The Bowdoin Orient

The Office of Admissions has received a total of 6,694 applications for the Class of 2016 so far, a 2 percent increase from last year's applicant pool and an all-time record for the College.

Though the door of Brunswick's Frosty's Donuts has displayed a "Closed" sign since last June, new owners Nels Omdal and his wife Shelby St. Andre are working hard to flip the sign to "Open" in just a few weeks.

For professors like former Assistant Professor of Government Shelley Deane, teaching at Bowdoin might be just the beginning of their careers.

For those students fed up with the challenge of finding courses that will satisfy their distribution requirements, relief does not appear on the horizon.

One of Bowdoin's biggest draws is its small course sizes. Tour guides love telling visitors that the median class size is 16 students. And yet, first years and sophomores are often disappointed to discover that while their first year seminar is 16 students, almost all of their other courses are bigger—much bigger. Often through junior year, students enrolled in the most popular majors—English, government, economics—find that their 200-level classes are consistently filled with upwards of 30 students. Of course, if the school was $500 million richer, smaller classes would be easier to come by. But given our present budget constraints, we still think there may be a path to improving the educational experience: allowing for more flexibility in class size.

Four years ago I wrote an essay about finding home.

My column is named after George Orwell's 1940s column in the British paper Tribune. With that in mind, I wanted to begin this column, and this semester, by paying brief tribute to a man who passed away a month ago and was heavily influenced by George Orwell.

Some things are supposed to come in a box. Shoes are one example. Rings, computers and board games also come in boxes, as they should. But macaroni and cheese? I suppose an argument could be made for convenience. Kraft is easy, Kraft is quick, Kraft is cheap, and Kraft gathers all the ingredients you need together, packaging them in expedient, individual plastic bags. But macaroni and cheese from scratch does not take particularly long to make, none of the ingredients require much prep time, and macaroni and cheese from scratch tastes infinitely better than macaroni and cheese from a box. It's sort of like the time that I bought a frozen pack of Wyngz. They did not taste particularly good, and I asked myself why I hadn't bought real chicken wings, instead of a product that appeared to be created by a fourth grader using imaginative spellyngz. So make your own macaroni and cheese using this recipe. Because if you don't, you'll regret it. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon.

Shortly before most of us departed for break, yet another Asian restaurant opened for business on Maine Street.

I never saw the Muskie School of Public Service atrium before Professor of Art Mark Wethli's new sculpture, "Civitas," was installed, but I try not to imagine the space without it. With its bare white walls, stretches of glass and gray trim, it is no wonder the space, part of the University of Southern Maine in Portland, "struck a lot of people as being a little cold."

On Tuesday, the studio heads at Fox and actor Andy Serkis lost their campaign for an Oscar nomination in the category of Best Supporting Actor. Serkis played the chimp Caesar in the sci-fi prequel "Rise of the Planet of the Apes" (2011) and was probably Fox's best chance for a nomination in the category. Nonetheless, his performance is still distinguished in that, unlike those who were named nominees, Serkis did not appear in a single frame of film.

Welcome back! I return for the spring semester energized and refueled because this break was exceptionally fruitful in terms of awesome releases of electronic dance music (EDM).

In his latest work, "The Marriage Plot," Jeffrey Eugenides alternates between the points of view of three different characters and flashes back to different moments in their past ad nauseam. This facet of the 406-page "epic" might make the act of reading it easy for those of us who suffer from internet- and texting-induced A.D.D., but, ultimately, it betrays an utter lack of inventiveness.

When it comes to Hollywood, Brad and Angelina just don't do it for me. Give me hilarious and adorable instead of untouchable and elegant any day—my "couple crush," if you will, is on comic geniuses (and married couple) Amy Poehler (former "Saturday Night Live" darling) and Will Arnett, best known for his role as Gob in "Arrested Development."

The men's and women's track teams are off to a season of individual and team-wide successes, crushing personal records and sweeping regional competitions. The men hit the ground running before winter break with a first-place finish at the Southern Maine Invitational on December 10.

The women's ice hockey team has been trying to find its rhythm since December, currently hovering in the middle of the NESCAC standings with a record of four wins and four losses.

The Nordic ski team is just getting warmed up this season, which began with the Bates Carnival last weekend.

The men's swim team notched victories on both January 20 against Bates (198.5-101.5) and raced January 21 against the University of Maine-Orono in a non-scoring meet.

Weeks of an intensified training regimen proved valuable over the long winter break for the women's swim team, which prevailed in back-to-back meets January 20 and 21.