The Bowdoin Orient

Common Hour's monopoly on Friday lectures will soon come to an end with the start of Bowdoin Student Government's "Uncommon Hour." The program is styled after TED talks, a series of lectures featuring thinkers who are behind breakthroughs in science and cultural studies.

The Office of Admissions admitted 53 students through Early Decision (ED) II, putting the total of admitted students for the Class of 2016 through ED at 224, six fewer than to last year. Admissions will now begin to evaluate the regular decision pool, which consists of 5,818 applications.

After a three-year career as director of the art museum, Kevin Salatino unexpectedly announced his plans to leave the College and become the director of art collections at The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens in San Marino, Calif. He will maintain his post at Bowdoin through the summer.

Bowdoin students may be expressing their opinions on the internet more than ever, but they are not doing it on Curia (bcuria.com), Bowdoin's life and culture blog. On the website, which is described on its "About" page as "a place to gather and discuss timely issues," there have been no new posts since November 30, 2011. Five posts have been created since the current editors—who wrote all five—Jimena Escudero '13 and Ursula Moreno-VanderLaan '13 took over this year.

After five years of heading the women's soccer program, Maren Rojas has stepped down from her position as head coach. She recently accepted an assistant coach position on the Boston College women's soccer team, and left for Massachusetts on Wednesday. Nonetheless, Rojas attributes her decision to leave to more than just the offer from Boston College.

Today marks the publication of the Bowdoin Globalist's inaugural issue. The content was initially published online this Wednesday, though hard copies of the magazine are now available on campus. This issue of the Globalist, an international affairs magazine with chapters based at other colleges and universities, focuses on "youth in revolt." The magazine's executive staff includes Lauren Speigel '12, Aaron Wolf '12, Gus Vergara '13, Stanton Cambridge '13, and Max Staiger '13.

The Northwestern University Associated Student Government approached Bowdoin Student Government (BSG) on February 7, urging it to sign a resolution that aims to condemn the use of unnecessary police force during protests on college campuses. The resolution was drafted in light of the allegedly violent protests occured at U.C. Berkeley and U.C. Davis campuses last November.

With the conclusion of Early Decision II admissions, 224 high school seniors have accepted a place in the Class of 2016. And after March 23, the target date for sending out regular decision letters, about 260 more will join them as the next incoming class takes shape. The rush of getting accepted to college might be enough to get many high school seniors to accept their spots in the Class of 2016 almost as soon as they rip open their fat envelopes. But amid all the excitement, consider what sending that letter back really means.

From the outset of this campaign season, Republican presidential hopefuls have sought to capture support from the disgruntled Republican base. Mitt Romney appears to have adopted the strategy of hiding his true values and opinions in an effort to appease the GOP base, but his time would be better spent making the case for a new direction for the Republican Party.

While the official process of setting the federal budget for the fiscal year doesn't begin until October 1, Obama's energy department released its "wish list" earlier this week. Among other things, Energy Secretary Steven Chu and associates are proposing to remove $4 billion in subsidies to fossil fuel companies. At the same time, the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy would benefit from a 29 percent hike in funding, up to $2.34 billion.

Can lemon chess pie solve all of America's problems? It might be just a teeny-tiny stretch, but anyone who's eaten a slice of this heavenly pie would not discount it.

To the Editors: In response to Daisy Alioto's "Facebook is important, deactivation movement is misguided" (February 10) and the ensuing online exchange between Alioto and Tyler Patton (the founder of the Facebook deactivation movement), the super-connection snowball might be unstoppable, and it may well crush all who refuse to plug in.

As an institution, Bowdoin has consistently shown an admirable dedication to the arts. A visitor to the Bowdoin College Museum of Art over the course of this year alone might have seen outstanding exhibitions of Grecian urns, Assyrian relief sculptures, Bronze Age Chinese vessels, and works by Edward Hopper, Henri Matisse and Käthe Kollwitz. The College has spent a fortune enhancing its arts facilities—most notably, the $20.8 million renovation and expansion of the museum and the $15 million renovation that transformed what had been the campus pool into a state-of-the-art performance hall. But Bowdoin's institutional support for the fine arts often fails to extend beyond these conspicuous gestures, and among students, a culture surrounding visual arts is strikingly invisible.

A few years ago, I took the night train between two cities 1,038 miles apart. It was meant to be a fairly quick journey, but the train arrived late at our departure point and left nearly an hour behind schedule. Its delay then added up through the night and we arrived at our destination almost three hours later than we had expected. There were no mechanical issues, and on paper, this was nothing more than a simple journey from Denver to Chicago, delayed even before the train entered the station.

