Riley Nelson

This election day, Bowdoin students braved wind speeds of up to 25 miles per hour biking to the polls to exercise their right to vote in Brunswick. A “Bike to the Polls” event, organized by Sustainable Bowdoin and Bowdoin Votes, gathered participants for a three-mile bike ride from Moulton Circle to a polling location in Brunswick Landing.

Shea McGrath ’27, a student employee at the Sustainability Office, was one of the organizers of the event, which utilized bikes from the new Bowdoin Bike Share Program. Participants were invited to borrow bikes from the bike sharing program in an effort to remove any potential barriers to voting.

For McGrath, the event presented an opportunity to foster a sense of community engagement while promoting civic duty and sustainable practices.

“Showing civic engagement and being involved in what can help make a community more connected and cohesive also yields sustainable results like riding a bike with three or four friends to the polls,” he said. “Now you know those friends a little bit better, you’re seeing Brunswick in a different way and you’re more engaged in the community.”

McGrath noted how the event was designed to advance sustainable transportation choices across campus.

“Part of our Sustainable Bowdoin goals is about encouraging people to replace cars or fossil fuel transportation with bicycles, walking or other non-carbon transportation. It’s cool to see people embracing that as an option,” he said.

Beyond simply promoting sustainability, the event aimed to show students just how easily these alternatives can be implemented in everyday life.

“The biggest takeaway is that it’s very easy to just decide to choose sustainable transportation, and it fits in very seamlessly to a college campus,” McGrath said.

Along the way, participants formed connections with each other as they explored the area.

“Beyond just getting to the polls, we also got to see another part of Brunswick where a few of the people that were on the ride hadn’t ever really been,” McGrath said. “It’s also just about exploring the area on a bike, which is really fun.”

Liam Kelly-Thompson ’28 decided to attend the event to have fun while consciously opting for a sustainable mode of transportation.

“It’s really important to me that in our politics, we’re pushing for a better world and a better, more climate-aware world,” Kelly-Thompson said. “In general, sustainability practices are something that you have to incorporate into every aspect of your life where you see an opportunity.”

McGrath spoke of the potential for future events to bring students together while biking and promoting alternative forms of transportation.

While the Bowdoin Bike Share Program will go on break soon for the winter until the snow melts, McGrath emphasized the program’s potential to promote accessibility and equity at future community sustainability events.

“We definitely want to do more events that involve group rides off campus. We want to do more events that introduce people, especially first years, to the bike paths and other ways to get around Brunswick by bike,” McGrath said. “So while this one was a little bit spontaneous, we definitely are excited to carry the model forward.”