Emily CohenABROAD CHANGED ME: In the face of coronavirus (COVID-19) uncertainty, students are facing a difficult decision on studying away in the fall. 90 students have already changed their plans.
To the Editor:
As former editors-in-chief of the Orient, we want to commend and voice our support for Kate Lusignan ’21 and Nina McKay ’21, who have begun considering changing the name of the paper we oversaw last year.
President Clayton Rose has formed a new working group to develop a model for remote teaching and learning in the event that the College determines students cannot return to campus in the fall semester or should they have to leave campus again.
Registration for next semester’s classes may be delayed until early July as the College considers its decision about fall semester learning. Dean for Academic Affairs Elizabeth McCormack informed faculty of the tentative timeline for course registration in an email on Monday.
Marcus Williams ’21 was elected president of Bowdoin Student Government (BSG) for the 2020-2021 academic year Sunday night following a week of remote campaigning. The current BSG chair of diversity and inclusion, Williams beat Steven Xu ’22, current Class of 2022 class council president, 717 to 226.
In the past few months, Chris Brown ’20 has applied to 96 jobs.
“Ninety-six applications and I’ve only had three interviews, with one of them being cancelled because of this,” Brown said in a phone interview with the Orient on April 2, referring to the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.
After two years of housing juniors and seniors, Ladd House will again house only sophomores for the 2020-2021 academic year, said Director of Residential and Housing Operations Lisa Rendall. College House decisions were sent to applicants on Monday.
The Town of Brunswick declared a civil state of emergency Monday night in response to the growing coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak, ordering all businesses to close except those included in the 29 types of sanctioned “essential businesses.” The order is in effect for seven days, after which it is expected to be renewed.
To our readers:
This has never happened before. Even in the great crises of the 20th century—two world wars, student movements in the 60s and the Spanish Influenza pandemic in 1918—Bowdoin’s campus has never been vacated in the way it has been in the last few weeks.
Commencement activities and Reunion Weekend will not happen in May this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic. President Clayton Rose announced the decision in an email to seniors Friday morning and in an email to the campus community Friday afternoon.
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.
Jingyi Zhou ’22 was planning to return home to Beijing over spring break to celebrate her 21st birthday with friends and family. She had booked her ticket during winter break, before the extent of the COVID-19 virus outbreak in China had been revealed.
Saturday, February 1—Rochester, N.H.
The calluses first appeared around day 12 in Sioux City, Iowa, says Penny Mack ’22.
“You knock like two doors, and the calluses are already coming back,” she says, making a fist with her right hand, her knocking hand.
Last Saturday, water from a burst pipe in Moulton Union damaged walls, ceiling tiles and furniture in one room on the first floor of the building and also caused a leak in the dining hall located in the basement.
A Brunswick man was found dead in his sleeping bag by the train tracks on Federal Street on November 23. Russell Williams, 64, was reported missing on November 5.
The death is not considered suspicious, according to Brunswick Police Department (BPD) Commander Mark Waltz, though the official cause of death is not yet available.
One man is dead following a shooting in a Federal Street apartment on Monday night. Another man was shot and injured at the scene.
The first man, Ali Fisher of Lisbon, broke into the apartment carrying a handgun, according to a release from the Maine State Police, and entered into an altercation with an occupant of the apartment, a 22-year-old woman.
REFERENDUM QUESTIONS
This year, the Maine ballot features one bond issue and one constitutional amendment. Following passage by a two-thirds vote in both the House and Senate of the state legislature, bond issues and constitutional amendments in Maine must be approved by voters in order to take effect.
Last week, the Office of the Dean of Students released its annual conduct report in a campus-wide email and published it online.
The annual report of academic and social code violations was formatted differently this year, in order to protect the identity of students involved in cases heard by the Judicial Board (J-Board) and adjudicated by the Office of the Dean of Students, while simultaneously improving readability and accessibility, said Dean of Students Kristina Bethea Odejimi and Associate Dean of Student Affairs and Community Standards Kate O’Grady.
Last week, the Office of the Dean of Students released its annual conduct report in a campus-wide email and published it online.
The annual report of academic and social code violations was formatted differently this year, in order to protect the identity of students involved in cases heard by the Judicial Board (J-Board) and adjudicated by the Office of the Dean of Students, while simultaneously improving readability and accessibility, said Dean of Students Kristina Bethea Odejimi and Associate Dean of Student Affairs and Community Standards Kate O’Grady.
Only 17 percent of the senior class participated in its class council election this past weekend, and two of the four available positions, vice president and treasurer, went unfilled because no candidates registered to run. The other two races, for president and programming director, were uncontested.
