The Bowdoin Orient

The White House's budget proposal for the 2006 fiscal year proposes the elimination of 48 Department of Education programs, including Upward Bound, which has had a chapter at Bowdoin for 40 years. The Orient reported last week on speculation that the program would be cut in the budget, which was released Monday.

Bowdoin's endowment performance among peer institutions has been in the top quartile over the one, three, five, and ten-year periods. The endowment's performance following the stock market slide three years ago is exceptional due to the structure of the investment portfolio, which has outperformed those of other Maine colleges, such as Bates and Colby, by as much as eight percent.

Bowdoin Student Government (BSG) passed a proposal Tuesday to extend the hours of the Watson Fitness Center to midnight from its current closing time of 10:00 p.m. Sunday through Thursday.

A kitchen fire broke out at Baxter House while residents were making snacks during the Super Bowl halftime show. Stephanie Witkin '07 was baking nachos in the oven when they caught fire. The food had been placed too close to the oven's heat source.

A vehicle parked on South Street outside Howard Hall was vandalized late Friday night or early Saturday.

President George W. Bush's 2006 budget, to be unveiled Monday, may propose eliminating the Upward Bound program, which has had a chapter at Bowdoin since the 1960s. The funds would be redirected towards an extension of the No Child Left Behind program, according to a report in The Chronicle of Higher Education.

When high school juniors sit down to take the SAT on March 12, they will face a radically different test than today's college students took for college admission. New portions will be added to the test and other parts will be removed.

Four students' portable music players proved a little too portable Saturday as their iPods were stolen out of the visitor's locker room near Morrell Gymnasium. The digital devices were snatched from the bags of visiting students from Trinity College. Bowdoin Security and the Brunswick Police Department are investigating.

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.

Despite the facts that Summers had in his arsenal to support his claim, he has been widely criticized as sexist, and his credibility to serve as president of Harvard has been called into question.

Last weekend millions of Americans utilized their inalienable right to property. They stockpiled and consumed enormous quantities of food and alcohol while using incredible amounts of energy to power their sound, entertainment, and climate control systems. I watched the Super Bowl, and it hurt.

The United States consumes 80 million Hershey's Kisses every day, and on Valentine's day that number jumps to over 280 million?well over one for every man, woman, child, and spider monkey in the U.S. More amazing is the fact that this number doesn't even come close to the at least one billion hearts?whether chalky, chocolate-coated or caramel-filled?that are consumed on that same day.

I am concerned that the Ash Wednesday service at the Bowdoin Chapel this week served only to dishearten Catholics and further the rift between Christian groups on campus.

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.

Until the January 30 election, I had all but abandoned my faith in the U.S. venture in Iraq as the situation, with the insurgents' unrelenting campaign of violence and the grim signs of an imminent civil war, seemed beyond repair.

Given the preparations being made to gut the Social Security system and the still-precarious situation in Iraq, I've been wondering how President Bush II will be remembered decades from now. Will history be kind? What will be his legacy?

Last week in this space, I narrated the experience which led me to conclude that our worship of "the thesis" and its pernicious side-kick, "the thesis sentence," places a bogus priority on rational argument at the expense of accurate observation. As a result, when writing papers students tend to view texts (and I speak specifically of literary texts) as tools for proving their point rather than the soil from which they are to be tilled.

A new Bowdoin-specific guidebook released by College Prowler and on display in the college bookstore has been drawing the attention of current and prospective students alike for its enlightening, though potentially controversial, student quotations.

One of the most exciting, terrifying, potentially rewarding, and often surreal aspects of going to college is learning to live with new roommates. Regardless of whether a student is an only child who grew up in an isolated palace or the middle child in a family of thirteen, he or she is expected to sleep, sharing the same air with one or two other people.

Dear Dr. Jeff: I think I have the flu?bad. Should I come in to the Health Center for some antibiotics? A.P. Dear A.P.: It is definitely flu season, here at Bowdoin, and it's proving to be a fairly rough one because of the shortage of flu vaccine.

The Superior Court in Portland, Maine is housed in an intimidating building of stone that remains a foreboding gray even on the sunniest of days. At first glance, its color somehow seems out of sync with its purpose of delivering clear, unambiguous justice. One wonders where the shining white marble and statue of blind justice are.

A relatively unknown but powerful organization on campus is the Inter-House Council, known as IHC.

Dear Dr Jeff: Last weekend I froze my toes teleskiing at Sugarloaf. They're still kind of numb and tingly. Did they get frostbitten? What can I do about it now? G.G. Dear G.G.: Hopefully your toes only got frost-nipped, a less damaging form of cold injury than frostbite.

