable. But Rose and the College have a responsibility to proactively speak out against Trump’s actions, separate from their impact on Bowdoin as an institution. In short: Bowdoin needs to do more.

The administration has a significant degree of power that, if leveraged effectively, can be used for proactive resistance. 

As students, our role in this is most important. If we want our college to speak on our behalf, we need to hold it accountable and make explicit demands.

Public opposition is a step in the right direction, but we can call on Rose and the administration to put pressure on our Maine and federal representatives. We can demand that the school schedule more programming addressing contemporary political and social issues. We can demand that professors find ways, in and out of the classroom, to convey knowledge and skills to do good in the Trump era. 

In May of 1970, students at Bowdoin voted to strike in opposition to America’s military action in Southeast Asia. President Roger Howell Jr.’s actions that spring are notable because they matched the school’s public policy to student political demands about an issue unconnected to the interests of the College.

But the student demands came first. Members of the Bowdoin community have already taken action, such as participating in women’s marches and last week’s protests at airports. But if we are serious about pressing for change, the intensity and frequency of our actions and demands need to increase. As the Orient editorialized on May 6, 1970, “What we ourselves have often failed to grasp is that we are the college, if we want to be.”  

If we’re unified in our demands and speak as as a student body, Rose would be wise to follow the example Howell set in 1970 and align the College’s actions with the voices of its students.

A Bowdoin alumnus signed E.B. wrote in the May 1970 edition of the Bowdoin Alumnus, “What was the alternative to the suspension? To have conducted business as usual? To have told seniors, many of whom are only weeks away from going to war, that they should stick to their books because their President knows best?” Neutrality is not an option, and lack of action in this case is equivalent to neutrality. 

The Bowdoin student body is disproportionately wealthy, with a fifth of students hailing from the top one percent of the income spectrum, according to a study by the Equality of Opportunity Project republished in the New York Times last week. The study indicates that socioeconomic diversity at Bowdoin remained largely the same between 1998 and 2009, and data published in the Orient this week shows that the percentage of students receiving financial aid between 2008 and 2015 has remained at roughly 45 percent, despite increased spending on aid.

The data shocked some of us, but others felt it matched their perception of Bowdoin. This discrepancy is important and shouldn’t be downplayed, as it demonstrates students’ varying levels of consciousness regarding wealth on campus. As students at Bowdoin, we spend surprisingly little time discussing class—both amongst ourselves and with administrators, faculty and staff—considering the dramatic impact that socioeconomic status has on every Bowdoin student’s experience, from buying textbooks to navigating social life.

There are also institutional questions that need to be addressed. Of critical importance among these are Bowdoin’s admissions policies relating to class and increases in the overall cost of Bowdoin.

Need-blind admissions are an improvement over need-based admissions but this 1990s policy is outdated and  there are other ways of improving our admissions practices. If Bowdoin is committed to educating a more socioeconomically diverse student body, there are enough qualified low-income applicants to allow for such change. In order to achieve that goal, the College would need to go beyond need-blind admissions, which is the most progressive admissions policy regarding socioeconomic class that we know of. By further developing an admissions system that actively seeks qualified low-income students, Bowdoin could distinguish itself as a leader on the issue of class equity in elite higher education.

Since 2008, there has been a 3.2 percent average year-to-year increase in comprehensive fee, accompanied by a 3.16 percent average year-to-year increase in average financial aid gift size. These roughly equal increases cancel each other out and keep the number of students receiving aid flat. If Bowdoin wants to substantially increase the socioeconomic diversity of the student body, it needs to either increase gift size faster than the comprehensive fee or stabilize the comprehensive fee. We acknowledge the efforts the College is making to investigate the budget, but the budget (and comprehensive fee) will almost certainly increase again this year. To achieve a more socioeconomically diverse campus, we encourage the community to focus on the budget and hold the College accountable to keeping the comprehensive fee stable or significantly increasing financial aid spending.

Class affects every student at Bowdoin, and we should more thoroughly investigate how it influences our experiences here. This goal requires efforts from students and administrators alike, working together to bring issues of class to the forefront of conversation and taking steps to ensure that the reality of the student body reflects the College’s goals regarding socioeconomic diversity.

This editorial represents the majority view of the Bowdoin Orient’s editorial board, which is comprised of Julian Andrews, Harry DiPrinzio, Dakota Griffin, Meg Robbins and Joe Seibert. 

Earlier this week, MacMillan House advertised a party planned for tonight called Gender Bender. The posters read: “dress as a woman, dress as a man, dress in between, dress best as you can.” Upon creating a Facebook event for the party, MacMillan quickly received criticism: students on campus addressed how the events’ posters implied a gender binary and how the event brought a sensitive conversation into the insensitive environment of a campus-wide party.

One of the major criticisms was the lack of partnership with Gender Matters, a new discussion group and supportive space for trans/genderqueer/non-binary students to come together to share common experiences and seek support from one another. No member of MacMillan House openly voiced knowledge of this student group.

Due to the sensitive nature of the topic, prior to advertising the party, members of MacMillan discussed the event and met with the Bowdoin Queer Straight Alliance (BQSA). Following that meeting, MacMillan planned to host a panel to explore issues of gender before throwing the party. This programming, however, fell through. Although the House’s intent was not malicious, without this fundamental part of the programming the planned campus-wide was still hurtful and offensive for some. The House should have canceled the party as soon as the plans for the panel failed to come to fruition.

In recent years, students have criticized the College Houses for being predominantly white spaces. In addition to racial homogeneity, however, College Houses consistently attract clusters of applicants who are members of similar campus groups and who socialize with similar people. 

The Office of Residential Life’s website describes members of College Houses as “thoughtful leaders in the broader campus community.” In order to be leaders of the greater campus community, however, there must be representation of the student body as a whole in the College Houses. While Bowdoin makes efforts to diversify the overall campus, the College still needs to work to diversify existing spaces, such as the College Houses. This begins with diversifying the makeup of the College House system.

The fact that relevant student communities were overlooked in the planning of the party highlights the lack of social diversity within College Houses. It is important to recognize that for the panel and party to have been properly executed, the makeup of MacMillan—and all College Houses, for that matter—must be representative of all identities that make up the student body. 

College Houses seek to be the “living rooms” of Bowdoin’s campus—but if the College House system is not diverse, how can the Houses be truly welcoming spaces? The current social stratification on campus is exemplified by the homogeneity in College Houses. As we move forward in conversations like these, it is important to be mindful of who the conversations include.

This editorial represents the majority view of the Bowdoin Orient’s editorial board, which is comprised of Marina Affo, Julian Andrews, Steff Chavez, Meg Robbins and Joe Seibert.

Since the election, a petition calling on the administration to designate Bowdoin as a sanctuary campus has circulated among students, alumni and community members. President Clayton Rose emailed all students and employees on November 22 in response, noting that “legal counsel tells us that we have no such power.” The email also expressed that the College will not take action to put community members “in this kind of jeopardy” unless “compelled by law.” He concluded with an expression of support to the community.

In our most recent editorial, the Orient Editorial Board endorsed the establishment of Bowdoin as a sanctuary campus. We stand by the statements we made, but we acknowledge the legal implications explained in Rose’s email and appreciate the clear and honest tone of his communication.

However, the fear and uncertainty among undocumented students and students with undocumented family members remains. Acknowledging that we don’t have a strong understanding of the relevant laws, we believe that Bowdoin can still harness its many resources as an institution and provide support structures for the community beyond campus.

Providing emotional support for undocumented students on our campus was a focus of Rose’s email. In addition to the recognition of members of our campus community, helping students who have undocumented family members should be an equal focus.

The Bowdoin Admissions website expresses a commitment to providing undocumented students “with the support and resources they need to excel.” To accomplish this goal, bringing students with undocumented family members into this conversation is crucial. If a student’s family situation is precarious, they, too, face uncertainty, which provides a barrier to experiencing Bowdoin to the fullest.

Bowdoin has an extensive network of alumni and others committed to the College. There is an opportunity for Bowdoin to harness this network in a new way given the concerns outlined in the sanctuary campus petition.

The College should utilize its resources and take advantage of its far-reaching alumni network to educate and inform undocumented students and undocumented community members about what President-elect Donald Trump’s intended legislation means for them. This could include information about individual rights or available legal counsel.

Expression of support from the campus community for students from all backgrounds should continue to be a focus. This includes facilitated conversations, safe spaces and access to on-campus resources that already exist. In addition, Bowdoin must actively pursue research into what is legally viable given the administrative structure and network available to the College. Though the promise of a sanctuary campus is not legally viable, Bowdoin must take explicit action to assist undocumented students and families in whatever way it is able to. President Rose’s email cannot be the end of this conversation.

This editorial represents the majority view of the Bowdoin Orient’s editorial board, which is comprised of Marina Affo, Julian Andrews, Steff Chavez, Grace Handler, Meg Robbins and Joe Seibert. 

A petition is currently circulating through the Bowdoin community, in Brunswick and beyond, to make Bowdoin a sanctuary campus. According to the petition, this would mean those documented under Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and undocumented peers “are able to remain on campus and focus on their education instead of their fears of being forced to abandon their education and separate from their families.” The initiative comes in response to President-elect Donald Trump’s threat to deport undocumented immigrants from the United States during his presidency.

The petition—addressed to President Clayton Rose, Dean of Student Affairs Tim Foster, Dean of Multicultural Affairs Leana Amaez, Director of the Student Center for Multicultural Life Benjamin Harris and Director of Safety and Security Randy Nichols—seeks to “protect our current and future students from intimidation, unfair investigation, and deportation.” The petition urges administrators to take action prior to Trump’s inauguration on January 20, 2017.

The Orient’s editorial board vehemently endorses the establishment of Bowdoin as a sanctuary campus. In an email to the campus community on November 10, following the debrief of the election organized by the McKeen Center, Rose noted “that Bowdoin is among a small number of institutions in America that are designed and especially well-equipped to engage, understand, and debate ideas, to build the skills necessary to respectfully disagree and bridge differences, and to transform ideas into action.” He continued to note that taking action is “[at the] center of our purpose, and also at the center of our democracy.” Establishing Bowdoin as a sanctuary campus is a way to transform conversations about support into action establishing inclusion.

Many cities, including Portland, Maine, Boston, New York, Washington, D.C, and Seattle are designated sanctuary cities. Sanctuary refers to cities who have pledged to refrain from assisting federal officers seeking to deport undocumented immigrants.

In addition to established sanctuary cities, many campuses across the country have launched similar petitions and staged walkouts over the course of the last week. We believe Bowdoin should join this effort for national action. This is one of many ways the College can take an active, public stance in favor of the Common Good both on and off campus.

Bowdoin as a sanctuary campus not only embodies the Offer of the College, but contributes to the Common Good. Given the nation’s current political climate, working towards the Common Good and ensuring everyone knows that they are accepted and have a true home here is more important than ever. To echo the petition, “This is not a time for silence.”

This editorial represents the majority view of the Bowdoin Orient’s editorial board, which is comprised of Marina Affo, Julian Andrews, Steff Chavez, Grace Handler, Meg Robbins and Joe Seibert.

Bowdoin is in a unique position following the results of Tuesday’s election. People are feeling many things—from elation and joy to pain, sadness and fear. We have an opportunity as a campus to recognize our privilege of living in this intellectual environment, where we are encouraged to think critically and question openly.

For those who want to fight the bigotry of the incoming administration, we must begin to engage actively and productively with those who feel the outcome is the best move for America so that we can demonstrate actively and productively.

This is not a plea to come together and blindly accept the outcome of the election. This is not a plea to suppress the feelings of anger or fear. This is a plea to reform our method of discourse.

If you want empathy from those that did not vote for your candidate, you need to show empathy to those individuals. As difficult as it may be, we must accept that a significant number of Americans feel that Donald Trump’s proposed policies are valid and the change needed for America. While many of us do not agree with this subset of America’s thought process, there are some real fears at the root of the votes they cast.

Dialogue and communication where we listen and fully understand another’s point of view before beginning to respond is how we ought to engage with America’s next four years. In doing this, we can recognize the validity of the fears many Americans feel on both sides of the political spectrum. We can use this understanding to stand up for what we believe in and to fight what we don’t.

For those of us who are disheartened, outraged and otherwise affected by this election outcome, this is the time to mobilize. We can take our better informed discourse and propel it into productive activism. This is the perfect opportunity for different groups to bridge gaps and come together to affect change.

Bowdoin can help provide the skills and tools to push back against the sexism, xenophobia and racism that still runs through America’s veins. Some professors here fought the good fight in the past—our classes can give us the intellectual perspective and speakers and workshops can refine activist skills.

There is a lot to be learned from movements in the 1960s and 1970s in this country that fought for civil rights, women’s rights and against the Vietnam war that can help us ensure that everybody’s civil and human rights are protected, no matter their class, race, ethnicity, immigration status, gender, sexual orientation, ability, etc. It’s time to act now.

This editorial represents the majority view of the Bowdoin Orient’s editorial board, which is comprised of Marina Affo, Julian Andrews, Steff Chavez, Grace Handler, Meg Robbins and Joe Seibert.

In an email to all students and employees on October 12, 2016, President Clayton Rose spoke on the direction of the College regarding its "purpose, culture, opportunity, and innovation." Rose questioned: "How might we enhance the ‘quantitative literacy’ of our students, in much the same way our curriculum is currently designed to enhance their writing skills? Critically, this is not a STEM issue, but rather is something germane to our entire curriculum."

In this email, Rose raises an important point about defining liberal arts and areas of study at Bowdoin in the context of our evolving world. When considering all of the departments at Bowdoin, the categorization of the humanities, such as English or religion, as liberal arts is more intuitive for many than categorizing those that fall under the sciences, such as biology or computer science, as liberal arts.

The value of a Bowdoin education lies in its liberal arts curriculum that explicitly values critical thinking, curiosity and cross-discipline dialogue. Interdisciplinary conversation is only made stronger by the recognition that all types of departments—humanities, science or others—have an equal value in the conversation on liberal arts.

Not everyone, however, shares this point of view. Often, certain departments are criticized for the supposed pre-professional nature of their area of study. Perhaps this point of view is best summed up in an op-ed by an alumnus in the Orient from January 2015, after Rose was named former President Barry Mills’ successor.

"Thank goodness, for instance, we preserve a liberal arts curriculum, despite the fact that the two most popular majors are government and legal studies and economics, whose courses feed directly into careers in law, business and finance. Thank goodness we sustain a classics department, despite our petitions to open up more computer science courses to ensure opportunity for careers in the lucrative high-tech industry."

This interpretation of certain departments Bowdoin misses the goal of liberal arts and the distinction that schools like Bowdoin can draw between the way we teach classes in computer science or economics compared to other educational institutions.

There is a difference between economics and business, physics and engineering and computer science and software development. Bowdoin’s conscious decision to not include programs in these fields is evidence of a commitment to framing a Bowdoin education in any discipline as one that teaches students to be creative and think critically.

Despite this, certain departments are still treated like they do not fit the definition of a liberal arts discipline as well as others. We should affirm our commitment to liberal arts education by highlighting the contribution of these departments in campus-wide culture.

The contributions that each department individually make are key to maintaining strong, productive conversation and research on campus. Recognizing the unique perspective and approach each department employs celebrates the liberal arts education as a whole.

This editorial represents the majority view of the Bowdoin Orient’s editorial board, which is comprised of Marina Affo, Julian Andrews, Steff Chavez, Grace Handler, Meg Robbins and Joe Seibert.

Last year, in the wake of the “tequila” party, a group of students interrupted one of the monthly faculty meetings in order to urge faculty to participate in conversations about race on campus. These students wanted their professors to be involved in issues that exist outside of their classrooms—and they were not the only ones expressing the desire to engage. 

Assuming a student jumps through all the necessary hoops in order to speak at a faculty meeting—which most students do not even know is an option—an opportunity for faculty to respond and engage with that student does not currently exist. Since that meeting last year, a group of faculty has been discussing whether to allow unannounced students to speak at faculty meetings. In addition, at this week’s meeting, a number of professors voiced a desire to engage with what students had expressed in the past. Creating opportunities for this to happen is a valuable pursuit for students and faculty alike.

When students or faculty do have concerns, there should be a forum where students and faculty can talk to one another on a larger scale. Having a monthly meeting—separate from the faculty meeting—where students and faculty are invited to converse and express any concerns would be a step in the right direction. Meetings like this would help bridge the gap that currently exists between students and faculty when it comes to non-academic issues.  

In order to make these meetings as effective as possible, it is important for faculty and students to cultivate personal, non-academic relationships. For both parties to feel comfortable expressing themselves in forums like this, there needs to be a degree of familiarity and openness, which is built through engaging one-on-one outside of class. While students and faculty can individually work with one another to strengthen such relationships, the College should be more involved in encouraging these interactions. 

For example, having a planned dinner that students can directly invite their professors to takes the pressure off of students to bridge the gap on their own. Formalized events like this bring large groups of students and faculty together in a comfortable setting and facilitate the type of bonding that would make participating together in larger meetings more accessible. Events like “Pints with Professors”—a Senior Week event where students can invite their professors to get drinks—is an example of this, but it comes too late in our Bowdoin careers for us to take full advantage of the opportunity. 

Outside of the classroom, connecting with faculty helps Bowdoin feel more like a place students can call home. Constantly surrounded by other people our own age, it can be refreshing to have close relationships with a different age demographic as well as helpful to have advice from people other than our peers. 

Schools like Bowdoin attract faculty that want to cultivate strong relationships with their students. Instituting monthly meetings for students and faculty would accomplish this. These meetings will be the most effective if students and faculty can build strong enough one-on-one relationships so that when they are in larger groups they feel comfortable speaking openly and honestly.

This editorial represents the majority view of the Bowdoin Orient’s editorial board, which is comprised of Marina Affo, Julian Andrews, Meg Robbins and Joe Seibert. 

On Friday, September 30, Director of Safety and Security Randy Nichols released the 2016 Annual Security Report, issued in compliance with the Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act of 1998. Among other things, the Clery Act requires the College to disclose reported sex offenses over the previous three years, defining sex offenses as rape, fondling, incest and statutory rape.

Bowdoin’s policies in regards to sexual assaults have consistently been forward-thinking compared to those of other institutions of higher education. In 2014, the White House Task Force to Protect Students from Sexual Assault issued a report with recommendations to bolster sexual assault policies at colleges and universities. When these recommendations were issued, Bowdoin did not have to amend its policies in order to comply with the task force's counsel—the College had policies in place that met the standards set in every area of the report.

Given that the College has independently set progressive reporting policies (where ‘reporting’ means the College’s disclosure of the number of incidents in a formal report) relative to those of peer institutions, the College should continue along this vein and further improve its formal reporting of sex offenses in its Annual Security Report.

We believe that the College has an obligation to go beyond the guidelines established by the Clery Act. The Security Report should include a broader range of sex offense classifications in order to reflect a more accurate review of sex offenses. Students have a right to know about incidents that may continue to pose a risk to the Bowdoin community.

Since the Clery Report has a limited definition of sex offenses, some occurrences are not officially mentioned. For example, the “Peeping Tom” incidents of last fall are not included in the Security Report because they don’t fall under one of the four aforementioned categories of sex offenses. A person unaffiliated with Bowdoin committed a crime by invading the privacy of Bowdoin students in their residences, which posed a direct risk to student safety, and should have been formally included in the annual report.  

In addition, Bowdoin’s Security Report states that it includes statistics “concerning reported crimes that occurred on campus, in certain off-campus buildings or property owned or controlled by Bowdoin College, and on public property within or immediately adjacent to and accessible from the campus.”

This language is inherently limited. Any crimes, including sex offenses, that occur outside this scope, including those at or near off-campus residences, are not accounted for in the Annual Security Report—and neither are instances involving Bowdoin students farther than the areas “immediately adjacent” to campus.

Not reporting incidents such as these is an oversight. They are relevant to all students, and can directly affect their safety. Formally acknowledging such incidents as part of the College’s reported statistics is necessary. Bowdoin should be a leader among its peers and demonstrate a willingness to go beyond the minimum requirements for officially reporting sex offenses.

This editorial represents the majority view of the Bowdoin Orient's editorial board, which is comprised of Marina Affo, Julian Andrews, Steff Chavez, Meg Robbins and Joe Seibert.

For the 2017-18 academic year, more than 50 professors are eligible to take leave. In the last five years, no more than 34 professors have been on leave at one time.

Sabbaticals are a key element to maintaining an intellectual community at any institution of higher education. A year of leave gives faculty the opportunity to conduct intense, high-caliber research and continue to refine expertise in their area. As a result of new research, faculty can become better professors and bring new ideas into their courses, which helps develop a more dynamic curriculum. Moreover, strong faculty research can bring more grants to Bowdoin, as well as attract distinguished faculty and more highly engaged students. Investments in sabbaticals pay off. 

Sabbaticals provide a net positive for any learning community. However, they are not without negative ramifications for students. When professors go on sabbatical, the College has to replace them with visiting professors to fill the voids within departments. While visiting professors can provide the same quality of teaching as their full-time counterparts, it’s difficult for students to form long-lasting connections with them due to the temporary nature of their positions. 

One of the advantages of a school like Bowdoin is the relationships students build with their professors, as both teachers and mentors. Since visiting professors cannot officially serve as advisors, the opportunity to be a formal mentor throughout a student’s Bowdoin career is lost. Even when informal mentor relationships are developed, a visiting professorship lasts only a few years at most. 

Though such inconveniences pale in comparison to the overall benefits of sabbaticals, the disruptions are amplified if such a large number of professors are absent from campus. Small departments suffer when such a high proportion of faculty are away—it places a burden on both the students and the department as a whole. 

The administration has a responsibility to better regulate sabbatical leave in a way that benefits everyone. At the very least, the College should make sure that individual departments do not disproportionately feel the impact of professors on sabbatical leave.

In addition, more regulations should be placed on the faculty with regards to delaying sabbatical leave. This academic year, 14 of the 45 faculty eligible for leave chose to postpone their sabbatical, which drastically increased the number of professors eligible for the 2017-2018 school year. The administration should place a cap on the number of professors that can postpone their leave in a given year and be more diligent about the future impact of the number of postponements. 

Faculty and administration should be more transparent about long-term sabbatical plans. The administration is aware of the schedule for eligibility and there is no compelling reason why it is kept hidden from students. This would be valuable information for students planning their academic careers at Bowdoin. Releasing the information would come at no cost to those involved but would have a positive impact on both students and departments.

Sabbaticals help a learning institution thrive—there is no question about it. But the College should maintain as much stability as possible for students by trying to keep the number of faculty on leave at a consistent level and being transparent about eligibility for leave.

This editorial represents the majority view of the Bowdoin Orient’s editorial board, which is comprised of Marina Affo, Julian Andrews, Steff Chavez, Grace Handler, Meg Robbins and Joe Seibert. 

For the Class of 2020, Orientation included a new two-part program called “More Than Meets the Eye,” which directly addressed issues of racial diversity on campus. During the first event, which took place before the start of the semester, 16 current students each shared a personal anecdote related to their experiences with race at Bowdoin.

The second event was about keeping an open mind to new perspectives as first years form social ties at the school. The talk was led by Reverend Dr. Jamie Washington, the president and founder of Washington Consulting Group.

Student voices have called for the inclusion of a program on race in Orientation over the past few years. However, controversial events from the 2015-16 academic year—such as the “gangster” party and the “tequila” party—were a critical push to develop this program because they fueled last year’s discussions on race. The fact that the Office of the Dean of Student Affairs instituted this new Orientation program is a positive step forward in the evolution of Bowdoin’s discourse on race.

Sydney Avitia-Jacques ’18, a member of the sailing team, mentioned one such event, which was hosted by her team. The “gangster” party was a critical component of her experience of race at Bowdoin. Openly presenting events like these to first years gives them an appropriate context to inform their future conversations about race at Bowdoin.

Moreover, it is valuable that this particular Orientation event continued into the semester, modeling the fact that conversations about race will happen throughout students’ careers, not just during Orientation. 

There are talks, lectures and discussions dealing with these topics consistently scheduled throughout the year and are open to all students. Consistently taking advantage of these events rather than only engaging when incidents like the “gangster” party occur is crucial for moving towards a more inclusive community.

Furthermore, attending these events and participating in these conversations facilitates a more comfortable environment where students are proactive in having these difficult conversations. If or when instances of cultural appropriation occur, discussions about these events will be more productive since more students will be ready to engage.

An important goal of Orientation is to model how to interact with different parts of our community in a positive way. However, it is also important to strike the right balance of telling first-year students what they can and cannot do. This program did just that.

Uniquely developing this program each year is crucial. Including contemporary stories from current Bowdoin students is important to continue to effectively model productive discourse on race. Giving first years the context of our campus climate while also encouraging first years to engage in conversation about race provides a direction towards a more open community.

This editorial represents the majority view of the Bowdoin Orient’s editorial board, which is comprised of Marina Affo, Julian Andrews, Steff Chavez, Grace Handler, Nickie Mitch, Meg Robbins and Joe Seibert. 

The number of students living off campus has increased over the past few years and is currently at its highest in recent memory. On one hand, students living off campus engage with the town in new ways both personally and economically. On the other hand, incidents of disorderly conduct and noise late at night place stress on a historically civil relationship. 

On Wednesday, Director of Safety and Security Randy Nichols sent an email to the student body regarding complaints received from Brunswick residents over the past two weeks. This email reflects tensions between the town and Bowdoin that exist in part as a result of Bowdoin students living off campus.

For upperclassmen living off campus, the relationship with the town of Brunswick is not the only one that changes. As students gain more independence and autonomy, a rift grows between students living off campus and those who remain in college housing.

Students who live off campus often downgrade their meal plans, and thus eat fewer meals in the dining hall with their peers, spending more time in their houses rather than in campus spaces. On the weekends, social gatherings and parties drift away from College Houses and college-owned apartments to the off-campus houses. There is no denying the divide between students who live on and off campus.

Structural changes need to be put in place to maintain our campus community. This is an opportunity for a mutual effort between the Bowdoin administration and those students living off campus to build a formalized structure with the goal of improving relations in our community.

As the market for renting to Bowdoin students grows, the number of interactions with BPD will inevitably increase. In the past, Nichols has met with off-campus houses informally and on a case-by-case basis. It is important to have these conversations in a more official capacity to clarify expectations for students, the College and the town. Creating a mandatory orientation program for students living off campus facilitated by the Office of Safety and Security, the Brunswick Police Department (BPD) and other relevant administrators would achieve this goal. 

Additionally, providing formal resources for navigating what happens when things go wrong ensures that all parties involved—Security, BPD, students and/or landlords—engage with incidents in a fair and consistent manner. 

Implementing these changes would not be difficult and would help shape a relationship of mutual respect amongst our community as a whole.

This editorial represents the majority view of the Bowdoin Orient’s editorial board, which is comprised of Marina Affo, Julian Andrews, Steff Chavez, Grace Handler, Nickie Mitch, Meg Robbins and Joe Seibert. ​

On Tuesday, the College announced that Bowdoin will eliminate its application fee for first generation applicants and applicants seeking financial aid. This step will have a significant impact in increasing the accessibility of Bowdoin’s application process. Bowdoin has taken a clear stance asserting that ensuring inclusivity in our campus community is at the core of the College’s mission.This systematic change will positively impact the lives of prospective and current students. As one of the nation’s most elite institutions, Bowdoin is in a position to lead the community of higher education towards a future of deliberate and active institutional change. We challenge Bowdoin to continue to be a leader among its peers in addressing national concerns, as it did by becoming SAT-optional, removing loans from financial aid packages and now waiving the application fee for the aforementioned groups of applicants.In deciding to waive the application fee for students for whom it would pose a financial barrier, Bowdoin has recognized that the student body’s composition must change from what it is today in order to fulfill the Offer of the College. This is an acknowledgment of the College’s obligation to the Common Good, decisively affirming the view that a diverse student body is necessary in order to maintain the College’s educational excellence. Most importantly, waiving the fee expands our notions of ‘diversity,’ demonstrating that creating a well-rounded student body is not only about considering gender and race—socioeconomic status is of equal importance.The progress, however, should not stop here. Eliminating the application fee will bring students from new and different backgrounds to campus. Bowdoin has brought these students to the campus but now it needs to make the campus resources equally available to everyone or the cause will be lost. There are explicit institutional changes that should be made to make that possible. To ensure true accessibility, it is Bowdoin’s responsibility to thoughtfully engage with this diversity in background and experience.This involves reflecting upon the different organizations and resources on campus. Do those organizations and resources provide the necessary support such that every student can partake in or utilize them? Additionally, reflection on what the network of Bowdoin students, professors, and alumni means is also important. Is the Bowdoin network the same for every student? Asking questions and having conversations like these is at the core of productive change. Waiving fees is a good start, but let’s continue these conversations on every level. And most importantly, let’s make sure that our campus community adapts with them.

This editorial represents the majority view of the Bowdoin Orient’s editorial board, which is comprised of Marina Affo, Julian Andrews, Steff Chavez, Grace Handler, Nickie Mitch, Meg Robbins and Joe Seibert. ​

Wednesday night, an overflowing audience watched as five professors on stage in Kresge talked about their views on freedom of expression—how it comes into play nationally, on campus and in the classroom at Bowdoin. The conversation consisted of nuanced ideas from professors speaking clearly and argumentatively about the types of discourse allowed on campus and various forms of marginalization—here and in America overall. After each professor spoke, snaps and claps echoed from different parts of the audience. 

It was a diverse crowd of attendees and a diverse group of faculty modeling a conversation for them. The conversation was heated—it got tense and even angry at points. Ultimately, it was messy and left the audience with many more questions than it answered. But, as challenging and inconclusive as it was, it was a space on campus for a public conversation about restrictions to expression. 

Self-censorship happens in the world and on this campus in particular, not that it is a good or a bad thing. And, especially this year, absent or silent voices have even further impacted the course of dialogue. Claims have become defensive and the campus is more divided than we have seen it in our time at Bowdoin. Letting down our guard and allowing for some messy interpersonal engagement is not easy to do, but taking the risk of being imperfect and wrong is exactly what members of the Bowdoin community need to do more.

Classes end on Wednesday, and a week and a half after that we will leave Bowdoin, the majority of us coming back, at the soonest, three months later. We’ll say goodbye for now, and many of us will have the luxury of stepping away from the debates that have occupied Bowdoin this year. A controversial Facebook post will pop up here and there, but, otherwise, most of our communications will stop. 

For all of us, including seniors preparing for their journey into the so-called ‘real world,’ we are presented with a challenge and an opportunity in each moment we confront the world: how do we defend our beliefs while being open to the fact that others think differently? It’s not easy to critically examine personal beliefs, but it is only through being challenged and pushing others that we grow as thinkers, as learners and as generous enthusiasts. Wednesday’s talk was beautifully chaotic. Each person was respected but their views were nevertheless debated unforgivingly. Let’s do more of that.

This editorial represents the majority view of the Bowdoin Orient’s editorial board, which is comprised of Julian Andrews, Jono Gruber, Meg Robbins and Emily Weyrauch.

The sun is shining, the weather is (arguably) nice, the quad is sparkling green after a brief snowy coating and Randy Nichols is filling his polar bear water bottle and gearing up for a big weekend. It’s Ivies, baby.

This fall, the 2015 NESCAC Alcohol and Drug Survey results were released, revealing Bowdoin students’ attitudes on Bowdoin’s alcohol policies and bystander intervention. The survey was first conducted in 2012, and in the three years since then, Bowdoin students have shown improvements in their self-reported “sense of responsibility” to intervene in difficult situations involving intoxicated friends. Bowdoin students have increased 10 percentage points across the board in terms of intervening in the case of a friend driving drunk, vomiting, passing out, harassing others, threatening students, threatening to injure their self, embarrassing their self or drinking to “escape” emotions.

One of the biggest jumps was in sense of responsibility to intervene if a friend was “too intoxicated and might ‘hook up’ with someone.” Whereas in 2012, only 49 percent of students reported that they would intervene, in 2015, 67 percent of Bowdoin students claimed that they would get involved. This increase is encouraging, especially considering the widening of conversations that Bowdoin has been having about sexual assault. It correlates to the increase in Bystander Intervention trainings through Associate Director of Health Promotion Whitney Hogan, which every upper-class student leader is required to participate in. 

The survey asked about “sense of responsibility,” and the results show that the majority of Bowdoin students feel very responsible to step in in a variety of potentially dangerous situations involving alcohol. Now, it’s Ivies! While some of Randy Nichols’ “best memories of Bowdoin” happened during Ivies—we’re very excited for our pictures with you, Randy—it’s also the time of year when we hear most from Randy about drug and alcohol safety. We receive “Survivies” and other protocol emails throughout the week, and Security is present all throughout the weekend. Many Bowdoin students will be choosing to imbibe in some way this weekend, and some of the scenarios presented in the survey may come up. This weekend offers a great chance to put these values into practice and step up when these situations occur in real life. The majority of Bowdoin students claim to feel responsible to do so, and now is the time to make good on those promises.

Ivies can be super fun. We can nap, we can laugh, we can cry and we can nap. And, it’s a time to, thankfully, be ourselves; our attitudes and sense of responsibility have improved greatly, and it’s important to keep it that way.

This editorial represents the majority view of the Bowdoin Orient’s editorial board, which is comprised of Julian Andrews, Jono Gruber, Meg Robbins and Emily Weyrauch.