This past summer, Nylea Bivins '12 planned a week of programming dedicated to discussing identity, bias, privilege, and inequality. The fruits of her work were seen during the first week of this semester, in a series of events thoughtfully entitled "Beyond the Bowdoin Hello: Ask, Listen, Engage."

Dear My Dear Author Mr. Isseroff, I write in response to your column in last week's issue remarking on the "thoughtlessness" of the "Beyond the Bowdoin Hello" series, likening it to that which has corrupted the ideals of today's Republican Party ("Republicans and the 'Bowdoin Hello' face distortions of original meanings," February 3).

It was Sunday night, and I had yet to review any beers. Even worse, I had absolutely no clue what to write about for this article.

If you happen to tune into WBOR 91.1 FM at the opportune moment, you just might be taken aback by talk of touchdowns and home runs in place of the station's usual indie fodder. For the first time in decades, sports broadcasting has returned to WBOR.

Last Saturday, the Maine Republican nominating caucuses drew a whopping two percent of registered Republicans. Americans are known for their lackluster voter turnout, but this is a paltry showing even for us.

While the New England weather might be cold, gray and depressing, I find that eating colorful, cheerful foods can make the winter months seem less dark and drab, and this spicy avocado rice is definitely colorful. It is, in fact, almost disconcertingly green.

Before I even start talking about the different options, I think it should go without saying that this is 7-Eleven. It won't be fresh. It won't be good for you.

Tim Schafer does not do things the normal way. He is a man who wrote his cover letter in the form of a choose-your-own-adventure when applying to his first job as a programmer in the early '90s. His breakthrough came when he was assigned to the the position of lead writer for "The Secret of Monkey Island"—the placeholder dialogue he inserted into a then-serious pirate adventure was so funny that the game was redesigned as the comedy classic. Over the last two decades, this type of creativity has given Schafer a reputation for taking risks and making games that no one else would.

It's been a busy week for music. We lost a legend, there was an allegedly important award ceremony Sunday evening, and Usher and Diplo got together. But what most caught my attention this week was the well-received release of Goldfrapp's compilation record "The Singles." Who knew that a relatively new band like this one was so deserving of a greatest hits album?

Author of the "The Best People in the World," Justin Tussing will visit campus on Monday for a reading of his work.

When James Bowdoin III donated his private art collection to the College in 1811, he started a tradition that lives on today.

While surfing YouTube this past week, I came across a video called "Angst" by New York rapper T.Shirt. I was immediately enticed by the old-school boom-bap drumbeat and the meandering horn section, but was soon assaulted by an aggressive onslaught of profanity.

In 1929, silent film star Lillian Gish declared the cinema "a new Esperanto," or a new artificial language that combined aspects of all cultures. At that point, Gish was most famous for playing waifish damsels in D.W. Griffith's early epics like "Birth of a Nation" (1915) and "Broken Blossoms" (1919), but she was able nevertheless to recognize how the language of film could be understood by all.

In the genus of things that improve with age—wine, women, leftover Indian takeout—TV shows are not usually included. This is because it is nigh impossible to balance the demands of continuous creativity with predictability. For a series to seem fresh, we can't guess what the jokes will be or which characters will kill each other. We need change, but not too much of it. In short, the show that viewers keep watching is the show that fulfills their emotional expectations, while the show they become bored with is too familiar. It's a very delicate distinction.

Peter Coviello, chair of the English department, will lead a discussion of Herman Melville's "Benito Cereno" Wednesday as part of the Bowdoin Book Lecture series.

The men's basketball team fell to Wesleyan last Friday but bounced back the next day with a victory against Connecticut College, clinching the No. 6 seed in the upcoming NESCAC tournament.

Who is more worth the hype, Jeremy Lin or Tim Tebow? Who do you think will be able to sustain it? -Will Horne '14, Englewood, Colo.

The women's ice hockey team (11-8-3, 9-5-0 NESCAC) broke even against Hamilton (9-12-1, 6-8-0 NESCAC) last weekend, winning the first game but dropping the second.

Against Bates on Friday, the women's squash team suffered an unfortunate 7-2 defeat, with just Rachel Barnes '15 and Christiana Whitcomb '14 winning their matches.

The men's indoor track team had a record-setting weekend at the Valentine's Invitational at Boston University.