Last weekend, the National Association for College Admission Counseling (NACAC), of which Bowdoin is a member, voted to eliminate parts of its ethics code. These sections, according to the U.S. Department of Justice, stifle competition between schools and limit students’ choices in the college application process.
Growing up, the High Holidays were the only time my whole family would go to synagogue. “High Holidays” is the collective name for Rosh Hashanah (the Jewish New Year) and Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement).
In an email to the Orient on Sunday evening, Vice President of Bowdoin Student Government Arein Nguyen ’21 announced the results of the class council elections for the classes of 2020 and 2023. Eighty-six votes were cast in the senior class council election, representing approximately 17 percent of the class.
This summer, Bowdoin announced that it would donate $450,000 to build a “discovery classroom” at Kate Furbish Elementary School, which is set to open in 2020. A plan for the classroom was reviewed and approved in last week’s meeting of the Brunswick Planning Board.
Ryan Britt ’22 was elected Bowdoin Student Government (BSG) chair of student affairs Friday night, beating River Fenton ’22 and Lucas Johnson ’22 in a special election governed by ranked-choice voting.
Only 373 students voted in the election, approximately one-fifth of the student body.
Before this summer, Alana Morrison ’20 was known to the Bowdoin community as a singer; she released her first EP “Oh Boy” last fall and has performed around campus several times. This summer, however, Morrison had her network-television debut on the U.S.
Kristina Bethea Odejimi has been named the new dean of students and will begin at the College on August 1. The post was previously held by Janet Lohmann, who was hired as dean for student affairs in April, replacing Tim Foster upon his retirement.
Editor’s Note, 6/26/19, 7:44 p.m.: Bank of America announced on Wednesday afternoon that it would cease lending to private prison corporations. President Clayton Rose issued a statement in support of this decision on Wednesday evening.
On Monday morning, President Clayton Rose became the first subject of an online campaign to protest Bank of America, the only major bank still financing private prison corporations that operate migrant detention centers at the U.S.-Mexico border.
Even a cursory glance around campus reveals the ways in which the College has changed since its founding. Buildings, in a range of architectural styles across various time periods, reflect not only the College’s evolution, but also the changes in its leadership.
When you “take financial resources and human beings and juxtapose them such that they produce an added value in human beings,” what do you get? A college, according to former Bowdoin President Robert H. Edwards.
College presidents are a special kind of celebrity. They’re probably not the kind you’d stop to take a picture with, but whether or not we realize it, many of Bowdoin’s presidents’ names are ubiquitous on campus.
Nearly every evening for the past two weeks, the men’s baseball team has begun practice in Farley Field House at 9 p.m., not leaving until 11:30 or midnight. The team works on the skills that they can indoors, just feet away from their diamond, which is currently under several layers of snow and ice.
Stories of friendship, trauma and political activism share the stage this weekend at the third annual production of “RISE: Untold Stories of Bowdoin Women.” This year’s show, true to its roots, represents diverse experiences of Bowdoin women, even when they may be difficult to hear.
On Monday afternoon, Leslie Tuttle, associate professor of history from Louisiana State University, began a talk to a packed audience in the Beam Classroom by describing the “suspicious death” of Mademoiselle de Guerchy, a tabloid star of Louis XIV’s Paris.
Two new buildings—an academic building named for former College President Barry Mills and a new home for the Peary-MacMillan Arctic Museum and Arctic Studies Program—will be constructed in the coming years on the corner of College Street and Sills Drive.
Every Saturday from November to May, vendors selling goods from freshly-harvested mushrooms to homemade body lotions shuffle in to fill the first floor of Fort Andross with their colorful stalls. This is the Brunswick Winter Market, where the vendors are as eclectic and versatile as they are passionate about their craft—whether it is cheese- and butter-making, coffee roasting or knife sharpening.
Next door to the Winter Market is the Waterfront Flea Market. In fact, customers have to walk past the flea market to get to the winter market. A lot of people pause before the flea market, look, a bit confused and intrigued, at the couple of mismatched chairs out front, but many just continue to the other market.
This summer, two properties on Federal Street will be converted into chem-free upperclass housing for the next academic year. The properties, 84 and 86 Federal Street, are owned by Bowdoin and currently house employees of the College, who will move out before conversion begins.
As of the May 1 commitment date, 525 students have submitted a deposit to Bowdoin for the Class of 2022. Following the College’s most selective admissions season yet, this number is greater than the class of 500 students that Bowdoin planned would matriculate in August 2018, according to Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid Whitney Soule.