This year, we have seen the power that Bowdoin Student Government (BSG) can enact. The organization’s actions and responses have become a visible part of campus culture, and BSG frequently shows up on our front page. BSG has been redefining itself and its role on campus. It has released statements of solidarity with the victims of racist attacks at the University of Missouri, as well as two statements of solidarity with students at Bowdoin following the “gangster” party and the “tequila” party. In the fall, students voted in overwhelming support of adding the seat of Multicultural Representative and throughout the year BSG’s “public comment” time has proved itself a heated platform for airing grievances and debate. This has led to an increase in discussions about the role of BSG in representing the student body and the standards it holds itself to. For instance, it has adopted new, more comprehensive procedures for the impeachment of its members and introduced a Good Standing Amendment that allows the BSG Executive Committee to review previously confidential disciplinary records should members fall out of good standing with the College. 

In past years, during the week of BSG Executive Committee elections, we have written an editorial endorsing a candidate for president. This year, though, we think it’s more important to use this space to urge you to vote and to make sure you have all the information you need to make an informed decision. While we used to use our interviews with the presidential candidates to inform the position we took, this year we are posting clips of these interviews online for you to evaluate. We are also presenting you with all of the candidates’ candidacy statements in the Opinion section and we have extensive coverage, both in print and on Twitter, of last Tuesday night’s debates, if you were unable to attend.

Ballots were sent by email to all students this morning, and voting will be open until Sunday night. While we realize BSG has its limits, its position as a governing body nonetheless makes it the face of our student body. If the laws it enacts and statements it makes reflect our campus, it should do a good job of representing us. So, be aware of the information you have available to educate yourself about the candidates. If you have opinions on what BSG should be next year, then you should vote for the candidates you think best represent your interests. If you choose not to vote, know that abstaining is tacit agreement with whatever decisions are made on BSG next year. Seniors, too, can vote in this BSG election, as well as students who are abroad, facts that are often overlooked. Voting in this election—like any other election—is a privilege that we have in deciding what our governing body looks like and how we are represented as students and citizens. This year has shown us that BSG’s actions affect our lives, which makes our decisions as voters all the more important. 

This editorial represents the majority view of the Bowdoin Orient’s editorial board, which is comprised of Julian Andrews, Jono Gruber, Meg Robbins and Emily Weyrauch.

We know there is a byline at the bottom of this editorial, but here are the people who write it each week. Our names are Julian Andrews, Jono Gruber, Matthew Gutschenritter, Meg Robbins, Nicole Wetsman and Emily Weyrauch. All of us are white. All of us come from high schools that had the resources to support a student newspaper and four of us worked on that publication. Five of us grew up in a state touching the Atlantic Ocean. All of us are liberal-leaning. Our goal is to represent the entire student body, so we are falling short if our staff does not reflect as many of the perspectives, experiences and interests of Bowdoin’s students as possible. This week we will send out applications for next year’s Orient leadership and we would like to reach out to people who do not necessarily fit the current mold.

We are proud of the weekly paper that we produce. We think our stories are well-reported, we stick by journalistic ethics and we cover topics that are important to the campus. We are happy that we’ve been a forum for discussion on campus and that our opinion section has included a diverse range of perspectives.

We are also lacking in some key areas: writers who don’t have experience writing journalistic articles before college often fall through the cracks because we don’t do enough to train them, and some avoid approaching us in the first place out of fear of being under-qualified. Because our article topics are generated by a group of students that represents a relatively small community on campus, we miss some potential stories from groups we don’t have connections to, and our newspaper doesn’t include as many conservative voices as we would like. While we have strong women members of leadership, there is very little representation of racial and ethnic minorities on our staff, especially in leadership. 

These are not new problems, and they are not ones that are exclusive to our campus. As Margaret Sullivan, Public Editor of the New York Times wrote on the importance of newsroom diversity this year: “When the group is truly diverse, the nefarious groupthink that makes a publication predictable and, at times, unintentionally biased, is much more likely to be diminished. And that’s a good thing.” 

We want to let all students—not just those who seek us out and come into our house (which is notably removed from the most trafficked areas of campus)—know that the Orient can be a place for them if they are interested. We are looking into the factors—social, cultural, political and financial—that discourage students from joining our staff and we are committed to doing our best to break down these barriers. 

We want to share the opinions and experiences you bring to the College. We want to hear the stories that you think are important and want us to cover. We’d like to talk to you about how to make the Orient better and more inclusive. Most importantly, if you’ve ever wanted to contribute to the Orient, we’d love to have you. No experience necessary. 

This editorial represents the majority view of the Bowdoin Orient’s editorial board, which is comprised of Julian Andrews, Jono Gruber, Matthew Gutschenritter, Meg Robbins, Nicole Wetsman and Emily Weyrauch.

Whether you can put a name to it or not, every college house has a personality. Are you going on the Katahdin trip tomorrow? Sean is leading it, you know, the one in Reed. Were you at Baxter at all last night? The basement was lit post 1 a.m. See you at Ladd after the hockey game? I wish I could go to swing dancing at Howell, but I have an essay due. Year after year, the college houses embody somewhat similar characteristics, and this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but the College seems committed to convincing students that the houses are interchangeable.  

Over the last several years, Residential Life (ResLife) has made many adjustments to the college house system in an apparent attempt to homogenize the culture between houses. Three years ago, first years’ house affiliations were changed from dorm-based to floor-based. Two years ago, the application was modified to encourage more upperclassmen to submit their names to the mostly-sophomore applicant pool. Last year, the application became binding so that students could not decline acceptance to a house even if they were not placed in a house they specifically applied to. Even more restrictive, first years can only apply to the houses that members of their block are affiliated with, or relinquish their right to list preferences. 

We question the efficacy of ResLife’s social engineering attempts to shift the college house culture by adjusting house application requirements and questions. If the College really wants to address exclusivity within the College house system—as demonstrated by the “Why Do College Houses Feel So White?” panel—shifting around blocks and mandating that students apply to houses that they are affiliated with seems superficial.

In each of these tweaks to the college house system, ResLife has attempted to counteract the personas each house has developed over time. But the houses’ personalities are often among the most celebrated, important and positive aspects of the college house system. College houses can have unique identities and have a close-knit group of residents without inheriting the negative characteristics of fraternities. Though the College House system was designed to be a healthier space on campus than fraternities were, it is still a necessarily exclusive system—not every student can live in a house, and not everyone wants to, either.

Because there are eight houses on campus, each with a slightly different atmosphere, most students are likely to identify with at least one house, though it is inevitable that no student will connect with all of them. Bowdoin can work on making the houses more inclusive and open to all members of campus without sacrificing the character of the individual houses. It is absolutely important that every student feel safe in every house, but for students lucky enough find a house they connect with, ResLife’s rules should encourage, not prohibit that.

This editorial represents the majority view of the Bowdoin Orient’s editorial board, which is comprised of Julian Andrews, Jono Gruber, Matthew Gutschenritter, Meg Robbins, Nicole Wetsman and Emily Weyrauch.

Recently, discussions about the potential dangers of masculinity have been coming out of the woodwork on campus. On Wednesday, the Bowdoin Men’s Group, partnering with the Women’s Resource Center and the Center for Gender Violence Prevention and Education, hosted a screening of “The Mask You Live In.” The film explores the limiting ways in which masculinity is socially constructed and taught to boys from an early age. Many of the ideas it addressed are not foreign to our campus. For instance, in her article for this week’s opinion section, Skye Aresty ’16 calls attention to what she sees as an unhealthy and unequal hookup culture at Bowdoin fueled by men exerting a sense of entitlement over women.

As Professor Judith Casselberry pointed out in the discussion following the screening of “The Mask You Live In,” autonomous spaces, that is, spaces where people can talk with people like them, can be incredibly valuable. This is not to downplay either the importance of incorporating diverse experiences into conversations, or the necessity of recognizing that many of the people hurt by toxic displays of masculinity are not men. The Men’s Group is a good effort by a small group of students to recognize that issues of masculinity—including sex, fatherhood, emotional expression and mental illness—often go undiscussed, and to facilitate healthy conversations in spaces specifically designated for this purpose.

We are in a moment at Bowdoin where people have a lot to say and are talking to each other about tough and often emotional themes—including looking at taken-for-granted concepts and assumptions and deconstructing them. Issues of masculinity are relatively new in campus discussion, so we have a unique opportunity to shape the way in which we talk about them.

The next two events in the Men’s Group’s current series “We Need To Talk” are focused on the always-relevant issues of sexual assault and supporting survivors, topics that are typically tackled by groups of women and individual women. These events show that the Men’s Group is internally grappling with the complexities of a masculine identity while using that male privilege to work toward educating others. Although we recognize that the discussions and programs of the Men’s Group are a step in the right direction, it is also important to acknowledge that its efforts are not yet widespread and build on discussions opened up by feminists on campus.

Last night, Tim Wise, a white anti-racism activist and writer, spoke to a packed crowd in Kresge about racism, using the power that comes with his white privilege to speak to a group of students who might not have gotten the same message from countless other sources. We think it is of utmost importance for those who consider themselves allies—whether of people of color, the LGBTQIA community, feminists, or any other group—to use the dominance and respect that they inevitably carry with them to educate others. In our last editorial, we wrote that the onus should not be on those marginalized to educate others about their oppression. This week, we see tangible examples on campus of folks who are in the process of critically examining their own privilege and bringing these issues to light to new audiences in different ways. This work will continue to be critical on this campus, as students from all walks of life struggle with new ideas, experiences and relationships, together. 

This editorial represents the majority view of the Bowdoin Orient’s editorial board, which is comprised of Julian Andrews, Jono Gruber, Matthew Gutschenritter, Meg Robbins, Nicole Wetsman and Emily Weyrauch.

The students who hosted the “tequila” party received a harsh punishment from the administration. While some of the disciplinary measures seem productive—they will participate in an educational program facilitated by a faculty member, attend Active Bystander training and write a letter or paper on these experiences—other aspects of their punishment seem arbitrary. They were forced to move out of their room in Stowe Hall and relocate to doubles in Chamberlain Hall and they are banned from Ivies and Spring Gala. What’s more, Bowdoin Student Government (BSG) is moving forward with impeachment proceedings against two of its members who attended the party. While we have concerns about the impeachment proceedings and believe that aspects of the current punishments miss the mark, the details of the disciplinary actions are not the most important parts of this conversation.

It is concerning that the disagreement over punitive measures seems to be overshadowing the larger-scale problems and tensions on campus, both related and tangential to the “tequila” party and its predecessors. It is troubling, too, that many seem to focus on rumors about the exact details of who wore what to the “tequila” party. This diversion is crowding out the opportunity to think critically about why some Latinx students (and other students of color) feel disrespected and hurt by this incident in the first place. Last week, we wrote that regardless of what one thinks of the rules or the ways they are enforced, the focus in the wake of an event like this should be on listening and creating an environment that is welcoming to students who have historically felt unwanted and disrespected here.

Free speech is a right, but it does not excuse us from from being held accountable for the things we say and do by others who are exercising the same right. Free speech is necessary and important. However, if you want to be taken seriously, you must be as willing to hear others’ opinions as you are to dole out your own.

Despite the conversations we’ve already had, it’s clear there is still no solid consensus on campus about what defines hurtful ethnic stereotyping. That said, the onus should not be placed only on students of color to repeatedly educate others about systemic oppression and racism. Every Bowdoin student should have the opportunity to grow and succeed in this institution without having to bear the additional burden of repeatedly explaining to others why they deserve the respect of their peers.

It is reasonable to be conflicted about some of the issues raised by the “tequila” party. There may be more questions than answers and we are unlikely to reach a campus-wide consensus. Students of color—who do not have a choice about whether or not to care about race at a white majority college—have repeatedly expressed that this conversation is inherently painful, uncomfortable and unavoidable. This discomfort is a choice that white students have the responsibility to lean into.

This editorial represents the majority view of the Bowdoin Orient’s editorial board, which is comprised of Julian Andrews, John Branch, Jono Gruber, Matthew Gutschenritter, Emma Peters, Meg Robbins, Nicole Wetsman and Emily Weyrauch.

Last semester, it was impossible not to hear about the pain that ethnic stereotyping causes people of color on our campus. So why did it happen again? 

On Wednesday night at the Bowdoin Student Government (BSG) public comment time, students from across campus described the emotional harm that ethnic stereotyping at a tequila-themed party caused them. Some described how they felt a joke was had at the expense of their culture’s complexity and richness. Others said that they feel excluded from the campus community as students of color, and that events like this and their aftermaths reinforce that sense of ostracization. A first year said that he regrets coming to Bowdoin in the first place. The pain in the room was palpable.

It is alarming that we have had three prominent incidents of this kind in just over a year. Each time, a similar dialogue has been sparked in response. It’s frustrating that the same conversations keep happening with many of the same participants, a disproportionate amount of whom are students of color. It speaks volumes that most of those in attendance at the tequila party weren’t at Wednesday’s BSG meeting to hear the responses of those affected by their event. This is one of the reasons why we are stuck in this cycle of offense and re-offense. 

There are some rules you can break that will only harm yourself—from something as common as drinking hard alcohol to more serious offenses like plagiarism. There are some standards of conduct at Bowdoin that you may not agree with. You might think that the Social Code’s phrase “conduct unbecoming of a Bowdoin student” is too vague to mean anything.

However, the fallout from the tequila party isn’t about breaking rules or your relationship with the administration. It’s about basic empathy. It’s not about finding a loophole in the College’s codes of conduct, and it’s not about a debate over political correctness. It’s about respecting your peers as human beings and acknowledging what makes them feel unwelcome in our community.

If you’re confused about why people are mad, take the time to figure it out. Listen to what your peers are saying, learn from past mistakes, recognize that this behavior has a historic and political context and stop throwing these parties. This behavior is demeaning to your peers and it must end. 

This editorial represents the majority view of the Bowdoin Orient’s editorial board, which is comprised of Julian Andrews, John Branch, Jono Gruber, Matthew Gutschenritter, Emma Peters, Meg Robbins, Nicole Wetsman and Emily Weyrauch.

Earlier this month, the Bowdoin Outing Club (BOC) reported a budget deficit of $18,000 to the Student Activities Funding Committee (SAFC). The BOC is not technically in the red: the $18,000 it has overspent does not push it past its 2015-2016 operating budget. Without  additional funding, though, the BOC will have to alter its plans for the remainder of the academic year. The number of trips per weekend will be reduced, less financial aid will be offered and students will be forced to supply their own transportation for some trips. Many worry that the repercussions of this could affect more than just those seeking to get away for the weekend. As Bowdoin Student Government (BSG) President Danny Mejia-Cruz ’16 said last week, “The BOC is one of the crowning joys and major selling points of the College and we don’t want them to go stagnant.”

Since this information became public, some have questioned how an oversight of this stature could occur. Part of the problem is circumstantial; the BOC receives their operating budget while the previous year’s expenditures are still being calculated. This means that any debt from the previous fiscal year is repaid with the next year’s operating budget—i.e. there’s little consequence for going over budget year after year.

However, the other part of the problem is procedural. The BOC receives the bulk of its money from the SAFC, a committee of eight students, who are responsible for determining how much money to allocate to “student-run” clubs, according to the BSG website. It gives operational budgets to 18 student-run organizations including $2,000 to the Bowdoin Food Co-op, $6,617.96 to the Men’s Ultimate Frisbee Team, and $24,010 to the Orient. This funding alone marks the College’s financial contributions to these student groups. However, there are several clubs that receive additional funding outside of the SAFC whose chief leadership responsibilities rest on non-students. These clubs—among which are the McKeen Center and the Outing Club—are inherently unlike “peer” organizations that request funding. 

The SAFC gave the BOC over $69,000 for its 2015-2016 operational budget, but the BOC also received significant funds from an endowment, and a separate budget for the salaries of its non-student staff.

The issue is not the amount of funding the BOC has at its disposal—it is that with three non-student staff members holding its top leadership positions, the BOC is hardly a student-run organization. The BOC operates at a level of organizational complexity that is beyond what the SAFC was designed to oversee, and they should not be considered among student-run organizations. The SAFC’s responsibility should be focusing on clubs that are truly and fully student run. When the SAFC is tasked with the funding of organizations that are so massive in their operational capacities and so integral to the College’s image, it is forced to take on a task too large for a small group of students. The SAFC is not at fault—it finds itself in a difficult situation out of its control.

Given the confusing relationship the BOC has with the SAFC, it is clear that this funding model is flawed. Without funding large organizations such as the McKeen Center and the BOC, the SAFC could focus on the small student-run clubs—The Quill, Taiko and Club Tennis— that it is best-suited to work with. It would be able to devote more of its time and resources to allocating its funds properly among those clubs, while Bowdoin could recognize the McKeen Center or BOC as the large College-funded programs that they should be and deal with their funding separately and accordingly. 

This editorial represents the majority view of the Bowdoin Orient’s editorial board, which is comprised of Julian Andrews, John Branch, Jono Gruber, Matthew Gutschenritter, Emma Peters, Meg Robbins, Nicole Wetsman, and Emily Weyrauch.

One year ago, student activists held a demonstration in Smith Union. At its conclusion, they presented an open letter to the Bowdoin community containing a series of 19 “calls to action” for the College’s administration that took a stand on the intersecting issues of climate, sexuality, class, gender and race. This week in the Orient, we took stock of what progress has been made on each of the appeals.

The administration has been taking concrete actions in response to the issues brought up at last year’s meeting. Thanks to campus activists, Bowdoin has made significant strides in grappling with the implications of its historical whiteness, and has started conversations that have led to actual institutional changes. Each move forward is a success when looking at the history of Bowdoin and examining whom the College was originally created to serve. This week, for example, the newly-created BSG position of multicultural representative went into effect. This is a lasting, important action, pursued by student activists, that is a small but significant shift towards making Bowdoin a more inclusive environment moving forward. President Rose’s acknowledgement of racial inequalities on campus was important as well—a naming of a problem that some Bowdoin students have been struggling with, unheard, for years.

But advocacy informed by a desire to make Bowdoin a safe space conscious of the injustices around us needs to continue. Progress made by administrators is not inevitable; it is tied directly to the pressure students are able to exert for change, and their continued and sustained efforts in doing so. Class issues were one of the meeting’s focal points, but were left out of the calls to action, thus taking a backseat in the administration’s agenda.

Each step has been the result of a push from students who want to make Bowdoin a more accessible place for them. Bowdoin cannot rely on the momentum of last semester to keep students working for social justice on this campus. The very structure of a four-year college means that with new students matriculating and young adults graduating annually, we cannot rely on the same faces to be leading the fight each year.

The administrators of Bowdoin have good intentions, but they have certain responsibilities that students do not. Often, their jobs involve upholding the image and reputation of an institution that is most comfortable when progress happens at a slow, gradual pace. Students should not expect administrators alone to lead the charge for institutional advances in regards to race and intersecting issues of identity, especially when many students feel that a movement like this is urgent. Invested underclass students—those directly affected by injustices and their allies—have the responsibility to keep tabs on what has been accomplished and to keep pushing as they progress through their time at Bowdoin. 

This editorial represents the majority view of the Bowdoin Orient’s editorial board, which is comprised of Julian Andrews, John Branch, Jono Gruber, Matthew Gutschenritter, Emma Peters, Meg Robbins, Nicole Wetsman, and Emily Weyrauch.

DeRay Mckesson ’07 announced on Wednesday that he is running as a Democrat to be the 50th mayor of Baltimore. He announced his candidacy in a Medium article in which he acknowledged he was a non-traditional candidate, writing, “I am not a former Mayor, City Councilman, state legislator, philanthropist or the son of a well-connected family. I am an activist, organizer, former teacher and district administrator that intimately understands how interwoven our challenges and our solutions are.” His words quickly went viral online, picked up by many of his 299,000 Twitter followers.

Mckesson has an impressive breadth of achievements. At Bowdoin, Mckesson was the president of BSG twice and served three terms as his class president. After his graduation from Bowdoin, Mckesson worked as a teacher for Teach for America, worked for The New Teacher Project and the Harlem Children’s Zone, and then in human resources for the Minneapolis school system. In the summer of 2014 he famously left his job in Minneapolis to go to Ferguson, Mo. to join the protests of the death of Michael Brown, who was killed by a police officer while unarmed.

Mckesson began community organizing through social media, and has since taken his activism to other high-profile sites of police violence—including Waller County, Texas, where Sandra Bland was found dead in a jail cell, and Mckesson’s hometown of Baltimore, where Freddie Gray died in a police van. With other Black Lives Matter activists, he helped to create Campaign Zero, a 10-point agenda to reduce police violence with a platform that focuses on decriminalizing minor infractions that disproportionately affect poor communities of color. 

It is an understatement to say that Mckesson’s public persona is unusual for a Bowdoin alum. He’s switched places with Stephen Colbert for a late night segment, guest lectured at Yale Divinity School, and been the focus of a New York Times Magazine feature; he’s sparred with Wolf Blitzer on live TV and been called a “next-generation race baiter” by the National Review. He’s faced too many death threats to count and was the subject of the trending hashtag #gohomederay. His signature blue Patagonia vest has a tribute Twitter account, @deraysvest, with over 4,000 followers of its own.

It’s inspiring to us that Mckesson, who’s forged a unique trail to this point, came from Bowdoin. We’re often told that the path to a meaningful career can be winding and indirect, but most of our notable alumni are successful via a traditional path. Take the Board of Trustees—almost half work in finance. There is no “be an activist” counselor at the Career Planning Center. Yet, we hope that in the future, Mckesson will not be such an outlier. Mckesson doesn’t have his name on a building, but he is the Bowdoin alum doing the most exciting work right now.

This editorial represents the majority view of the Bowdoin Orient’s editorial board, which is comprised of Julian Andrews, John Branch, Jono Gruber, Matthew Gutschenritter, Emma Peters, Meg Robbins, Nicole Wetsman, and Emily Weyrauch.

This past fall, there were several incidents of racial and gender bias directed toward Bowdoin students and a professor close to campus. They ranged from drive-by verbal assaults to an episode of racial prejudice in a local restaurant. President Rose asked Brunswick town officials to begin a conversation about these issues. The town formed a “Human Rights Task Force,” with the goal of addressing bias incidents that affect not only Bowdoin students, but the entire Brunswick community. The formation of this task force was not an obligation, but a choice made by the town of Brunswick to accommodate Bowdoin students and make them feel more comfortable in the town they call home. 

Yesterday, at the first meeting of the task force, town officers discussed a commitment to foster a welcoming community that Bowdoin students and Brunswick residents can share. Some attendees of the meeting expressed concerns that the College’s interests are being prioritized over those of the residents, because the town council has reached out more formally to the College than to the general population of Brunswick in forming the task force. As the task force looks to improve “human rights” in Brunswick, it is just as important to hear from Brunswick residents as it is to include the College in these conversations. These residents point out an important reality—Bowdoin risks exerting outsized influence over town governance and the issues it prioritizes. While we may not realize this privilege, it can be difficult for local residents to ignore. 

The Bowdoin community is inextricably tied with that of Brunswick and while students may only see the direct relationship when the actions of Brunswick residents affect them, our presence is felt by the people who live here every day.

We can’t change the institutional power Bowdoin exerts in Brunswick, but we can do little things to keep our day-to-day presence in the community a generally positive one. Bowdoin students have longstanding relationships with Brunswick through volunteer programs and organized community outreach, but this shouldn’t be anyone’s only connection to the town they live in. Brunswick has committed to making itself a comfortable place for Bowdoin students and we should do the same for Brunswick residents. Small acts like minding our language on Maine Street and keeping the noise down when we walk to off-campus residences show respect for the community that we share. If Bowdoin’s presence in Brunswick is undeniable, our individual presences should, at the very least, be inoffensive.

We are grateful that the town of Brunswick takes Bowdoin’s concerns seriously and is willing to work with us on preventing these incidents, though it is unfair for us to expect Brunswick to prioritize us over the town as a whole. 

This editorial represents the majority view of the Bowdoin Orient’s editorial board, which is comprised of Julian Andrews, John Branch, Jono Gruber, Matthew Gutschenritter, Emma Peters, Meg Robbins, Nicole Wetsman, and Emily Weyrauch.

On Tuesday night, President Clayton Rose facilitated a town hall-style meeting in Smith Union that sought to answer the question “Why do issues of race matter if I’m white?” The aim was to foster an open discussion amongst the entire student body—a difficult task considering the sensitive nature of the issue at hand. The event was packed and it was the most visibly engaged the campus has been in recent memory; hundreds of students, faculty and staff filled the Union to listen and participate, with many standing for the entire 75-minute event.

The discussion was honest and lively. President Rose was a firm moderator, guiding the discussion as necessary, unafraid to rephrase certain comments into more pointed questions. People talked not past each other but to each other, which is especially meaningful on a campus where much of the provocative dialogue takes place behind closed doors or on Yik Yak. In his closing remarks, Rose said that this was just a first step, and “in some ways, we haven’t done anything.” The town hall was successful as a starting point, but it will be meaningless if the conversation and action around race at Bowdoin ends there.

In November, the Bowdoin Student Government (BSG) executive committee introduced a proposal to elect a multicultural representative to serve as a voting member of the general assembly. This student would represent the Multicultural Coalition, an organization of 17 student groups dedicated to diversity and multicultural life. There is precedent for this position: the Entertainment Board, the McKeen Center, Inter-House Council and Athletics all have designated representative positions on the BSG.

Voting on the referendum began on Wednesday of this week and remains open until 9 p.m. this Saturday. In order for the position to be approved, one third of the student body must vote and within that group, two-thirds must vote in favor. This position would guarantee that there is a voice on BSG to represent minority students on campus regardless of BSG’s elected members. In theory, the representative would place multicultural issues at the forefront of their agenda, ensuring that issues of diversity and race will never fall through the cracks. BSG has taken a proactive role on issues of race this year, issuing resolutions of solidarity with students of color at Bowdoin and at the University of Missouri. However, BSG is a large, complex body with dramatic turnover each year, and it has not always shown the racial consciousness proving so important this year. A multicultural representative would help to hold it accountable to the interests and concerns of minority students no matter who its elected representatives are. 

As Rose said at the end of Tuesday’s town hall, “This is the beginning of this conversation, not the end.” This semester has seen a dramatic uptick in the Bowdoin community’s willingness to talk frankly about race—but it cannot stop now, even as the shock and anger from certain specific incidents fades. A vote for the creation of the multicultural representative is a vote for a concrete step toward lasting awareness of racial issues at Bowdoin.  

This editorial represents the majority view of the Bowdoin Orient’s editorial board, which is comprised of John Branch, Sam Chase, Matthew Gutschenritter, Emma Peters and Nicole Wetsman.

Tomorrow’s the big one, friends: Bowdoin vs. Colby ice hockey in Sid Watson Arena. Easily the biggest sporting event on campus every year, Bowdoin-Colby takes a normally sedate student body and whips it into a frenzy for three periods of puck. But, like Thanksgiving dinner at Thorne or Ivies weekend, this iconic campus event requires careful planning. In the interest of providing the fans in the stands with a fun night and helping secure a win for the boys on the ice, the Orient’s editorial board humbly presents to you the ABCs of Bowdoin-Colby hockey.

Were you one of the lucky souls that waited in the now-infamous line that snaked around Smith Union throughout the week and emerged victorious with a ticket? Kudos, your dedication to Bowdoin men’s hockey is a huge part of what makes the program the NESCAC powerhouse that it is. Don’t feel bad if you didn’t score a seat to the big game, though. There’s an unspoken understanding that those who show up to the game will find a way in. That said, don’t make the ushers’ jobs hard or awkward by begging them for admission. Have the courtesy to bring a homemade ticket or just dart past them inconspicuously.

It’s going to be tempting to drink all day in preparation for the game, because that is an awesome thing to do if you’re 21 years old. Don’t darty too hard, though—there’s nothing worse than passing out at 6 p.m. and not even making it to the game. And don’t pregame intensely directly before the game, either. The bleachers will be packed and you’ll be uncomfortable. Drink in moderation before the game, and save turn up o’clock for immediately after the boys get the W. As hockey legend Wayne Gretzky once said, “You miss 100 percent of the shots you don’t take.”

The best anti-Colby chants, ranked:

1. “UMaine-Waterville”2. “Mules are sterile”3. “Safety school”

These are the essentials, the classic war cries shouted by generations of Bowdoin students. They will be chanted, and they will be chanted often. But don’t hesitate to take things a step further. Scan the Colby men’s hockey roster and put some names into Google. Does the goalie speak Russian and French? Yup—shout some things at him in Russian and French! Does the leading scorer have an embarrassing Vine account that hasn’t been updated in two years? He sure does! Please loudly make reference to it while he’s on the ice. It’s not about insulting the opposition—in fact, that should be avoided. The best chirps are obscure, innocuous references to the players’ lives.

If you’ve ever felt envy while watching a student section go wild at a big-time college sporting event, tomorrow night is your chance to live that life. The Mules are coming to town, and every self-respecting Polar Bear should be present to defend the hallowed grounds of Watson Arena. It’s time for Bowdoin-Colby hockey.

This past Sunday, members of the Bowdoin community gathered on the steps of the Museum of Art to hold a candlelight vigil to reflect on recent events both near and far. Attendees reflected on a variety of sobering incidents varying in scale and proximity to the Bowdoin community, including nationwide student protests for racial equality, a sexual assault in Mayflower apartments and, most recently, the terrorist attacks in Paris. Students and administrators gathered to comfort others and be comforted themselves. It was but one example of the Bowdoin community finding a way to come together in a difficult, confusing time. 

After an occurrence of cultural appropriation that harmed students of color and others on campus, many—including those affected—performed public displays of protest and unity in the following days. A Bowdoin Student Government (BSG) meeting provided a platform for many to voice their sadness and frustration, and resulted in the General Assembly releasing a Statement of Solidarity. The next week, many students gathered in the Union for a protest that called attention to difficulties students of color face on campus. This month, BSG’s annual No Hate November initiative has provided outlets for support and education, including a photo display showing support to those affected by racial bias and an Uncommon Hour presentation today on racism by Associate Professor of Africana Studies and History Brian Purnell. Last Friday, dozens of Bowdoin students marched in solidarity with students of color across the country fighting forms of racism on their campuses. While large issues of racism cannot be immediately solved and there is much more work to be done, it’s encouraging to see many Bowdoin students work relentlessly to make change in our community.

The sexual assault and other troubling incidents of a similar nature have caused many on campus to reconsider their sense of security. Many members of the student body feel confused and vulnerable. However, the response has not been one of helplessness. Hours after Tuesday’s incident, a Facebook group called Bowdoin Safe Walk was created as a forum for students to offer and seek out rides or “walking buddies.” The group has over 1,500 members. That same night, Director of Safety and Security Randy Nichols visited several off-campus houses on and near Potter Street to check on the wellbeing of students living there. The next day, BSG organized a community safe walk through campus and the surrounding neighborhoods. These responses have affirmed the strength and resilience of our community. The events that have forced us to reconsider our sense of security have also revealed the ways that members of the Bowdoin community can come together to support one another. 

The past few weeks have been trying in a way that few on campus remember in the recent past. It is necessary to view Bowdoin critically and honestly, and the administration’s handling of some of the recent events has at times left something to be desired. But at the very least, we should still be grateful for the movements at work here: the responses we’ve seen across campus have reaffirmed for us that Bowdoin’s community is something to be thankful for. 

This editorial represents the majority view of the Bowdoin Orient’s editorial board, which is comprised of John Branch, Sam Chase, Matthew Gutschenritter, Emma Peters and Nicole Wetsman.

The sexual assault that occurred on Tuesday has left campus in a state of shock. While similar incidents may be a more common reality outside of Bowdoin, it’s greatly distressing to find that such a horrifying act of random violence could happen here. Our thoughts are with the victim, and with all the members of the Bowdoin community deeply affected by this attack.

As college students, a number of resources for dealing with sexual assault are available to us. This year’s Clery Report recorded 20 sex offenses in the 2014 calendar year, and others almost surely went unreported. We’re trained—formally and otherwise—to think about sexual assault in specific ways that aim to confront this unique problem of sexual assault on college campuses. We’re told that the victims of sexual assault usually know their attacker, that alcohol is involved in a large percentage of assaults on campus, and that a culture of affirmative consent is key to stopping sexual assault before it happens. We’re told that the notion of a stranger entering your room is a narrow and rare conception of what sexual assault is for college students. All of this education is accurate and necessary, but it also makes it all the more jarring when an incident like this happens. 

While each student may have felt a different level of safety at Bowdoin before this event, many of us, particularly women, feel significantly less safe this week. Behaviors we take for granted—jogging without a cell phone, wandering home from a party alone, leaving a door propped open for a roommate—will be given up by many students after what happened on Tuesday. These everyday activities, rarely second-guessed, were reflections of a collective belief that Brunswick and Bowdoin are generally safe. Every time a student makes a conscious effort to avoid such a behavior will be an implicit statement that campus is perhaps not as safe as we once thought. While these privileges of safety are small individually, losing them all at once profoundly affects how we perceive our environment.

There’s no shortcut to regaining the sense of security that many of us had until this week. Many of us are scared, and unfortunately, there’s no way that we can be entirely comforted after an incident like this. There are things that help, however. Student affairs staff have been on hand at 24 College Street so students can convene there, providing many students a way to cope with the emotional toll that an incident like this takes. In less formal settings, students have found comfort through simply sharing their feelings and offering support to friends. This week, we lost some of the small privileges of our experience at Bowdoin and in Brunswick. Coming together as a community will continue to help us slowly regain some sense of security.

 This editorial represents the majority view of the Bowdoin Orient’s editorial board, which is comprised of John Branch, Sam Chase, Matthew Gutschenritter, Emma Peters and Nicole Wetsman.