While looking through the news this week, we came across the heroic story of a Slovakian man trapped inside his car by an avalanche.

The Orient's Beth Kowitt sat down with Visiting Professor Richard Ford, a Pulitzer Prize winning author for Independence Day. Ford, who lives in Boothbay, has published five novels and several collections of short stories. At Bowdoin, he teaches Writing Fiction and Making Stories, Not Telling Them while working on his next novel, The Lay of the Land The following is a partial transcript of that interview. For the complete transcript, please visit orient.bowdoin.edu.

Whether you are spending Valentine's Day with a date or a group of friends, watching a movie is a great way to celebrate (or remonstrate). There are too many options to include them all here, but these are some of the highlights.

With each run-through of Second Breakfast's self-titled debut album, I'm more and more convinced that this isn't just a cut from your typical pipe-dreaming college garage band. The four-man, one-woman ensemble of undergraduate musicians hailing from Bowdoin, Wesleyan, and Columbia humbly states that their music is "best described as an eclectic mix of pop, rock, funk, R&B, folk, jazz, and even classical." While their music is all that, it is also two heaping servings of smooth listenability, followed by the delicious dashes of lyrical irony and wit.

There's a second after the end of a movie when you know if it was worth it. It's right after the screen goes black and the credits begin their crawl up from the off-screen abyss. If you're lucky, that second can bring nothing short of euphoria. Like at the end of Million Dollar Baby (the best film of last year and don't dare question it), in one precious instant I exhaled everything I had absorbed in those two-plus hours, keeping only the rich Eastwoody aftertaste. When the lights came up, I shook the dismembered popcorn flakes off my lap and walked tall all the way to the real world. Yeah. That's one way to leave a movie.

I was stranded in O'Hare Airport, but I was laughing. Not that sadistic, why-am-I-stuck-in-this-awful-place type laugh, but actually giggling to the point that I had to put down Susan Gilman's Hypocrite in a Pouffy White Dress so that I would stop embarrassing myself. In Hypocrite, Gilman recounts her New York City upbringing with humor, wit, and brutal honesty, making it the funniest book I've read in quite a while.

The first thing you will notice about Maine Street's latest cafe, Little Dog Coffee Shop, is the space. Unlike Bohemian Coffeehouse or Wild Oats, its nearby competitors, Little Dog gives patrons more than ample elbow room, cushy couches, and a nice view (don't tell me you like looking at the Hannaford's parking lot, friends!). There is so much room, in fact, that the place seems almost spare.

The arrival of the Little Dog is but the latest change in the landscape of the Brunswick coffeeshop scene, which has been expanding quickly for a little over a year now. I offer this survey of locales to get your latte fix in our fair town. For price comparison, I have collected the tag on a latte of approximately 12 ounces, single shot, at each location.

How would I know about girls? I am a rocker. I rock out.

Lee (Maggie Gyllenhaal), a young woman recently released from a mental hospital, is very excited about her new job as secretary for Mr. E. Edward Grey (James Spader), a local lawyer.

Bowdoin men's hockey bounced back from a loss against a highly-ranked Norwich team and avenged an overtime loss to Colby earlier this season with a 5-3 win over the White Mules on Tuesday. Bowdoin also defeated an overmatched St. Michael's team a week ago, 7-2. Bowdoin has earned the number nine ranking in the nation with another strong week which improved the team's record to 13-3-3 (9-3-3 NESCAC), good for second in the conference.

The men's track team was host to the Maine State Meet Saturday night. Bates, Colby, and USM all made the trek to Brunswick. Although the men competed hard, the heavily favored Bates Bobcats were able to repeat as State Champions.

When the Bowdoin women dunked Connecticut College last Sunday 92-48 it must have revived their spirits, to say the least. After a disappointing loss to Bates two weekends ago, Bowdoin took it up a notch last weekend, defeating both Wesleyan and Connecticut College within 19 hours.

The blocking dummies have been put away and the Lombardi Trophy awarded. The New England Patriots again state their dominance over the NFL with their third Super Bowl win in the last four years. In the age of salary caps and free agency, this is a feat equal to Armstrong's Tour de France prowess.

A number of outstanding individual performances were not enough to carry the men's track team to victory on Saturday. The men lost a hard-fought battle to MIT, Springfield, and Tufts. Previously, the men had been unbeaten.

The Bowdoin Women's Basketball Team suffered an unusual loss to Bates College in Alumni Gymnasium on Tuesday night. Bowdoin fell to 16-2 on the season.