The Bowdoin Orient

Students clamoring for summer internships will find their search broadened by a recent change to the policy regarding academic credit. The Bowdoin Committee on Educational Policy (CEP) voted to pass a proposal that will acknowledge internships that require academic credit as a condition of employment at Monday's faculty meeting, allowing students to pursue internships they previously could not.

The devastation caused by the recent 8.8 magnitude earthquake in Chile may seem remote to students clustered on a small campus in Maine, but for three Bowdoin students studying abroad in Chile, the disaster is anything but distant.

The to-do list of the members of the incoming Class of 2014: Buy twin-size sheets? Check. Sign up for a pre-Orientation trip? Check. Complete first year summer reading assignment? Not this year.

Bowdoin Security and local law enforcement are working around the clock to close the case of thefts that occurred on campus this past Tuesday and Wednesday. The identified suspect is connected to other thefts in the Portland area, and he seems to be targeting Apple laptop computers and is focusing his efforts on college campuses.

The Judicial Board (J-Board)'s two-week search for new members ended Tuesday, when five students received notification from Dean of Student Affairs and J-Board adviser Laura Lee that they were accepted.

The preference for semester abroad flipped from spring to fall this year, according to Director of Off-Campus Study (OCS) Stephen Hall. As of the February 22 deadline, the Office of OCS had received 260 applications: 131 applications for the fall, 109 for the spring and 20 applications for the full year.

The Office of Residential Life sent notification letters to students who applied to join the staff on Thursday. The Office received 110 applications for the 71 available spots, half of which were from this year's staff members.

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."

We have to reduce our military and defense spending. Wait! Don't go yet! I know what you expect. You expect to hear that conservatives, most notably Ronald Reagan, have built a huge, unmanageable, and undesirable military-industrial complex that does as much to defend our country as it does to encourage military options too quickly in international scuffles. Then you expect a slam-dunk rebuke of Republican congressmen that are always willing to give another dollar for guns but not a penny for health care, welfare, or education.

The notion that the United States should behave "like an equal member of the global community on the foreign policy stage," as Catlin Hurwit asserted in last week's op-ed "Patriotism without exceptionalism" is as misguided as it is dangerous.

Appearing Wednesday afternoon, surrounded by medical professionals in white lab coats, President Barack Obama laid out his plan for passing health care reform in Congress. It came two days short of the one-year anniversary since the president kicked off his health care reform effort with a summit of medical professionals, insurance heads and other health care industry leaders. Pressing ahead on health care reform, the President announced, will require a final "up-or-down vote," which top administration strategists have said means using the budget reconciliation process in the Senate to force a simple majority vote on health care. But this is likely to be only one of a few stages of the process.

Christmas dinner conversations with my grandma were especially intriguing this year: the horrible American obsession with sports, the decline of America's universities, the ridiculous price tag of university education, the lack of work ethic in American students in comparison to international students, and how all of these issues are somehow leading to the "inevitable doom" of my generation. As a granddaughter, I meekly listened and nodded my head. But as a Bowdoin student, I could not be happier with my university education, and I have hope for our generation.

I'm glad Bowdoin is thinking of ways to keep alums and friends of the College updated. But the new Bowdoin Daily Sun seems unnecessary.

On October 4, 1989, when my husband (brown hair) and I (blonde) first set eyes on our daughter, we were surprised and delighted to see her shock of red hair. Ever since that day, we've been mesmerized by redheads—who suddenly seem to be everywhere.

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.

Bowdoin's dining earned top marks in 2005 and 2006, holding the No. 1 spot on the Princeton Review list of "Best Campus Food" for two years in a row. In 2008, when dining held the No. 2 spot in the rankings, Director of the Dining Service Mary Lou Kennedy said, "We are proud to have been in the top 10 list in Princeton Review and recognized for excellence for many years...Our primary goal has always been to be No. 1 in the eyes of Bowdoin students."

The Bowdoin Student Government (BSG) as it is known today has not always been officially named or structured as such. In the 1999-2000 academic year, the existing Executive Board (known as E9) ratified a constitution to create a second governing body, known as the Student Assembly (SA). According to an April 2002 Orient article, the SA from 2000 comprised elected class representatives, vice-presidents of the College Houses, a representative from the Inter-House Council, and the Student Activities Fares Committee chair.

At the start of the decade, a controversial report called into question the role of athletics at New England Small Colleges Athletic Conference (NESCAC) schools, finding that athletes received an advantage in admissions over non-athletes despite lower test scores, and tended to rank in the bottom portions of their class.

Having established that there is a serious deficiency in meaningful discourse among students at Bowdoin, I set out to solve the problem. The answer can be summed up with two words: "bath" and "house." I am proposing that the old pool building next to Smith Union be turned into a Greek-style bathhouse equipped with saunas, hot tubs, and possibly tanning booths.