Signs containing the phrase “#AStatementIsNotEnough” were posted throughout campus last Thursday night, signifying some students’ dissatisfaction with the administration’s response to the sailing team’s “gangster” party. In a protest this Wednesday, students wore duct tape over their mouths—representing the silencing of minority voices—to further express disapproval with how the College handles racial issues on campus. Many felt that the reaction emails sent by administrators were lacking in concrete solutions, and placed the burden on students to foster future discussions. 

In his campus wide email, President Clayton Rose recounted meeting with student leaders from various multicultural groups over the weekend, writing, “they offered thoughtful ideas that we will be discussing with them soon.” While this statement is vague, and more direct attention to racial issues could have been paid even before the “gangster” party, it’s unclear what concrete action we should expect from the College so soon after the party happened.

Even so, the tension between the College’s desire to appear responsive to student concerns and its inability to take immediate action on complicated problems has fallen hardest on the students affected by these issues in the first place. They have been asked to devote long hours on top of their usual course load and activities to facilitating dialogue. There is no institutional course of action for responding to incidents like the “gangster” party, but the administration cannot place the responsibility of reacting to racial issues entirely on students of color. 

There is plenty of work the administration simply cannot do. What happens off campus—say, when a car of strangers yells racial slurs at a student walking on Maine Street—is out of the administration’s control. What the administration can do, however, is to ensure that there are support systems in place when issues like this arise. 

In the Orient’s article on faculty diversity this week, several people spoke about the importance of faculty mentors who, coming from similar backgrounds as students of color, can empathize with the unique issues they face and provide guidance as these students navigate their time at Bowdoin. The last two weeks have brought the importance of this idea into sharp focus. Bowdoin as an institution may have little power to control isolated bias incidents, but the decisions it makes about who works here, the roles that they play and the training they receive, shape the environment in which we preempt and respond to these incidents. What’s more, the benefits of a more diverse faculty extend far beyond responding to incidents of racial bias. A more diverse faculty could foster a culture that’s more capable of discussing race to begin with, preventing events like the “gangster” party from happening in the first place. 

This editorial represents the majority view of the Bowdoin Orient’s editorial board, which is comprised of John Branch, Sam Chase, Matthew Gutschenritter, Emma Peters and Nicole Wetsman.

Many students who were harmed by the sailing team’s “gangster” party last Thursday have stepped up in its wake to express their frustration and educate their peers in public forums. Whether it be at Wednesday night’s packed BSG meeting or in the pages of the Orient, students who saw their culture reduced to a crude stereotype came forward wholeheartedly, sharing intensely personal experiences and leaving themselves vulnerable in sincere hope of producing positive change on Bowdoin’s campus.

Less inspiring were the dialectical contributions of those on campus who are unconvinced of the severity of racist cultural appropriation. In response to Dean Tim Foster’s campus-wide email condemning the incident, some students took to Yik Yak to share posts that were ignorant at best, and in some cases outright hostile. Worsening the effects of the original incident, these anonymous posts created a threatening environment for the students at which they were directed. The idea that your lab partner or the person in front of you in line at Thorne might be covertly, yet publicly, attacking the validity of your emotions is enormously disturbing. Hiding behind anonymity to post malicious messages is a display of pure cowardice.

We’ve seen this pattern before. As is often the case with incidents of this nature, administrators and many students are calling for a renewed focus on conversation and dialogue. Dialogue is happening, but it’s not the kind they’re hoping for. Unfortunately, productive dialogue is an unlikely result given our current pattern of responses. Statements from the administration that present an official position of the institution, valid and necessary as they may be, create a situation in which honestly conflicted students—distinct from those who simply troll on anonymous forums—are reluctant to speak out publicly because they don’t want their opinions to be seen as being at odds with the College’s core values.

It is common knowledge on campus that divergent viewpoints exist, but, despite calls like Foster’s for “constructive engagement,” so-called public dialogues always seem to play out as one-sided discussions. We believe that the College should indeed take official positions on moral issues about which it feels strongly, but it appears that this prevents earnest questioning on the finer points of issues as complex as cultural appropriation. This conflict in the College’s stated goals does not have an easy solution, but it is an issue our campus would do well to acknowledge.

Unfortunately, incidents of racism like the “gangster” party are not uncommon at Bowdoin and similar institutions, and this month’s will probably not be the last. The pattern shows that there is still a population here unwilling to participate in the public dialogue so many of us are asking for. Moving forward, we must consider how to break this cycle of asymmetrical dialogue in which students putting themselves on the line are made to feel unsafe, and students speaking anonymously don’t feel compelled to identify themselves. 

This editorial represents the majority view of the Bowdoin Orient’s editorial board, which is comprised of John Branch, Sam Chase, Matthew Gutschenritter, Emma Peters and Nicole Wetsman.

Last weekend, the Board of Trustees approved President Clayton Rose’s proposal to terminate the Jefferson Davis Award—an academic honor given to a student excelling in the study of constitutional law. In President Rose’s words, “It is inappropriate for Bowdoin College to bestow an annual award that continues to honor a man whose mission was to preserve and institutionalize slavery.” This change was a necessary one, perhaps even overdue. The Jefferson Davis Award had been given out annually since 1973, and those who saw it awarded year after year may have assumed its inevitability. In President Rose’s motion to discontinue the award, we saw for the first time the benefit of bringing in a president with no previous ties to the College. Armed with a fresh set of eyes, he saw the award as the outdated relic that it was. 

Last month, columnist Maya Reyes ’16 wrote an Op-Ed for the Orient titled “Franklin Pierce’s legacy deserves more recognition and discussion,” in which she called on the Bowdoin community to have “more conversations about the actions and products of Bowdoin that we aren’t so proud of.” Pierce—who graduated from Bowdoin in 1824—was a President guided by a troubling ideology. He ardently enforced the Fugitive Slave Act and opposed the abolitionist movement. Likewise, in a column this week about the Jefferson Davis Award, columnist Adira Polite ’18 writes, “America desperately needs to address its dark past and present in order to achieve progress. This is true in the context of Bowdoin as well.” Both Reyes and Polite are correct: the College must confront the parts of its history we might prefer to forget.

In 1858, Jefferson Davis was visiting southern Maine when the College awarded him an honorary degree at commencement. He was the lone southerner at the ceremonies, and another honorary degree recipient that afternoon was prominent Maine abolitionist William Pitt Fessenden. Every element of the event was fraught with contention. Bowdoin appeared to feel obligated to give an honorary degree to a man of Davis’ stature, but many students and local media outlets were at odds with his pro-slavery politics. And though Davis was certainly out of place on campus, he was not without a Bowdoin connection: he had served as Secretary of War under Franklin Pierce. 

These are rich histories, compelling simply as narratives, but they also contain lessons.  We aren’t necessarily proud of our historical associations with these men, and their stories are all the more worth telling for that fact. Seeing how representatives of Bowdoin have fallen on the wrong side of moral issues in years past helps us avoid assuming our own infallibility as an institution. Advocates for the removal of the Confederate flag at the South Carolina State Capitol this past summer argued that the flag did not belong at a government site but rather in a museum. It is in a similar way that Bowdoin should treat the memories of men like Davis and Pierce. They may not deserve to be honored, but they certainly need to be remembered.

This editorial represents the majority view of the Bowdoin Orient’s editorial board, which is comprised of John Branch, Sam Chase, Matthew Gutschenritter, Emma Peters and Nicole Wetsman.

For only the fifteenth time in the College’s 221-year history, Bowdoin is inaugurating a new president. This weekend, Clayton Rose will be officially welcomed with a variety of events, including a symposium of prominent alumni that promises to explore the power of the liberal arts. The Inauguration coincides with Homecoming as well as the Board of Trustees’ fall meeting, so campus will be packed with alumni. What’s more, Clayton Rose will have a significant and unique platform to speak to the College community during his inaugural address—a chance to shed light on his goals for his tenure here.  

This weekend marks a rare occasion in which many prominent alums from a diverse array of professions will gather to discuss topics of interest to the Bowdoin community. They will address the lasting relevance of the liberal arts—a theme featured in the inaugural ceremonies of many previous Bowdoin presidents. Take former president William Allen, who said in 1820, “The arts and sciences, besides conducing in a high degree to individual happiness, exert an important influence on the general state of society.” Or Rev. Edwin B. Webb, who, at the inauguration of former president William Hyde in 1885, said, “It is a foundation laid upon the bed rock, and a superstructure patiently raised in due proportions and symmetry that we covet. Let the specialty come after the curriculum has gone.”

Many previous presidents have also addressed more timely concerns facing the Bowdoin community at their inaugural events, and this weekend gives us an opportunity to hear from President Rose. Until now, Rose has made a point of hearing the voices of others at the College. In April, he told the Orient he was in a “listening and learning mode,” and in July said that the “broad theme for a while is going to be listening and meeting as many people as I can.” This is a commendable strategy for a newcomer seeking to understand a complex environment like Bowdoin. However, the time has finally come for Rose to speak and for us to listen. 

So far, he has given us little insight about the directions in which he plans to steer the College. For instance, Rose is highly qualified to address the lack of faculty diversity—an issue the College has grappled with for decades—having studied issues of racial diversity from an academic perspective. As the College experiments with different ways to complement its liberal arts program with business education, Rose, a president with years of experience in both the financial sector and academia, has clear expertise to contribute. We hope to hear his thoughts on these and other pressing issues facing the College this weekend. 

The Inauguration is more than just pomp and circumstance. It is a chance for the College to come together to reaffirm our commitment to the liberal arts and focus on the work that Bowdoin needs to do under President Rose’s leadership.

This editorial represents the majority view of the Bowdoin Orient’s editorial board, which is comprised of John Branch, Sam Chase, Matthew Gutschenritter, Emma Peters and Nicole Wetsman.

Yesterday, the campus-wide teach-in, “Intersections: Making Connections, Moving Forward,” finally took place after ten months of planning. What was originally conceived as an event dedicated to climate change ultimately became an opportunity for members of the community to discuss the intersections between a range of pressing issues—namely climate and race. As a campus that often bemoans its tendency to “talk about talking,” the College finally engaged. 

The teach-in’s goals were abstract. As organizer Mary Hunter told the Orient this week, “My bar is that people learn something that they couldn’t have learned without the day and that they converse in a way that they would not converse without the day.” As best as we can tell, yesterday met that goal. Events seemed well-attended, and participants engaged in conversations that are often had behind closed doors, if at all. Students and professors alike took advantage of the platform to share their knowledge and unique perspectives.

However, the event’s reach did not truly extend to the whole campus. Because events were optional and classes were not cancelled, many students did not participate, including some who may have wished to. While successful on many levels, this teach-in was not the campus-wide reckoning that some hoped for. 

The teach-in was special because it concentrated the energy and focus of many students, faculty and staff. But every week, events are held on campus that address the same topics as the teach-in. For example, this past Monday, Clenora Hudson-Weems, a prominent academic from the University of Missouri, discussed the modern socio-economic, political and cultural experiences of women of African descent. This event did not occur as part of the teach-in, but it dealt with similar themes of race and social justice. A teach-in is a visible way to draw attention to certain issues, but Bowdoin should not forget the importance of engaging with them regularly, especially given the opportunities that only a college campus can provide.

Many members of the Bowdoin community attended the teach-in as a statement in and of itself. By attending, they showed not only the importance they place on the issues at hand, but affirmed the value of dialogue and activism in general. This is an affirmation that should exist beyond the teach-in; we should constantly look for ways to engage with issues that challenge us, not only when the opportunity falls in our lap in the form of a day-long event. This could mean attending more organized events and talks, getting involved in student activism, or being open to having more uncomfortable conversations. Everyone will take away something different from individual experiences at the teach-in, but if there’s one thing community members can all share, it should be a desire to continue filling the spaces where opportunities for engagement and thoughtful discussion are presented to us so readily.  

This editorial represents the majority view of the Bowdoin Orient’s editorial board, which is comprised of John Branch, Sam Chase, Matthew Gutschenritter, Emma Peters and Nicole Wetsman.

Wesleyan’s student newspaper, the Argus, published an op-ed headlined “Why Black Lives Matter Isn’t What You Think” on September 14. The article questions the motives of Black Lives Matter and goes so far as to suggest the movement was to blame for the deaths of police officers. The article was ill-conceived, poorly-written and, by the paper’s own admission, insufficiently fact-checked. After the campus weighed in with deserved criticism, the paper scrambled to atone. In an unprecedented front-page editorial, the Argus apologized profusely, even suggesting they were at fault for not accompanying the controversial op-ed with an opposing viewpoint directly next to it.

Despite the Argus’s over-the-top backpedaling, activists in the Wesleyan community are not satisfied. This week, a petition demanding that Wesleyan’s student government defund the paper until a list of other conditions are met gained over 170 signatures. In exchange for continued funding, the petition calls for specific measures such as diversity training for the publication’s staff each semester and an open space on the paper’s front page for marginalized voices. It also calls for vague measures such as “active recruitment and advertisement.”

It is apparent that the petition’s signatories believe that the Argus has not sufficiently addressed issues regarding the voices of students of color. A few of the petition’s specific demands, such as staff diversity training, are both worthwhile and attainable. Nonetheless, attempting to withhold the student newspaper’s funding is misguided. Though their frustration with the paper extends beyond this one column, in trying to censor an opposing idea, these signatories contradict their own goal of promoting diversity of opinion.

We do not pretend to know everything about the controversy taking place on another campus. But we find several elements of the situation concerning journalistically. For instance, the Argus’ editorial implies that opinion columns should be coupled with counter arguments, but this is neither a standard journalistic practice nor a wise one. All newspapers strive to publish opinion articles with a range of perspectives, but not necessarily side by side.

In terms of the petition’s demands, the mandated creation of a space on the front page of the newspaper reserved for the perspectives of minority students, however well-intentioned, would set a disturbing precedent: it would make continued funding for the paper contingent on the publication of certain content. Such a policy would infringe upon editorial independence, which is vital to the integrity of any publication.

While it is not specifically mentioned in the petition, the op-ed appears to have been the catalyst for the document’s creation. We find it further troubling that members of the Wesleyan student body are conflating the opinions of an op-ed contributor with those of the paper at large. Publishing an article is not the same as endorsing its assertions, and we worry about the implications of missing this distinction moving forward. A newspaper that serves a small community like Wesleyan or Bowdoin should strive to represent the perspectives of its diverse constituents, and that includes publishing unpopular opinions.

This editorial represents the majority view of the Bowdoin Orient’s editorial board, which is comprised of John Branch, Sam Chase, Matthew Gutschenritter, Emma Peters and Nicole Wetsman.

President Obama introduced the White House’s College Scorecard, a compilationof federal data including student debt and attendance cost for over 7,000colleges and universities, last Saturday. While the scorecards aren’t an outrightranking, they are intended as a means of comparison for prospective studentsand families choosing between schools. In some data categories, Bowdoin scoredpredictably high. With a graduation rate of 94 percent and a first-year retentionrate of 97 percent, the College far surpasses the respective national averages.Bowdoin’s average annual cost for students receiving federal aid, $18,613,is only $1,824 greater than the national average and is the smallest such figurein the NESCAC. This relative affordability speaks well of the College’s financialaid packages.

One statistic the scorecard highlights is average salary after attending, whichconsiders the income of alumni who received federal student aid ten years afterthey entered school. For Bowdoin graduates, that number is $54,800. That is asignificant step above the national average of $34,343 and the sixth highest in theNESCAC. However, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education, Bowdoinalums’ median annual earnings are fourth-lowest among colleges whose studentsaveraged scores of at least 1400 on their SATs. Considering their alma mater’sprestige, Bowdoin graduates are earning relatively little. Many students and familiesin the throes of the college search will find this information useful as returnon investment is an important factor to consider when choosing a school.But attending Bowdoin is more than just a means to an end. We think of collegenot only as a financial investment, but as an experience that can fulfill us inother ways, too. It’s impossible for any data-based scorecard or rating system tomeasure the relationships, values and skills we develop. There’s no way to quantifythese aspects of life at Bowdoin, but they shape our lives here and beyond insignificant ways.

Still, initiatives like the College Scorecard show that statistical comparisons dohave a role in helping people approach a large investment like a college education.One number that doesn’t appear in the College Scorecard, but that we findsignificant, is the alumni giving rate. A U.S. News article from December 2014listed Bowdoin as one of ten schools where the highest proportion of alumnidonate. As the Orient reports this week, over 61 percent of alums donated to theCollege last year, an all time high.

This statistic represents a group of people who have had time to reflect ontheir experience at Bowdoin and everything it did for them—whether intellectually,socially, emotionally or financially. And remember, this statistic measuresbreadth, not depth of giving. It does not speak to the raw amount of money theCollege receives, but it is significant because it shows many Bowdoin graduatesare still dedicated to the institution. In giving money to the College, alums areexpressing satisfaction with their Bowdoin education. Regardless of the numbersthat come out, most are willing to put something back in.

This editorial represents the majority view of the Bowdoin Orient’s editorialboard, which is comprised of John Branch, Sam Chase, Matthew Gutschenritter,Emma Peters and Nicole Wetsman.

This semester begins on the heels of a busy and complex year for social justice and activism at Bowdoin. In early December 2014, hundreds of students rallied on the Museum steps in support of the Black Lives Matter movement. Bowdoin Climate Action continued its push for the College to divest from fossil fuel companies, bringing dozens of students to a sit-in at the president’s office in April. At the end of the spring semester, Students for Justice in Palestine initiated a referendum and heated debate on a boycott of Israeli academic institutions. Bowdoin, a campus not known for a culture of political activism, felt an undercurrent of change.

At the same time, a more tangible change was also taking place. For the better part of a year, Bowdoin conducted an extensive search for a leader to replace Barry Mills, who had spent 14 years as President of the College. The Board of Trustees selected Clayton Rose, a man who is enthusiastic about engaging with today’s pressing social justice issues. Bowdoin, a place where students have recently complained of a stifled dialogue with administrators, was witness to a visible change.

Now, at the start of a new academic year, these two movements converge. Rarely in the memories of those on our campus has there been more of a genuine desire for dialogue on both ends. The slate is about as clean as it’s ever going to get.

Rose devoted a significant portion of his convocation speech to the topic of racial injustice, and he has taken strides to understand the perspectives of minority students at Bowdoin. Last Friday, through Director of the Student Center for Multicultural Life Benjamin Harris, Rose met with student leaders from the Multicultural Coalition, which is made up of organizations such as the Asian Students Association, Students for Justice in Palestine and The Undiscussed.

It is up to us as students to continue to take Rose up on his offer to engage. Our recent wave of activism seems to have convinced President Rose of the student body’s investment in social justice, but it remains to be seen how responsive the administration will be to concrete proposals for change. And while student and faculty activists have organized events such as the October 1 teach-in, it’s unclear exactly how effective the event will prove to be.

We have students desperate to talk and a president eager to listen. Let’s take advantage of this opportunity. All forms of campus dialogue and subsequent activism—from organized discussion to uncompromising protest—are important, and social change rarely happens through any one channel. We shouldn’t count anything out. Maybe the teach-in will effect the most change this semester. Maybe smaller recurring meetings with President Rose will. Most likely, it will be a combination of both.

This editorial represents the majority view of the Bowdoin Orient’s editorial board, which is comprised of John Branch, Sam Chase, Matthew Gutschenritter, Emma Peters and Nicole Wetsman. 

When members of the Bowdoin community reminisce about President Barry Mills in five, 10, or 15 years, they will talk about his expansion of financial aid, his fundraising skills and the many campus buildings constructed during his career. But when the students who matriculated during Mills’ tenure talk about him, they’ll remember other things: the times he sat down with students during lunch at Thorne Dining Hall, his slow walks across the Quad, his printed face glued to popsicle sticks during this year’s Bowdoin-Colby hockey game. President Mills achieved the ultimate success at Bowdoin: He grew the College’s national profile while still making it feel like home.

Considering how well he fits the identity of the College, it is ironic that Mills was an afterthought for the 2001 presidential search committee—a committee Mills himself chaired. A biology and government double major and a member of the Class of 1972, Mills took full advantage of the liberal arts experience while a student at Bowdoin. After leaving Brunswick, he continued his varied academic pursuits, earning a doctorate in biology and a law degree. Mills then became a successful lawyer in New York and began volunteering his time as a Trustee of the College shortly thereafter. 

Once chosen as President, Mills’ prowess as a fundraiser stood out among his other achievements. Some may only remember him for the capital campaign from 2004 to 2009 that raised $250 million, or for his stewardship of the College recession, but Mills was much more than just a financial leader. He took a genuine interest in the experiences of the students, attending and participating in lectures, performances, presentations and athletic events. He also took campus issues head on, responding directly to the National Association of Scholar’s conservative critique of the College in 2013 and meeting continuously with campus activists throughout his tenure.

President Mills’ accessibility and affable nature extended to his approach to admissions, an area in which he did hands-on work to bring the best and brightest to Bowdoin. Many remember Mills approaching them and their parents at Accepted Students Day to give an honest assessment of the College, while others received personal phone calls from Mills when they were still in the midst of choosing the right school. For Mills, bringing the best to Bowdoin meant relentlessly dedicating himself and the College to increasing financial aid funds and ensuring that no accepted student would be unable to attend for monetary reasons. This past December, the faculty endowed a scholarship in honor of Mills and his wife, Karen, and their commitment to the practice of need-blind admissions. The faculty gave him a standing ovation, and he deserved nothing less.

Although Mills will not officially relinquish leadership of the College until July 1, he is probably experiencing many of the same sentiments of nostalgia that graduating seniors are feeling. Fittingly, he will soon be made an honorary member of the Class of 2015. When you see President Mills around campus before you pack up for the summer, don’t hesitate to stop him and thank him for what he’s done for the College. If we’ve learned anything about him, it’s that he’ll be more than happy to stop and chat. 

This editorial represents the majority view of the Bowdoin Orient’s editorial board, which is comprised of Garrett Casey, Ron Cervantes, Sam Chase, Matthew Gutschenritter, Nicole Wetsman and Kate Witteman. 

It’s party time. Many Bowdoin students look forward to this weekend of raucous celebration all year—or even go as far as to plan their semesters abroad around it—and a collective sigh of disappointment could be heard on campus when it was announced that for a second year in a row, the concert would be held indoors. Though the weather may not be ideal, and the floor of the Farley Field House pales in comparison to the grass of Whittier Field, the show and the weekend’s fun should go on uninterrupted. All ivy needs both rain and shine to grow and thrive.  

An urge for restraint may fall on deaf ears this far into the week of revelry, but it is important to remember that other peer schools have ended long-held traditions they deemed unsafe. This year, the Bates campus erupted in controversy after its administrators decided to end Trick or Drink, an aptly-named off campus Halloween celebration, stating that the event encouraged underage and binge drinking. Colby ended an annual tradition for graduating seniors called Champagne Steps after a slew of transports and property damage in 2009. The Tufts administration decided in 2010 to ban alcohol from its Ivies-equivalent, called Spring Fling, following a year when more transports were called in than the local ambulance companies could handle. Last year, Bowdoin had three transports over the Ivies Weekend. Damage was also done to Bowdoin dorms and nearby Brunswick residents often complain about the noise. After several incidents in previous years involving visitors who did not know anyone at the College, the administration began charging guests to enter the Saturday concert in 2012. And this year, to help mitigate the problem of public urination during the annual Brunswick Apartments Quad celebration, the College will provide portable restrooms for the first time. Hopefully, preventative actions like these will continue to be the norm for the College’s approach to making Ivies safe and fun every year. 

While Ivies is a carefree time for students, that is not the case for everyone at the College. Director of Safety and Security Randy Nichols is sleeping on a cot in his office for the next few nights, and many Office of Safety and Security officers are required to work multiple shifts over the weekend. Dining Services workers must be prepared to handle especially big rushes of students coming from the Brunswick Apartments Quad and the Saturday concert. Facilities Management shoulders the burden of some of the cleanup and repairs the damages that are too often a byproduct of the festivities. Student Activities has poured its time and energy into improving Ivies each year and ensuring that it runs smoothly. And finally, the Entertainment Board carefully considered students’ survey responses and spent months planning the weekend; in addition, its members will forgo some of the weekend’s freedoms in order to staff events. Numerous people go above and beyond this weekend so that we can enjoy ourselves, and for that we should all be appreciative.     

When the last of the champagne is poured and Security closes up shop at Pine Street Apartments, we hope to have done past generations of revelers proud. It may only be three (or four, or five, or six) days long, but Ivies usually provides many of the most memorable moments of the year. Happy 150th, Ivies, and here’s to many more.

This editorial represents the majority view of the Bowdoin Orient’s editorial board, which is comprised of Garrett Casey, Ron Cervantes, Sam Chase, Matthew Gutschenritter, Nicole Wetsman and Kate Witteman.

An article published in the Orient this week investigated several questions that arose on the ethics of the recent Bowdoin Student Government (BSG) Executive Committee election, which concluded on Monday. While we do not have reason to believe that anyone acted with malicious intent, or that the election should be repeated, uncertainty about the integrity of elections has real potential to damage BSG’s credibility on campus. We think there are a number of ways BSG can clarify or expand its election rules to prevent future problems: 

• Before the polls closed last weekend, a limited number of candidates were unofficially informed about the real-time margins of the vote, which might have given them an advantage over their uninformed opponents. There are currently no rules concerning the dissemination of vote totals, even though asymmetrical knowledge of these numbers can influence the election’s outcome. One solution to this problem is to add a rule to the by-law stating that BSG will not release information about the election until it concludes.

• In November, BSG approved a change to the election bylaws that set a $12 cap on campaign spending, all of which is provided by BSG. The initiative aimed to prevent a candidate’s personal financial resources from affecting campaigning. While the change is a good improvement to the election bylaws, there are no mechanisms for enforcement. When candidates go to the Copy Center, they pay using a BSG project code, and there is no oversight as to how much is spent and no system to determine if candidates spend their own money. BSG should implement a process for auditing candidates’ campaign spending. 

• This year, for the first time in recent memory, two candidates campaigned together. Since each candidate is allotted $12 to spend on campaign materials, a pair of candidates would technically be able to promote themselves with more funds than a candidate campaigning alone. BSG should make it clear whether or not candidates can campaign together, and if they are allowed to, should not give them an unintentional funding advantage over single candidates. 

• After a large influx of last-minute votes crashed BSG’s voting website on Sunday night, the voting deadline was extended twice. BSG could not have anticipated its website would go down, but not being clear about how it decided to extend the voting deadline, and for how long, does threaten the election’s credibility. BSG does not have any rules about extending the deadline, and since some members can have knowledge of the vote tallies before a deadline extension, the lack of rules about extensions is an opportunity for abuses. 

• Lastly, throughout the years, members of BSG’s Election Commission, including the Election Coordinator, have actively supported or campaigned for candidates. Although doing so is not against any BSG rules, it could lead to conflicts of interest. BSG would do well to define what types of interactions the supervisors of an election can have with candidates’ campaigns, and should ban any form of public endorsement from the members of the Commission. 

Collegiate student governments provide a model for future civic involvement, and bestowing students with strong democratic values should be one of Bowdoin’s goals. While BSG officer elections are obviously not as high stakes as U.S. presidential elections, it should still matter to the student body that its representatives are elected in an ethical, systematic and transparent manner. And if BSG wants its efforts to be taken seriously, it should begin by taking its electoral process more seriously.

This editorial represents the majority view of the Bowdoin Orient’s editorial board, which is comprised of Garrett Casey, Ron Cervantes, Sam Chase, Matthew Gutschenritter and Nicole Wetsman.

When the polls open for the Bowdoin Student Government (BSG) elections today, the student body will have the choice of three candidates for president. While all three candidates have impressive résumés and plans for the future of BSG, the Orient endorses Danny Mejia-Cruz ’16. 

The president of BSG heads an organization that serves as a liaison between the student body and the College’s administration, a role that will be particularly important next year when President-elect Rose begins his tenure. BSG has a real opportunity to determine Rose’s relationship with the student body and help set the tone for his presidency. Each candidate expressed his discontent with aspects of BSG’s performance in previous years, citing that BSG has to work on reconnecting with the students it represents. This disunion has prevented BSG from achieving important goals, and we are eager to see it reversed next year. 

All three candidates highlighted their desire to address two of the most high-profile policy issues that have been discussed on campus over the past few years: pushing back the Credit/D/Fail deadline and lengthening Thanksgiving Break. The Orient editorial board has supported both efforts, as have recent BSG presidents, and yet they have fallen short every year. Mejia-Cruz’s willingness to apply constant pressure to the administration, as well as his intimate understanding of the work required to bring these initiatives to fruition, weighed heavily in our decision. In recent years, the faculty have nixed both an extended Thanksgiving Break proposal and a change to the Credit/D/Fail policy despite widespread support from students and members of the administration. Achieving these policy goals will require winning over skeptical professors, and we believe that Mejia-Cruz will be best able to mobilize students and aggressively lobby the faculty. 

Mejia-Cruz will be a tireless advocate for the student body. His willingness to engage both himself and BSG as a whole in important campus conversations will bring the student government out of the shadows. Additionally, his proposal to have a representative from the multicultural center on BSG highlights his recognition that BSG could benefit from including a voice that would speak specifically to issues of multiculturalism on campus. With three years of service in a variety of student government positions and various campus committees, Mejia-Cruz is familiar with both the institutions and individuals that shape the College and he knows what is required to maintain continuity with them in a transitional period. His platform includes a plan to acquaint President-elect Clayton Rose with the authentic student experience through forums and programming to be held throughout the fall semester. 

Mejia-Cruz’s opponents, Robo Tavel ’16 and Justin Pearson ’17, are also well qualified. Very rarely is the student body fortunate enough to have so many excellent candidates to choose from. All three would make outstanding BSG presidents, but we feel that Mejia-Cruz’s outspokenness and energy make him uniquely suited to help BSG overcome its inertia.

This editorial represents the majority view of the Bowdoin Orient’s editorial board, which is comprised of Garrett Casey, Ron Cervantes, Sam Chase, Matthew Gutschenritter, Nicole Wetsman and Kate Witteman. 

President Barry Mills’ announcement on Monday that Dean for Academic Affairs Cristle Collins Judd will be leaving the College for the Mellon Foundation means that two of the highest-ranking officials in the College are stepping down this summer. Since Judd is the administrator with the most impact on the College’s curriculum and faculty, her departure gives us an opportunity to evaluate the state of academics at the College and to share our hopes for certain changes under President-elect Clayton Rose.

The Dean for Academic Affairs Office may seem detached from student life, but it has a tremendous impact on the academic experiences of the entire student body. And while the College has found several ways to collect student input on academic matters—including class surveys at the end of each semester, lunches with prospective professors, and student-written recommendation letters for faculty who are up for promotions—we would like to see more direct and impactful student involvement. Students should be be part of tenure and faculty search committees, and student feedback should weigh heavily in any decisions regarding the curriculum. Our next dean for academic affairs should institute changes that increase the transparency of what is now an opaque office.   

In 2005, the year before Judd’s arrival on campus, the Orient reported that just three of Bowdoin’s 150 instructional faculty members were African American. That same year, 20 out of 190 faculty members identified as minorities, according to the College’s Common Data Set. This year, that number is 32 out of 235, meaning that even now, less than 14 percent of Bowdoin’s professors are minorities. Bowdoin has the third lowest percentage of minority faculty in the NESCAC, trailed only by Bates and Connecticut College. Increased faculty diversity has been a goal for at least 10 years, yet the College still has a long way to go. It will be the responsibility of the new dean for academic affairs to follow through on achieving that goal.

In the last few years of Judd’s tenure, her office has sought to adapt Bowdoin’s curriculum to the needs of the information age and defend the liberal arts against those who question its value. In an effort to incorporate modern technology into traditional classroom settings, Bowdoin began the Digital and Computational Studies Initiative (DCSI) two years ago. Additionally, computer science has become so popular in the past few years that some prospective majors and minors have been unable to enroll in the department’s courses. The new dean of academic affairs will need to expand the computer science department and continue to carefully integrate technology with the rest of our curriculum.

When President-elect Clayton Rose appoints Judd’s replacement, he will set a tone that will endure for the rest of his presidency. The Board of Trustees indicated its priorities—a balance of financial and academic leadership—when it elected Rose, and now Rose will indicate his academic priorities for the College by selecting a new dean for academic affairs. Unlike President Barry Mills, Rose has experience as a faculty member, and we hope that he will take a leading role in setting the academic policy of the College and working to facilitate collaboration and trust between the faculty and the administration. 

This editorial represents the majority view of the Bowdoin Orient’s editorial board, which is comprised of Garrett Casey, Ron Cervantes, Sam Chase, Matthew Gutschenritter, Nicole Wetsman and Kate Witteman. 

Bowdoin Climate Action (BCA) announced over Spring Break that it would escalate its fossil fuel divestment campaign by turning to civil disobedience, starting with a sit-in that will occur in the coming weeks. The group distributed a press release stating that more than 50 students have pledged to participate. BCA says “divestment is the tactic, climate justice is the goal.” We, and many members of the Bowdoin community, agree with BCA’s goal of working toward climate justice, but we do not believe that a narrow focus on pressuring the Trustees to divest is BCA’s best path forward.    

The group has honed the rhetoric it uses to justify its escalation, repeatedly stating that since BCA members presented their case to the Board of Trustees in October, the Trustees have been silent for over 140 days. Group members also accuse President Barry Mills, who recently stated that he is the liaison between the Board and BCA, of failing to engage with them and failing to take climate justice seriously. Though Mills has been an imperfect liaison, we believe that BCA’s argument is misrepresentative. Both Mills and the Trustees have met with BCA and engaged with the group’s proposal. According to Mills, the Board concluded that divestment was not viable for Bowdoin, yet BCA continues to focus on this singular goal.   

