The Bowdoin Orient

While the influence of the Middle East in world affairs is undisputed, the urgency of adapting Bowdoin's curriculum to this reality is less certain. However, for some students and faculty members, the lack of courses about Islam and the Middle East represents a critical gap in the institution's curriculum.

Safety concerns have led the School for International Training (SIT), an organization providing study abroad programs attended by Bowdoin students, to have its use suspended by Ithaca College.

Safe Space's third annual Speak Out was held last week to provide a forum for sexual assault survivors and their supporters to relate their stories as part of the healing process.

This year, kNOw Poverty Week, which begins Sunday, will focus specifically on public health and poverty in Maine.

The Campus Kitchen Task Force will play host to its monthly "Taste for Change" dinner at Ladd House next Friday, April 13. Working with Dining Service, the group will serve cooked-to-order beef, chicken, Maine shrimp, and soyrizo fajitas.

The New England Regional Fellowship Consortium (NERFC), headquartered at the Massachusetts Historical Society, announced Wednesday that Kid Wongsrichanalai '03, doctoral candidate at the University of Virginia and a resident of Charlottesville, Virginia, is one of 10 winners of fellowships for 2007-2008.

The Bowdoin Orient was awarded second place in its category in the best-of-show competition at the Associated Collegiate Press's national college media convention over Spring Break.

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.

In response to junior Brian Lockhart's piece on March 30: Dissenting opinions and differing stances on various issues can certainly stimulate the growth of ideas.

As a Bowdoin alum, Class of 2004, and someone who has recently married another Bowdoin alum, I was a little surprised to read the column in the Orient regarding the utter lack of privacy and rampant gossip that some students seem to think prevail at Bowdoin (March 30).

This Sunday, while Bowdoin students slumber in their beds, eagerly awaiting morning, the Maine state Easter Bunny will prepare to leave its burrow, bearing Cadbury eggs, pink saran wrap, and enough Peeps to rot the enamel right off a casserole dish.

Coached on the practice since elementary school, recycling comes as naturally to us as breathing. Future historians may well define us by our compulsion to recycle: The blue-bin generation, they'll call us.

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.

I read with interest the article "Teach for America divides educators" (March 2). I retired from the Pittsburgh public schools, an urban district with many students from low income families, as an elementary school principal.

I was unsatisfied with the recent article "Professors question merit of Wikipedia citations" (March 2). While I agree with the main thrust of the article?that students should not be citing Wikipedia in research papers?I believe this singling out of Wikipedia misses the point.

April is Sexual Assault Awareness month. Over the course the month, Safe Space hopes to raise awareness about how sexual violence affects the Bowdoin community.

Spring Break is a lot of things. It's a time to exhale, forget about functions, formulas, Foucault, and failing grades, and coax your blood pressure down to a rate that doesn't make your forehead resemble a topographical map of Utah. It's an opportunity to catch up on reading, sleep, and episodes of "The Office." It's an excuse to head south and reintroduce your pasty, translucent skin to the long-forgotten phenomena of "sun," "warmth," and "body shots." But despite its virtues, Spring Break one thing above all: a tease.

One of the things they forget to mention on your pre-college tour of Bowdoin is that once you've accepted your admission, you can say goodbye to the "private" part of your life. Don't start writing your letter to the editor just yet. Before I divulge, I want to clarify that I am not out to defame Bowdoin or its ability to allow students a private life. But after talking with Bowdoin students at length about this situation, I was amazed at how much people have to say about it.

On April 10, Hari Kondabolu '04 will return to Bowdoin, but this night will not be about his comedy. Instead, Kondabolu and Cambodian immigrant Many Uch will be screening the documentary "Sentenced Home," which focuses on Uch's struggles with indefinite detention and his looming deportation without due process.

J.W. Dundee's Amber Lager and Honey Brown Lager?$4.99 each at Hannaford Growing up in Maine, I have become accustomed to weather that often proves more mercurial than a two-year-old left at home with the babysitter. One second he's humming "Yankee Doodle Dandy," and the next he's screaming bloody murder. So it is, we have seen, with the weather, as we have all just experienced the first Bowdoin College snow day since Woodstock?and the first in April since that Safe Ride down to 'Shua's was pulled by a team of horses.

The first sentences of Howard Norman's fifth novel, "Devotion," are enough to keep the most passive reader engaged past the first page. After this first chapter, it is hard to put the book down. The pace of "Devotion" is quick and the novel is compact. Without preamble, Norman launches the reader into a fray of emotion that fuels the novel and is inherent to the human interactions therein. Immediately, the reader discovers that David, the protagonist, recently managed to nearly kill his father-in-law and estrange his wife days after their honeymoon.