As the College transitioned to remote learning last month, weekly town halls and daily updates from President Clayton Rose and deans for the College have become the norm, prompting a mix of anxiety and relief amongst readers.
Every afternoon, Annie Rose ’20 calls the same home-bound senior citizen in Brunswick. Their conversations flow naturally from topic to topic, just as a conversation with a good friend would.
“How’s your family these days?”
“What do you think of the presidential primaries?”
“Have I told you my story about a seagull eating raw meat from the back of my pickup truck?”
Rose and this woman have never met in-person.
Laila McCain ’21 is accustomed to working 18 to 20 hours per week. She gives tours and hosts information sessions for the Office of Admissions, works in the Center for Cocurricular Opportunities and is employed by the Office of Residential Life (ResLife) as a Residential Advisor in Chamberlain Hall.
When Lily Tedford ’22 received the news Wednesday morning that she would finish the spring semester remotely, taking her classes online to reduce the spread of the coronavirus (COVID-19) on campus, her first instinct was to drive to Bowdoin with a few extra suitcases.
Produced, edited and filmed by Marcus Ribeiro ’23
The noise level in Moderation Brewing Company oscillated between murmurs and shouts at Tuesday’s trivia night. Bowdoin students, faculty and staff sat alongside Brunswick-area residents as they all huddled around tables to discuss where the seat of the Anglican Bishop of London is.
Like many visual art students, Maddie Squibb ’20 went into the semester choosing between a couple of courses. “Printmaking II or an advanced painting independent study?” she wondered.
“And then I got the email about the Kaempfer Fund running out and it made me think, ‘Oh, I guess I won’t pursue an independent study,’” said Squibb, who is a visual arts minor.
A housekeeper discovered black mold in a housekeeping closet behind Jack Magee’s Pub and Grill over winter break. R.J. Enterprises, a contractor that specializes in asbestos abatement and mold removal, was brought in to perform an assessment.
Luis Miguel Guerrero ’20 and Sasa Jovanovic ’20 admitted that there were a few bumps in the road during the Alternative Winter Break (AWB) trip they led last week.
“Those back roads in Maine are barely plowed,” Guerrero said.
In her 50 years living on Belmont Street, Bobbi Tucker has never had an issue with Bowdoin students. But this fall, when more students began parking on her street, it became difficult to back out of her driveway and she had to swerve more frequently around parked cars so as to avoid hitting pedestrians and bicyclists.
After waiting for three hours, seven members of Bowdoin Climate Action (BCA) spoke at the Brunswick Town Council meeting on Monday night. They urged the council to declare a climate emergency.
“We were here to start the conversation,” Perrin Milliken ’22, a leader of BCA, said during the meeting.
Allen Daniels, Bowdoin security officer first class, warned me that he was going to cry during our interview.
“I can’t block it out,” he said of his time in the military. “It’s like a watermark. It’s always there, over the image that is real life.
This weekend, alumni, students and guests will gather to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Africana Studies program (formerly known as Afro-American Studies), the Black Students Union (BSU, formerly known as the African American Society) and the John Brown Russwurm African American Center.
This weekend, alumni, students and guests will gather to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Africana Studies program (formerly known as Afro-American Studies), the Black Students Union (BSU, formerly known as the African American Society) and the John Brown Russwurm African American Center.
Tamara Nikuradse ’84, P’21 carefully organizes the library in her fifth grade classroom at Dana Hall, an all girls school in Wellesley, Massachusetts.
“I feel that my one of my responsibilities, especially as a woman of color, is to expose the students to other cultures and histories of other people.
Produced, edited and filmed by Alexandra Lin ’23
Sophomore Emma Dewey used to think dancing was about perfect posture and technique. For her, improvisation used to take place in her bedroom only. Now, in her fourth dance class in three semesters and as a leader of the Bowdoin Modern Dance Collective, she’s begun exploring dance that makes her feel good—and lots of other feelings, too.
In mid-September, as Esther Fernandez Rosario ’23 waited for her train in the Brunswick transportation center, she double checked that she hadn’t forgotten anything in her dorm room. She had her toothbrush, her school work, a birthday card for her mom—she was prepared for a weekend back home in Boston.
This fall, 60 years after Bowdoin’s first American Association of University Professors (AAUP) chapter meeting, a group of faculty members founded a new chapter in the hope of promoting academic freedom and shared governance at the College.
On Monday night, Kresge Auditorium was filled with voices from across the globe. Carla from Cuba. Jesse from Mexico. Hernando from Colombia. Audience members quickly realized that Daniel Alarcón’s talk, titled “How to Listen: Telling Latin American Stories in Sound and Print,” was actually a multimedia performance, a series of performed podcasts.
As I drove through Brunswick Industrial Park toward Elevated Remedies, I was hit by the unmistakable smell of weed. The skunk-like scent was unsurprising, but it disappeared as soon as I pulled up to the storefront.
While seniors on campus update their LinkedIn profiles and rush to the Career Exploration and Development office, Jean Claude Kagame has crossed borders and oceans in search of work. He moved from Kigali, Rwanda to Brunswick, Maine in late June.
Career Planning has changed its name to “Career Exploration and Development” (CXD), Kristin Brennan, executive director of CXD, announced on Wednesday in an email to the student body. The name marks a shift in the office’s focus towards helping students explore their passions while gaining practical skills necessary for the workplace.