BCA would be better off reaching out as opposed to sitting in. In a recent survey conducted by Associate Professor of Government Michael Franz, only 24 percent of 311 respondents supported divestment, while 37 percent opposed it, and 35 percent reported that they did not have enough information to make a decision. If BCA wants to continue the divestment conversation, it should engage both the 37 percent of students who are opposed and the 35 percent who are undecided. BCA often asks, “Whose side are you on?” Until there is a more meaningful and balanced debate on the issue, many students will not know their answer to that question. We are beginning to see students who do not support divestment speak out. Kuangji Chen ’15 wrote a detailed op-ed this week in which he argues that the financial costs of divestment outwiegh its symbolic value.

BCA might also consider putting its divestment campaign on the backburner and focusing its efforts on other climate initiatives. There are other steps that can be taken toward the goal of climate justice. For example, when Middlebury announced that it would not divest from fossil fuels in 2013, Divest for Our Future Middlebury changed its tactics. It began encouraging Middlebury to increase its investments in renewable energy companies. BCA could also shift its focus away from the endowment entirely. Maine is confronting a number of environmental issues. Environmentalists working on local problems and climate change researchers at Bowdoin and elsewhere could all benefit from the work of committed college activists like those involved with BCA. 

Climate change is one of the most pressing issues our generation faces. However, the single-minded pursuit of a symbolic goal is not the best way for Bowdoin students to address it. Sitting in will do little more than perpetuate a divestment campaign that is, for the time being, a lost cause. If BCA wants to make a difference, it should begin to pursue other options. 

This editorial represents the majority view of the Bowdoin Orient’s editorial board, which is comprised of Garrett Casey, Ron Cervantes, Sam Chase, Matthew Gutschenritter, Nicole Wetsman and Kate Witteman. 

On Sunday, Wil Smith ’00 passed away after a battle with colon cancer. As has been widely written, Smith leaves behind a legacy as one of the most influential alumni in Bowdoin’s recent history. One of three African-American students in his class, Smith matriculated to the College when he was 28 and caring for his toddler daughter. Smith experienced hardships at Bowdoin in a time when our community was not as well-equipped to help struggling students adjust to Bowdoin.  

In Smith’s first few months at the College, graduation seemed like an unattinable goal. Smith was surely the only Polar Bear to ever study and play basketball as a single parent, and at the beginning of his first semester, he felt underprepared and inadequately supported. That changed quickly. Roy Partridge, the professor of Smith’s first-year seminar, and Betty Trout-Kelly, the assistant to the president for multicultural affairs and affirmative action, marshalled resources and support for Smith. The College provided housing and a meal plan, and an alumnus donated $25,000 for childcare for his daughter. 

After graduation, Smith became the director of multicultural student programs at Bowdoin, a position that allowed him to expand access to the College to new populations of students, and—once they arrived in Brunswick—to ensure that they received help if they needed it. According to Dean of First Year Students Janet Lohmann, Smith represents the idea of possibility at Bowdoin. “There was no scaffolding for a 28-year-old who wanted to play on the basketball team,” she said. “He just showed us what was possible—how we, as an institution, could meet people’s needs and how a person like Wil could really make this his home.”

Since Smith enrolled at the College, it has begun accepting a more racially, economically and regionally diverse student body, and it has developed progamming to meet that student body's needs. The administration has implemented the Bowdoin Advising Program to Support Academic Excellence (BASE) program, which provides robust advising to students who did not attend rigorous high schools. The College has also begun offering courses like Quantitative Reasoning, which help students improve the foundational skills they will need throughout their time at Bowdoin. Despite these efforts, there are students who believe that more should be done. Two weeks ago, over 200 community members gathered in the David Saul Smith Union to hear a small group of students talk about a variety of issues, including how Bowdoin can better support students from diverse backgrounds.  

Smith worked tirelessly on issues of diversity and inclusion both at Bowdoin and beyond. All who knew him speak to his skill in giving voice to those who were not always heard and his belief in the potential of everyone with whom he worked. As we remember and mourn him, we should also recommit ourselves to the causes he championed. Smith’s story is as an example of how Bowdoin can enable all of its students to succeed, regardless of their circumstances. At the Berkshire School, Smith was known for his catchphrase “keep working.” Bowdoin has worked hard to expand access and better accomodate the needs of all students, but it should honor Smith’s mantra as it moves forward. 

This editorial represents the majority view of the Bowdoin Orient’s editorial board, which is comprised of Garrett Casey, Ron Cervantes, Sam Chase, Matthew Gutschenritter, Nicole Wetsman and Kate Witteman. 

This year, Ladd House will not be hosting its annual Inappropriate Party. After multiple conversations with the Office of Residential Life (ResLife) and Ladd’s advisors, House residents decided to forgo the event. In years past, disrespectful costumes have included aborted fetuses and various impersonations of Hitler. The Inappropriate Party, a Bowdoin and Ladd House tradition, is little more than a justification for students to be offensive. ResLife’s decision to caution Ladd House to think carefully before hosting the party—particularly in light of November’s Cracksgiving incident—was a good one. Ladd residents themselves spent two weeks brainstorming ways to host the Inappropriate Party without finding a solution. That itself is evidence that the event no longer has a place on campus.  

The Inappropriate Party is not an event where an isolated offensive action may occur; rather, it specifically encourages participants to be offensive. One can imagine costumes that would be inappropriate but harmless, but the chances that all or even most of the costumes would be innocuous are slim. It is not worth the risk. Additionally, simply telling those who may be offended not to attend this party goes against the very purpose of the College House system: to create an inclusive social environment at Bowdoin. The College should not allow, let alone promote, an event condoning disrespect.

The pre-emptive cancellation of an event, however, could be a dangerous precedent to set. The mere possibility of offensive behavior should not be reason enough to cancel a party, since pre-emptive action punishes everyone for presumed transgressions. We believe individual students should be punished after the fact, should they decide to act in a disrespectful manner. The Inappropriate Party is an event at which students have conducted themselves poorly year after year, and it merits cancellation, but the College should not presume that Bowdoin students are incapable of attending a Wild West-themed party, for example, without resorting to disrespectful Native American costumes like those worn at Cracksgiving. 

Upon graduation, Bowdoin students will enter a world in which many people are not as conscientious of concepts such as microaggressions and cultural appropriation. But we will also enter a society in which conversations about diversity of all kinds are becoming more common and in which cultural sensitivity is increasing. If Bowdoin can play any role in graduating a more socially-conscious group of alumni, it should. It is not our belief that Bowdoin students should plan events or live their lives in fear of offending others, but when we have a clear opportunity to prevent hurtful behavior, we should take it. 

Bowdoin took a decidedly progressive stance when it punished the students who dressed as Native Americans at Cracksgiving, and it reaffirmed its committment to that stance by discouraging the Innappropriate Party. The loss of this ill-conceived event will improve campus culture. When it comes to other student programming that the College may find questionable, however, we hope that that the administration will take a back seat and that students will have the wherewithal to act in a manner becoming of a Bowdoin student.  

This editorial represents the majority view of the Bowdoin Orient’s editorial board, which is comprised of Garrett Casey, Ron Cervantes, Sam Chase, Matthew Gutschenritter, Nicole Wetsman and Kate Witteman. 

Dartmouth College President Phil Hanlon announced on January 29 that alcoholic beverages that are more than 15 percent alcohol by volume (ABV) would be prohibited from Dartmouth’s campus beginning this spring. The announcement has sparked discussion about the role of hard alcohol on college campuses around the country, with the debate proceeding along these lines: Administrators and health experts argue that limiting hard alcohol consumption reduces binge drinking and makes campuses safer. Detractors claim that hard alcohol bans are evidence of college administrators becoming increasingly paternalistic. After a similar policy went into effect at Bowdoin in the late 1990s, the College became a safer place to drink.

Much of the coverage of Dartmouth’s new ban makes reference to Bowdoin, which was one of the first schools to enact such a policy. Bowdoin prohibits the possession of hard liquor with an alcohol content of more than 10 percent ABV, while permitting beer, wine, malt beverages and hard cider. Both Amherst and Williams prohibit hard alcohol at registered events, with a few exceptions. Hamilton banned it briefly, but lifted the ban in 2012. Of the 11 NESCAC schools, only Bates, Colby and Bowdoin have banned hard alcohol entirely.

Bowdoin’s policy provides a strong deterrent to having hard alcohol at campus-wide parties that we believe protects students from overconsumption. Whereas a typical mixed drink like jungle juice—which contains an unknown amount of alcohol—might be served at parties at other schools, it is relatively uncommon at Bowdoin. That is not to say that one cannot find hard alcohol on campus. Students often binge drink in their rooms before attending larger parties, and opponents of prohibiting hard alcohol argue that bans encourage rather than deter such dangerous behavior. However, if students do choose to pre-game with hard alcohol, at least they are making their own drinks in a controlled environment, rather than consuming mystery drinks in the midst of a chaotic party.

In recent years, Bowdoin has had a low number of student transports and last year had the lowest in the NESCAC. Although this statistic is also attributable to other factors, the College’s policy certainly helps foster a healthier drinking culture. A ban on hard alcohol alone cannot create a safe campus party environment, but it is an important step in the right direction. 

Enacting a policy that moderates the behavior of college students is not an easy task, and even Bowdoin’s time-tested ban is not without its downsides. But by and large, our experiences at the College have confirmed that banning hard alcohol is more responsible than it is paternalistic. Each year roughly the same number of U.S. college students die from alcohol-related causes as are enrolled at Bowdoin, and although there may be other ways to prevent these deaths, banning hard alcohol should not be overlooked as a potential solution. It took a tragic death in the late 1990s for Bowdoin to reassess its drinking culture, and today’s students are better off as a result. We hope that the recent national attention given to Dartmouth’s actions will encourage other schools to consider similar policies.​

This editorial represents the majority view of the Bowdoin Orient’s editorial board, which is comprised of Garrett Casey, Ron Cervantes, Sam Chase, Matthew Gutschenritter, Nicole Wetsman and Kate Witteman. 

After the redesign of its website several years ago, the Orient began using the commenting platform Disqus to provide an easy way for readers to respond to articles. Recently, many large publications have eliminated their comment sections entirely, while many others are re-evaluating their comment policies and engaging in more active moderation. Too often the Orient’s comment threads devolve into off-topic arguments or personal attacks on writers, rather than thoughtful discussions of issues. The editorial board believes in the value of open discourse and hopes that our articles spark thoughtful and respectful conversations. Readers deserve to be heard and our comment section is an important medium for people to voice their opinions. We are therefore implementing a set of guidelines that we believe will elevate the quality of the discourse in our comment sections. 

Please read our new Comment Policy below: 

​The Bowdoin Orient encourages its readers to submit thoughtful and relevant comments on its stories. Our goal is to provide a space for considerate discussion, civil debate and informed commentary.

The Orient strongly encourages commenters to use their real names, or at the very least, a relevant descriptor (i.e. class of '92, parent, sophomore, etc.). Commenters should not misrepresent themselves by using someone else's name; if this is discovered, the comment will be removed.

When a comment is submitted, the name and email address provided are made available to the Orient. This information is never shared nor made public.

Comments are moderated by a small team of Orient editors and they will not appear on the site immediately. Comments will be approved if they are relevant and contribute to a thoughtful discussion of the article.

Comments will not be approved if:

The Orient strives to be as consistent as possible in moderation, but final judgements are the subjective decision of the moderators. The Orient reserves the right to reject or delete any comment, or disable commenting, for any reason. Due to the high volume of comments, the Orient may not be able to respond to inquiries related to specific moderation decisions.

Commenting may be disabled on high-profile stories that attract spam comments. Additionally, the Orient reserves the right to disable commenting on an article that is no longer topical or that was published more than four years ago.

Once submitted, comments become the property of the Bowdoin Orient. They may be published in print using the name attached to the comment. If a real name is used, the commenter will be contacted to confirm his or her identity before the comment is published in print.

The views expressed in comments are solely those of the commenter. They are not endorsed or promoted by the Bowdoin Orient or Bowdoin College.

On Monday, Bowdoin announced that Clayton S. Rose, a professor at the Harvard Business School, will be the College’s 15th President. Admittedly, Rose is not the most exciting or novel candidate, but that in no way means that he is not the best fit to lead the College. The dedicated members of the search committee spent countless hours evaluating candidates and we are confident that he is exceptionally qualified for the position. There is no sense in passing judgment on President-elect Rose’s ability to lead the College before his work has begun. While some may have initial reservations about Rose, we have every reason to be optimistic. 

While it is fruitless to scrutinize Rose before he takes office, it can be valuable to ask how his unique characteristics can help the College at this moment in its history. His tenure as chief operating officer of J.P. Morgan and his management expertise indicate he has the leadership skills the College will need. That he did research on race in corporate settings after transitioning to academia shows a commitment to addressing issues of diversity not unlike those that affect Bowdoin on a daily basis. Too often, the values of corporate America and the liberal arts seem in conflict with one another, but Rose’s résumé proves he can reconcile the two. His contributions to both areas can serve as a model for students looking to achieve business success without sacrificing a committment to the common good. 

When President Barry Mills announced his plan to retire, the Orient’s editorial board wrote, “An outsider will be able to evaluate campus culture without the bias toward the status quo that comes with having been a part of it; he or she will also have a fresh start with Bowdoin’s various interest groups—the students, the faculty, the staff, and the Brunswick community.” President-elect Rose’s position as an outsider will allow him to recognize the College’s strengths and also identify where it has room to improve. Rose has a clean slate with Bowdoin’s interest groups, which gives him an opportunity to forge new relationships between the administration and the student community. 

His experience makes him particularly well-suited to address several important areas of concern for the College. Increasing Bowdoin’s accessibility and diversity by growing the endowment and prioritizing financial aid was one of Mills’ strengths and should be a top priority for the president-elect. Rose must also continue to modernize the College’s curriculum while still maintaining its liberal arts identity. While addressing these issues and the others that will arise, we hope that Rose will be willing and eager to engage with students, faculty and alumni. Collaboration will be key to making Rose—a newcomer to the environment of a small liberal arts college—successful in his new role.  

Leadership changes in an institution like Bowdoin are an important time for reflection, not a time for quick criticisms. As our seventh president, William DeWitt Hyde, wrote in the Offer of the College, part of Bowdoin’s mission is, “To gain a standard for the appreciation of others’ work and the criticism of your own.” The Bowdoin community should receive Rose’s unique knowledge base with optimism and be ready to work toward preserving what we love about Bowdoin and changing what we do not.

This editorial represents the majority view of the Bowdoin Orient’s editorial board, which is comprised of Garrett Casey, Ron Cervantes, Sam Chase, Matthew Gutschenritter, Nicole Wetsman and Kate Witteman. 

“If your conscience stops at the border of Maine then you are less than who you should be,” Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. explained while at Bowdoin on May 6, 1964. King’s words should resonate for the many students who find that Bowdoin’s New England location isolates them from recent national racial issues. As these issues make headlines both nationally and at Bowdoin, the College is primed for dialogue about race relations; however, that conversation will not be productive without participation from students of all races. While many students of color have mobilized in response to recent events, there has been a lack of engagement from the majority of Bowdoin’s largely-white student body.

There is no excuse for such apathy at Bowdoin. Recent events have demonstrated that Bowdoin is neither immune to insensitivity regarding race and culture, nor isolated from national events. In November, members of the men’s lacrosse team hosted an annual party where some guests wore Native American costumes, despite warnings from other students and the administration that doing so would be offensive. The administration rightfully chose to punish the guests involved. Then, in December, a man reacted to the non-indictments in the Michael Brown and Eric Garner cases by murdering two New York City policemen, an event that directly impacted the Bowdoin community.

Bowdoin has begun to facilitate conversations about race. The new Student Center for Multicultural Life will serve as a hub for programming on campus. President Mills indicated that classes will likely no longer be held on Martin Luther King Jr. Day beginning in 2020, the next time the start of the semester coincides with the holiday. Furthermore, College policies regarding bias incidents and the College’s responses to national race-based events show a willingness to confront those who are racially insensitive.

Nevertheless, it is the responsibility of the student body to take advantage of the resources provided by the administration, and not leave them just for the minority members on campus. At a panel held as part of the Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebrations this Monday, a number of minority students expressed frustrations at the microaggressions they still face regularly on campus. However, as the panel was mostly attended by students of color, those comments were not able to reach those who would most benefit from hearing them.

While Bowdoin can provide the spaces for discussion, they cannot force students to participate in them. Students must choose to do so on their own, whether by attending organized forums or by having casual discussions with their peers. We understand that this kind of engagement can be uncomfortable—that is part of what makes it so important.

As Elina Zhang ’16 wrote in her December 5 op-ed, “Always assume you have the legitimacy to be concerned about other peoples’ struggles.” For any substantial conversation to occur on campus, students of all colors must participate.

This editorial represents the majority view of the Bowdoin Orient’s editorial board, which is comprised of Garrett Casey, Ron Cervantes, Sam Chase, Matthew Gutschenritter, Nicole Wetsman and Kate Witteman. 

The two weekdays on campus before the start of Bowdoin’s Thanksgiving Break are surreal. Professors announce “sick days” well in advance. Class attendance plummets. The dining halls are conspicuously empty, and students who live close enough to drive start taking off by Monday afternoon.

In the last three years, the faculty has rejected two separate proposals by the Office of the Dean of Student Affairs and BSG respectively, that would have extended Thanksgiving Break to a full week and moved up the beginning of the academic year by two days. Faculty members voiced concerns that the plans would hinder their summer research and would be unfair to students who would not be able to afford a week-long trip home for this holiday. We do not feel that the faculty acted in the best interest of all students in making their decisions. 

While the faculty’s arguments for vetoing a longer Thanksgiving Break are not invalid, they are a selective reading of the facts. The proposal would indeed lessen professors’ research time by two days at the end of the summer, but it would also give students and faculty four extra days for Thanksgiving Break. And although lengthening the break to nine days would leave a few students on a quiet campus for a longer period of time, it would also grant about an additional 20 percent of the student body the opportunity to share Thanksgiving dinner with their loved ones. According to a survey conducted by the College in 2011, 84 percent of respondents said they would be able to travel home during a week-long break, compared with the 64 percent who said they would go home either way. The percent of students from outside New England has increased from 62 to 66 percent just between the Class of 2017 and the Class of 2018. For the extra Bowdoin students who could see their families those few days would make all the difference.

Without faculty approval for a schedule change, students and professors currently get the worst possible outcome. Classes empty out on the Monday and Tuesday of Thanksgiving week as students from outside the Northeast vote with their feet and schedule earlier flights home. In seminars, the absence of only a few people significantly affects the quality of discussions, while some professors cut back on lesson plans or cancel their lectures altogether. Those who do fly on Wednesday are subject to the most expensive ticket prices, a schedule too tight to account for weather emergencies and the threat of delays on one of the busiest travel days of the year.

This issue has been in the minds of students for at least the last four years. The Orient editorial board has voiced its support for a longer break in 2010 and 2012. The faculty has repeatedly failed to consider how important this issue is to students. Thanksgiving is an important family holiday that is celebrated nationwide, and many students would undoubtedly appreciate the opportunity to spend it with their loved ones. 

After returning from this year’s Thanksgiving vacation, students quickly needed to get back into the swing of things. In the Bowdoin way, everyone greeted each other by asking how their breaks were. The common refrain given by almost every student was: “Too short.” It is time to re-examine the case for a longer Thanksgiving break.

When students were notified of their spring semester courses on Monday, a number of computer science and neuroscience students were left without the courses they need to finish their majors. This issue did not stem from Polaris, which continues to work well. Interim Registrar James Higginbotham reported to the Orient that 84 percent of students were enrolled in three or more classes during Round One registration and that the back end of the system was operating smoothly. Polaris provides a simple and streamlined process for students—a welcome improvement over the paper registration that students used as recently as the spring of 2013. For computer science majors, the problem is that there are too few courses to meet growing student demand. In neuroscience, an interdisciplinary major without its own department, the issue is that students are only sometimes given priority for required biology, chemistry and psychology courses.

Demand for next semester’s computer science offerings was incredibly high. Every course filled up after Round One registration, leaving dozens of students who are hoping to major or minor in the subject without any options. Unfortunately, this is not a new trend. Last spring, Caroline Pierce ’16 collected over 80 signatures on a petition asking the College to hire an additional computer science professor. The Office of Academic Affairs has said that it is working to accommodate more students in next semester’s classes, but any solution it offers will be a stopgap. We understand that resources are scarce and that expanding an academic department is an expensive and incremental process. However, the experiences of the many students who were turned away show that long-term solutions are necessary. 

Neuroscience majors also struggled during the registration process, although for different reasons. Because the major has no corresponding department, and courses are not listed specifically as neuroscience classes, it can be hard to navigate the program’s requirements. This is especially true since majors do not receive preference for every biology and psychology course that is part of the Neuroscience Program. These issues could easily be rectified by officially cross-listing relevant biology and psychology courses with neuroscience and by offering neuroscience students priority where necessary. 

The problems faced by neuroscience and computer science students indicate that there is room for improvement in our curriculum, both in terms of creating space where there is substantial demand and helping students enroll in the courses they need. One of the College’s greatest strengths is offering intimate classes in which we can learn from our excellent faculty.  Students will be best served if the administration can ensure that they have access to the courses they are required to take without greatly inflating class sizes.

This editorial represents the majority view of the Bowdoin Orient’s editorial board, which is comprised of Garrett Casey, Ron Cervantes, Natalie Kass-Kaufman, Sam Miller, Leo Shaw and Kate Witteman.

In the past two weeks, the College has welcomed two high-profile speakers to campus to present views that many students consider controversial. Last night, Bowdoin hosted a talk by Kristan Hawkins, president of the national pro-life organization Students for Life of America—the same group that used targeted Facebook advertising to recruit students to establish a chapter at Bowdoin in October. And last week, Fox News military analyst Colonel David Hunt gave a talk supporting a more isolationist approach to the War on Terror, in which he advocated “letting Iraq and Syria burn.”

Both talks provoked responses from the Bowdoin community. At the conclusion of Hunt’s lecture, a few students chanted to protest his belief that Islam is connected to terrorism, and last night, a group of female students stood outside Hawkins’ lecture with signs featuring pro-choice slogans. We recognize that when speakers come to campus to discuss divisive issues, students have a right to protest. They also have an obligation to protest respectfully. We are glad that in recent weeks, Bowdoin students have protested by listening and responding, rather than interrupting, mocking or making ad hominem attacks.

It is critical that public forums remain open to all opinions, especially since a narrow set of progressive political beliefs often seem to dominate campus culture. Hosting speakers whose perspectives differ from those of our community prevents Bowdoin from becoming an ideological echo chamber, which would not serve anyone well, regardless of their political beliefs. After all, the liberal arts ethos encourages us to approach opposing viewpoints as opportunities for learning. When we attend a talk like Hunt’s or Hawkins’, we gain a more nuanced understanding of complex issues and can better situate our own beliefs in the context of a broader discourse.

While Bowdoin strives to create dialogue through its many student-run organizations, the College’s overwhelmingly liberal ideological environment can prevent students from voicing alternative viewpoints. An event like last night’s could empower the minority of students who are pro-life—who may feel that most Bowdoin students are hostile to their perspective—to express their opinions more openly. In recent years, conservative students have reported feeling uncomfortable expressing their views and have asserted that their opinions are suppressed on campus. The community needs to make sure that all of its members beliefs are treated with due consideration. 

These two talks demonstrate the College’s willingness to address a discernible lack of ideological diversity surrounding certain hot-button issues. Looking forward, Bowdoin should continue to broaden the campus’ political discourse while also ensuring that guests are willing to engage in meaningful discussions with students.

This editorial represents the majority view of the Bowdoin Orient’s editorial board, which is comprised of Garrett Casey, Ron Cervantes, Natalie Kass-Kaufman, Sam Miller, Leo Shaw and Kate Witteman.

This week, the Orient examined a petition circulated by Bowdoin Climate Action (BCA) calling on the College to divest its endowment from fossil fuels. BCA has been collecting signatures since the fall of 2012 and has reported that it now has the support of 1,200 students. The group has shown remarkable initiative and dedication to its cause and has received the attention of those on campus, the Brunswick community, and the greater Bowdoin network. Just a few weeks ago, leaders of BCA met with members of the Board of Trustees to present their case for divestment. President Barry Mills arranged this meeting under the impression that over 1,000 Bowdoin students had expressed a desire for the College to divest. However, this was not the case.

We recognize the passion with which members of BCA have promoted the group’s divestment agenda and appreciate the value that student activism provides to our community. While the editorial board of the Orient expressed its opposition to divestment in February 2013, we acknowledge that BCA has made progress in its mission and sparked significant dialogue on a campus that often lacks political engagement.

In their presentation to the Trustees, BCA leaders relied on the petition when claiming that they had a mandate from the student body. However, a survey conducted this week of students who signed BCA’s petition revealed a considerable discrepancy between the group’s self-reported support and the actual student backing for its cause. Its alleged 1,000 signatures included names from two separate petitions—one of which stressed carbon neutrality more than divestment—and a large number of signatories reported that they do not currently endorse divestment. In light of these findings, BCA should not claim to speak for the majority of students on campus nor use this claim as leverage in its discussions with the administration. 

An editorial that ran in the Orient last April argued that students should engage more meaningfully with the issues that are at stake when asked to sign petitions. Although many signed the BCA petitions without such critical consideration, we do not doubt that hundreds of signatories do make up an important voice for environmental change. The large number of students who presented the petition to Mills last April and the letter from 70 faculty members to the Board of Trustees demonstrate that a significant portion of Bowdoin community members are behind divestment. 

Despite these outspoken voices, however, there remains an equal if not greater population that doubts whether or not divestment is the best course of action that the College can take to promote environmentalism. For now, the College should not be unduly influenced by the inflated numbers of a vocal minority. 

This editorial represents the majority view of the Bowdoin Orient’s editorial board, which is comprised of Garrett Casey, Ron Cervantes, Natalie Kass-Kaufman, Sam Miller, Leo Shaw and Kate Witteman.

The College sent a campus-wide email on October 2 to share proposed changes to the Sexual Misconduct Policy and request feedback from students. Many of the proposed changes will make Bowdoin compliant with new requirements created by the Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act of 2013, including broadening the definition of gender-based violence to include dating violence, domestic violence and stalking. Bowdoin has been progressive in providing resources for sexual assault survivors, and was among the first of its peer schools to create a gender violence and education position.

As strong as Bowdoin’s policies are, the College still needs to create an online portal that students can use to anonymously submit reports of sexual misconduct. There are currently five boxes on campus in which students can anonymously drop reports of sexual misconduct. We commend the College for providing a number of reporting options, but recognize that dropping a form into a box is itself an act of courage that could be a barrier for some victims of sexual misconduct.

According to Dean of Student Affairs Tim Foster, the administration is in the process of developing an anonymous online reporting system. We fully support the College in this initiative. For survivors, reporting sexual misconduct remotely might feel safer and more private than delivering a report to a physical box and we have an obligation to make the reporting process as uncomplicated as possible.

This editorial represents the majority view of the Bowdoin Orient’s editorial board, which is comprised of Garrett Casey, Ron Cervantes, Sam Miller, Leo Shaw and Kate Witteman.

Last spring, the volunteer advisors of Bowdoin Christian Fellowship (BCF)—an organization of Christian students on campus—refused to sign the College’s Freedom from Discrimination and Harassment Policy. BCF advisors Rob and Sim Gregory disagreed with the provision of the policy that prohibits discrimination against any member of the community based on race, religion, sex and sexual orientation. After a protracted debate that gained national coverage, including an article in The New York Times, BCF decided to cut official ties with the College and keep the Gregorys as its advisors. 

This week the Orient reports that the College will offer student leaders of the new Christian Fellowship at Bowdoin positions on Bowdoin’s Interfaith Council despite the group’s official separation from the College. By making this offer, Bowdoin undermines its own Freedom from Discrimination and Harassment Policy and its efforts to protect LGBTQ members of the community. Last spring, the Student Organization Oversight Committee (SOOC) suggested steps BCF could take to stay affiliated with the College. Its members chose not to renew the group’s charter and are now making use of alternative resources.

The Christian Fellowship at Bowdoin must decide whether it intends to be a religious organization involved with spiritual life at the College—and comply with Bowdoin’s policies—or an independent group operating off campus. In the meantime, Bowdoin should enforce its decision to prevent discriminatory organizations from engaging with the student body in an official capacity. 

This editorial represents the majority view of the Bowdoin Orient’s editorial board, which is comprised of Garrett Casey, Ron Cervantes, Sam Miller, Leo Shaw and Kate Witteman.

Students may have noticed advertisements on their Facebook and Twitter feeds this week for a “Bowdoin Pro-Life” group. The ads read, in part, “Join us as we start up a new pro-life group at Bowdoin College!” and link to a page for the group featuring a photo of the Quad. While the post and group appear to be associated with the College, or at the very least organized by Bowdoin students, they are not. The ad was paid for by Students for Life of America (SFLA), a national 501(c)(3) organization and pro-life advocacy group that has chapters on 838 high school, college and medical school campuses. 501(c)(3) organizations are tax-exempt nonprofits that serve religious, educational or charitable purposes. According to Beth Rahal, the regional coordinator of SFLA, the organization is using targeted Facebook advertisements to solicit students who may be interested in starting a chapter at Bowdoin. 

SFLA is misleadingly portraying itself, through the post’s design and rhetoric, as an existing, student-led organization. The ads on Facebook list “Bowdoin Pro-Life” as their author and mimic the Bowdoin brand in order to create the impression of an affiliation with the College. While the post could easily be mistaken for one of the many advertisements targeted to college students that permeate social-media, it is part of a concerted effort by SFLA to reach the Bowdoin community. According to this week’s front-page article, the organization has already made direct contact with students and College officials in order to advance its mission.

When three students attempted to launch Polar Pads, a franchise of Roomie Rentals, the company that rents beds and futons to students, Bowdoin refused to authorize the enterprise over concerns that it violated the College’s solicitation policy. The policy states,  “No outside organization may proselytize, distribute, or sell products without direct sponsorship of a student organization recognized by the Bowdoin Student Government or an administrative office.” Director of Student Life Allen Delong remarked at the time, “There are a lot of people, corporations, businesses and philanthropic groups who would love to have access to Bowdoin students, and we really are cautious about who has access.” While the College does its best to prevent unsolicited contact with outside groups, targeted social media advertisements come as a new and unregulated means of reaching Bowdoin students.

In 2012, the Orient spoke with students holding conservative values who reported their discomfort and unwillingness to express their views on Bowdoin’s campus. A Bowdoin Pro-Life club has the potential to provide a more welcoming environment for campus conservatives to voice their opinions and could foster dialogue on a divisive social issue. However, SFLA’s misleading method of reaching out to students only discredits its commitment to free and open discourse; a national pro-choice advocacy group using the same approach would be equally dubious. By circumventing the official channels of Bowdoin’s administration with targeted advertising on social media, SFLA undermines the spirit of Bowdoin’s solicitation policy and leaves us wondering: Would Bowdoin Pro-Life be a student-run group, or the instrument of a national organization?

This editorial represents the majority view of the Bowdoin Orient’s editorial board, which is comprised of Garrett Casey, Ron Cervantes, Natalie Kass-Kaufman, Sam Miller, Leo Shaw, and Kate Witteman.

Three years into the rollout of its Digital and Computational Studies Initiative (DCSI), Bowdoin is delving deeper into an experiment that integrates digital tools with the liberal arts. Classes under the DCSI umbrella have challenged students to study conventional material from contemporary angles, by, for example, using mapping soft ware to better understand the urban spaces described in eighteenth century literature. Trending concepts such as “smart cities” and “big data” have become buzzwords in popular discourse, but the College is turning them into areas of critical study. Bowdoin is right to acknowledge the growing relevance of technology in academia and to promote computational literacy, which is an increasingly important skill. More importantly, Bowdoin is taking a worthwhile risk by enabling talented new faculty members to develop an interdisciplinary curriculum. At a time when the value of the liberal arts is being questioned, DCSI can preserve the ethos of a Bowdoin education while bringing it to bear on a new set of questions about the world around us.

The first courses offered through the initiative have been well received. In this week’s front-page article on the DCSI, students expressed their enthusiasm for the new courses and for the opportunity to incorporate a host of digital tools into traditional academic settings. The intersection of computing and Bowdoin’s humanities offers a chance to engage critically with information in digital form—enriching discussion and enabling a progressive approach to learning. DCSI programs are accessible to students with or without backgrounds in computer science, and they have opened up positions for new faculty members who have used technology to invigorate their research in exciting ways.

Administrators and faculty must remember that these technologies are tools that depend on their users, not magical keys to a better learning experience. The College should avoid fetishizing technology and adopting what is simply in vogue. After all, many students know by now that tools such as Blackboard and iPad apps can become tedious stand-ins for effective instruction. It is also important to maximize the value of class time. Courses in which students require extensive technical instruction should make use of lab sections. And if professors do not have a sound understanding of a technology or software, its purpose in a class, and the pedagogic strategies necessary for using it, it will not benefit their classes. Above all, the “humanities” aspect of the digital humanities should remain paramount.

Bowdoin’s DCSI has the potential to enrich a wide range of intellectual projects as long as faculty are able to take advantage of its resources. Its most promising components are those directed by the postdoctoral fellows who have immersed themselves in the digital humanities as both subject and practice. If the initiative is expanded with a critical eye for continual improvement, Bowdoin will have made an investment in developing a curriculum relevant to quickly changing times.

