Mia Lasic-Ellis

Every weeknight, a considerable number of Bowdoin students come together to eat dinner alone. It’s hard to imagine a time before the sacred institution of Moulton Express, but Director of Leadership Development Sara Binkhorst ’15 does. She was there when it was practically a scandal. “If you had a to-go meal it was like, ‘Oh, you’re too good to not sit and have a meal with your friends. Oh, you’re so busy,'” she said.

Sara is telling me this from a parking lot, mid-errand, battling a head cold and somehow still the most present person I’ve talked to all week. She’s about to pick up “the nugget” and audibly lights up when I ask about Camilla, her daughter. “She’s the best part of my identity. And probably will be forever,” she gushed. On the other side of the phone, I am, frankly, a mess—sleep deprived, stressed about impending exams and writing this T-14 hours before the deadline. But Sara instantly makes me feel less alone, apologizing about going virtual and poking fun at herself when she loses her train of thought mid-sentence—”Hold on, give me a minute, it’ll come to me.”

It always does. Every tangent Sara takes lands in the same place: people showing up for each other. She can’t talk about basketball without talking about the families who fed her team. She can’t talk about her daughter without paying tribute to the Bowdoin Children’s Center.

Back when Sara was a student, Bowdoin embraced the art of the sit-down meal. She describes a campus where you got lunch with your professor just because you wanted to hear about their research. Where you walked into Thorne without plans and sat down with whomever you recognized. “I was just amazed at the people here and how willing people were to open themselves up to you,” she said. The dining hall wasn’t where you ate. It was where you belonged.

I think about how many meals I’ve eaten this semester with my AirPods in, tuning out the background noise of people using the dining hall the correct way. I have a problem set to finish, people!

Sara admitted that when she first enrolled, “I’d be lying if I said I came to Bowdoin because of the state of Maine.” Maine, of course, had other plans. While on the women’s basketball team, her coach made a point of keeping five to eight Mainers on the roster each year, and through them, Sara got to know the state as a network of homes. Weekends meant driving up north along the coast—meeting families, sitting at kitchen tables, hearing stories. “It felt like a personal connection to the place,” she said.

She specifically remembers the fierce Brunswick fanbase. At other schools, the gym would empty out after the men’s game. But at Bowdoin, the community filled the stands for the women’s game. When campus went quiet during winter break, some residents even had the team over for dinner. She still runs into some of their biggest supporters on campus. Dave, one of their hosts, is now a card swiper at Moulton.

“Going to college here is not a transactional engagement,” she said. “It is really one of reciprocity and transformation.”

After graduating in 2015, Maine stayed in the back of her mind. Then came a call: “Hey, are you aware that this cool thing is being built?” It was a leadership initiative. This time, she came back for Maine.

But campus had changed. More night classes. First years networking for jobs. Schedules so stacked that getting a group of students in the same room feels like a logistical miracle. “You lose the late-night dinner at Thorne where you keep talking even though you have other stuff to do,” she said.

I should disclose that I am the culprit. My Google Calendar was once infamous—meals with friends required the strategic precision of a Tetris game. But now, as I admitted to Sara, “I don’t think I make time normally in my day to actually stoke meaningful time together.” My paper bag dinner is going cold on my desk.

But while I stopped scheduling meals with people I know, I started sitting down with strangers I didn’t—which is what happens when Sara Binkhorst gets ahold of you during your sophomore year. She roped me into a leadership office pilot: a cohort of students exploring the idea that listening to others’ stories can teach you about your own. I didn’t think much of it at the time. That’s Sara’s whole leadership philosophy: “Innocuous moments that you have with a student could be really transformational in their life, and you might never know it.”

She might not, but I can name five people who do. While writing “Why Brunswick?” this semester, I, a person who can no longer commit to a Wednesday lunch, began cornering unsuspecting members of the Brunswick community and asking them to trust me with their life stories.

I eased into it—Bunny through my roommate Ava, Lisa through my roommate Juliet. Mutual connections, familiar restaurants.

But then, I lost my mind. I strolled into the Brunswick Flea Market, spotted a 23-year-old in head-to-toe pink and pulled her into an empty room for an hour and a half. I burst into Gulf of Maine Books with no plan and asked a couple I’d never met to tell me their 46-year love story.

They stayed with me even after I left. Ava told me I’d perfectly captured Bunny’s joyful energy. Vendors started taking Lisa’s merchandising calls because they’d read her article, quoting back her “stern smile”—”That’s you!” Crystal forwarded me a message from her best friend: “That girl is something special for being able to meet you and immediately know exactly who you are.” And with mock irritation, Gary reported that people had been amused by just how romantically I’d written him and Beth.

Each of these moments is exactly what Sara was talking about—the innocuous conversations that turn out to matter. I didn’t set out to change anyone’s day. I just sat down.

Sara, of course, has a name for all of this: leadership, or “the repetitive act of showing up for people.” It isn’t a title—“it’s a way of being.”

And that’s what Sara’s doing on the other end of this phone call—congested, apologetic, still showing up, still telling me to text her if I need a good soundbite.

I’m still a to-go meal person. I probably always will be. But Sara has never needed to be in the room to change how I walk into one—and this column led me into five.

In the remaining three-week hell of midterms, Ivies and finals, I have one more sit-down scheduled. “We’ve got to do lunch,” Sara told me.