After significant debate, the faculty voted at Monday's faculty meeting to pass the Recording Committee's Thanksgiving break proposal. Beginning in the fall, the Wednesday before Thanksgiving will be added to the vacation. Scheduling alternatives to compensate for the extra day will be further explored.

Professors emeriti at Bowdoin have drastically different lifestyles from your typical retirees. They are neither golf fanatics nor residents of retirement communities. Instead, they lead symposiums, contribute to academic journals, and spend time researching in Hawthorne-Longfellow Library. Professors in good standing receive the title "emeritus" upon retirement. Emeriti professors have the liberty and flexibility to continue pursuing their academic interests, as well as to enjoy retirement. Many live in Brunswick, just minutes away from Bowdoin's campus.

Jamie Nadeau '10 has become the first Bowdoin student to receive the prestigious Princeton in Africa Fellowship. This was the first year the fellowship was offered to non-Princeton students. With the fellowship, Nadeau plans to travel to Zambia in July to work for 11 months with the Kucetekela Foundation, which provides scholarships to Zambian children so they can attend elite secondary schools. Nadeau will be working in Lusaka, the capital of Zambia. Nadeau studied abroad at the University of Cape Town in Cape Town, South Africa during his junior year, but decided he wanted to return to Africa after being unsatisfied with the community service opportunities presented to him in Cape Town.

The occasional series "How it feels" was first published in the 2005-2006 volume of the Orient. In this 2010 revival, Bowdoin students tell the Orient about their experiences—good, bad, or just extreme. Here are their stories.

German language? Check. German literature? Check. German politics? Check. Sally Hudson '10 seems to have it all covered. A government and German double major and economics minor, Hudson is working on a senior honors project that will allow her to combine her love of German politics and culture. Hudson is researching German nuclear energy policy, and according to her advisor, Assistant Professor of Government Laura Henry, "how a country like Germany arrived at this energy policy and how it changes over time." After she studied abroad in Vienna, Austria, Hudson became further interested in German politics and, particularly, energy policy.

In light of being in college, a time in our lives during which we should all feel liberated to explore our identities and sexualities, I think it's only appropriate to discuss something that, in my opinion, is often terribly misinterpreted: bisexuality. According to Anatasia Toufexis's article in Time Magazine "Bisexuality What Is It?", many people have the common perception that bisexuals are basically "just straights with a taste of exotic adventure or essentially gays who are unable or unwilling to acknowledge their true orientation" (Toufexis).

As students begin to cram for the final week of midterms, Julia Bond '09 and her stand-up comedy arrive back on campus, giving Bowdoin students the opportunity to take a break and be entertained by an alumna who's kept humor at the center of her life.

Many of us have caught snippets of Bowdoin tours while running to class or through the union or toward the stapler parked on H-L's front desk. In doing so, how many of you have heard the favorite fact that, following only behind San Francisco, Portland holds the second-highest number of restaurants per capita in the United Sates?

While the weather outside may be dreary, Nina Sylvia's exhibit "Botanical Impressions" in Lancaster Lounge will bring some natural beauty back to the campus.

Pianist Chiharu Naruse travels to Bowdoin next Friday as part of the music department's Teatime Concert series.

Local musicians, physicians and community members will celebrate and support Haiti at a benefit concert at Frontier Café on Saturday, March 13.

If music is made to be shared, then it served its purpose at Pickard Theater on Tuesday night with "Béla Fleck and the African Project," a performance centered around the revered banjo player Béla Fleck and the African musicians he is collaborating with for a 33-show U.S. tour.

We had hoped this week to write about one of the rarest beers out there: Kate the Great Russian Imperial Stout from the Portsmouth Brewing Company of Portsmouth, New Hampshire. The brewery distributes Kate only once a year in limited quantity.

What do Snoop Dogg, Lou Reed, and the Lebanese National Orchestra for Oriental Arabic Music have in common? In the past few years, they all received a call from Damon Albarn to feature on the new Gorillaz album that released this week.

Head Coach Brad Burnham hoped his swimmers would leave everything in the pool when they competed at the NESCAC Championships.

At the Open New England Championships, several members of the women's track team competed against the top athletes from New England, leading to some fast times and strong performances in the high profile meet.

On Saturday, the men's track team will compete in the Eastern College Athletic Conference, the last chance for athletes to qualify for Nationals. The meet brings together schools from all divisions.

It is easy to gauge the true character of a sports team by its level of performance in its final event of the season. Some teams bow to their fatigue and slip out of the season in mediocrity, while others rise to the occasion and end on a high note.

For those of you who don't like sports, I'm sorry. Saturday night's nerve-wracking, gut-wrenching, endless fingernail-biting, edge-of-your-seat gripping, captivatingly epochal thriller that saw first year Jordan Lalor's overtime snipe against the much-abhorred Colby sent the men's ice hockey team to the NESCAC semifinals.