This editorial represents the majority view of the Bowdoin Orient’s editorial board, which is comprised of Garrett Casey, Ron Cervantes, Natalie Kass-Kaufman, Sam Miller, Leo Shaw, and Kate Witteman.

Last week the New York Times’ data-driven blog, The Upshot, published an index of “The Most Economically Diverse Top Colleges” in which Bowdoin performed only slightly above average. The index was based on two statistics for each school—the percentage of students who receive federal Pell grants and the net price paid by students whose households earn between $30,000 and $48,000 per year.

According to the index, 13 percent of Bowdoin students recieved Pell grants betweeen 2012-2014. Since students who come from households that make less than $60,000 a year usually qualify for the Federal Pell Grant Program, examining the percentage of students who are Pell recipients helps measure the number of low- and lower-middle class students that colleges enroll. Despite having the 17th highest endowment-to-student ratio of schools in the index, Bowdoin is tied for the 66th highest percentage of students who are Pell grant recipients. The Upshot index, however, ignored the distinction between colleges like Bowdoin, which meet 100 percent of demonstrated need without loans for all students, and schools that include loans in their financial aid packages. David Leonhardt, a creator of the index, acknowledged that giving so much weight to Pell grants minimizes the impact of middle incomes on economic diversity. Bowdoin is more attractive to middle class students than most other schools in the country, since it provides financial aid to a wider spectrum of students.

Since 2009 Bowdoin has not included any loans in the financial aid packages it awards to the approximately 48 percent of students who receive aid. This means that while the College may not enroll as many Pell grant recipients as say, Susquehanna University, it makes a Bowdoin education affordable for students from households that earn too much money to qualify for Pell grants, and too little to pay full tuition. Susquehanna scores in the top-10 of the index despite billing low-income students (as defined by The Upshot) $9,100 more per year than Bowdoin does. The index shows that dozens of schools enrolls more students who qualify for Pell grants than Bowdoin. However, it obscures Bowdoin’s commitment to making college affordable for students at all income levels.

The Upshot points out that applicants from the lowest-income households are not making their way into Bowdoin’s student body. This is largely a problem of outreach. Talented students from low-income communities often do not realize that elite schools can be affordable, or that places like Bowdoin exist at all.

The College made a brave decision to do away with loans in the depths of a recession and has continued to prioritize aid in difficult economic circumstances. The Presidential Search Committee recently reiterated that Bowdoin “believes firmly that it must offer opportunity to talented students across the entire economic spectrum, including first-generation college students.” Many talented students, especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds, never receive that opportunity—and often it is simply because they do not know to apply. We commend the College for making Bowdoin tuition more affordable for students across the economic spectrum, but ask that it expands its efforts to recruit applicants from that spectrum’s lowest end.

Many upperclassmen with cars on campus have abided by the new student parking restrictions with frustration over the past week. Now that Bow- doin has reserved College House lots for faculty, staff and visitors, and the Town of Brunswick has designated all of Park Row as two-hour parking, students have mini- mal access to any central parking locations on campus. The administration’s “park once” philosophy—suggested by an independent parking consultant in 2012—encourages drivers to park at the beginning of the day and not use their vehicles again until leaving in the evening.

The new restrictions require most students with cars on campus to park in the Farley Field House and Watson Arena lots for extended periods of time. For some students driving from off-campus houses, that means walking a distance that is al- most equivalent to their original commutes. But while new restrictions may be espe- cially inconvenient for those who drive frequently, they are necessary steps toward improving the experience of all those who share Bowdoin’s limited space.

The College regularly attracts visitors for whom it must provide convenient parking. Both the Bowdoin College Museum of Art and the Peary-Macmillan Arctic Museum draw tourists, and prospective applicants and their families can be seen wandering campus throughout the year. It is worth sacrificing some parking con- veniences to ensure that these guests have easy access to all that our campus has to offer. We may not have the same degree of mobility that we used to, but with a main campus that is less than a mile in diameter, students do not need to have constant access to their vehicles.

This editorial represents the majority view of the Bowdoin Orient’s editorial board, which is comprised of Garrett Casey, Ron Cervantes, Natalie Kass-Kaufman, Sam Miller, Leo Shaw, and Kate Witteman.

Before students arrived on campus this fall, Information Technology (IT) was hard at work making adjustments to the campus printing system. Up until this semester, students could easily print any items in the queues at public printers, even those that did not belong to them. The updated system requires students to enter their usernames and only allows them to print their own documents.

These changes represent significant improvements in terms of electronic security and privacy and were long overdue. The rollout of the new system was not flawless, however, and it has left many students frustrated, confused and inconvenienced. Certain printer kiosks display documents in the queue as random numbers, and the College failed effectively to inform students that they would have to provide their usernames when printing.

We understand that employees at IT have been working for several weeks to fix the glitches plaguing the new system, and we appreciate their efforts. We wish, how- ever, that the College had explained the new system and its problems to the student body. Awareness of the problems, at the very least, would have enabled students to budget more time for printing and thus avoid a frantic scramble before class.

This editorial represents the majority view of the Bowdoin Orient’s editorial board, which is comprised of Garrett Casey, Ron Cervantes, Natalie Kass-Kaufman, Sam Miller, Leo Shaw, and Kate Witteman.

In the wake of President Barry Mills’ announcement that he will leave the College next spring, Bowdoin faces a decision about its leadership and future. A president sets the tone for the College’s direction and represents it to the wider world. As the Board of Trustees works with input from students, professors and others to find his successor, it is important that it considers bringing a new perspective to the College. 

In the past few years, the College has filled several important administrative positions from within. Tim Ryan ’98 was promoted to director of athletics after serving as the interim director. Just last month, former associate dean of student affairs Meadow Davis replaced Mary Pat McMahon as director of Residential Life. There is a convenience in promoting dedicated and capable servants of the College, but we encourage the presidential search committee to choose a candidate who does not already work here. An outsider will be able to evaluate campus culture without the bias toward the status quo that comes with having been a part of it; he or she will also have a fresh start with Bowdoin’s various interest groups—the students, the faculty, the staff, and the Brunswick community.

Mills told the Orient two weeks ago that he wanted the College’s next president to serve for 10 to 15 years. The higher education landscape is already changing rapidly: college costs are rising precipitously and online courses have permeated the traditional brick-and-mortar classroom model. There is no telling how much the academic environment will have changed by 2025 or 2030. Mills has spoken about avoiding the “arms race” with peer schools to provide lavish amenities, but we are embroiled in it all the same. Moving forward, we think we should attract students not with frills like sparkling new buildings, but with forward-thinking policies and substantive curriculum changes. The College has not shied away from making pioneering moves in the past. In 1969 the Office of Admissions stopped requiring applicants to submit SAT scores to favor a more holistic evaluation approach. Many selective peer schools are just implementing this policy now. Additionally, Bowdoin bravely abolished fraternities in the face of alumni resistance in 1997, and replaced them with the more inclusive College House System. Mills replaced loans with grants in 2008, dedicated millions more to financial aid, and led the College’s endowment past the $1 billion mark.

We want our new president to continue to uphold Bowdoin’s legacy as a leader among NESCAC schools. The College has taken first steps in a few critical directions that should be followed going forward. These changes include the creation of the new Marine Science Semester, which could allow Bowdoin to lead its peer schools in marine biology. The Robert H. and Blythe Bickel Edwards Center advances the quality of arts facilities and opportunities at the College. Additionally, the new courses in the Digital Humanities promise to help the College offer a curriculum with relevance to web-based communication and data infrastructure.

In his first week on the job in 2001, Mills outlined his vision for Bowdoin under his tenure: “We have recognized that growing the College is incredibly expensive and I think it is time for us to focus on curriculum, faculty resources, [and] financial aid.” Our next president will have to keep pace with the significant strides the College has made on these goals in the last 15 years while adhering to the ideals to which it has historically subscribed. He or she must also be prepared to adapt imaginatively to shifts in higher education while working within the College’s means.

The editorial represents the majority view of the Bowdoin Orient’s editorial board, which is comprised of Erica Berry, Nora Biette-Timmons, Garrett Casey, Ron Cervantes, Marisa McGarry, Sam Miller, Leo Shaw and Kate Witteman. 

Even one hundred and forty-nine years after the Class of 1867 first planted ivy near the Chapel, the Ivies celebration continues to serve as respite from academics. Despite some obvious differences, the Ivies weekends of yore bear a surprising resemblance to the Ivies of today. In “Tales of Bowdoin,” a collection compiled by former students, President Kenneth C. M. Sills of the Class of 1901 recalls a day when “the expectant mothers, the passive fathers, the pretty sisters” descended on Bowdoin’s campus for a day of oratory performances. Sills describes a tennis match that began at dawn after a night of debauchery, contested between two seniors and two young alumni who were only “slightly clad,” and refereed by one Tim Taylor, who was—even at such a late hour—“rather drunk.” Sills uses the elegant language of a more restrained era, but many current students can read their own Ivies experiences into his account.

From the College’s perspective in 2014, this weekend is primarily about attempting to impose order on chaos. E-Board members hand deliver notices to our neighbors in Brunswick, and some professors even skip town. Rain contingency plans are in place. Multiple emails from Director of Safety and Security Randy Nichols have enumerated strategies to “Survivies.” While there is plenty of debauchery already underway, the Ivies spirit has as much to do with breaking the norms of everyday interaction as it does with bending the rules. The near-magical quality of Ivies comes from a meaningful sense of liberation from social divisions within our small community. Today’s party on the Brunswick Quad marks the one moment when a large portion of the student body will gather together informally.  

This communal revelry makes Ivies a uniquely inclusive opportunity for fun. Demarcations drawn by class years, varsity teams, College House affiliations and extracurricular involvements dissolve. First years will find that this last weekend in April is the first significant opportunity to invoke the “Bowdoin Hello” since the early months of the academic year. Above recognizing tradition and celebrating the long-awaited start of spring, we gather to celebrate our common experience as the academic year reaches its final crescendo. 

We see Ivies as a utopia because of the collective release it brings. But instead of saving the date, we might take the experience instructively. We are capable of substituting bacchanalian camaraderie with substantial—and sober—conversation with new friends after the weekend ends. Ivies sets an example and poses a challenge for the last few weeks of this term and our Bowdoin experience more generally. The long-celebrated Bowdoin tradition brings a state of mind that should linger long after the hangover fades.

The editorial represents the majority view of the Bowdoin Orient's editorial board, which is comprised of Erica Berry, Nora Biette-Timmons, Garrett Casey, Ron Cervantes, Marisa McGarry, Sam Miller, Leo Shaw and Kate Witteman. 

In October 1972, an Orient columnist quipped, “As most upperclassmen will readily agree, it requires a fairly strong issue to fire Bowdoin students up over virtually anything, with the possible exception of the hockey season.” For the most part, this sense of political apathy has continued within the Bowdoin Bubble. However, the past two years have seen student activism coalesce around a handful of topics more forcefully than at any point in recent memory. Bowdoin Climate Action (BCA), Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and the 2012 Yes on One initiative, among others, have involved students, faculty and staff in efforts that have produced meaningful conversations—even if they have not always met their goals. 

Today, President Barry Mills plans to receive a petition from BCA that was signed by more than 1,000 students and asks Bowdoin to divest its endowment from the top 200 publicly traded fossil fuel companies. This weekend also features the College’s first Palestinian Film Festival, organized by SJP. These are only small steps toward addressing contentious global issues, but they have fostered lively debate among a historically apathetic student body. When Bowdoin students attend a lecture by an activist from the West Bank or a hearing at the Maine Public Utilities Commission, they are engaging with a community that lies beyond Brunswick.  

These student-led efforts have not gone unnoticed by Bowdoin faculty. Last May, 24 professors emailed BCA a letter of appreciation for its efforts encouraging the College to divest. The note communicated that while the individual faculty members might not believe that divestment is the best solution for climate change, they “are grateful to the students for dramatically energizing the conversation on campus.” In opening up a critical space for dialogue on social, political or economic issues, students have earned the right to collaborate with their educators and administrators. 

It can often feel overwhelming to navigate a Smith Union filled with event posters and tables of vocal activists. Many students blindly accept pamphlets and sign petitions out of a sense of social obligation or brush by without engaging at all. This is a disservice to peers who are pushing for change, even if that change comes incrementally. We do not have to sign the petitions if we disagree with them, but we should be willing to have a conversation and think deeply about our own beliefs. When our signatures reflect a genuine desire for change, the petitions will carry more weight when presented to the administration.

Activists at Bowdoin face a particular challenge because their goals may not come to fruition during their four-year tenure at the College. Though we might not agree with each component of what SJP, BCA and other advocacy groups fight for, it is detrimental to look down on student activism at Bowdoin as a whole and abstain from the conversation. These efforts should be respected, not derided. 

The editorial represents the majority view of the Bowdoin Orient's editorial board, which is comprised of Erica Berry, Nora Biette-Timmons, Garrett Casey, Ron Cervantes, Marisa McGarry, Sam Miller, Leo Shaw and Kate Witteman. 

This weekend the student body will elect next year’s Bowdoin Student Government (BSG) president, the person responsible for setting BSG’s agenda and implementing changes—large or small—that improve the lives of students. The Orient believes that David Levine ’16 is best suited for the job.

In his two years here, Levine has demonstrated his capability and competence through the leadership positions he has held with BSG. As an at-large representative last year, he helped organize a protest urging the faculty to adopt a week-long Thanksgiving break, a campaign thatwe hope he continues to pursue. Levine has served on three College committees and is the current vice president for facilities. He is familiar with the obstacles BSG often faces and has established relationships with members of the faculty and administration that we believe will enable him to confront bureaucratic deadlock.

The other candidate for BSG president, Christopher Breen ’15—currently vice president of the 2015 Class Council and former vice president for Student Government Affairs—grasps the challenges and limitations of the job, but has not contributed to as many actionable initiativesas Levine has in the same amount of time.

An underclassman has not served as BSG president since 2006, but we do not think that Levine’s class year is a disadvantage. In fact, pursuing ambitious goals like postponing Credit/D/Fail deadlines and extending Thanksgiving break requires effective long-term cooperation with thefaculty and administration. With the graduation of senior BSG leaders, there is an annual loss of institutional knowledge that inhibits BSG’s ability to effect change and speaks to a larger problem: the fact that there is not a large enough field of candidates with sufficient experience. At least two incoming members of the Executive Board will be rising seniors with no prior history on BSG.

In this weekend’s elections, four out of seven positions for the BSG Executive Committee will be uncontested. This has become a recurring issue for BSG leadership elections; two positions went uncontested last year and four the year before. Consistently uninspiring races suggest that we lack interest and faith in student government. We should be more invested in the organization whose mission it is to work on our behalf. Not only does competition between candidates demand morepassion from those running, but it engenders more interest and enthusiasm for BSG among the student body.

There are countless students with leadership experience on class councils or in student organizations that chose not to run in these elections. BSG cannot be an effective institution until there are competent and experienced candidates running for each Executive Committee position.

The editorial represents the majority view of the Bowdoin Orient's editorial board, which is comprised of Erica Berry, Nora Biette-Timmons, Garrett Casey, Ron Cervantes, Marisa McGarry, Sam Miller and Kate Witteman.

Every Friday afternoon this semester, 12 students have traveled to the Maine Correctional Center in Windham, Maine to attend class with 12 inmates. This week, the Orient features a story about Citizenship and Religion in America, taught by Associate Professor of Religion Elizabeth Pritchard. Initially proposed by students and spearheaded by Pritchard, the course was inspired by the Bard Prison Initiative and modeled after Temple University’s Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program.

According to a 2005 study by the Institute for Higher Education Policy, the recidivism rate for participants in prisoner exchange programs was on average 46 percentage points lower than the rate for the general prison population. If expanded, these programs could have a huge impact in the United States, which has the most incarcerations per capita. For those serving long sentences, classes shared with students from the outside offer respite from an otherwise grim environment. But perhaps more importantly, prison exchange programs help to put ex-convicts in a position where they can more fully contribute to society after getting out. 

For college students, prisoner exchange programs provide an unparalleled educational opportunity. Our society marginalizes those who have committed crimes, yet in these classrooms, the opinions and insights of all students receive equal weight. According to this week’s article, Citizenship and Religion in America was designed to enable a discussion of what citizenship means to both inmates and Bowdoin students. Grappling with issues of freedom on a daily basis, inmates offer a radically different perspective. The subject material provides common ground, highlighting similarities—and not differences—between classmates. Reflecting on his experience in the course, one inmate wrote in a feedback letter, “When class ended, I found myself saying goodbye to strangers that I now considered friends. Crossing the yard, it took every ounce of self-restraint not to skip and whoop and punch the air.” 

Yet this semester’s class was approved on a one-time-only basis. To ensure that there are similar classes in the future—as we believe there should be—the College needs to establish a more formal structure. Pritchard and the two students who proposed the idea have laid the groundwork for future classes and we hope the College builds on this in years to come. Whether this means appointing a faculty liaison or formalizing a semester-to-semester schedule for professors to rotate through teaching, we need support from both individual departments and the administration to meet continued student demand. Peer schools such as Amherst, Bard, Cornell and Dartmouth have had success with similar programs and Bowdoin should follow suit. 

As President Joseph McKeen said at his 1802 inaugural address, elite institutions like Bowdoin are “founded and endowed for the common good, not for the private advantage of those who resort to them for education.” By allowing Maine inmates access to the wealth of knowledge that even one course can provide, the College increases the value of a Bowdoin education for students, whether they are behind bars or not. 

The editorial represents the majority view of the Bowdoin Orient's editorial board, which is comprised of Erica Berry, Nora Biette-Timmons, Garrett Casey, Ron Cervantes, Marisa McGarry, Sam Miller and Kate Witteman.

This week, the Orient published the first in a three-part series about athletic recruiting at Bowdoin and across the NESCAC. The conference adopted a system in 2002 that standardized the admissions process for these recruits, placing them into one of three categories based on the academic strength of their applications. A-band athletes are those who fall in line with the academic performance of the average accepted student, while B-band athletes fall just below those standards and C-band candidates dip even lower. Schools must report how many admitted students fall into the B- and C-band categories each year to ensure that they do not exceed the prescribed limit. Additionally, admissions offices at NESCAC schools conduct “early reads” for applicants who are recommended by coaches. This system was established to ensure that each institution fields teams whose academic achievements do not deviate dramatically from the rest of its student body.

The bulk of this information came to the Orient through Amherst’s dean of admissions, Thomas Parker, who openly acknowledged that his college recruited 66 B- and C-band athletes this year. The athletic department and admissions office at Bowdoin declined to speak candidly about specifics at the College and how B- and C-band spots are distributed among Bowdoin’s 31 varsity sports. According to Parker, NESCAC-wide policy dictates that member colleges are allotted 14 spots for having a football team and two additional spots for every other varsity sports team, with a few exceptions. These total slots can be distributed among coaches as they see fit.

The adoption and reinforcement of this standard is laudable, and we appreciate the effort that goes into maintaining its integrity. It distinguishes the NESCAC from other collegiate conferences. However, this process was established to provide transparency between college officials, and we think the same level of transparency should be afforded to the student body. A 2005 New York Times article exposing the system quoted Parker saying that a lack of open information about recruiting “engendered a corrosive cynicism.” We agree. With over 70 student-athletes supported in admissions each year at Bowdoin, roughly 15 percent of an incoming class receives preferential treatment. This is a large portion of the College and it is in the interest of our student body—and applicants to the College—to understand how they are selected.

The administration might worry that providing specific numbers about athletes aided in admissions could create a stigma against all student-athletes. But as the Orient reported in April 2013—and as the third section of this series will discuss—statistics show that Bowdoin’s student-athletes had a negligible .01 GPA difference from non-athlete students. Any stigma is unfounded. Yet even those statistics have not been updated since 2005, and we deserve to know if this number has changed. 

With approximately 15 percent of our peers granted an edge in admissions, we would like to see the parameters of recruitment bands, not to mention more open discourse about the process. Like any other applicant, an athlete is entitled to a degree of confidentiality, but we feel that in a system built to standardize admissions within the NESCAC, we should standardize transparency too.

The editorial represents the majority view of the Bowdoin Orient’s editorial board, which is comprised of Erica Berry, Nora Biette-Timmons, Garrett Casey, Ron Cervantes, Marisa McGarry, Sam Miller and Kate Witteman. 

When billionaire hedge fund manager Ken Griffin announced last week that he will donate $150 million to Harvard University, his alma mater, he reignited a national debate over the value of donating to prestigious colleges. In a Slate article, Matthew Yglesias called for college graduates to withhold donations to the country’s most selective schools, which he called “terrible targets of charitable donation” because their funds go to mostly affluent students. Yglesias says that anyone hoping to benefit low-income students would be better off donating to the institutions that educate the majority of that demographic. This idea has gained considerable national media attention. Bloomberg ran an article titled “Cut off Harvard to Save America” and the debate extended into the NESCAC when The Williams Record published an op-ed by junior Chris Huffaker in which he argued that donating to Williams would do little to make the world a better place. 

While we recognize the validity of these criticisms, we feel strongly that Bowdoin alumni play a vital role by donating to the College. Arguments like Yglesias’ are utilitarian; they advocate the greatest positive effect for society in general, while ignoring the immense value that a Bowdoin education has for an admittedly smaller number of people. A Bowdoin degree can transform the socio-economic trajectory of a low- or middle-income student. Bowdoin has a clear purpose for its students—offering them a high-quality education and access to good and meaningful jobs—and it serves this purpose exceptionally well. Alumni should reward the College not only for fulfilling its educational mission but also for the opportunities it has afforded them.

Though young alumni in the earliest stages of their careers—still wincing from the costs of textbooks or student loans—may hesitate about donating right after graduation, a gift brings more to the College than its cash value. This year’s ongoing Senior Class Gift Campaign has a participation goal of 85 percent, and for each year out of the next five that the Class of 2014 reaches 60 percent participation, an anonymous donor will contribute $10,000 to a scholarship for a member of the Class of 2018. We encourage seniors to donate any amount they can to help make this scholarship a reality.  Additionally, a donation is a symbolic gesture of gratitude to the institution that has subsidized the education of all students, even those paying full tuition. (The true cost of a Bowdoin education is upwards of $85,000 per year.)

Donating to a highly selective college is not going to directly impact the neediest populations. However, alumni can earmark donations for specific projects—whether financial aid, the McKeen Center for Common Good, or sustainability efforts—to ensure that their money is going toward the causes at the College that they deem most worthy. And though a Bowdoin education might not, for example, directly help the students in the Harlem Children’s Zone, it educated Geoffrey Canada ’74, the man who did. 

The editorial represents the majority view of the Bowdoin Orient’s editorial board, which is comprised of Erica Berry, Nora Biette-Timmons, Garrett Casey, Ron Cervantes, Marisa McGarry, Sam Miller and Kate Witteman.

In last week’s issue, we published “The pretty game: objectification, humiliation and the liberal arts,” an article written by an anonymous female first year. The article ran as an off-week installment in the biweekly Features column “The Bears and the Bees,” but was written by a guest contributor. As of press time, the article had received 69 comments and garnered over 6,800 page views. The writer’s words have started a substantial dialogue on campus; on Wednesday, approximately 45 female students attended an informal discussion facilitated by the Women’s Resource Center which addressed the content of the piece.  

This article was unorthodox for the Orient. We only publish anonymous contributions when we have verified the author’s identity and when the content cannot otherwise be obtained. We encouraged the author to include her name, but decided that her words held enough significance for the Bowdoin community to merit anonymous publication. Of course, there are also benefits to withholding names. Granting anonymity can help readers focus on an article’s content and the issues it raises rather than on the identity of its writer. In this case, the author also sought the advice of leaders in Peer Health for guidance in narrating her experiences. And the article was just that—one person’s story. Both online comments and campus conversations suggest that her sentiments resonate with a wider population of students, and not just women. People of all genders face social alienation and self-consciousness about their bodies.

One misses the point of the article if the terminology of “the pretty game” is the only takeaway. By featuring this phrase in the headline, we highlighted one facet of the article’s analysis of Bowdoin’s social scene. The focus, however, should not be on the prepackaged term but on the greater forces at work that contribute to its reality. Students have responded to the article’s discussion of body image issues that lead to eating disorders, social pressure to go out, and the sense of failure some feel when going home alone after a party. We also feel it is limiting to read the article as just a condemnation of off-campus houses and their residents; the author implicates a culture that pervades Bowdoin and beyond. 

The article has provoked a broad range of impassioned reactions on campus. While some applaud and identify with its astute observations, others criticize it for relying on perceived generalizations or thinly-veiled accusations. We do not know where these conversations will go, but we think they are productive nonetheless. 

The Curriculum and Education Policy Committee (CEP) recently proposed a revision to the College’s transfer credit policy that would allow departments to start awarding credit for online courses. The CEP’s proposal is progressive for a college that just introduced online course registration this year. Courses taken online are often viewed as antithetical to the small, interactive learning environment of a liberal arts school. Bowdoin values the close interaction between professor and student, and frequently boasts of its low student-to-faculty ratio. However, it is time to acknowledge that scholarly work can be accomplished through web-based classes.

While it is unlikely that many students will take online courses in addition to Bowdoin curricula, this allowance would enable students taking leaves of absence to earn credit while away from campus. Students on leave—medical or otherwise—often enroll in several classes, either to prove they are capable of completing academic work or to avoid falling behind in their degree progress. Not all students have access to an institution of higher learning while away; online courses provide an alternative.

The proposal would give departments the authority to determine whether an online course meets the high standards of the College, and we are confident that online courses would be held to the same scrutiny as any others. That is why the CEP proposal would neither threaten the College’s commitment to classroom learning, nor diminish the quality of a Bowdoin education. What it would do is provide further academic options to Bowdoin students—particularly those who need them the most. We encourage faculty to vote in favor of this proposal.

Dean of Student Affairs Tim Foster wrote in a campus-wide email on Wednesday that the College is creating the position of Director for Gender Violence Education and Prevention. According to Meadow Davis, associate director of student affairs and adviser to the Student Sexual Misconduct Board, this new director will advise the student groups that deal with these issues and work one-on-one with students who come forward with complaints. Th e establishment of this position comes at a time when many of our peer institutions have come under fire for their treatment ofsexual assault violations and allegations.

Most notably, Amherst’s procedure for responding to accusations of sexual assault came into the national spotlight in October 2012 when former student Angie Epifano penned an op-ed in the Amherst Student revealing how poorly Amherst had responded to her report of sexual violence. Dartmouth—which has also incurred heavy criticism for its handling of sexual assault cases—announced last week that it is creating a campus center for the prevention of sexual assault and violence.

Although Bowdoin has not come under the same scrutiny as Amherst or Dartmouth, its handling of sexual assault cases has not totally escaped criticism. In 2010, the Center for Public Integrity reported on the case of a Bowdoin student, to whom it gave the pseudonym Ariel Brown, who alleged that she was raped by a male student in December 2007. The College found the male guilty of sexual assault, not rape, a decision which Brown found inadequate. Her testimony is proof enough that there is always room for improvement.

As first years scrambled to figure out their sophomore year housing plans last week, the Office of Residential Life (ResLife) announced a major change to the College House system. In an effort to entice rising juniors and seniors to apply, ResLife will now allow larger blocks if they include rising upperclassmen. 

Walking into a College House filled with sophomores can be intimidating for first years. The residents might only be one year older, but they boast a year of collegiate experience and familiarity with the norms of campus social life. Over time, that divide can be easily bridged, but the wider gap between first year affiliates and upperclassmen residents has—in past years—proven too vast. As first years, members of the Class of 2015 who were affiliated with the senior-heavy 2011-2012 Helmreich House remember feeling unwelcome and uncomfortable at House events. ResLife maintains that this House was an example of what a College House should be. Having upperclassmen residents may have been a positive experience for House members, but any benefit seems to have come at the expense of those students who we think depend most on the College House system—first years. 

Approximately half of each sophomore class lives in a College House. This gives these students an opportunity to live in a house full of peers and gives the year a sense of distinction that does not exist at other colleges. Just on the cusp of becoming upperclassmen, sophomores who live in College Houses are put in leadership positions and asked to organize events for the whole community. Even for sophomores who live elsewhere, the Houses provide a fundamental space for programming and socializing. Incorporating juniors and seniors into this setting may be a valuable way to connect class years, but we feel that this compromises the quintessential sophomore and first-year experiences that currently exist. 

In his State of the Union address on Tuesday, President Obama reaffirmed his commitment to overhaul the current health care system in America. The day before, Dean of Student Affairs Tim Foster referenced these ongoing reforms when he sent a campus-wide email about the state of the Bowdoin Health Center. In light of Director of Health Services Sandra Hayes’ imminent departure, the school is reviewing the structure of the College’s Health Center. In his email, Foster outlined three possible plans for its future: a partnership with an outside agency to handle increasingly complex administrative work, a complete replacement of the staff with employees of a private firm, or a continuation of the College’s current system with a new director. 

We welcome this review. Although the Health Center received its highest approval rating ever—76 percent—in the fall installment of the Orient’s biannual approval ratings survey, it has consistently ranked among the lowest of campus administrators and offices. Even with higher ratings this year, a vocal minority still expressed the need for improvement. One female senior wrote last spring: “Bowdoin should be ashamed of the poor quality of the services provided by the Health Center. It’s a joke.” These complaints are nothing new. A 2005 Orient editorial called for extended weekend hours,continuing a decades-long debate over the availability of health care on campus. Last year, Hayes told the Bowdoin Student Government that the opening of the Mid Coast Primary Care and Walk-in Clinic had alleviated demand for walk-in hours. While we understand that the Health Center is not a 24-hour hospital, we believe that busy students would benefit from a daily drop-in hour after classes. 

The Dean’s office could have reviewed the Health Center behind closed doors and announced its findings to the community once a decision was made. We thank Foster for reaching out to the campus in his email. Amidst the confusion and anxiety that have recently characterized national health care, we feel lucky to have a low-hassle system in the serene atmosphere of the Buck Center for Health and Fitness. Under the current system, an ailing student does not have to worry about providing insurance details or other personal information for a checkup. The Health Center’s total integration into the College makes dealing with sickness simple, particularly when health concerns can interfere with a student’s campus life. While we might not immediately notice a change in the Health Center’s staffing, it would—in all likelihood—impact our lives at the College. We are glad that any changes made to the administration of the Health Center will come as the result of a thorough on-campus dialogue. While we may be exhausted by the national debate, we look forward to exploring new options at Bowdoin.

Earlier this month, the Bowdoin College Museum of Art received 320 pieces from the legendary collection of Dorothy Vogel, a donation that—in the words of Colby art museum curator Diana Tuite—“catapults [the Museum] into a whole other league.” A former librarian, Vogel collected almost 5,000 works of art with her late husband Herb, a postal clerk, gathering it in their rent-stabilized, one-bedroom apartment in New York City. Their donation marks a 33 percent increase in the museum’s contemporary art collection and adds work from modern and postmodern artists such as Richard Tuttle and Julian Schnabel. With this addition, the Vogels—long-time friends of Museum co-directors Anne and Frank Goodyear—have furthered the Museum’s developing reputation as an artistic heavyweight. Since the renovated art museum reopened in 2007, it has attracted record-breaking crowds and national attention with Edward Hopper, William Wegman and Maurice Prendergast exhibits.

Bowdoin’s art world is inarguably in the public eye, and with the September opening of the Robert H. and Blythe Bickel Edwards Center for Art and Dance, art has moved closer to the nucleus of student life. Apart from this academic building, the Ramp Gallery opened in Hawthorne-Longfellow Library last semester, creating a forum dedicated to student-curated and created art. Meanwhile, the Art Society’s inaugural interactive exhibit in Ladd House succeeded in turning traditionally social spaces into artistic venues. We applaud these efforts and want to see the trend continue. Why not put artwork in other high-traffic areas like the dining halls or classrooms? By largely confining art to the Museum, the Visual Arts Center and the Edwards Center, the College limits its exposure to people already engaged in Bowdoin’s artistic circles. 

Some colleges have taken bold steps in their attempts to integrate visual art into student life. Oberlin College rents artwork to students and faculty, including pieces by Picasso and Dali, for $5 per semester. Bowdoin’s Museum has over 20,000 pieces in its collections, the vast majority of them in storage. It could consider rentals, not only to better take advantage of its incredible quantity of works, but also to expose students to their beauty. The benefit to students is obvious: an original Winslow Homer painting would make a nice alternative to an Animal House poster in your Coles Tower bedroom next year. Another option is designating a public space—like Pomona College’s Walker Wall—where students could create art. These sorts of public projects can be marred by crude expressions, but we believe that Bowdoin students would rise to the challenge. Art has the power to elevate both aesthetics and attitudes. In 2008, residents of Quinby House partnered with students from Professor Mark Wethli’s public art course to redecorate a basement room frequented by urinating revelers, according to a 2008 Orient article. Designed by Sara Griffin ’09 and Cami Osorno ’10, the “European Portrait Gallery” continues to be appreciated, not defaced. Transformations like this one remind us that we can remake our campus spaces and reimagine the ways in which we interact with art both in and outside of the Museum.

Results from the Orient’s latest approval ratings survey indicate an 84 percent approval rating for Bowdoin Student Government (BSG), the highest first semester ratings in four years. BSG President Sarah Nelson ’14 also ranked highly this term, with 86 percent of respondents favoring her performance thus far.

