First and foremost, allow me to preface this article with a word of caution: this is a personal dialogue. In the process of writing, I concluded that this submission was going to be nothing more than a way for me to organize my thoughts—a process for me to take what was crammed into my mind and place it onto paper.
It sucks believing you’re the smartest Black person in the room. And it sucks even more having people believe that because you’re the smartest Black person in the room, you must be an exception to the norm, a deviation from your race, a “white” Black person.
Thinking back, I feel like I’ve never truly evaluated the effects that racial trauma—derived from instances of racial bias, abuse and discrimination—have had on my life. Strange, I know. Sure, in passing I’ve been able to monitor my mental health, assessing how much I need to remove myself from heavy social media use to not become overwhelmed with constant racial violence.
How does one measure collegiate eliteness, and how is said eliteness communicated to the pool of applicants for our nation’s top colleges? I suppose this question of measurement could be answered by statistical evidence—placing student selectivity, academic rigor and financial endowment as determinants of prestige.
The College expects to resume Orientation trips and activities for the Class of 2025 this upcoming fall, President Rose announced in an email to the Bowdoin community on March 4. He also wrote that similar class-building activities may be offered to the Class of 2024, which did not have Bowdoin’s typical orientation programming this past fall due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
For International Day of People with Disabilities (IDPD) yesterday, Bowdoin’s DisAbled Students Association (DASA) collaborated with Bowdoin’s Accessibility Taskforce and Bowdoin Student Government (BSG) to host a sticker contest focused on raising awareness on disabilities, both those seen by others and those battled silently.
Editor’s note 12/28/2020 at 10:38 p.m.: This article has been updated to accurately reflect details around the establishment of the Movement Collective.
Seeking to replace the tedium of Zoom meetings with the joyful experience of shared dance, Lucy Sydel ’22 and Emma Dewey ’22 are transforming the landscape of dance at Bowdoin through the Movement Collective: an expressive, dance-based initiative that emphasizes the need for student connection without the formality of usual Zoom meetings.