Bowdoin Student Government (BSG) has announced it is releasing its Student-Driven Behavioral Expectations—a document meant to help clarify how students can safely enjoy the spring semester.

“We’ve already signed a community agreement form, and the purpose of this is to help explain how to live student life,” said BSG President Marcus Williams ’21 in a Zoom interview with the Orient. “We, the BSG, play an interesting role—we’re not the administration, so that’s why we’re not putting out clear rules and expectations, but we wanted to provide some guidelines and guidance to how to read and understand the nuances of the rules [the administration] made.”

The document is in direct response to feedback about the administration’s lack of clarity regarding the behavior students are allowed to participate in on campus, and it tries to add nuance to several gray areas in the policy. The document is intended to mitigate COVID-19 transmission rates on campus through outlining safe activities. The BSG focused its energy on four sections: community norms, intimacy, safely gathering and partaking in illicit behavior safely, respectively.

“For instance, there’s a lack of information on how to safely hook up, and that’s because it breaks COVID[-19] rules. But we’re hopefully coming with information that basically walks students through how to do these things safely, acknowledging [the activities] that they’re still going to do since this is a place where the administration can’t [comment],” said Williams.

In an attempt to maintain safety by providing more specific guidance in relation to typical day-to-day student activities, BSG created this document to add guidance that the administration cannot necessarily condone.

“Some information is best coming from your peers, and that’s what I think the BSG is for. We want to have a safe and healthy semester,” said Vice President of the BSG Harry Sherman ’21 in a Zoom interview with the Orient. “We’re looking for ways to make these awful circumstances better.”