This fall, BSG introduced two new programs: TurboVote, a service that helps students apply for absentee ballots, and PolarFlix, a free online film-streaming program. Some of the Executive Committee’s most ambitious campaign proposals from last spring have yet to be realized, and are pending administrative approval. Currently, BSG carries a proposal that would extend the deadline for Credit/D/Fail, and waits for the Recording Committee to take action. We applaud BSG for taking steps towards actualizing this key campaign issue and hope it will doggedly pursue the policy change. BSG has also continued the popular Food For Thought lecture series it began last spring, offering a platform for students to nominate their friends for short, informal talks on topics of their choice. The lectures have been well-attended and wide-ranging, from “Life Without Brakes: BMX and Extreme Sports Culture in Brooklyn” to “Story of My Life: An Inside Look at the One Direction Fangirl Phenomenon” this Monday. 

The success of these lectures depends on student engagement, both from speakers and audience. This is true of most BSG initiatives—when they fall short, lukewarm student participation is often partly responsible. Its course review website, for example, is a valuable resource for selecting classes. BSG runs the website, but the utility of the database depends on students submitting up-to-date class reviews. Right now, only one member of the class of 2017 has written a review; just 83 reviews have been contributed from members of the sophomore class. We will all be filling out paper course evaluations for the Office of Academic Affairs during our final classes next week, and we encourage everyone to take a few extra minutes to submit their thoughts on the BSG site as well.

With less than three weeks left in the fall semester, the final push is upon us. And though we’ve known about many of these final assignments since the first day of classes, these last papers, exams and projects never fail to induce panic, culminating in December’s all-too-familiar—and almost always over- caffeinated—frenzied final sprint. What we produce in these last three weeks represents, in theory, a demonstration of a semester’s worth of lectures, readings and assignments—a synthesis of all we’ve learned. Yet we tend to dispatch these completed assignments into a void, abandoning them as we pack our bags for our long-awaited break.

Currently, there is no official policy for professors handing back graded finals and papers. And though some do offer students the option of turning in final work along with a self-addressed envelope, or encourage them to collect assignments at the start of the following semester, this is far from the norm. More often than not, the quality of our final work is reflected in the course grade alone; students rarely ask for—and thus miss out on—constructive feedback.

It would be disingenuous to suggest that grades are irrelevant, or that the hard work we do throughout the semester is reflective of pure intellectual zeal. Grades are powerful external motivators. But this reality does not negate the fact that learning for learning’s sake is folded into our work as well. We benefit from working on these assignments, and we owe it to ourselves to bring the process full circle.

One week ago, the staff of the Harvard Crimson ran an editorial embracing a new trend in higher education—the growing number of students choosing to pursue degrees in science, technology, engineering and mathematical (STEM) fields over the humanities. “Let them eat code” is currently the top-read article on the Crimson’s website, with 80 comments as of press time. The editorial applauds students who choose these more “rigorous” fields, characterizing the knowledge and skills gained through study of these disciplines as more practical in our ultra-competitive economy. Scholars in the humanities, they write, are of little importance because with or without them, people will still have access to literature, music and philosophy.

“Why spend four years listening to lecturers warn you that you can never really know anything?” asks the piece. We can’t help but note that this is neither an unenlightening nor a novel concept; Socrates argued that “the only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.”  

And while we do not believe that four years spent reading Woolf and Hume and Shakespeare is a waste of time, the strength of a liberal arts education is, in part, its breadth. Bowdoin’s new Digital and Computational Studies Initiative proves that the two disciplines are not mutually exclusive; for one final project in the inaugural Gateway to the Digital Humanities class, two students are learning code to build a website that archives the history of art at the College. These classes prove that the disciplines are not only valuable in and of themselves but as complements to one another.

Looming registration for next semester’s courses invites conversation about  how we choose classes. The process requires us to manage a number of different (and sometimes competing) aims: pursuing our intellectual interests, maintaining GPAs, fulfilling major and distribution requirements, and allowing enough time for activities beyond school work. One of the best ways to perform this balancing act is to keep the Credit/D/Fail (Cr/D/F) option in mind.

Last year’s Bowdoin Student Government (BSG) President and Vice-President for Academic Affairs promised to reevaluate the Cr/D/F policy during their tenures, floating ideas about pushing back the deadline until after students had received graded feedback. In last spring’s BSG election, the Orient endorsed current BSG President Sarah Nelson, who included a similar proposal in her platform. Pushing for Cr/D/F amendments is a frequent campaign pledge, and one that many students support, but the policy remains unchanged. BSG currently has a proposal to extend the deadline for taking a course Cr/D/F until the ninth week of classes, which the Recording Committee may consider. We support these changes.

Taking a course Cr/D/F is not an inherently lazy decision or a way to opt out of trying in class. Liberal arts education is predicated on a broad range of intellectual exploration; removing the disincentive of a potentially bad grade is invaluable in getting us to take unfamiliar courses.  

In response to the recent bias incidents on campus, a group of student leaders will be installing a display of black and white portraits of students and faculty in Smith Union this weekend to show support for any who feel targeted or marginalized by these incidents. Throughout the week, student photographers sat outside the entrances of both dining halls during dinner to solicit individuals’ participation, asking each person whether they would take a photo “for the bias incident thing.” 

While we applaud our fellow students’ effort to unify the campus, we feel this emphasis on participation and urgency did not engage the nuances that precipitated the incidents in the first place. We would like to believe that each face that appears on the wall represents a student who has done this out of genuine support, not out of a sense of social obligation. There is subtle but coercive social pressure to comply with the request and avoid the risk of being labelled as insensitive. We understand there are a variety of reasons why someone may not want their photo on public display. Providing a medium to express clear and visible support for those affected by the bias incidents is laudable, and we hope that the upcoming show will spark conversations that have so far been glossed over. 

The editorial represents the majority view of the Bowdoin Orient’s editorial board, which is comprised of Claire Aasen, Erica Berry, Nora Biette-Timmons, Marisa McGarry, Eliza Novick-Smith, Sam Miller and Sam Weyrauch.

Last night marked the kickoff of Date-apalooza: two weeks of events and deals intended to encourage students to go on romantic dates, friend dates or just to meet new people. On the docket are programs like speed dating, Date My Roommate and a Sadie Hawkins dance, as well as special discounts from restaurants on Maine Street. 

This program comes around every year, and it brings with it the same conversations about our perpetual dissatisfaction with Bowdoin’s hook-up culture. This is not a new complaint; it can sometimes seem like there is no middle ground between the very serious relationship and the very casual hook-up. Our lack of dating culture can be frustrating for those who wish to find something in between.

We may not radically change the social dynamics of our school, but you can take ownership of your own experiences here. Ask someone from class to get a meal or to procrastinate studying with you. Text someone you haven’t seen in a while and invite them for coffee. You’ll be able to find things to connect over, and the worst-case scenario is that you don’t stay in touch and instead just have someone new to say hi to when you pass on the Quad. It is possible to meet new people here—both in a friendly and romantic way—but it takes effort, and it can be scary to put yourself out there. You can expand your social circle, whether or not you do it while speed-dating at Moulton Union. 

On Wednesday, President Mills sent out a campus-wide email highlighting an incident on October 10 when an intoxicated Brunswick resident made homophobic and sexist remarks before punching a student outside of Joshua’s Restaurant and Tavern. This violent altercation sticks out as an anomaly in the otherwise peaceful relationship between the College and the greater Brunswick community.

The dispute outside Joshua’s is not indicative of deep-rooted us-and-them tension. Most of the faculty and staff live in town, send their children to Brunswick schools, pay Brunswick taxes and shop at Brunswick stores. Many restaurants on Maine Street now accept students’ OneCards, and town auditors are a familiar sight in class. The relationship between Bowdoin Security and Brunswick Police Department is a symbiotic one that encourages cooperation between the forces. Incidents like those we covered this week are perhaps an inevitable consequence of living in a place where people are not all the same. It is important to address and try to make sense of these individual acts of violence and bigotry, but it is also important to remember that they do not characterize our town-gown relationship as a whole. 

In March of 2011, someone vandalized a white board in Coles Tower. Dean of Student Affairs Tim Foster sent a campus-wide email soon after the incident was reported, explaining what had transpired, and condemning the act as “targeted hate speech.”  Several days later, a community-wide forum was convened to discuss not only the event but also other instances of bias. The following fall, our editorial board applauded Bowdoin’s active response to the incident, contrasting it with the hands-off approach the Williams administration took immediately following a hate crime on their campus. We saw a similiarly supportive reaction from Bowdoin this week: yesterday, a closed meeting at 30 College Street brought multicultural campus leaders together to discuss moving forward in the aftermath of the week’s reports. A follow-up forum on Sunday will further the discussion. 

Last Friday, President Mills announced the College’s proposal to install a solar power complex spanning the roofs of Farley Field House and Watson Arena as well as three acres of the recently-acquired former Naval Air Station property. If the project obtains the necessary local, state and federal approvals, it will be the largest solar power installation in the state, with the potential to generate 1.6 million kilowatt-hours of power and offset Bowdoin’s annual electricity consumption by 8 percent.

The announcement made headlines in the Boston Globe, the San Francisco Chronicle and on the Huffington Post, highlighting Bowdoin’s efforts to remain at the forefront of renewable energy use. We applaud the plan’s movement toward institutional sustainability, taking steps beyond encouraging individuals to recycle or turn off the lights. But we should note that the project is still no more than a promising prospect—a preliminary step toward our ultimate carbon neutrality goals. The College must still jump through a number of regulatory hoops before ground will be broken at the Naval Air Station, and electricity prices have yet to be established. It will be a few years before the panels will become fully operational.

As Bowdoin seeks to benefit from the construction of Maine’s largest solar-panel facility, the state as a whole has missed an opportunity in another field of renewable energy. On Tuesday, the Norwegian company Statoil announced that it will not proceed with plans to build a $120 million wind farm on the coast. A spokesperson for the company attributed the decision partially to legislation signed by Governor LePage in June that reopened the bidding war for offshore wind power. LePage stated his opposition to the deal when it was announced last winter. According to the Portland Press Herald, the governor criticized the agreement because it offered Statoil an above-market rate for the electricity it would provide to the state. As a result, Maine loses a multi-million dollar investment in green energy and jobs as well as an opportunity to be a national leader in harvesting offshore wind power.

For some students, this week’s federal government shutdown may not mean much more than a cancelled weekend trip to Acadia National Park. But not all Mainers are as insulated, and the spending freeze will be felt most acutely by those who are already vulnerable.

According to the Portland Press Herald, funding for Section 8 housing subsidies for low-income residents is only guaranteed through the end of the month; if federal funds aren’t restored, landlords will have grounds to evict tenants. Similarly, money for Temporary Assistance for Needy Families and Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children is likely to dry up if the shutdown is not resolved before the end of the month, leaving the more than 26,000 Mainers who receive assistance through those programs unable to cover their basic expenses. The Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program that subsidizes utility costs—which will only increase as the weather gets colder—needs federal confirmation before November to be able to help underwrite heating bills.

The previous shutdown, which lasted for 26 days between November 1995 and January 1996, cost the federal government $1.4 billion. Bloomberg projects the current shutdown will cost the federal government about $300 million a day. The results of an extended shutdown will be enormous, and a swift agreement seems like a tenuous hope. We will hit the debt ceiling on October 17, and if the government surpasses it, the Treasury will not have the authority to borrow funds to close the gap between spending and revenues. Though Speaker of the House John Boehner has publicly stated that he wants to avoid defaulting on our loans, the shutdown is an unnecessary crisis and his egregious mishandling leads us to question his ability to navigate another critical fiscal vote. 

By the time you read this, the online polls will be open for the 2014 and 2017 Class Council elections. With four qualified candidates in each presidential race, the competition will likely be close, and we encourage you to peruse the candidacy statements printed in our Opinion section before you cast your vote. But beyond the newsprint, check out our video Q&As with presidential candidates on  bowdoinorient.com. 

Including this video on the front page of our website marks a change in the Orient’s approach to web-based material. This week, we shuttered the Orient Express, our three-year experiment with blogging. We found that the multimedia pieces we ran on the blog complemented our regular print content, so we have consolidated everything onto our main website with the hopes of cultivating a general forum for news. Print is still the Orient’s primary focus, but we realize that much of the student body is plugged in seven days a week; we hope to reach you beyond the confines of the physical Friday paper. 

But as we post online content more frequently, it is important to note that our web non-removal policy has not changed. Interviewees frequently ask to make their remarks anonymous or to preview quotes before articles are published, even on banal topics. The Orient’s policy states that anonymity will be granted only in situations when the paper would not otherwise be able to include reliable or pertinent information; previewing quotes prior to publication is allowed only in very unusual circumstances. Additionally, we hear regularly from alumni, students and former contributors who would like us to remove comments or quotes from articles online. Our policy is to decline these requests. The Orient is public record, and its content does not change to suit individual needs; this policy was created under the ethical premise that history will not be revised to fit private interests. It also safeguards against editorial staff making highly subjective decisions about which removal requests to grant.

As the Orient reports this week, Counseling Services has seen a 40 percent increase in student visits over the past nine years. This figure does not indicate the rapid decline of our collective mental health—rather, it signifies the growing number of us who are willing to seek out and accept help when we most need it.

Roughly 27 percent of Bowdoin’s student population has utilized individual therapy, a figure that has led Counseling Services to place renewed emphasis on group options and preventative programming this year. This is, in part, a simple response to increased demand, but it also represents a conscious decision intended to prevent Counseling from ever having to turn students away. Ensuring that more intensive care remains an option for students in crisis—as well as those with complex, long-term diagnoses—is a laudable and important goal. This is not always the case at other schools where student counseling visits are capped at five or ten, regardless of the student’s level of distress. 

The College’s dedication to preventative mental health programming extends beyond Counseling. Services like those provided by the Center for Learning and Teaching—which opened its Writing Project Workshop on Tuesday—can help students learn to manage academic stress and avoid becoming overwhelmed as workloads intensify. 

Readers of the Orient may have noticed that our Opinion section has long been dominated by writers with quite a bit in common. We are fortunate to work with talented contributors, but they tend to look the same on paper: white males between the ages of 18 and 22. We want our Opinion pages to reflect the diversity of perspectives, activities and personalities we see on campus. As your friends and classmates, we hear your complaints and opinions on countless topics and we encourage you to give yourself a wider audience than your roommates.

If the time commitment is all that’s preventing you from sharing your opinions, know that writing once does not lock you into a bi-weekly column; the section is always looking for one-off contributors. We’ve heard you ranting about hazing and health care. Now we’d like to see it in print.

The editorial represents the majority view of the Bowdoin Orient’s editorial board, which is comprised of Claire Aasen, Erica Berry, Nora Biette-Timmons, Marisa McGarry, Eliza Novick-Smith, Sam Miller and Sam Weyrauch.

In March of 2005, a string of drunken physical confrontations in the vicinity of a villain-themed Ladd House party resulted in streaks of blood on a wall, smashed windows and the hospitalizations of multiple injured students. That Saturday night stands out as an anomaly at Bowdoin, where the consequences of excessive drinking often tend to be more embarrassing than violent.

This semester, we are off to a good start. For the first time in several years, you’ll find no reports of alcohol-related transports in our first Security report. To put that in perspective, 11 Colby students have already been hospitalized for high blood alcohol content since the start of the year; seven of them were first years.

The first weekend of campus-wide College House parties is upon us. Whether you’ve never had a sip of alcohol or you’ve  been going hard on Saturday nights for years, remember that this is an early Bowdoin weekend. You do not need to come out with your bacchanalian guns blazing. No one will turn you away from Quinby or Ladd if you aren’t sufficiently intoxicated.

You are on the brink of a host of new experiences: from watching the sun rise on the Quad as you slink home from an essay-writing marathon to dancing on tables in Ladd House. We know the academics and the extracurriculars at Bowdoin will challenge you and define much of your next four years here. But throughout all of this, you will be flanked by 498 other members of the Class of 2017. And, during any given year, you’ll be surrounded by 1300-odd students in different class years. We’re not sure if we believe the mythical statistic that 40 percent of Polar Bears marry another Polar Bear, but we have no doubt that many of the still-strange faces around you will become wonderful friends for years to come.

First Year Orientation is designed to ease the transition from life as you knew it to the brave new world of college. And these first few weeks require you to be just that: brave. Do not immediately cut yourself off from social opportunities by constantly Skyping, texting or Facebook messaging your friends from home. Some of you have not had to make new friends in a while and are loathe to put yourself out there—but isolating yourself on the internet is not going to help.

There is no way you will meet each and every one of your classmates during the five days that Orientation lasts. You will likely find comfort hanging out with your Orientation trip group, the people who live on your floor, and the teammates you meet right off the bat. But everyone comes to Bowdoin from different backgrounds and experiences and you will do yourself a disservice if you don’t branch out from those early clusters. You’ll be much happier moving through Bowdoin if you keep your mind open to new friends everywhere from your Econ 101 review session to the Thorne salad bar to the beer line at Helmreich House.

The results of the latest installment of the Orient’s semi-annual approval ratings survey overwhelmingly suggest that Bowdoin students are disillusioned with the Office of the Dean of Student Affairs. Many students responded to the Orient expressing discontent with the deans’ handling of recent hazing incidents, and were generally dissatisfied with the administration’s lack of transparency.

Dean Tim Foster’s recent email to students outlining staffing changes within the Office of Student Affairs is demonstrative of the ambiguity that often accompanies administration communiqués to the student body. A similar lack of clarity has defined the administration’s response to multiple hazing incidents this year, leading many students to regard the deans as foes rather than friends. Despite continued discontent with the current policy, exactly what constitutes hazing remains uncertain, and there is no sign the administration plans to change its procedure any time soon. Many students are unsure about what falls under the College’s expansive definition of hazing. It is understandable that the administration does not want to report the details of hazing incidents, but leaving the student body in the dark as to what actually constitutes hazing only hinders efforts to prevent future occurrences. There have been many programs geared toward educating club and sports team leaders on hazing over the past few years, and perhaps the situation would be improved if that information were made widely available to all students—not just those in charge of student organizations.

Student reactions to this year’s hazing incidents underline the fact that the deans’ judgments often seem like they come out of left field. Their decisions reflect a disregard for the norms of our campus, given that the broad definition of hazing encompasses activities that are considered both ordinary and safe. The dominant opinion among students is that the deans are far removed from student life. Periodic appeals to connect with students do not do enough to engender a sense that the deans are on our side. While some students will certainly get to know administrators, for most, the deans appear to be little more than talking heads who sign campus-wide emails.

Ivies is upon us. As this issue goes to print, many Bowdoin students are readying to head to Brunswick Quad for an afternoon of carefree carousing. Whittier Field is being prepared for tomorrow’s concert, when Phar\os, Hoodie Allen and Guster will take the stage, and the stacks of H-L have plenty of carrels to spare. 

One of the reasons that Ivies is special is because it has a tendency to breed nostalgia, for both our personal memories of the College and its 219-year history. Beginning in 1865, Ivy Day celebrated the planting of an ivy by the side of the Chapel. The spring concert (and preceding parties) that exist today barely resemble this occasion. 

Guster, this year’s headlining act, is no stranger to campus--the band performed at Bowdoin in 1997 and 2000. We are glad to see them return a third time, and tomorrow’s concert--with mostly sunny skies in the forecast--promises to be another memorable set. 

This has been a hard week for the United States, and a hard week for Bowdoin. The American flag flew at half-mast in honor of those who were killed and injured in the Boston Marathon bombings, some of whom had close ties to the Bowdoin community. No sooner had the Orient confirmed the safety of over 100 alumni and students in the vicinity of the bombs on Monday evening, than did we learn of the death of beloved alumnus and former Orient columnist Jose Cespedes ’12, who lost his battle with liver disease last Friday. And as the editorial board convened yesterday evening, news broke of continued bloodshed in and around Boston like an unending nightmare.

The violence, terror, and loss that has marked the past few days and hours has forced us to take a step back and reflect on the fragility of life and the senselessness of random violence.

The marathon finish line, where the bombs went off, is just one mile from the street named for James Bowdoin, a testament to the College’s deep roots in Boston. With almost a fifth of the student body hailing from Massachusetts, the unfolding tragedy hits close to home. Many students from the state are affectionately known around campus as “J.O.B.s” for hailing from “Just Outside Boston.” They had friends, parents and neighbors in the vicinity of the bombs, and spent hours on Monday afternoon anxiously wondering if their loved ones were among those killed or injured in the attacks. This morning, many students will wake up to the news that familiar streets around Watertown and Cambridge are the scene of a massive manhunt for a suspect in the bombings. This week, “just outside Boston” took on a new meaning.

One of the student body’s most important collective decisions will be made this weekend as the votes are tallied in the election for the 2013-14 Bowdoin Student Government (BSG) Executive Committee. Sarah Nelson has our vote for president of next year’s assembly.

Nelson’s diversity of experience, established relationships with members of the administration, and realistic outlook make her a strong choice to broaden BSG’s impact. Her work for Residential Life and Student Activities has proven her ability to collaborate with a wide variety of groups on campus, and she demonstrated her natural talent for organization on a campus-wide level when she co-chaired Winter Weekend in February. As a former class treasurer and community outreach officer, Nelson understands fiscal responsibility and the importance of Bowdoin’s relationship with the Brunswick community.

Clear, feasible goals make up the bulk of Nelson’s campaign platform. She stresses improving communication through the development of a unified Bowdoin app, facilitating student leadership outside of existing organizations, and fostering open dialogue with administrators. She has already begun to work toward creating a $10,000 “Good Ideas” fund to provide financial resources for students outside of clubs. A Nelson presidency would improve cohesion across all class years to work toward larger goals, such as revising the College House application process.

Bowdoin’s “need-blind” admissions policy ensures that students from all walks of life can attend the College. Forty-six percent of Bowdoin students received need-based financial aid as of the 2011-2012 academic year, and the average grant was over $35,000 this year. The strength of the College’s financial aid program is especially notable in an unstable financial climate, which has led many colleges to abandon need-blind admissions policies.

The College’s commitment to recruiting and admitting qualified applicants of all income levels is crucial to our mission of creating a diverse student body. However, this is not feasible without considerable donations from alumni who want to make the Bowdoin experience accessible to all. Earmarking donations expressly for financial aid is the best way to ensure that deserving students of all backgrounds can continue to attend the College.

Some students will only have the opportunity to engage with such a diverse group of students during their time at the College. Many are understandably hesitant to discuss financial matters with their peers, but having those types of conversations can add a new dimension to our education outside of the classroom—that’s part of the reason that Bowdoin brought us all together in the first place.

There are many ways that the College could respond to “The Bowdoin Project,” a report published by the National Association of Scholars (NAS) that attacks the College’s educational mission and waxes nostalgic for the Bowdoin of the past—before co-education, affirmative action and the elimination of fraternities made this place what it is today.

The report claims that the College’s liberal arts curriculum educates students in progressivism, but is itself deeply infused with conservative ideology. It at once criticizes Bowdoin students for refusing to engage with viewpoints that diverge from their own, while expressing disdain for a cur- riculum that teaches us to look beyond our community and our borders.

Despite the authors’ claims to the contrary, “The Bowdoin Project” insults the intelligence of Bowdoin students, and misrepresents the nature of a liberal arts education. The best response to the report is to regard it with the critical acuity that Bowdoin has taught us.

This year Bowdoin again reported its lowest acceptance rate in history, 14.5 percent. With a record 7,052 applicants, it is clear that the College’s reach continues to grow. The application pool consisted of students from over 3,184 high schools across the country, continuing an encouraging trend of increased geographic diversity among the student body. As Bowdoin became even more selective this year, more qualified students were rejected from the College than ever before. 

Though the story of admitted students is the one most often told, those who are rejected, wait-listed, or who do not even apply to the College also deserve attention. As The New York Times recently reported, many highly-qualified, low-income students do not even apply to top schools like Bowdoin, instead opting for bigger-name institutions that may be closer to home, or that come with a cheaper price tag. Only by looking at the admissions process from all perspectives—taking into account the experiences of all applicants—can we get the complete picture.

This is what the Orient intended to do last week, when a reporter retweeted applicants’ reactions to Bowdoin’s admissions decisions, both positive and negative. What was meant as an attempt to tell both sides of the story came off as a cruel mockery of those who were not accepted to the College, and reflected poor journalistic judgment. 

Next fall marks 10 years since Bowdoin’s current academic distribution requirements were approved, and eight years since students first chose their courses bearing them in mind. Then as now, the wording of the requirements was a cause of concern and confusion, and the rationale for why some courses qualified for a requirement while more relevant ones did not was unclear. Back in 2004, this board expressed support for the requirements in hopes that they would encourage students to broaden their academic experiences, but expressed concern that the Exploring Social Differences (ESD) requirement would apply to too many courses. Now, it seems that the opposite is true. Courses that fulfill a specific distribution requirement are often tough to come by, and the current system frequently causes students to enroll in classes that do not challenge them academically. There are only so many credits that can fit into four years at the College, and none of them should go to waste.

Given the systemic problems of the distribution requirements, it is heartening that they are now being reviewed by the Curriculum and Education Policy Committee (CEP), a body composed of students and faculty. In addition to revising the language of the ESD, Inquiry in the Natural Sciences (INS), International Perspectives (IP) and Visual and Performing Arts (VPA) descriptions to make them more succinct, the CEP is proposing to change the criteria and application process necessary for a course to fulfill a distribution requirement.

In this last aim, the CEP could potentially improve the registration process significantly by developing a standardized protocol for allocating distribution requirements. Currently, there are many courses that would seem to meet the parameters of INS or VPA that do not actually satisfy a distribution requirement, often for the simple reason that the professor did not apply for the designation. For example, Introduction to Anthropology does not count toward an ESD credit, nor does The German Experience fulfill the IP credit. The allocation of distribution requirements should be more consistent within individual departments, and easier to obtain for a given course. Professors should be encouraged to register their courses to fulfill distribution requirements, and the difficulty in gaining approval should not dissuade them from doing so.

Campus is changing. Projects are underway at the the Naval Air Station Brunswick, the Stevens Retirement Home, the former Longfellow School, and beyond as part of the College’s beautification plan. As Bowdoin takes on these initiatives, it should keep in mind the importance of maintaining a cohesive campus. The College purchased Stevens Retirement Home on Harpswell Road in November, with the intent to convert it into a dorm as soon as next year. This acquisition will alleviate the housing crunch of the past few years, though it does not seem wise to make repeated reactionary purchases to solve this problem. Bowdoin should act sustainably in its execution of the many development projects currently on the docket. One of the things that makes our school so unique is the bounded feeling of our campus, which can easily be traversed in 10 minutes. Development that sprawls far beyond the Quad may threaten the close-knit environment we currently enjoy, and will increase our energy demands.

For many students, the gray area in Bowdoin’s alcohol policy is cause for trepidation when it comes time to register as an alcohol host (A-host) or event host for a party. This is a good thing. Signing Residential Life’s party registration form can have serious implications, and is entirely an act of generosity toward one’s peers. It’s a commitment that shouldn’t be taken lightly, and a favor that deserves respectful behavior from partygo- ers in return. Bowdoin’s A-hosts agree to assume legal responsibility for distributing alcohol at a registered event. By and large, this system of accountability works well, and allows students to consume safely under the auspices of the College Houses. But the College’s alcohol policy is not the law, which can bring down harsh penalties on A-hosts if something goes wrong. In recent memory, no A-host has received summons from the Brunswick Police Department for furnishing alcohol to minors, but this doesn’t mean it couldn’t happen, and it is incumbent upon underage partygoers to make sure it won’t. Bowdoin’s current alcohol policy may seem paradoxical, problematic or overly indulgent, depending on who you are. It only works if we all take responsibility for our own actions, and are mindful of the risks our peers take so that we can have a good time.

In December, this editorial board argued that the merits of divestment from fossil fuel companies were impossible to evaluate so long as data on how the College’s endowment is invested remained obscure. Now that we have the facts, the case for divestment has little ground to stand on. About 1.4 percent of Bowdoin’s $902.4 million endowment is invested in fossil fuel companies. If the College were to divest, a full quarter of the endowment would have to be transferred away from high-performing commingled funds. This would mean lower annual returns, a lower operating budget, and a big hit to the endowment overall. If the College had invested exclusively in fossil free funds, its average annual rate of return would have been 5 percent lower over the past decade, and Bowdoin’s endowment would be at least $100 million smaller.

Bowdoin Student Government (BSG) has made meaningful progress towards realizing the campaign platforms its members ran on last spring. We commend BSG for actively pursuing projects including bringing LSAT and MCAT prep courses to the College, extending Thanksgiving break, and making the proceedings of the student government more transparent to the Bowdoin community. It is a mark of BSG’s commitment to maintaining accountability that the Executive Committee provided a comprehensive report of its progress to the Orient at the start of this semester. BSG introduced a new website at the beginning of this academic year, which was the product of much time and effort within the organization. The site’s launch was a positive step toward establishing standards of institutional accountability and record keeping that will serve generations of students to come. Even small projects, like subsidizing discounted movie tickets to Regal Cinemas and Brunswick Taxi services, and reviving Winter Weekend, evidence the fact that BSG spent the fall working hard. BSG President Dani Chediak has put forward a proposal to bring graduate school test prep courses to campus, one of the promises she made to the senior class last spring. We urge the administration to accept her proposal so that students do not have to pay out of pocket for help preparing for graduate school.

On December 21, the Chapel bells tolled 26 times—once for each victim of the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School. The unthinkable violence that cost 20 first graders and six adults their lives has shaken the nation. In the weeks since, there have been five more school shootings in the United States, including one this Tuesday at Lone Star College in Texas. New legislative sessions have begun in Augusta and Washington, and in the aftermath of these tragedies it looks as though lawmakers are finally serious about reforming gun laws nationwide. Maine’s senators will vote on President Obama’s gun control proposal in the coming months, and Brunswick’s state representatives will soon evaluate a number of bills that would alter gun regulations throughout the state. One bill submitted this week would permit school employees to carry concealed firearms in the classroom.

The events of this week have proven that divesting Bowdoin’s endowment from fossil fuels is not merely the naively idealistic project of a small cadre of students. On Wednesday, the lead story on the New York Times’ website reported that divestment movements are emerging at over one hundred colleges across the country. On Wednesday, Middlebury agreed to consider the possibility, and to actively research strategies for divestment. At Bowdoin, the push for divestment has grown from a few students holding signs in protest last month, to a core group of over 20 students who showed up to lunch with President Mills on Tuesday with charts and figures in hand, determined to move the issue forward. Mills told the students that the College would not commit to considering divestment in the immediate future.

This week, the Orient interviewed the student behind Not Bowdoin College, an anonymous Twitter account that parodies the College’s official feed. With 124 followers—including @bowdoincollege—the voice behind @notbowdoin has earned a modicum of online celebrity through its brand of mockery. In its creator’s eyes, maintaining anonymity helps ensure that Not Bowdoin College’s criticism of Bowdoin can stand for the views of its followers rather than the gripes of one individual. Satiric Twitter accounts abound, and can put pressure on institutions and political figures in a way that is off-limits to other forms of media—like, for instance, the Orient. Though the persona of @notbowdoin may enjoy some Oz-like power behind its curtain of anonymity, as a news organization, we hold ourselves to a higher standard.

In a letter to the editor published in the October 12 issue of the Orient, seven professors voiced their concern over a growing chorus of complaints regarding the work load of college faculty. The letter explained that faculty engagement at Bowdoin extends far beyond class time and office hours; professors serve on administrative committees and are expected to actively participate in their areas of study by publishing their research. We are immensely grateful to the faculty of the College and are thankful for the high level of scholarly achievement and intellectual rigor that defines a Bowdoin education. Faculty come to our small college for more than its academic reputation and resources; they come to work closely with undergraduates who are just discovering their academic passions. This is touted in Bowdoin’s promotional literature and by our tour guides, but it is an important reality that bears repeating here. Our professors are deeply committed to our learning and growth; we see this in their willingness to schedule meetings outside of regular office hours, to guide us through papers and lab reports, and to wholeheartedly support our independent projects, however aspirational they may be.

Tuesday night may not have ended with the song-filled tiki-torch rally of 2008, but there was still a palpable sense of elation on campus as the results rolled in. Each victory was marked by celebratory shrieks emanating from first-year bricks and from a packed Jack Magee’s Pub. The revelry continued through Wednesday morning, culminating when over a hundred community members gathered in Smith Union to commemorate Maine’s newly-minted status as the first state to legalize same-sex marriage by popular vote. Three years ago, Maine voted “Yes” on 1 as well, but to an opposite end: the 2009 referendum rejected the legalization of same-sex marriage 53 to 47 percent, the exact margin by which the 2012 ballot measure passed. This year, in place of the dejected and disappointed sentiment of 2009, there was wedding cake to be had.

While Hurricane Sandy largely spared Bowdoin, the storm left thousands of Maine residents without power and devastated much of the eastern seaboard. The death toll currently stands at 88, and the situation may get worse before it gets better. Still, life at Bowdoin goes on more or less as usual, even as the families of many students continue to cope with the storm’s damage. Since Sandy hit, much has been written about how the storm will impact the election on November 6. Pundits and public officials across the nation have called for both presidential candidates to seriously address global warming after avoiding the issue for months, an imperative Walter Wuthmann elaborates on in this week’s Talk of the Quad. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg have both linked the severity of the storm to climate change. In an op-ed in Bloomberg View yesterday, the mayor endorsed President Obama in part because he feels the president will “place scientific evidence and risk management above electoral politics.” We agree.

