The Bowdoin Orient

To be or not to be, that was the question. A theater and dance major, collaboratively designed by faculty from the two disciplines and proposed by Associate Professor of Theater and Dance Robert Bechtel, was turned down this week by the Bowdoin Curriculum and Educational Policy Committee (CEP).

Assistant Baseball and Football Coach Trevor Powers '06 was arrested for Operating Under the Influence (OUI) on Sunday, April 25 at 1:31 a.m. on Coffin Street, according to public records on the Brunswick Police Department (BPD) website.

Next fall, students will be introduced to a new, environmentally sound printing policy. The Bowdoin Printing Group (BPG), a committee composed of representatives from the library, Finance, and Information Technology (IT), recently approved a new measure that is expected to reduce paper waste by 20 to 40 percent.

Five hundred twenty admitted students have accepted spots in the Class of 2014 as of Thursday and Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid Scott Meiklejohn said it is "unlikely" that the College will accept any students off the wait list this year.

At an estimated cost of approximately $3.4 million, the work currently being done to the heating station is the largest scale construction project the College has broken ground on since the completion of the Peter Buck Center for Health and Fitness last year.

The seventh annual SolarFest will offer a variety of energy-conscious activities and solar-powered performances on the Dudley Coe Quad tomorrow from noon to 5 p.m.

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.

The summer after my sophomore year, I spent some time working at a nonprofit writing out by hand thousands of addresses and thank you letters. While my hand was cramping and my handwriting was deteriorating, I had a lot of free time to listen to anything I wanted to on the radio. I decided to spend most of the summer listening to the partisans of talk radio—Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Mike Malloy, and a few others. I wanted to find out why so many found these radio shows hosts compelling.

With the school year drawing to a close and another crop of Bowdoin students getting ready to end their four years here, it seems appropriate to wish the Class of 2010 the best of luck in their future endeavors. In fact, it seems almost necessary given the almost Herculean task of securing employment in the current economy.

As one of the most useful and arguably most important developments of the 20th and 21st centuries, the Internet has a ubiquitous presence in developed countries and is exponentially increasing in users worldwide. A report issued on February 23, 2010, by John B. Horrigan at the Federal Communications Commission, finds that 78 percent of adults in the United States are Internet users and 65 percent of adults have home broadband access.

I enjoyed your article on College pranks. To set the record straight, the chickens used for the auxiliary dining annex and stockyard prank were not stolen, but purchased from a chicken farmer.

Like any senior, I've been looking forward to Senior Week for a long time. However, I recently became less excited when I learned that I am expected to pay $35 in Senior Week dues to subsidize lousy beer that I am not going to drink and a Portland Pub Crawl in which I will not be participating.

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.

A few weeks ago, an editorial appeared in the Orient proposing that classes be canceled this Friday for the sake of allowing more students to enjoy the Friday of Ivies. The editors cite actions at Williams and Smith Colleges where Friday classes are annually canceled for the tradition of "Mountain Day."

It's old news that the Student Activities Funding Committee (SAFC) is hurting for money: The WBOR concert has been canceled for somewhat dubious reasons and clubs on the whole are having their budgets slashed. Clubs are responding by inflating requests for funding, creating a vicious cycle that will only result in the poor allocation of money. And yet, the Entertainment Board (E-Board) is still bringing three acts to Ivies. Granted, it's too late for any of this to be changed, but clubs have been hurting for funds since before the beginning of the year. Considering the huge wellspring of musical talent at Bowdoin, it seems ridiculous that we should use so much money to bring in three artists when we could make use of local talent, thus saving money and building interest in local bands.

How can we guarantee freedom for the hardworking, English-only-speaking American descendants of immigrants in an age of foreign-born, Muslim presidents and the threat of terrorism? Why, enact immigration reform that demands racial profiling, of course. The real threat to American security is, naturally, illegal immigrants. Thanks, Arizona, for showing the rest of us how it's done!

The level of faculty diversity at the close of this academic year is reflective of the notable success of the College's concerted efforts to expand the range of perspectives and areas of research on campus. In October, Dean for Academic Affairs Cristle Collins Judd issued a report to the Special Committee on Multicultural Affairs outlining the College's approach to improve faculty diversity. Her statement reported that faculty of color now comprise 20 percent of the Bowdoin faculty, a 10 percent rise from the 2005-2006 academic year.