Camille Serrano ’18 is from Olathe (oh-LAY-thuh) Kansas, about 20 miles southwest of Kansas City. When asked if there are any places in Olathe that she thinks about when she thinks of home, this is what Camille said:
“Oh my goodness.
Yesterday afternoon, Peter Skerry, a professor of political science at Boston College and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, shared his views on immigration policy in a talk titled “It’s Not About Your Grandmother! Some Dispassionate Reflections on Immigration.” Drawing on trends and attitudes towards immigration to the United States the past three decades, Skerry aimed to point out flaws in both the left’s and right’s dominant narratives on immigration.
Peter Skerry’s lecture yesterday on immigration is the second event sponsored by the Eisenhower Forum this academic year that was also funded in part by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), a conservative-leaning think tank based in Washington D.C.
After nearly 20 college students employees, faculty and staff saw their paychecks stolen since the College began using Workday to manage employee finances and payments in January 2016, Bowdoin Information Technology (IT) rolled out a two-step authentication, which became mandatory on Tuesday.
In the Peter Buck Center for Health and Fitness, an intimate room on the third floor with purple cushions, dim lighting and statues of Buddha seems out of place. But several nights a week, students and community members come to Room 302 for meditation classes, retreating from the chaos of campus, if only for 55 minutes.
In an email to the Bowdoin community on Wednesday, Dean for Academic Affairs Elizabeth McCormack and Registrar Martina Duncan ’97 officially shared changes to the daily time block schedule and final exam period that will take effect in the fall 2018 semester.
Q1: Should the Maine Gambling Control Board allow to operation of slot machines or a casino in York County, Maine?
If passed, Question 1 would allow for the creation of a gaming and entertainment venue in York County, the most southwestern county in Maine, which includes the towns of Saco, Kennebunk and Old Orchard Beach, among others.
In addition to waking up without power Monday morning, Bowdoin’s campus awoke to the loss of some of its oldest residents—three trees on the Main Quad. Two oaks and one maple fell as a result of the storm that blew across campus early Monday morning.
A “queer disabled nonbinary femme writer and cultural worker of Burger/Tamil Sri Lankan and Irish/Roma ascent” is how Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha describes herself on her website. An activist and poet, she came to Bowdoin last night to share her work in several events sponsored by various groups from all areas of campus, underscoring the intersecting identities that have influenced her experience and perspective.
This summer, Bowdoin made progress on its efforts toward reaccreditation by producing a 113-page self-study evaluating the College’s performance and setting projections for improvement within the next 10 years.
The report was submitted to the New England Association of Schools and Colleges (NEASC), a reaccreditation body, for approval.
For over 200 years, American colleges and universities have maintained a commitment to the public good that has outlasted cultural, economic and technological change, says Chuck Dorn, professor of education and associate dean for student affairs.
This summer, contractors carried out major renovation projects around campus in preparation for the new academic year. Major projects include the creation of two new collaborative spaces in Hawthorne-Longfellow Library (H-L), updates to Magee-Samuelson Track and Whittier Field and initial work on the Roux Center for the Environment.
Next year, the Alliance for Sexual Assault Prevention (ASAP) will no longer serve as a campus-wide programming organization, a change introduced by the Office of Gender Violence Prevention and Education. The eecision received pushback from the leaders of ASAP—who were not consulted—for several reasons, but primarily because the change ends ASAP’s role in sexual assault prevention programming and it is unclear which groups will sponsor the ongoing events ASAP developed.
On April 12, the Cumberland County Superior Court ruled that Bowdoin has the right to purchase the property at 28 College Street, the last remaining property on College Street that Bowdoin does not own. The decision comes after a months-long legal battle over a 1996 agreement between the College and the property’s owner that granted Bowdoin the right to buy the home before any other buyer could place an offer, should the home be placed on the market.
The Health Center has seen an increased demand for longer-term contraceptives among students concerned about insurance coverage of birth control, according to Director of Health Services Jeffrey Maher. This increase in demand for long-acting reversible birth control coincides with the Health Center’s current emphasis on education about more proactive, effective forms of preventing pregnancy
Under the Affordable Care Act, private health insurance plans have begun reducing or eliminating co-pays and deductibles on contraceptives.
Janet Lohmann will return to Bowdoin to become dean of students, a new position in the College’s administration, on July 1 after serving as dean of students at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio for one year.
For the first time, Bowdoin’s Mock Trial A Team advanced past the regional tournament of the American Mock Trial Association (AMTA) national championship to earn a spot in the second round. When the team was first notified of its bid on Tuesday, however, there were questions about the team’s ability to obtain funds to travel to the competition.