A week from this Tuesday, Brunswick must cast its vote not just in the race for president, but for representatives to both houses of Congress and to the State Legislature. The choices this election day have particularly high stakes, especially Question 1, which would legalize same-sex marriage and narrowly failed in 2009. If Question 1 passes, Maine will be the first state to affirm gay marriage by popular vote. By denying marriage licenses to same-sex couples, our state, and most of the country, has withheld basic civil rights from too many of its citizens, for far too long. A “yes” vote is a vote in favor of equality for all. Democrat and Brunswick native Mattie Daughtry will best represent the 66th District in the Maine House of Representatives. We are convinced by her sense of civic responsibility: Daughtry read every bill proposed in the 125th session of the Maine legislature, is dedicated to improving public education, and is committed to bipartisan policy making.

In an op-ed published in the Amherst Student on Wednesday, “An Account of Sexual Assault at Amherst College,” Angie Epifano, a former member of the Amherst Class of 2014, bravely recounts how she was raped by a classmate as a first year. Since it was released, her account has sparked an outpouring of sympathy and outrage at the administration’s response, and has inspired others to come forward with similar stories. Epifano writes that she felt unsafe on the small campus and did not tell anyone about the assault. When she did seek help from the college’s sexual assault counselor, she was asked whether the rape might have been just “a bad hook up” and was dissuaded from pressing charges or initiating disciplinary proceedings. Months after the assault, Epifano confessed suicidal thoughts and was transported to emergency care. When she returned to school, she was blocked from studying abroad or writing a senior thesis in light of her “unstable” condition. Epifano withdrew from Amherst after her sophomore year, one year after the assault. One of the most disturbing aspects of Epifano’s testimony is her characterization of how administrators tried to whitewash her assault and subsequent withdrawal from the college. “Silence has the rusty taste of shame,” she writes, condemning the school’s attempt to “sweep sexual assaults under a rug,” and noting how administrators failed to provide her with a support system and instead insisted that “Amherst is a safe place.”

This week the first affirmative action case in a decade came before the Supreme Court. The justices heard oral arguments in the case of Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, and though no opinions will be issued until well into 2013, the consequences of this case will impact public and private institutions of higher education across the country. Bowdoin, along with 37 peer schools, submitted an amicus curiae brief supporting the University of Texas that underscores the importance of cultivating diversity on American college campuses. This brief emphasizes that diversity is a crucial element of the academic, residential and social climates of liberal arts institutions.

The Bowdoin Student Government (BSG) will convene for the first time this year on October 10, and some BSG Executive Officers have already begun to make good on last year’s campaign promises. This week, BSG Vice President (VP) of Sustainability Tessa Kramer succeeded in her goal of improving the Bowdoin Shuttle system. It is a strong first step, and we applaud her effort to follow through with her platform. We hope other BSG officers will similarly actualize the proposals they ran on, and we encourage students to hold representatives accountable for their actions, or lack thereof.

The results are in from last spring’s alcohol and drug use survey, and they confirm what many of us already know: Bowdoin’s drinking culture encourages responsibility and prioritizes the health of students above all else. Ninety-three percent of students surveyed think the College alcohol policy encourages calling for help, compared to only 77 percent at peer schools. Ninety-five percent of Bowdoin students believe Residential Life staff are supportive during alcohol-related emergencies—ten percent more than at peer schools. Most importantly, the survey showed that Bowdoin students are more likely to trust the administration and to call Security when help is needed. The results indicated that drinking at the College is no more extreme, nor prevalent, than at other NESCAC schools.

Next fall will mark the start of a two-year trial program that will re-imagine first-year-College House affiliation. Each house will be affiliated with four or five floors from different bricks. Howell will remain a chem-free College House and will be affiliated with floating chem-free floors.

Anyone who wants anything has a choice: build or buy. Do it yourself, or have someone do it for you. In the field of web development, the choice can be particularly difficult. This week, the College and the Orient are launching new websites. Independently, we have both chosen to build.

Orientation is dizzying and overwhelming—the days are long and laden with programming, you encounter a wide variety of people and remember very few names, and you travel constantly with your floor. It's a marathon meet-and-greet that will make the first few days of classes seem simple in comparison.

On Tuesday, the Bowdoin Daily Sun posted an article lauding three Bowdoin students who secured internships at Goldman Sachs this summer. On Wednesday, the post was deleted from the site after drawing criticism for distastefully trumpeting the well-known fact that Bowdoin students often land prestigious internships, glorifying the financial industry, and neglecting to acknowledge two other students also interning at the bank.

When this issue hits campus, much of the school will be reveling at the annual Ivies celebration on Brunswick Quad. This weekend is a well-earned break from the relentless workload at Bowdoin and a defining part of the College's traditions. Some administrators and faculty members are wary of the deleterious effects a week of bacchanalian carousing may have on academic commitment, and their concern is understandable.

Last night, Hari Kondabolu '04 performed stand-up comedy as part of a week of Asian-themed events sponsored by the Asian Student Association. Kondabolu began by speaking about his time at the College, humorously noting that many of his experiences as a student left him frustrated with Bowdoin's glaring lack of diversity. He recalled times when he felt like "the Indian kid" on campus, and when a first year from New England was uncomfortable around him because she had never interacted with someone with brown skin.

The next few weeks will present students with a number of difficult choices as they decide which dorm to aim for in the housing lottery and which courses to pick for the fall semester. When it comes to selecting a candidate for BSG president, however, the choice is much easier. Dani Chediak offers the depth and diversity of experience, the relationships with key players, as well as realistic ambitions that will make her a successful leader of the student body.

On the Wednesday before spring break, students were alerted to an uptick in diagnoses of Sexually Transmitted Infections (STIs) on campus, including chlamydia, syphilis, herpes, and gonorrhea. The news came in the form of an email from Whitney Hogan, coordinator of health education. While the College has not released the exact number of confirmed cases, there have clearly been enough to incite concern.

On Wednesday, Dean Foster sent a school-wide email with the findings of the Chem-Free Housing Review Committee. After gauging the opinion of the community, the committee found that stigmatization, social rifts, and de facto racial, cultural and ethnic segregation have resulted from the current system. The committee put forward several recommendations aimed at eliminating the stigma attached to chem-free students.

Applications for Bowdoin-funded grants and fellowships are due next week, and the competition for awards to conduct research in the library's archives or on Kent Island is intense. While students of all disciplines are invited to apply for summer research grants, the applicants most likely to be successful probably take the lion's share of their classes in Druckenmiller.

With the conclusion of Early Decision II admissions, 224 high school seniors have accepted a place in the Class of 2016. And after March 23, the target date for sending out regular decision letters, about 260 more will join them as the next incoming class takes shape. The rush of getting accepted to college might be enough to get many high school seniors to accept their spots in the Class of 2016 almost as soon as they rip open their fat envelopes. But amid all the excitement, consider what sending that letter back really means.

As an institution, Bowdoin has consistently shown an admirable dedication to the arts. A visitor to the Bowdoin College Museum of Art over the course of this year alone might have seen outstanding exhibitions of Grecian urns, Assyrian relief sculptures, Bronze Age Chinese vessels, and works by Edward Hopper, Henri Matisse and Käthe Kollwitz. The College has spent a fortune enhancing its arts facilities—most notably, the $20.8 million renovation and expansion of the museum and the $15 million renovation that transformed what had been the campus pool into a state-of-the-art performance hall. But Bowdoin's institutional support for the fine arts often fails to extend beyond these conspicuous gestures, and among students, a culture surrounding visual arts is strikingly invisible.

The students behind Mass Deactivation presented a challenge to the Bowdoin community this week, urging students to deactivate their Facebook accounts for exactly one month starting on February 8. The premise of the experiment is to re-experience what life would be like without the social network, and creators Tyler Patton '12 and Ruiqi Tang '13 think that Bowdoin—as close-knit as it is tech-saturated—is the perfect environment in which to do so. And they're right.

One of Bowdoin's biggest draws is its small course sizes. Tour guides love telling visitors that the median class size is 16 students. And yet, first years and sophomores are often disappointed to discover that while their first year seminar is 16 students, almost all of their other courses are bigger—much bigger. Often through junior year, students enrolled in the most popular majors—English, government, economics—find that their 200-level classes are consistently filled with upwards of 30 students. Of course, if the school was $500 million richer, smaller classes would be easier to come by. But given our present budget constraints, we still think there may be a path to improving the educational experience: allowing for more flexibility in class size.

Students making their way to Webmail and Blackboard on Tuesday, November 29 were greeted by a new page in place of the Student Gateway—the Orbit. This new site is a much-needed step in the right direction—unfortunately, many other components of the College's website continue to leave something to be desired.

For the past few weeks, the Colby community has been largely absorbed in a discussion about sexual assault on campus in response to allegations against several students. Other students have since come forward with tales of their own experiences with sexual assault. Federal law prohibits Colby from releasing information regarding the details of the recent incident. However, an email from Colby students who were attempting to organize a protest at the Bowdoin-Colby football game states that the investigation involves members of the Colby team.

Last Saturday, Williams College was confronted with a hate crime when graffiti reading "All N----rs Must Die" was discovered on the wall of a dormitory bathroom. In response to the event, Williams cancelled classes on Monday and a number of campus-wide discussions have occurred since. The episode recalls the bias incident that struck Bowdoin in March, when offensive graffiti was found scrawled on a white board outside a room in Coles Tower.

The senior members of the Meddiebempsters had been preparing an initiation night for a week before the evening of September 16. When the day finally came, the upperclass Meddies gave the first years a list of clues and told them to complete a scavenger hunt. Afterwards, they went to a senior's off-campus house, where the Meddies were having a party. The upperclassmen congratulated their newly-inducted first years, who were then able to meet everyone for the first time. The upperclassmen offered the first years beer; two decided to drink, and the third did not. "It was a lot of fun," said one first year. "There was a really happy mood."

Once again, seniors are looking for jobs, and the economy remains in the wood chipper. Luckily, many of the jobs offered this fall by the Career Planning Center (CPC) are quite well paid. However, not all of us want to make bank working at a bank.

Yesterday, Bowdoin students emerged en masse sporting yellow T-shirts emblazoned with the phrase, "Respect. All sexualities. All genders." The second-annual "Yellow Shirt Day" is organized by the Bowdoin Queer Straight Alliance (BQSA) in support of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, and queer (LGBTIQ) community at the College.

This week marked the midpoint of the semester, and students are sleeplessly wandering the campus. Yes, the usual procrastination is partly to blame. But the main reason is that every class seems to have a midterm scheduled or a paper due.

It's been five weeks since Occupy Wall Street began in Zuccotti Park, Manhattan, and to many, it's still largely unclear what exactly the protesters hope to achieve. Talk of disenfranchisement, social inequality, and "the 99 percent" abounds, but it's impossible to know whether it will all lead to institutional change.

Thomas Klingenstein has fixated his attention on Bowdoin's internal academic affairs once again, this time by funding a study through the National Association of Scholars (NAS) that will examine whether the College's lack of intellectual diversity affects the quality of its curriculum. Although Peter Wood, the director of the study, says it will be objective, it is difficult to believe this claim, given that the study is funded by a man who has repeatedly criticized the dearth of conservative viewpoints among the faculty.

The grading system is currently set up such that Bowdoin students can easily sail through four years of college without knowing the details of how they compare academically to their peers. And as long as the College refuses to release the student body’s average GPA—not to mention the average grades given by each department—this will continue to be the case.

On Wednesday evening, students held a vigil on the Walker Art Building steps in protest of Troy Davis’ impending execution in Jackson, Georgia. Davis’ execution was a miscarriage of justice and a failure of the American legal system.

Over the summer, the College made several upgrades to campus facilities that greeted us upon returning to school. Kresge Auditorium and the Beam classroom were revamped, there were renovations to the Convenience Store, and new computers were installed in Smith Union. Along with these visible additions, the College also invested millions of dollars in developments that a casual stroll through campus won't reveal.

The publication of this volume of the Orient marks the newspaper's 140th anniversary. We intend to mark this milestone with a number of changes to the paper that we believe will invigorate its pages. But first, we wish to acknowledge some of the criticism that has been levied at the paper in recent years.

To the chagrin of many seniors, graduation approaches with haste. For many of us, this is a bittersweet time—we are eagerly looking to the future while also reflecting on the four years we have spent here. Bowdoin has been our home, and it is hard to part ways.

Summer just is not what it used to be. The relaxing days at the beach are, for many of us, traded in for khakis and a water cooler. Though we are still weeks away from temperatures above 70 degrees, the scramble for a summer job, internship or activity is underway in full force.

Today marks the end of the annual "Consent is Sexy" week, which united students who advocate for racial, sexual, and gender diversity at the College. There have been numerous student panels and awareness events. This week is one of just many events that occur on campus to promote sexual health and discussion at Bowdoin: others include Anything But Straight in Athletics and Out Week. In general, the effects of such initiatives are fairly widespread—they are often topics of conversation in the dining halls and the actual programs are reasonably well attended.

Each year during Ivies, this space is used to remind our campus of the dangers that often accompany our yearly debauchery. And though the meteorological forecast may be wavering between grim and so-so, we can trust that the student body is capable of making choices that will ensure a safe time is had by all, no matter the weather.

The clock is ticking—we've got until Sunday night at 8 p.m. to vote in the 2011 Bowdoin Student Government (BSG) election, and who we pick could lead to an improvement in the quality of student governance and student life at Bowdoin. We are often skeptical of the proposition that student government can achieve so much. But BSG has real potential, and so do this year's candidates. Derek Brooks '12 is the right choice to lead BSG next year.

Dear prospective members of the Class of 2015, This space is not normally reserved for you. Today, however, is an exception. After years of jumping through hoops, you've been accepted to Bowdoin. Congratulations! Yet maybe you have offers to matriculate at Williams or Dartmouth, and the ball, for the first time, is in your court. When Williamstown and Hanover beckon, why come to Brunswick?

Before Spring Break, roughly 200 students, faculty and staff took part in a demonstration called "I am Bowdoin." Participants processed from the Polar Bear statue into Smith Union with duct tape on their mouths, one by one pulling off the tape and professing a statement about themselves followed by the phrase "I am Bowdoin," intending to signify that though students have multifaceted identities, they are all part of the same community. The demonstration followed a public meeting of students, staff and faculty addressing the March 1 bias incident in Coles Tower. At the gathering a number of students candidly voiced their experiences of feeling unwelcome and unsafe on campus and in Brunswick. The "I am Bowdoin" event was powerful by virtually all accounts. But for many observers and even demonstrators, the message was not entirely clear. What, exactly, was this act protesting?

The Maine State Legislature plans to soon vote on two bills that together would make it substantially more difficult for college students to participate in Maine elections. The first, LD 199, would require a Maine state ID for voter registration. The second, LD 203, proposes to mandate that all voters must be registered a week prior to filling out their ballots. The former would require that students who wish to vote in Brunswick obtain a form of Maine state identification listing the address of their campus residence.

We often use this space to discuss the larger issues facing the College: finances, the academic program, and environmental goals among them. Our focus today resides with a smaller—but nonetheless important—facet of the College that is dear to the hearts of students. The Bowdoin Shuttle provides an essential service to the College. We save the dispatch center's number in our cell phones under "Safe Ride," the former name of the nighttime shuttle service. Yet, despite a generally favorable opinion of the Shuttle, students—as well as the Office of Safety and Security—would benefit immensely from the improvement of certain elements.

Hankering for a hamburger? Better not be this Monday night. That evening, Thorne and Moulton Dining Halls, in partnership with the Bowdoin College Democrats (BCD) and other student groups, will not serve any meat. Meatless Monday, a national initiative, is well-intentioned: reducing meat consumption limits carbon emissions and provides health benefits.

With the housing lottery quickly approaching, students have begun eyeing their favorite housing options for the next academic year, and most of those who plan to live off-campus have already signed leases. Bowdoin has, comparably, some of the best student housing around. Tour guides tout our cushy facilities all the time—but how long until a tour guide has to open the door to a first year quint? Slowly, more and more of our spacious rooms seem to be getting a little crowded.

When every day seemingly brings headlines of record compensation for the top executives of America's nonprofits and companies, it is refreshing to see President Barry Mills exercise restraint. With a record as impressive as his, there is little question he could be among the highest-compensated liberal arts college presidents in the country if he so wished. Yet year after year, Mills has made it clear to the Board of Trustees that money is not his prerogative, turning away hundreds of thousands of dollars.

It snowed a lot this past week, particularly on Wednesday. That day, the College declared a weather emergency—not a snow day—and staff deemed "essential" were asked to report to work, keeping students from being left out in the cold. In the midst of the storm, countless facilities staff were out clearing sidewalks and driveways in order to ensure that students could get to and from their classes. Without their efforts, the College would have come to a halt and many would have been stranded in their rooms.

In 1997, a commission composed of trustees, faculty and students submitted a report tracing the failings of Bowdoin's fraternity system and proposed an alternative housing plan: the College House System. The commission was optimistic that the system would cultivate a deeper sense of community on campus, and the proposed plan was quite thorough and introspective. A few of the guidelines were tongue-in-cheek.

A few clamoring students stood outside Hawthorne and Longfellow Library—unable to get in—the Saturday morning during last semester's finals period. These students, some of whom had final exams at 9 a.m., were left out in the cold because the library was operating on its weekend hours, and would not open until 10 a.m.

It is hard to go more than a few hours during reading period without hearing the phrase "I can't wait for next semester" from friends and classmates. In the whirlwind stress of final assignments and exams, we forget that just a few months ago we had looked forward to the closing semester with the same enthusiasm we now hold for the coming term. Like it or not, next semester will bring the same disillusionment once the work begins to pile up again.

The end of fall semester is a crossroads at Bowdoin. Before Thanksgiving Break, students pore over the catalogue and scour the Internet on sites like RateMyProfessors and BSG's Bowdoin College Course Reviews in an attempt to choose classes for the next semester. The limitations of these resources often leave us with no choice but to rely on the advice of that friend of a friend who took Bio 109 last year, or accept the few, extremist opinions we can find on the Internet.

The men's soccer team is in uncharted territory. With a school-record 12 consecutive wins, a No. 6 national ranking, and a program-first NCAA tournament victory, this is the best squad Bowdoin has ever fielded. As for the field hockey team, Final Four appearances are quickly becoming business as usual. Thanks to Coach Nicky Pearson, the College boasts the premiere field hockey program in Division III, and we are ecstatic as the team pursues its third national crown in four years.

Recently, questions regarding the state of town-gown relations have been thrust to the forefront of the collective consciousness of Bowdoin and Brunswick. Last week, the Orient ran a letter from one frustrated student, which sparked an all-time high number of online comments in response, from students at Bowdoin and members of the community alike. Earlier this week, the Times Record, the local daily paper, ran an article that painted a town-gown relationship strained by alcohol. Do we have a serious issue?

There is a new Juicy Campus in town. College Anonymous Confession Board (ACB) is an independent website that serves as an open forum for students, and is organized into different pages for various colleges and universities, Bowdoin included. Almost all of the posts are anonymous and end up containing nothing more than rumors and defamation—gossip.

This Tuesday, many Bowdoin students will head to the polls to help Maine elect a new governor. The latest independent poll suggests that what had been a two-person battle between Democrat Libby Mitchell and Republican Paul LePage is now a bona fide three-way race, with Independent Eliot Cutler making significant late gains. This competition is far from decided, which makes our votes all the more important.

This week, students were frustrated by the storm of e-mails we received advertising campus events. It is an annoyance to sift through the many advertisements and announcements that bombard us day in and day out. Moreover, the daily deluge of times, titles and locations—most of which only interest a small number of students—causes the most vital information to get lost in the shuffle.

It is easy to complain about break once it's over. If you listen to students around campus, it seems like Fall Break wasn't long enough—no one got in quite as much work, sleep, family time, or fun as he or she wanted to. But the opposite is actually true. Far from being too short, Fall Break is two days too long.

Money makes the world go round in higher education. Money keeps students comfortable with dorm renovations and the College cutting edge with brand new buildings. Money allows students who could otherwise not afford to come to Bowdoin with the aid they need. Money enables everything from the large-scale to the unseen functions of the College to keep ticking.

Yesterday, when the campus sorted through its daily flood of e-mails, there was an especially important one waiting. Each student received the Judicial Board (J-Board) and Student Sexual Assault and Misconduct Board's (SSAMB) 2009-2010 Annual Report.

The start of the semester marked the introduction of a new printing system, sparking criticism and complaint. Though students in the past were permitted unlimited printing, we are now allotted $60—750 double-sided black-and-white pages—each semester and must pay out-of-pocket for any additional costs.

Each April, clubs on campus have the opportunity to submit budgets to the Student Activities Funding Committee (SAFC) to petition for funding for the next academic year. From 2002 until 2009, the Orient consistently requested approximately $20,000 per year and was awarded at least $19,000 by the SAFC on every occasion. Almost all of this money goes to cover the paper's annual printing costs, which totaled $19,169 in 2009-2010.

Will Bowdoin forget us? After spending four years on this campus, we'd certainly not like to think so. Having called so many dorms across campus our homes, worn in the seats of so many desks, and grown so familiar with faculty and friends, we've come to think of this place as our own, existing indefinitely just for us.

Last week, the Orient reported on an incident at 10 Cleaveland Street that occurred early in the morning on Sunday, April 18. The article stated that police arrived in the aftermath of an altercation involving at least one Bowdoin student and a knife. According to Vice President for Communications and Public Affairs Scott Hood, the student in question is no longer enrolled at the College, though there were no details, allegations, or attributions of blame provided. Despite further requests for information to report a follow-up on the event, however, no new information about the incident has been released.

Sometimes, plans change. Whether we are College administrators or college students, we are all forced to reevaluate our seemingly stable plans for better options.

The recent and frequent run-ins between students and Brunswick police officers have students murmuring about the potential escalation of police activity around campus during the fast-approaching Ivies Weekend. In past years, measures taken by Bowdoin Security have allowed us to participate, largely carefree, in a weekend of Dionysian revelry-or as close as Bowdoin can come to it. Since our return from Spring Break, however, the increased presence of the Brunswick Police Department (BPD) around campus serves as a reminder of the legal ramifications for violating laws governing drinking.

Students voting in the Bowdoin Student Government (BSG) elections this week will have one easy decision to make: John Connolly '11 for BSG President. While his experience qualifies him for the position, it's unfortunate that Connolly's presidency will be secured merely by a lack of opposition, rather than a show of voter confidence in an atmosphere of competition.

For many Bowdoin students—particularly older and wiser upperclassmen—warm weather and spring on campus can only mean one thing: Ivies Weekend. It's just around the corner, and with it will come the most energetic showing of campus spirit at the College all year, from the robust attendance on the (hopefully) sun-soaked Quad for Saturday's Spring Concert to the mass exoduses to Harpswell and Pine Street on Friday and Saturday nights. These outdoor events, open to all, are the ones that leave us smiling through the grind of finals and graduation goodbyes.

Did you read your first year book before Orientation? More important, did you take anything meaningful away from the book or discussion? Evidently, College officials are learning that the overwhelming response to these questions is "no."

On Monday, faculty will vote on a measure that, if approved, would allow students to pursue and accept unpaid internships that require academic credit from the students' college or university. In the proposed policy, the College would acknowledge a student's successful completion of an internship with a notation on his or her transcript.

Last weekend, the student body reached a semester milestone: we made it to Monday without a single alcohol-related hospital transport. While some mark this as an achievement, the alcohol issue is still very much a reality.

A student-led initiative made gender-neutral housing on campus a reality last week, following coordinated talks between students, Residential Life staff, and Bowdoin Student Government. The announcement that the College will allow a gender-blind doubles option in the upcoming housing lottery demonstrates the active potential students have to shape our campus—potential that students should utilize more often.

Last week, the Orient made the decision to print the name of a student arrested on allegations of physically assaulting a nurse who was providing him with care after he had been drinking. Following our decision, students have questioned our motives and scolded us for being irresponsible journalists. Though we are not surprised that emotions are running high, we would like to use this space to explain our ethical practices policy and the journalistic integrity of our decision.

During a Wednesday night meeting to discuss the presence, prevalence, and perils of alcohol on campus, one consensus was clear: identifying the crux of the problem is as difficult as identifying any potential solutions. While the raw data suggest that students are treating alcohol differently this year than they have in years past, the arguments articulated by students and administrators define the wide spectrum of opinions concerning current alcohol policy: either it is too strict, too lenient, or is simply too removed from the realities of drinking culture at Bowdoin for it to apply.

Even after seeing endless footage and coverage of the January 12 earthquake that left much of Haiti's capital and surrounding area in ruins, it is nearly impossible to fully conceptualize the devastation. The media can inundate papers and Web sites with images of the hungry, the sick, the orphaned and the dead, but there is no way to represent the hardship thrust on each individual life.

The joys of a fresh semester: reconnecting with friends, choosing between two menus at each meal...and not getting into a class you need?

When did Adderall become the norm? More importantly, when did it become a norm at Bowdoin? We are quick to assume that Adderall usage is something we as college students have to accept-that, along with coffee and all-nighters, Adderall is just one more thing we should embrace.

Two weeks ago, we applauded the professors who elected to partake in the College’s Ongoing Leaning Evaluation (OLE) program and encouraged students who were OLE participants to provide thoughtful feedback. Few of us have had the opportunity to take part in an OLE this semester, but all of us will fill out end-of-semester course evaluation forms.

This week, the Orient investigated the little-known process of Ongoing Learning Evaluations (OLEs), during which professors invite honest student conversation about a particularly difficult topic: themselves. During an OLE, a peer professor attends the teaching professor's class to facilitate student discussion about the effectiveness of the professor's teaching so far.

Instead of working to improve student life, this week, the Bowdoin Student Government (BSG) spent another meeting deliberating over the finer points of its own internal affairs and policies. Following up on an incident that happened nine weeks ago, the organization waffled over the possibility of allowing class council and BSG candidates to campaign on the Student Digest. This far into the semester, it's a shame that BSG hasn't moved on to tackling issues that affect a greater share of the student body.

Disgust. Disappointment. Blame. After news outlets reported early Wednesday morning that a majority of Mainers had voted "Yes" on Question 1, consequently vetoing the law allowing same-sex marriage, our own outlets of communication were flooded with emotional reactions to the news.

Two hundred and fifty-three students were honored as Sarah and James Bowdoin (SJB) scholars last weekend. Other than their superlative grades, these students have another similarity: none of them went abroad last year.

On Tuesday, the approximately 1,377 students that did not cast ballots in last Saturday's Early Vote Day will have the opportunity to vote in the Maine State and town elections. In a year when a Maine ballot issue—Question 1, the people's veto to overturn Maine's new same-sex marriage law—is the only such marriage equality vote in the country, the State election is receiving a significant amount of national attention.

The green posters, "350," even the lack of water bottles at Express—we're seeing signs of the College's push toward environmental sustainability everywhere. While last year's "We're Committed" signs were visible, the declaration seemed half-hearted and the campus's focus directed elsewhere; namely, at the economy. Suddenly, with the College's aim set squarely on carbon neutrality by 2020, things are happening, and they're happening fast.

Though voters will not be casting their ballots for a historic presidency this November, the outcome of the Maine ballot could still impact policy decisions across the nation. Although Maine legalized same-sex marriage on May 6, 2009, opponents of the law gathered enough signatures to force the issue onto the November ballot, halting the law in its tracks before it could take effect as planned in September. On November 3, Maine voters will either vote "yes" on Question 1 to veto the law allowing same-sex marriage, or "no," to uphold the law as it currently stands.

Is it the swine flu? Maybe it is the sudden realization that yes, school really has begun and yes, you do have a 10-page paper to write and a lab report due—yesterday. Whatever the cause, we have noticed a dearth in submissions to these back pages of the Orient, the Opinion section.

As seniors put finishing touches on their résumés, sharpen their interview skills, iron their suits, and make plans for life beyond Bowdoin, there's one important consideration that seems surprisingly neglected: health care. It's a debate that is raging in both houses of Congress but, aside from these pages, is absent from our politically minded campus. Despite its current ubiquity in the news, we would be hard-pressed to find the phrase "public option" uttered anywhere at Bowdoin outside of a government class. But it's time to face the facts.

Bowdoin has seen a lot of change recently.
Despite talk about tough times and harsh economic realities, we've seen large-scale projects involving first year bricks, the Museum of Art, Studzinski Recital Hall, Watson and Dayton Arena, and most recently, the Peter Buck Center for Health and Wellness.

With swine flu infecting students at an increasingly ferocious pace, the virus is no longer novelty?rather, it is a routine inconvenience. On late Thursday, 116 students had presented flu-like symptoms, and though the number is large in comparison to peer schools, it still represents less than 10 percent of the student body. Given that national predictions claim infection rates of up to 50 percent on college campuses, it is likely that Bowdoin is not done with the swine flu.

In the past week, students have been confronted by the unfamiliar: quarantine units scattered across campus, students emerging from the health center wearing face masks and rumors about the latest person deemed sick. Despite uncommonly accurate predictions that swine flu would descend on college campuses with a fury this fall, the virus's arrival has been greeted with entirely negative connotations and social outcast.

For those of us who are graduating in three weeks and stumbling out into the cold, hard, jobless world, now seems like a pretty good time to reflect upon how lucky we are to have been in college for the last year. While others have been stuck in a cubicle watching their 401k evaporate, or worse, been faced with the terrifying threat of unemployment, we've remained relatively insulated.

For many of us, Ivies is one of the most exciting weekends of the year. It's a time for people to drop everything, and, yes, knock back a few beers. Or knock back a lot of beers.

Given that it's Ivies Weekend, it seems unlikely that anyone would want to go sit still in a dark room for an hour. With Harpswell, Pinestock, and the concert on the Quad, it's easy to understand why. However, we can think of at least one reason: It's called "Openings," and it's the spring dance concert going on Friday and Saturday.

At Monday night's Bowdoin Student Government (BSG) debate, candidates for officer positions answered a variety of questions about their goals, dedication, and experience. During the debate between the two presidential hopefuls, one thing became clear: Mike Dooley '10 makes the grade in all three categories.

For the past several months, the College has been forced to make hard decisions about how to reduce spending. While trying to stay as committed as possible to its fundamental principles, the College has made cutbacks that have significantly affected everyone on campus—everyone, that is, except the students.

Admissions season is coming to a close. The decisions have been made, and the letters have been sent. At this point, Bowdoin has accepted less than 19 percent of applicants: most have been rejected, and far, far too many have been put on the wait list. When a high school senior learns that she has been put on the wait list, she may assume that she has a chance of gaining acceptance to the College. In fact, there is almost no chance that she will be admitted.

On Wednesday afternoon, posters popped up around campus with the Greek letters Phi Chi—the name of a former Bowdoin fraternity as well as the title of a traditional Bowdoin fight song now sung by the Meddiebempsters. The posters, which were hung to advertise tonight's a cappella concert, have since been removed, at the request of Student Activities and Residential Life, for the usage of Greek letters.

Of this year's sophomore class, more than half have applied to study off campus next year. With so many Bowdoin students choosing to study away each year, one could hardly call us insular. We boast a wide range of off-campus study options, including destinations from Great Britain to Sri Lanka. Those who go abroad will inevitably be exposed to new cultures and challenges. However, as studying abroad becomes increasingly popular, we should be increasingly wary of considering it the best choice for all students.

It's the time of year when seniors are looking for post-grad employment and underclassmen are searching for summer jobs—and things look bleak. Students of the past may have relied on Bowdoin's name to land their dream job, but these days we're being rejected or having difficulty just finding enticing job openings.

Before coming to Bowdoin, college guidebooks told us that professors here would invite us into their homes, take us to lunch, and ask us to babysit their kids. Many of us hoped to form close relationships with our professors, and we expected that such relationships would spring up naturally, easily, and frequently. While some students have had just these sorts of experiences, many others may feel surprised or disappointed that they have not.

The breakfast scene at Moulton and Thorne are familiar routines: swiping in, grabbing a newspaper, and sitting down to read the news with your scrambled eggs and fruit platter. A less familiar routine, however, is that of students returning these newspapers after breakfast for later diners to enjoy.

February is the toughest month of winter, offering neither the excitement of a new semester nor the anticipation of spring. This time every year, Bowdoin provides just about everything it can to cheer up students and prevent them from becoming slobbering, mindless zombies: themed dinners at Thorne, ice sculptures on the Quad, even a traveling clown troupe.

In his message to the College community last week, detailing Bowdoin's response to the current financial crisis, President Barry Mills showed that he and the financial "blue tarp" committee had done some serious thinking about the school's options. Presented with tough choices, Mills and the committee devised a measured response that calls for palpable sacrifices from students, faculty, and staff: freezing salaries, holding operating costs flat, and a small increase to the student body, among other things.

President Mills' family is undoubtedly in the midst of both difficult and exciting times. Will Mills' emergency operation for a brain tumor came shortly after Karen Gordon Mills' appointment as the head of the Small Business Administration. As the Mills embark on this challenging journey, we at Bowdoin will keep them all in our thoughts.

Although business went on as usual at Bowdoin on Monday, a certain awareness of the importance of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s work in civil rights pervaded campus. This year, the national holiday served as an appropriate prelude for the inauguration of our first African-American president.

Whether you're a girl or guy, gay or straight, we all know how it feels to?you know?like someone.

Under the current system of distribution requirements, implemented in 2006, already busy professors must take on an additional burden: submitting an online form if they want their course to be considered for a distribution requirement. Applying for such approval takes time and energy?professors told the Orient that the process is "lengthy" and "more complicated than one would expect." This system has been problematic not only for professors, but for students as well.

It is easy to feel gloomy as we approach the end of the semester?the days are becoming darker, school work is getting more difficult and the economy is in a downward spiral. However, despite all that, we have much to be thankful for.