Members of the Class of 2010 worried about finding that special someone for their last hurrah before graduation need not look any further: Senior Seven has finally come. The idea driving the Senior Seven tradition is simple. Members of the senior class hoping to achieve that one unrealized hookup (or possibly even seven) are given a last chance to anonymously test the waters before graduating.

Whether or not women have always been able to climax during sex, they certainly can, and do, now. Medical professionals contend that every woman should be able to have an orgasm, if she wants to. Furthermore, many sex experts argue that a majority of women are perfectly capable of climaxing several times in a row. So what's the secret?

By 2020, Bowdoin may have achieved carbon neutrality on campus, constructed a new social sciences building at the site of the former Dayton Arena, developed land acquired from the Brunswick Naval Air Station (NASB), and initiated a new capital campaign. While administrators are optimistic about plans and changes to come, they emphasized that in many respects, concrete plans for the future remain uncertain.

While students get plenty of face time with their professors during lectures, they rarely see the scholarly work their instructors do outside the classroom. According to the College's website, "Faculty members are also expected to be involved in their field outside the College, making scholarly, artistic or other contributions which are recognized by the larger professional community."

Every year, nearly 6,000 students apply to Bowdoin College. Of the one-sixth accepted, nearly half chooses to matriculate. And every year, the Office of Admissions strives for a "diverse" graduating class. Diversity, however, is not a sugar-coated word for racial and ethnic minorities. "We don't have minority recruitment," said Associate Dean of Admissions and Coordinator of Multicultural Recruitment Elmer Moore. "But multicultural and diversity recruitment." Moore defined diversity as "people from various perspectives such as geography, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, political ideology, religion, height and so on." According to Moore, efforts to bring "diverse" students to the College began in 1794, when it was founded.

"We decided that the Temple must be utterly destroyed, ruined beyond redemption, so we would blow it up." These words, which some might attribute to a deranged madman, are actually those of a former Bowdoin student. An anonymous note, which appeared in the Bowdoin Alumnus magazine of 1928, described one of the more notable incidents in the long history of pranks at the College: the leveling of the campus outhouse, known as the "Temple" in 1875. With the sense of revelry, and accompanying debauchery, that arrives with Ivies Weekend, this seems a particularly apt moment to revisit the often overlooked, but decidedly lengthy, history of pranks at the College.

After an unprecedentedly busy fall, the Counseling Center has seen some order restored. Emergencies, hospitalizations and counseling sessions have dwindled, despite the spring semester's reputation for higher Counseling Center traffic. In a November 6 article, the Orient reported that the volume of counseling sessions was up, the number of emergencies was high, and there had been more hospitalizations at that point in the year than ever before.

A bare arm, a tangle of legs, a shadowy silhouette: all will be on display tonight at the fourth annual Naked Art Show.

Most Bowdoin students love watching films, but there are also those Bowdoin students who love to make films. Next Saturday, The Bowdoin Film Society will host the annual Student Film Festival, where the Bowdoin community will have the opportunity to watch a series of student-made films.

An ensemble of four student comedians and one student MC will entertain, amuse, and start a comedy movement at Bowdoin tonight with Comedy Night 2010.

Ever wanted to know how the Polar Bear statue came to be, or why there are so many sets of memorial gateways on the Bowdoin campus?

"This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang but a whimper." Quotations make for easy leads. Guilty. We've certainly used them in past articles. This time, we don't really even know what that T. S. Eliot stuff is about. Don't care. But we do know we don't want our column to go out with a whimper.

This time of year is always so tough at Bowdoin. Ivies Weekend is officially behind us, finals are around the corner, and the weather keeps getting nicer and nicer, which is not conducive to studying in the least.

Though the team competition for men's track has ended for the year, the postseason continues this weekend for a few athletes. The Open New England at Northeastern University is all about individual performances: bettering personal records and qualifying for nationals.

In what was the final Bowdoin meet for the seniors on the women's track team, the Polar Bears finished an impressive sixth at the New England D-III Outdoor Track and Field Championships.

The women's lacrosse team fell to the Williams Ephs on Sunday in the NESCAC Quarterfinals, 14-12. The Ephs advance to the NESCAC Semifinals this weekend with the win, and the Polar Bears fall to 10-6 for the season.

The men's tennis team closed out their regular season this past week against Bates College (11-6 overall, 6-4 NESCAC).

The sailing team traveled to Boston this past weekend to compete in its final regatta of the spring season.

More than half of the Bowdoin student body either plays a varsity, club or intramural sport, or competed in high school. And, many would argue, the sports environment is the hardest environment to come out in.