The Bowdoin Orient

For the first time since 2003, WBOR will not be bringing a spring concert to campus. The Student Activities Funding Committee (SAFC) pulled funding for the concert last week after a change in the act, which was not reported to the SAFC.

As Ivies looms on the horizon, the tally of alcohol-related hospital transports takes on renewed importance in the minds of some. There were no alcohol transports between Dean of Students Affairs Tim Foster's meeting with first year students about alcohol on February 12 and Spring Break. Since then, there have been two.

Bowdoin kicks off its fifth annual Relay for Life event in Farley Field House tonight. The 12-hour event will consist of various activities that commemorate and celebrate those who survived, currently have, or were lost to cancer.

This month marks the second annual Climate Days event series, which celebrates the College's commitment to make Bowdoin carbon neutral by 2020. The event series this month will culminate the year-long efforts of President Barry Mills's Climate Commitment Advisory Committee's (CCAC) to publicize the College's commitment to sustainability and encourage student discourse on environmental issues.

"I'm so f***ing scared," thought LZ Granderson, an openly gay ESPN.com journalist, when the LA Lakers asked him who his Hollywood crush was. Granderson, who has been out for over 10 years, said he grappled with the decision of what to tell these athletes—grappled, he said, until he saw his son standing behind them watching. It was then he realized that he had to tell the truth about his sexuality, or everything he taught his son would be a lie.

The Bowdoin Student Government (BSG) considered proposals to purchase food and beverages for Ivies, fund a Faculty and Staff Appreciation Day, and subsidize movie tickets for students at Regal Movie Theater in Brunswick at its Wednesday meeting. All proposals were unanimously approved.

In light of recent faculty and staff requests, two experts on autism visited campus on Wednesday for a series of meetings and presentations on how to best assist students with the disorder.

Data collected Monday verified that Bowdoin students are among the best in the nation—at turning in census forms.

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.

Now that Delaware and Tennessee have been awarded the first grants from the federal Race to the Top Fund, education reform, and the corresponding assumption that American schools are abysmal, is back in the news.

BRCA1 and BRCA2 are genes that encode breast cancer susceptibility proteins. These proteins act in DNA repair as well as destruction of irreparable DNA in breast tissue, in effect working to stop cells from becoming cancerous. It is estimated that the risk of breast cancer for the average woman is approximately 12 percent, but for women with mutated copies of BRCA1, that number jumps to as high as 85 percent.

On behalf of the WBOR management team, I would like to apologize for the lack of a spring WBOR concert. While the circumstances surrounding our failure to book the artists we pursued were out of our control, we nonetheless feel responsible to our DJs, the student body and the community at large.

The sentencing of Bowdoin alumnus Aijalon Gomes '01 after his conviction on unspecified charges relating to his crossing of the North Korean border has shocked the consciences of U.S. diplomats, students of law and people of all faiths during the past week.

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.

I'm not a scientist. As much as I pride myself on interpreting and understanding the news, stories about science and scientific claims often leave me baffled and unsure as to whom I should believe. I don't mean that I'm so confused as to think intelligent design is credible or that evolution isn't fact, but confused enough to be skeptical of the latest scientific study.

This week, I attended a lecture by Writer-in-Residence Jane Brox on imagining place. She discussed the delicate interplay of time, space and memory that goes on in our minds as we develop a sense of place. Brox's topic seemed poignant to me in light of the juncture we find ourselves at. As spring returns to Maine, we rediscover our feeling of space as we reinhabit the campus and the town.

This week, we have compiled the most important stories from the decade pertaining to issues in Brunswick and Maine. We have pulled a selection of actual headlines from past issues, and condensed and synthesized stories relevant to each headline in order to showcase some of the most significant moments and enduring issues covered by the Orient.

This week, we have compiled a selection headlines and stories related to speakers, performers, and lecturers of significance that have visited the College over the past decade.

Cost: Free Child's pose...downward dog...cobra! Lay on your back. Close your eyes. Focus on your breathing. My yoga instructor's words echoed in my ears as I wearily lifted my eyelids to check that I was in the correct position. Still shaking from coffee that I had consumed the night before, I found it exceedingly difficult to hold a pose. What was I doing standing on one leg rocking back and forth like a sapling on a windy day? Soothing meditation music began playing softly in the background. My thoughts shifted from overwhelming future obligations to immediate present. I forgot about papers, tests, exams, practice, meetings, everything. By the end of the hour, I had blissfully forgotten about my heavy workload and heavy eyelids. Yoga is just one way to reach a meditative state, to escape from daily stresses; everyone has a different way of achieving inner peace. Some play piano. Some might sit beside the café and drool over the smell of freshly baked cookies. Finding your "special place" is not always easy, however. I did a little bit of research and came across something new: the practice of labyrinth meditation.