During the current economic downturn, administrators at many colleges and universities across the country have informed students, employees, alumni, and parents as to how the global economic crisis is affecting their school. Bowdoin is no exception: Several weeks ago, President Mills sent an e-mail to the campus titled, "The Economy and Bowdoin." In the letter, Mills emphasized that Bowdoin is well-positioned to withstand the current economic crisis. What Mills failed to mention in the note, however, were any specifics on the current state of Bowdoin's endowment.

For the past 137 years, the Orient has been the primary news source for Bowdoin College. As student press, the Orient has usually enjoyed unique access to administrators, faculty, and staff on campus. Such access to Bowdoin sources has not always extended to outside media reporting on the College. However, the Orient's mission of acting as a responsible campus news source depends on its ability to talk directly with those who make decisions for the College or have valuable insights on issues relevant to Bowdoin. It has recently come to our attention that certain administrators at the College have been encouraged not to hesitate in redirecting Orient reporters to the Office of Communications.

Though election season seemed to drag on forever and campaigns turned nasty toward the end, there is no doubt that the 2008 election brought out the best in Bowdoin students. From those who rallied around a candidate more than a year ago to the masses that gathered to celebrate Barack Obama's victory on Tuesday night, this election has sparked a spirit of political engagement and activism on campus that we should be proud of.

Over the summer, the cost of one year at Bowdoin surpassed the median household income in the United States. This staggering statistic makes apparent what many of us already understand: sending a child to college is a huge sacrifice. Yet here we are, and most of us have our families to thank.

There are a number of ways to understand where our tuition goes. Although the $50,920 average cost of attendance is made up of a number of different components, most of us don't think in such fragmented terms. Instead, we tend to understand tuition as the cost of an entire experience.On one end, people understand tuition as the price tag of a Bowdoin diploma—something that will grant access to opportunities in the future. At the other end, Bowdoin's tuition can be thought to fund four years of a rich learning and growing experience. No matter where students and their parents fall on this spectrum, one thing is clear: These years at Bowdoin will change us forever.

With less than two weeks until November 4, Senators John McCain and Barack Obama are both fiercely campaigning in an effort to sway undecided voters. As college students living in uncertain times, we feel certain that Obama is the best candidate for the presidency. Senator Obama, in addition to possessing the courage and intelligence needed to lead the country, has laid out policies that will benefit college students in the years to come.

Dark, dusty, even a little bit dingy, Brunswick Apartments have faithfully served students for ages. There's no one to clean the bathrooms, no view like from the top of the Tower, but the rooms are cozy and quiet, and they've got character. Students love them?many seniors choose to live there even when presented with a bevy of other options.

In a recent report, the Sustainable Endowment Institute gave Bowdoin a failing grade on endowment transparency. Only a handful of people, including President Mills, have any information regarding how the endowment is invested. Bowdoin investments are handled by outside managers rather than directly, which means the College must adhere to confidentiality agreements.

The election season is finally upon us. After an exhaustive series of primaries and conventions for both parties?and seemingly endless coverage and commentary on the candidates?November 4 is now less than a month and a half away.

Saturday marks the 10th anniversary of Common Good Day, a day when hundreds of Bowdoin students, employees, and alumni gather to participate in a few hours of service projects in the local community. The event, which has grown enormously since its inception, symbolizes the Bowdoin community's dedication?and eagerness?to promote the common good.

Since it was drafted in July, more than 120 college and university presidents have signed the Amethyst Initiative, a statement that calls for a public discussion about the 21-year-old drinking age. College presidents who have signed the statement are not asking for a specific change in policy; instead, they hope to stimulate "an informed and dispassionate debate over the effects of the 21-year-old drinking age." The signatories represent schools ranging from Ohio State University to Hamilton College?but Bowdoin is absent from the list.

For students already wounded by not getting into their top-choice classes, yesterday?s Phase II registration served them a healthy portion of salt. The inefficiencies of Phase II registration become immediately evident upon taking one?s place at the back of the line snaking through Moulton Union beginning at sunrise.

During the semester, most students can expect to receive thoughtful and frequent feedback from professors on their coursework. However, as students prepare to turn in the most substantial assignments of the semester, many of them know that they will never see that work again.

Bowdoin's geography makes the end of April an extraordinary time for the campus and its students. While many other campuses around the country have settled comfortably into the new season, Bowdoin students are only now beginning to shed their winter coats for T-shirts and their boots and sneakers for sandals and flip-flops.

As it often does, the advent of warm weather this year coincides with the arrival of Ivies Weekend, Bowdoin's annual end-of-April catharsis. The enthusiasm that results from this confluence of events has been palpable all week, and will culminate this weekend as students enjoy a well-deserved vacation from the pressures of academia to celebrate the real beginning of spring.

Traditionally, Ivies weekend has been fueled by a spirit of indulgence specifically with regard to the consumption of alcohol. As a result, Security has once again stepped up its presence this weekend. While students might feel instinctively bothered by this increased presence, they should not be. While they remain committed to maintaining order on campus, Security does not have any interest in spoiling the festivities for students. In recent years, under the direction of Randy Nichols, Security has taken a mature, accommodating approach to Ivies Weekend, prioritizing preserving safety over taking the opportunity to slap students with frivolous citations.

Though there may be a nearly campus-wide hiatus from studying this weekend, we all know what is looming on the other side: the infamous "final stretch." But unfortunately for many students, the last week of scheduled classes is more of a "finals" stretch.

We've noticed them, too: the private debates, the somber phone conversations, the dining hall conferences, even the tears. Despite what has easily been the balmiest weather of the year, an Eeyorian cloud has hung over a number of Bowdoin students all week, reminding everybody that Housing Lottery season?the stormiest of all seasons?has once again arrived.

For an unknown length of time, private student data including Social Security numbers, insurance information, and lists of students on medical and disciplinary leave were available on the campus server to anyone with a Bowdoin username and password. While the accessibility of the data was surely an error, with such sensitive information on the line, it was an inexcusable one.

In the coming weeks, a survey designed by students in a Bowdoin psychology class will make its way around campus. This survey, which asks questions on a variety of topics, including Facebook, parents, and the environment, will provide Bowdoin students with an opportunity to contribute to academic research?one they should take advantage of.

This weekend, students will decide whether candidates for Bowdoin Student Government (BSG) president will need to have had prior experience in the body to be eligible for election. If students trust themselves to choose their own leaders wisely, they should vote in favor of opening up eligibility to everyone.

When members of the Class of 2012 arrive on campus in the fall, they will enter a community rooted in safety, trust, and collaboration?values that attest to the legacies of Kim Pacelli and Mike Brown, two departing staff members whose leadership and vision during their tenures have improved the ethos of the College for the better.

Over the past year, the lack of Arabic language instruction and the scarcity of Middle Eastern studies courses at Bowdoin has been a concern of this page, Bowdoin Student Government, and the campus at large. We were pleased this week to learn that the College has taken concrete steps toward addressing this deficiency.

This week, the Election Reform Commission recommended to Bowdoin Student Government that eligibility for BSG president be expanded to include students who have not previously served in the body. Although BSG could easily kill a motion to send this question to referendum, we believe the student body, not the existing representatives, ought to decide who should be eligible to run for president.

Sunday was a disappointing day for democracy in Maine. Even for those pleased with the outcome of the Democratic caucus, the chaos and disorganization of the event left many voters frustrated.

Last week marked the kick-off of Recyclemania, a nationwide recycling competition among colleges. As the magnitude of our future environmental challenges becomes increasingly apparent, we should feel more compelled than ever to make changes. We have the power to make minor adjustments in our daily lives to reduce our impact on the environment.

February can be tough. With cold weather and slushy footpaths, no vacations, and accumulating schoolwork, the month can be a drag for many students. While spirits may not be at their highest this time of year on campus, the Dining Service puts in extra effort this month to keep things interesting. With themed dinners like "Just Like Home" and "Chinese New Year," the staff makes every effort spice things up when everything else seems bland.

Bowdoin students will have several opportunities to exercise their democratic rights in coming weeks. On Monday, the faculty may vote to forbid students from taking required classes Credit/D/Fail, and Bowdoin Student Government (BSG) is encouraging students to participate in this important curricular question by assembling peaceably outside Daggett Lounge. As the state caucuses approach, students registered in Maine will also have the opportunity to engage with national politics by helping Maine choose its favored presidential candidates.

In his 1972 hit ?School?s Out,? rocker Alice Cooper articulated the catharsis that grips students each spring when they wave goodbye to the various undesirable aspects of school. For college graduates, however, it is often more complicated: While many might leave behind ?pencils, books, and teachers? dirty looks,? debt from increasingly large student loans tends to stalk them into adulthood.

The proposed zoning ordinance that would prohibit two or more unrelated persons from living together in one household unit may have been masked as an innocuous decree intended to preserve the quality of neighborhoods in Brunswick, but its underlying message is clear: Bowdoin students are not welcome by some neighbors outside of the college community. Although the ordinance itself makes no specific mention of students, citizens who spoke in favor of the measure at Tuesday night's meeting repeatedly cited the off-campus student house at 17 Cleaveland St. in their remarks, confirming our fear that this proposal is little more than poorly disguised discrimination.

Amid the anger and sadness that accompanies the death of a friend, the bereaved often find solace in the immortality of memory. What makes Nick Barnett's death especially difficult is the fact that he was with us so briefly, and while we are comforted by the memories he left us, we are haunted by those he did not get the chance to make.

Last Sunday, our country observed Veteran's Day?a day on which Americans reflect on the sacrifices of the soldiers who have served throughout our history and those who continue to do so today. Because modern military conflicts tend to happen overseas, it is easy to forget those who work hard so we can live safely and comfortably. But recognizing their service is important. Of course, American military personnel are not the only ones who work hard to preserve the safety and comfort of Bowdoin students, nor are they the only ones deserving of our gratitude.

Bowdoin Student Government (BSG) approved two resolutions this week: one supporting Arabic instruction at Bowdoin and another urging the Language Media Center to purchase Arabic and Swahili instructional tapes. These were important first steps in the process of filling current gaps in the academic curriculum.

It's hard to argue that a Bowdoin education prepares students for the "real world" when many of us never cook our own meals, wash our own dishes, scrub our own showers, or shovel our own snow nine months out of the year. Many of us have become so accustomed to having our messes cleaned up for us at Bowdoin that we've forgotten how to do it ourselves?or have at least appeared to, based on housekeeping's recent reports of the consistently sloppy and occasionally repulsive states in which many students leave their common spaces at the end of each fast-paced weekend.

Sierra magazine awarded Bowdoin an honorable mention this week on its first-ever list of America's "coolest" colleges. Though this descriptor may seem quaintly juvenile, the meaning Sierra has ascribed to it is substantially weightier: The magazine?published by one of the country's foremost environmental groups?regards Bowdoin as one of the 18 most environmentally conscientious colleges in the country.

In 2004, the College changed its Credit/Fail option to Credit/D/Fail in order to prevent students from coasting through classes. Also in 2004, the Bowdoin faculty voted to increase the number of distribution requirements students must fulfill to graduate, a mandate that took effect last year. This year, the Curriculum and Education Policy Committee (CEP) is deliberating a motion that would prohibit students from using their Credit/D/Fail option in classes they take to satisfy those distribution requirements. It is not difficult to see the paternalistic trend here.

Amid hours of charged debate, a running theme emerged Wednesday from what must have otherwise seemed like a disjointed meeting of Bowdoin Student Government (BSG): students' proficiency in foreign languages and their access to foreign language instruction. This gives us the opportunity to re-address a concern that the Orient raised last April, but which, due to public silence on the matter by the Office of the Dean for Academic Affairs, seems already to have accumulated dust: Bowdoin's conspicuous lack of courses on Arabic instruction and the Middle East generally.

When the College unveils the newly renovated art museum this weekend, it will mark the end of an era that was frustrating, limiting, interminable?and completely worth it. Several years ago, when it had become obvious that the aging Walker Art Building would need to be renovated in order for it to remain viable, Bowdoin officials were faced with a decision: They could touch up the place just enough to get it up to code, or they could aim for something more ambitious?they could create a completely new space that would set a new standard for college-owned art museums.

A Bowdoin education is priceless. Unfortunately, it is also pricey. This year's tuition and fees total $46,260. Last year, the median American household made $48,201, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Needless to say, in order to send their kids to Bowdoin, most families need assistance.

Students have consistently given poor marks to academic advising at Bowdoin, and with last fall's reaccreditation report finally mirroring the sentiments of disappointed advisees, the College has taken steps toward reforming its academic advising program. With the appointment of advising czar Steven Cornish as the associate dean for curriculum, the administration is looking to replace a hit-or-miss system with one that could offer overwhelmed first years better guidance. This change has been a long time coming.

On Thursday, some students wore green and black to show support for the "Jena Six" in Louisiana, a group of six black students who alleged unjust treatment by the courts because of their race. This reminder gives us pause to consider how exclusion still affects us today?even at Bowdoin.
Earlier this week, the Bowdoin Student Government (BSG) held a school-wide discussion to address problems of exclusion and safety in the Bowdoin community. Following a number of incidents in recent months that left students feeling unsafe and unwelcome, BSG decided it was time to do something.

President Mills told the Orient he thinks that amid the growing opposition to the U.S. News methodology?which counts schools' reputations among their peers for a quarter of their final score?he and his colleagues wished to end the "notable silence" on the part of schools that are typically ranked in the top 25. These are the schools, after all, that benefit most from the credence many ascribe to the current system. This appears all well and good. But in terms of fomenting positive change, how effective will this gesture be?

Nearly as well-worn as the notion of the "Bowdoin bubble" is the observation that Bowdoin does not actually exist in a bubble, but as part?an extraordinarily large and important part, in fact?of a community that has its own interests, needs, and ambitions.

The Editors have no agenda for the Opinion section of the Orient. These pages belong to the Bowdoin community, and we urge students, faculty, staff members, parents, and campus neighbors alike to use them to learn from one another. Indeed, the discourse that takes place on these pages each week is an invaluable resource, as it encourages us all to better articulate our viewpoints and challenges us to consider new perspectives.

In an interview with the Orient on Wednesday, DeRay Mckesson '07 summed up Bowdoin in just nine words. ?This place is yours. This place exists for you,? he said. After four years as a prominent student on campus, Mckesson was reflecting on the role that students can play in leading and owning this place. One virtue of a small, wealthy liberal arts college such as Bowdoin is that there is enough room for every student to chart his own path and there are the resources to help him reach his destination.

Two items in the news should surprise students this week?and perhaps not in a good way. On Monday, the College began its search for a new director of health services. The individual will fill the position vacated by Dr. Jeff Benson in January, when the College abruptly announced that he would no longer be serving his post. We are also concerned by news that the faculty will not consider the proposed course scheduling policy during its May faculty meetings.

Although he is all but assured the student government presidency, Bowdoin Student Government (BSG) elections probably have not gone the way Dustin Brooks '08 would have hoped. Brooks is the only candidate for the presidency, voting for which ends at 8:30 p.m. today. But his seemingly smooth road to the office was made rocky by sophomore Ian Yaffe's decision last week to contest a requirement in the BSG constitution that presidential candidates have served previously in the student government.

Required academic engagements should be scheduled on a course?s syllabus during the first weeks of the semester. Most required activities should take place during the day. The course should have a clearly written attendance policy included on the syllabus. These ideas are hardly radical, but to some here on campus, they seem to be: The Student Affairs Committee has spent the last academic year reworking the College?s attendance policy, and it remains to be seen whether the faculty will approve it.

In his "Offer of the College," former Bowdoin President William DeWitt Hyde envisages an education that will equip graduates to "be at home in all lands and all ages." And though the academic curriculum here is broad, the College's lack of course offerings in Arabic language and Middle Eastern culture has made it so that Bowdoin students who aspire to careers in diplomacy or business in the Middle East?or wish to travel there for any reason?will not feel at home in the least.

Bowdoin doesn't actually exist within a bubble, and for that reason, it is sometimes necessary to market our "brand" to the outside world. Yet evidence exists that Bowdoin and other Maine schools, like colleges throughout the country, have increased their efforts to sell college as a market commodity.

As students soon to enter the workforce, we find ourselves baffled by the premier paradox of the "real world": You can't find a job without experience, but you can't get experience without a job. The way to surpass this dilemma, we've been told, is to land a summer internship. With internships on our resumes, we are no longer deemed "inexperienced," and come graduation, we can compete for spots in an increasingly selective job market.

Three years ago the College changed its Credit/Fail policy to a Credit/D/Fail policy. The policy change was driven by concerns that students were abusing the system. Faculty argued that students were putting in minimal effort to attain a passing grade and that their lack of interest was harming the quality of many classes. According to Orient records, students were barely included in the discussion?and the faculty ultimately decided to create a Credit/D/Fail policy that, for many students, is stifling. The threat of receiving a "D" discourages students from broadening their academic interests, even though that exploration is at the core of a liberal arts education.

The Judicial Board (J-Board) plays an essential role in the governance of the College. Charged with considering violations of the Social and Honor codes and making recommendations for appropriate punishments to the Office of the Dean of Student Affairs, which takes its recommendations very seriously, the J-Board is perhaps the most powerful and important student-run body on campus.

Last week, Dudley Coe Health Center announced that it would no longer provide students with free birth control after losing its contract with its contraceptive provider, Organon. This turn of events was sudden and unexpected, and has caused Bowdoin students?both women and men?a great deal of anxiety.

Upon hearing news that President Barry Mills and the officers of Bowdoin Student Government (BSG) had reached a tentative agreement regarding a proposed Community Response Committee to consider international humanitarian issues, our first reaction was one of disappointment. BSG wanted a college-level committee that would recommend institutional actions when humanitarian issues arise. Mills, on the other hand, proposed that student government create its own committee. This committee would include volunteer faculty and be given financial support. The problem with this sort of group, we thought, is that it would have no official power within the College as an institution.

At Bowdoin, we talk a lot about the common good, but few in our small community end up making it their life's mission in the way that Hanley Denning did.

As the fall semester comes to a close, we're looking forward to finding out what Bowdoin Student Government (BSG) will do in the spring. That's because throughout the semester, BSG has proven itself ready and able to take up issues meaningful to students and the College generally. The body has considered policy issues ranging from academic life to investment policy, and the College is a better place for it.

Shortly after the Democrats won back majorities in both the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives in November, party leaders laid out their agenda for the 110th Congress. Near the top of the list was making college more affordable to students who can't pay today's astronomical tuition costs. Specifically, the Democrats say they want to substantially heighten the ceiling on Pell grants, halve federal interest rates on student loans, and decrease federal tax liability for families who are paying tuition.

As he sat with an Orient reporter last week and reflected on the most important points in his adult life, Secretary of the College Richard Mersereau '69 recalled Professor Daniel Levine telling him something that he has never forgotten.

When the College formally announces its drive for a quarter-billion dollars amid much fanfare in Boston on Friday night, alumni and other friends of Bowdoin will be asked to give generously to this small college in Maine. In an age when there are so many opportunities for giving to worthy causes around the globe, we wish to assure alumni that Bowdoin not only remains a place worthy of their support, but also is more worthy of their support than ever before.

Boody-Johnson House provides a place for cultural groups?some of which have been historically marginalized and have had to struggle to obtain rights in the United States?to call home. If a group of school officials were to step in and essentially say, ?You?re moving next year,? we would understand if these students were to be displeased. Unfortunately, that is exactly what happened last week as administrators told the leaders of some of the College?s cultural organizations that Bowdoin will probably relocate the campus?s multicultural space to 30 College St. at the beginning of next year.

It is easy to become gloomy during this time of the year. Not only are the days becoming shorter, and not only is the air becoming cooler, but we're also at the height of an election season. We are constantly reminded of war?the war in Iraq, the war on terror. Politicians are mudslinging. The College Democrats and College Republicans are squabbling. Allegations of scandals abound.

Supposedly, as a student body, we appreciate the members of the support staff who work so hard to make Bowdoin a safe and enjoyable place to live and learn. From Bowdoin's top-notch Information Technology staff to the facilities crew to the acclaimed Dining Service, much of what we are proud of at Bowdoin stems from the people who work in these departments. Yet, judging by the behavior of some of us at late-night dining during the past few years, it sometimes appears that our actions contradict our supposed gratitude.

In his Common Hour speech in Pickard Theater last month, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. focused on corporate control of the media. "Five multinational corporations now own 14,000 radio stations, 5,000 TV stations, and 80 percent of the newspapers," he said. Given this corporate media monopoly?where voices that do not contribute to profitability struggle to be heard?we would expect that the federal government would not be threatening a small, community radio station with closure.

In our mission statement, printed at the bottom of this page each week, we outline two major objectives of the Orient?to provide relevant news to the Bowdoin community and to serve as an open forum for "thoughtful and diverse discussion."

This week, President Barry Mills issued his recommendation for the College's position on non-investment in Sudan. The proposal includes many, but not all, of the recommendations made by the president's Advisory Committee on Darfur (ACOD) in May. Mills has created a strong proposal that underscores the College's responsibility to act ethically in all areas of operation.

Harvard College made a substantial policy shift this week when it announced that it will eliminate its early admissions program. In a statement, interim university President Derek Bok said Harvard's early action policy benefited some students over others.

This week, Facebook debuted its latest innovations: a self-updating catalog of friends' activities dubbed the "news feed," and a record of personal activity on each user's profile called the "mini feed."

At a special dinner tonight, members of the college community will say goodbye to Dean of Student Affairs Craig Bradley and Dean for Academic Affairs Craig McEwen. These two men have guided the College's student life and academic programs into a new century. While at many colleges and universities the word "administrator" is said with distaste, Bradley and McEwen have shown that administrators can lead with integrity, compassion, and wisdom. We can say with certainty that their leadership has made Bowdoin a better place to live and a better place to learn.

We wholeheartedly support the current student-led drive urging the College to commit to purchasing 100 percent of its electricity from clean, renewable sources of energy. In order to more fully articulate its commitment to curbing global warming and promoting energy independence for our nation, the College needs to take this meaningful step forward.

The College must seriously reassess the academic advising system, especially in light of the new distribution requirements. Faculty must be adequately trained to discuss the curriculum broadly with their advisees so that students can make the right choices about their academic plans.

We ought to be saying "thank you" to the important people in our lives every day?but since this does not always happen, from time to time we consider it appropriate to make a special point of showing our appreciation.

Campaigns for Bowdoin Student Government (BSG) and class officer positions are about to begin. Interested students must file petitions for candidacy by Wednesday evening in order to run for office.

We were pleased to learn that the Dudley Coe Health Center has made its weekend hours permanent.

The College is currently trying to overcome a housing shortage for next year by, among other things, planning to cram more students into certain existing rooms designed to accommodate fewer people.

Bowdoin Student Government (BSG) has operated in stealth mode in years past. With the exception of a few scattered emails here and there, students were largely left unaware of what their representatives were doing?or not doing?on their behalf. Like any governing body, BSG cannot be effective unless it is accountable to those it serves. And the only way for it to be accountable is to run it transparently with productive communication going both ways between BSG members and students.

Three weeks ago, this page called on the College's administration to create a forum for dialogue on divestment from companies that do business with Sudan. The Sudanese government has supported genocide in the Darfur region of that country, and U.S. colleges and universities are beginning to use their economic power to show that this is not acceptable.

We believe that strong newspapers help to create strong communities. We do our best to provide in-depth, balanced reports that provide news and context for the campus and academic communities. However, the opinion pages are the one place where responsibility for content lies with the campus and academic communities.

Bowdoin's admissions web site describes its athletic facilities as "top-notch." We have a state-of-the-art squash facility, multiple gymnasiums, first-rate sailing and crew equipment, and a competition swimming pool, to name a few. So, why is it that Bowdoin's most basic athletic facility?the Watson Fitness Center in Smith Union?is, as a vast majority of students would put it, so sub-par?

As the Board of Trustees meets this weekend, the genocide continues in Darfur. The trustees may believe that there is nothing they can do to help stop this genocide. Yet there is something they can do?they can use the force of the College's nearly $600-million endowment to send the message that Bowdoin will discourage investments in companies that cooperate with governments that support genocide.

The issue of academic bias in the classroom is not outside the scope of Bowdoin Student Government (BSG). The matter could have been discussed and addressed in a productive and timely manner.

Bowdoin has lost many of its friends in recent months. Death is difficult to deal with and can be difficult to talk about, but as much as it is a time for grieving, prayer, and remembrance, it is a time for reflection. When tragedy strikes so close to home, we come to the realization that life can be far too short.

We congratulate Cristle Collins Judd on her appointment as our next dean of academic affairs. When she begins at Bowdoin in July, she will inherit one of the best academic programs in the country, but her job will not be an easy one.

Bowdoin Student Government (BSG) voted on a number of constitutional amendments this week. Some were rightly passed, but overall BSG missed several opportunities to create meaningful and effective reforms so that it can better represent the interests of the entire student body.

Today, we propose that the College work to integrate a new field of study?journalism?into its curriculum. We propose this field of study to improve students' ability to understand and interpret the world around them.

We applaud the College?s decision to create a trial of extended hours at the Dudley Coe Health Center to include the weekends. From November 20 until Spring Break, the Health Center will be open for students on Saturdays and Sundays from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Afterward, the College will make a decision regarding whether or not the hours should become permanent.

Two teams this season have especially highlighted the strength of Bowdoin Athletics. The field hockey and football teams' athletic achievements have made the campus proud?they have exceeded all expectations and we congratulate them for their accomplishments.

Maine citizens?including hundreds of voters from this campus?will go to the polls Tuesday to vote on Question 1, a proposal that would repeal Maine's law protecting individuals against discrimination on the basis of their sexual orientation. Maine's decision on November 8 will send a message to individuals throughout the state. We hope that Maine will choose to say that it is okay to thrive as who you are.

Question 1 has overshadowed another proposal on Tuesday's ballot that is also important for the people of Maine. If approved, Question 7 would help protect one of the most important elements of Maine's economy: our working waterfront.

Just months from now, U.S. Marine and Bowdoin senior Alex Cornell du Houx '06 will head to Iraq and risk his life for his country. This should have been a solemn and reflective time for our community, and a time for Cornell du Houx and his family to mentally prepare for his tour of duty. Yet, it appears that Dan Schuberth '06 saw it as an occasion to make a political statement. For Schuberth, secretary of the College Republican National Committee, to "question [Cornell du Houx's] logic and motivation" for doing his duty and to call him "one of the most vocal opponents...of our country" was reprehensible and devoid of reason.

The war in Iraq will feel much closer to home come December.

There is something inherently unfortunate about end-of-the-semester evaluations: they are at the end of the semester. Students will soon be off to other corners of campus, taking different courses with different professors.

After deciding to name one of the new first-year dormitories in honor of Bowdoin alum Bernard Osher '48, the trustees may consider a name for the other dorm at their fall meetings in mid-October. George J. Mitchell '54 would be an exceptional namesake.

The Bowdoin Student Government (BSG) is planning to issue a statement on a question Maine voters will face in November regarding discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation at this Tuesday's meeting, according to BSG President DeRay Mckesson '07.

DeRay Mckesson '07 is a College institution?

It may be too late for us to stand behind Mr. Rusesabagina, but it is not too late for us to stand against the genocide of today.

The renovations planned for Moore Hall, slated to begin in 2006, will force Bowdoin to find a new, permanent home for its textbook annex. This move provides the College with an opportunity to reevaluate how textbooks are bought and sold by students.

With over half of Bowdoin's students from New England and only a handful from the Katrina-stricken regions of the south, it's not easy for the student body to directly relate to the devastation.

If you're looking to start a co-op, don't look for any co-op from the College. On one level, the breakdown of the co-op initiative, led by Ruth Morrison, Katherine Kirklin, and Mike Taylor, is curious; Bowdoin, after all, prides itself on the visibility and responsiveness of its administration.

The College needs to be looking for three people with big feet, because it has three pairs of big shoes to fill before the 2005-06 academic year gets under way.

There are several serious problems in the way BSG's current leadership approaches the concept of an election, including its refusal to release the numerical results of the election, and current President Hal Douglas '05's view of this paper's recent endorsement as "inappropriate."

It is especially important that BSG is led by a strong and committed President. The candidate who will best fill this role is sophomore DeRay Mckesson, and we endorse him in his effort to be elected to that position.

That Pope John Paul II was a great man and one of the twentieth century's most consequential leaders needs no further reinforcement. To the poor, both in material and in spirit, he was a symbol of hope and encouragement.

Few would dispute the preeminence of the sandwich among today's array of lunch options. Its virtues are many, but perhaps its greatest is its inherent flexibility: there's simply no limit to what can go between two slices of bread. Nevertheless, some favorite combinations have emerged ever since the Earl of Sandwich bequeathed his greatest creation to humanity a long time ago

From time to time there arises the unfortunate need for a campus such as ours to reaffirm some very basic standards of acceptable behavior. Last weekend's series of confrontations underscores such a need.

We never thought we'd say this, but we could learn a thing or two from Colby. Well, maybe just one thing. Our friends in Waterville have garnered national attention for experimenting with alcohol?in the dining hall, that is. Students of age are invited to purchase a beer or two (or a glass of wine) with dinner on Friday nights.

On Wednesday, Quinby House welcomed Professor Jean Yarbrough to speak about Social Security?what it is, and where it might be going. While she admitted she is not an expert on the topic, her talk was lucid and accessible, and certainly helped the students in attendance sort through a system that seems complex and irrelevant to many young adults. In fact, Yarborough expressed surprise that so many showed up, since for many college students Social Security isn't on the list of things to be thinking about.

Throughout its long history, Bowdoin has been no stranger to snow. But it can take something like last night's storm to make us stop and take notice.

For nearly 40 years, Upward Bound has helped young Americans become the first in their families to attend college. This program, which offers the promise of the American dream to those it might otherwise pass by, may soon be imperiled by the prospect of budget cuts. The loss of Upward Bound would be upsetting.

Harvard President Lawrence Summers recently touched off a significant controversy when, while speaking extemporaneously at a conference on women?s progress in the sciences and math, he suggested that inquiries into a possible connection between biology and women?s ability in those subjects should not be off-limits.

For too long BSG has seemed like a behind-the-scenes operation due to its poor communication with students save a few irregular spats of mass emails. The campaign seasons at the beginning of the Fall Semester and end of the Spring Semester often bring active campaigning and engagement from both BSG incumbents and hopefuls. But in-between these elections the story is the same: a series of small, low-impact programs often indistinguishable from what many other student organizations are doing.

Could someone please tell us when it became more important for the College to serve the interests of the ten members of Freeport High School's brand-new indoor track team than those of its own 1,677 students?

All joking aside, a new policy for dorm damages is long overdue. The Tower, like most dorms, has endured a number of damages and "spills" this year. Under the current system, the College charges every resident for damages incurred in common areas, hallways, and elevators of dorms when the parties responsible do not come forth.

Today many are struggling to accept a wider world that does not, on the surface, share this calling: on campus, individuals' values are subordinated to a growing social awareness, while in society as a whole these same values are becoming increasingly elevated to the realm of political and social policy.

November 2 is four days away. After weeks of intense debate and careful consideration, the Orient is ready to endorse a candidate for President of the United States. We believe this man has the will, wisdom, and winning attitude to lead our great nation for the next four years. We speak, of course, of Red Sox Manager Terry Francona.

By capping state property taxes at one percent of the assessed property value, the measure would place unacceptable limits on services essential to the growth and prosperity of both the Brunswick and Bowdoin communities.

For the second year in a row, members of the campus group Poeting punctuated a Saturday night Parents Weekend performance of lighthearted a capella, dance, and drum acts with a highly-charged presentation of controversial social and political issues. While we respect Poeting's well-intentioned mission, we wonder if this Parents Weekend event is the proper venue for such inherently divisive racial issues.

Last week we expressed our concern over the sorry state of political discourse on this campus, particularly between both the College Democrat and College Republican organizations. Evidently our suggestion for a more meaningful debate that goes beyond senseless squabbling was not heard by the Republican protesters during the Maine State College Democrats Convention.

Both sides argue that the November election is the most important in years, if not in America?s history. But the debate on campus does not reflect this; in fact, it suggests precisely the opposite: that the issues at stake are worth squandering for the sake of personal gratification, ?gotcha? attacks, and silly diversions.

It is all too unfortunate that the qualities Mrs. Mary Marvin Breckenridge Patterson admired in Bowdoin did not guide its decision making process on the fate of the Breckenridge estate. By risking the estate's integrity, the college sacrificed a piece of its own.

The issue is one of planning and prudence, and the lesson hopefully learned from the process extends beyond the Museum and its similarly notable companions on the Quad.

The College community learned that Bowdoin has been giving merit-based scholarships for the last two years when President Barry Mills was recently pressed about the issue on BCN.

The proposed changes in distribution requirements, which will be voted on by the faculty next week though won't affect any current Bowdoin students, contain a number of improvements over the current system. The addition of an arts requirement and a more narrowly-tailored quantitative requirement are especially welcome.

In the midst of the most recent attempt to address diversity on campus, members of the Bowdoin community came together to witness an equally important kind of difference on Monday.

The College has and will continue to do its part in facilitating discussion, but no number of forums, banners in the Union, or even editorials can force students to reach out to one another. Instead, it is ultimately the responsibility of students themselves to work towards a genuinely inclusive and accepting community.

This week's widely discussed article in The New York Times details the extent to which the day in, day out "stress" of college life has apparently overburdened average students, many of whom feel enormous pressure to be "perfect" if he or she is to have any hope of success after graduation.

Recently, Colby students protested the administration's decision to cancel Doghead, a raucous celebratory event equivalent to our Ivies Weekend. This decision was understandably upsetting to students and, predictably, there was a backlash against the administration.