“Name a college from every state that touches the ocean,” Bob Stuart ’77 announced last Thursday in Kresge Auditorium. Teams of elementary schoolers grabbed their pencils and began listing off schools: Bowdoin in Maine, Tufts in Massachusetts, Stanford in California.
Rushing to catch a bus back to Jerusalem, Sophie stops at Sabich Shel Oved (Oved’s Sabich in English) for a not-quite sandwich, not-quite taco Israeli delicacy: sabich. Back in Brunswick, Eliana strolls down Maine Street after class and picks up lunch: sweet potato and fish tacos from the Taco the Town food truck.
When Joan Benoit Samuelson ’79 returned to campus after winning the Boston Marathon the spring of her senior year, she received a standing ovation in Thorne Hall, then the senior center. Sweaty and tired from her 2:35:15 finish, she soon learned that much of campus had watched her on television as she crossed the finish line in a Bowdoin singlet.
Forgive me Thorne Food Waste Owl, for I have sinned: most mornings, I pick the strawberries out of the fruit salad bowl. I’m not the only culprit; most people don’t want pineapple on their oatmeal or in their cereal, so they carefully collect slices of strawberries from the top of the fruit salad instead.
As Bowdoin’s housekeeping staff trudges through the snow to work in the wee hours of the morning, comparing their job title, benefits package and union representation to local counterparts is likely far from front of mind.
The Orient’s “50 things to do before you graduate” reads: “6. ‘Win’ dinner—be the last to leave.” Come graduation, most students can brag about having won Moulton or Thorne at least once. But the ultimate winner of Bowdoin Dining is John Parker, who has been working for the College for the past 35 years.
Although dating culture is dead at Bowdoin, food culture is immortal. By the time students graduate, they have attended four Lobster Bakes, eaten 256 Bowdoin Brunches and drained 150 PolarPoints far too quickly each semester. Thanks to the fantastic Bowdoin Dining staff, we’ve feasted on goat cheese paninis, seafood scampi and pumpkin chocolate chip muffins, while our peers at other colleges, as Malcolm Gladwell is quick to mention, either suffer through four years of greasy pizza or abandon meal plans and school dining hall culture entirely.
Rather than continuing to work in biology laboratories post-graduation, Ian Trask ’05 opted to pick up trash. After winding his way through various jobs, he ended up as a groundskeeper at a hospital in Massachusetts, cleaning parking lots and he ultimately deciding to use trash as a medium for art.
Candidates for the 2018-19 president and vice president of Bowdoin Student Government (BSG) faced off at a debate on Tuesday night in preparation for this weekend’s election. Mohamed Nur ’19 and Ben Painter ’19 are running for president, while Amber Rock ’19 and Nate DeMoranville ’20 are running for vice president.
This coming fall, Bowdoin will add Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich to its roster of creative writing professors. Marzano-Lesnevich will be the first tenure track creative nonfiction professor in the English department. A former lawyer and the author of “The Fact of a Body: A Murder and a Memoir,” they bring an interdisciplinary approach to creative writing.
The newest exhibit at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art (BCMA) consists of one room with couches, chairs, bookshelves, two iPads and a chalkboard. “Reading Room: Experiments in Collaborative Dialogue and Archival Practice in the Arts” is a social practice art exhibit, part of an art discipline that views the creation of a social situation as art in its own right.
Despite their centuries-long battle for human rights, the stories of Iranian and Muslim women have traditionally been overlooked in American society. Thursday night’s performance of the play “The Poets and the Assassin—Daughters of Iran” in Kresge Auditorium attempted to portray their stories and address the myth of the submissive, passive Middle Eastern woman.
After years of requests from both students and faculty, the College is hiring two new Arabic language instructors for the upcoming academic year. However, a potential Arabic or Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) studies major or minor seems unlikely in the near future.
Twelve students will participate in a trial intergroup dialogue (IGD) curriculum on socioeconomic class beginning this February. Kate Stern and Leana Amaez, associate deans of students for diversity and inclusion and co-directors of the Center for Sexuality, Women & Gender will facilitate discussion with students from various class backgrounds.
This week, students were urged to fill out Bowdoin Course Questionnaires (BCQs) to rate their experiences with courses and professors. Students’ responses are used to improve courses, evaluate faculty and supplement the process for making decisions on reappointment, promotion and tenure.
Each year, there are on average only eight students who focus their studies on the Arctic. Spearheaded by Susan Kaplan, professor of anthropology and director of the Peary-MacMillan Arctic Museum and Arctic Studies Center, the Arctic Studies program is an informal concentration in the earth and oceanographic studies, anthropology and sociology departments that began in 1985.
Filmmaker Raoul Peck now uses cinema as a platform for social activism. On Monday, the award-winning filmmaker and director of the world-renowned documentary, “I Am Not Your Negro,” came to campus to participate in a Q&A following a screening of his film.
Chair of the Russian Department Alyssa Gillespie spends much of her time in the basement of Sills Hall. Thin rays of natural light peek through the bottoms of windows, illuminating her office and its many Russian knick-knacks.
The Bowdoin men’s rugby team has had a strong start to its season, beating Maine Maritime Academy and University of Maine-Orono 40-14. The team is looking to continue its streak over the next two weekends against rivals Bates and Colby.
After two crucial wins this past weekend, the Bowdoin field hockey team is prepared to take on its longstanding rival, Middlebury, this weekend.
Last Saturday, the Polar Bears swept Wesleyan for a 6-0 win. Five separate players scored, assisted by an array of teammates.