As part of a nationwide pledge signed by Mills to eventually eliminate the College's carbon emissions, a College committee began meeting in the fall of 2007 to determine how the campus could achieve carbon neutrality, the Orient reported. The committee, which consisted of the faculty, staff and one student on the College's Environmental Action Committee, was charged with establishing a process for fulfilling the pledge's five steps, as designated by the American College & University Presidents Climate Commitment.

Record-breaking numbers of applicants over the years went hand-in-hand with increased competition among applicants. In April of 2007, then-Dean of Admissions Shain said the acceptance rate for the Class of 2011, which stood at 18.5 percent overall with only 16 percent admitted in the regular round, was "brutal." In addition to a 10-percent increase in the number of applicants for 2011, the College admitted fewer students in order to keep the size of the first year class small, and to leave space for applicants on the wait list, according to Shain.

The College announced in April 2007 that a Center for the Common Good was scheduled to open by the fall of 2008, and would serve as a central campus resource for supporting, teaching, and researching activities "grounded in community engagement and public service," the Orient reported.

This weekend, some of the most interesting and unconventional modern musical sounds that Maine has to offer will be heard at the 2nd Annual Back Cove Contemporary Music Festival. This festival features performers and composers from all around the state, a lineup that includes several Bowdoin students.

Though Eleven doesn't quite add up to 11, the band's now eight-person lineup has grown (significantly) since the band was formed in the fall of 2006. Then-first-years Alexi Thomakos '10 and Nick Lechich '10 began playing music together in the common room of their first-year dorm. Soon thereafter, they met bassist Max Taylor '10 and keyboard player, guitarist, and vocalist Sammie Francis '09, who pushed for the formation of a band.

Sometimes, issues are best understood when they are illustrated on human scale. So believes a group of four students—Peter Fritsche '10, Maina Handmaker '11, Matt Pincus '10 and Madeline Sullivan '10- who have joined to create "A Ton of Food," an interactive sculpture project advocating for hunger issues.

Jazz guitarist Sean McGowan returns to Bowdoin Saturday to perform as the third part of the music department's mini-series on guitar

The Bowdoin College Concert Band will greet the season with their spring concert, titled "Sousa, Then and Now" at Studzinski Recital Hall on Sunday. The Concert Band, Bowdoin's largest student music ensemble, is comprised of over 50 students who play brass, woodwind and percussion instruments.

Publishing prolifically since his first travel book in 1988, Douglas Kennedy '76 has been praised by reviewers as an author who consistently "knows how to keep the pages turning."

Each war or conflict acquires its own Hollywood aesthetic. Each aesthetic is susceptible to revision following how subsequent conflicts shaped the remembrance of previous ones: for instance, "Saving Private Ryan" dragged the mechanics of death back into the cold morning light following the hallucinogenic murk of Nam films

CHRIS ROWE '10 AND ZACH COFFIN '10

It was what Head Coach Frank Pizzo called a "picket fence Sunday" for the sailing team at the New England Dinghy Tournament (NEDT) this past weekend.

Despite a 7 a.m. departure and the six-hour trek to Middlebury, the baseball team's bats were wide-awake throughout a three-game sweep of the Panthers.

The women's tennis team took home two victories this past week, easily defeating both Wellesley and Colby, but it fell to the No. 1 nationally-ranked Amherst team 8-1 on Sunday.

The men's tennis team defeated Colby College on Thursday afternoon by a final tally of 8-1. Bowdoin's only loss came at the No. 2 singles position.

The women's lacrosse team lost 18-7 to the Middlebury College Panthers on Saturday afternoon, ending its five-game winning streak.

The men's track team will compete against rivals Colby, Bates and University of Southern Maine (USM) this weekend with the Maine State Championship on the line. The meet, to be held at Colby, begins the most competitive portion of the track season.

The women's rugby team started strong but faded in the second half of a match against a resurgent Boston University squad, who outscored the Polar Bears 17-0 in the second half on the way to a 22-10 loss.