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Halina Bennet
Orient Staff — Class of 2023
Number of articles: 32
First Article: September 20, 2019
Latest Article: March 9, 2023
3 photos by Halina Bennet
Halina BennetCOMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT: The audience at the Maine State House of representatives debate between Andrew Kaleigh '24 and Dan Ankles came prepared with a variety of questions to ask the candidates.
Halina BennetCIVIL DISOBEDIENCE: A protestor holds a sign calling for peace. Members of Peaceworks, a national organization that promotes world peace, have gathered every Friday since the 9/11 attacks to protest the War on Terror.
The Board of Trustees announced today that Williams College Dean of the Faculty and John B. McCoy and John T. McCoy Professor of Psychology Safa Zaki will become Bowdoin’s 16th president, making her the first woman to hold the position in the College’s history.
In his short time on campus, Omar Osman ’26 made a deep and lasting impact on those who knew him. His hyper-creativity, love of computers, infectious laugh and persistent selflessness are remembered by his peers and mentors as only a few of the characteristics that made him exceptional.
In an email to the campus community on Wednesday, President Clayton Rose outlined the College’s Covid-19 plan for a semester that will look more familiar to the College pre-pandemic than any other semester that has come in its wake.
Civil Rights Movement comes to Bowdoin, students participate across nation
From March 7 to March 21, 1965, thousands of nonviolent civil rights demonstrators marched from Selma to Montgomery, Ala. Led from Atlanta by Martin Luther King Jr.
In an email to the College community on Thursday, Senior Vice President and Dean for Student Affairs Janet Lohmann announced two new staff appointments in the Division of Student Affairs.
Katie Toro-Ferrari will serve as Associate Dean for Student Affairs and Director of Student Life, having previously held titles of Associate Dean for Student Affairs and Assistant to the Dean for Student Affairs.
Since March 2020, the College has fought the COVID-19 pandemic with restrictions intended to keep students as isolated as possible from the virus. Now, with the Omicron variant reaching its peak in Maine, the College has reimagined its approach to COVID-19, in the midst of the Omicron variant’s increased transmissibility.
Bowdoin’s Class of 2026 will not look like its two preceding classes, with applications submitted and reviews underway. The Classes of 2024 and 2025 matriculated during the COVID-19 pandemic and their statistics have, in turn, have gone against the norm.
Each Friday since the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, a group of Brunswick residents gather on the town green on Pleasant and Maine Streets, armed with signs calling for world peace. Initially conceived of as a protest to urge the United States government not to retaliate in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, the group has continued to convene every Friday at 5:00 p.m.
Driven by his observation of the high personal and academic standards to which Bowdoin students, faculty and staff are held, Chris Dehney ’24 seized the opportunity to bring Peer Counseling, a peer-based counseling service, to campus this semester.
In an email to the campus community on Thursday, COVID-19 Resource Coordinator Mike Ranen announced that the College would be moving back to Yellow status that evening following an uptick in cases after Homecoming weekend.
This change came on the heels of an email sent Tuesday in which Ranen announced that the College would transition back to Yellow beginning Monday, October 11 after fall break.
After a disjointed year on (and mostly off) campus, the Class of 2024 returned to campus this fall as sophomores. Having experienced an atypical year at the College, the class is still expected to step into leadership roles within the community.
On July 1, Paula Volent, Bowdoin’s chief investments officer, will be stepping down from her position after more than two decades of service to the College. Over the duration of her career in Brunswick, Volent oversaw the growth of Bowdoin’s endowment from $465 million to its current $2.4 billion valuation—growth which has fundamentally altered the College’s financial capabilities and enabled it to be one of 19 need-blind colleges nationwide in its admissions policies and meet full demonstrated financial need with zero loans.
With finals around the corner and weather getting warmer, Peer Health is attempting to ensure that mental health and wellness are a top priority on campus. On Saturday, the group hosted a Mental Health Holiday on Dudley Coe Quad from 10 a.m.
For the first time since COVID-19 sent students home last spring, the College hosted a campus-wide in-person event. Dubbed a “May 1 Celebration,” the Office of Student Activities scheduled a day of outdoor activities, live music and food trucks last Saturday afternoon to usher in the final month of the semester.
On Thursday, COVID-19 Resource Coordinator Mike Ranen addressed Governor Janet Mills’ decision to loosen the state’s mask mandate in an email to the College community. Despite new state guidelines that people do not need to wear masks outdoors when they are practicing social distancing, Ranen asked in his email that members of the community continue wearing masks on campus.
In an email to the College on March 8, President Clayton Rose announced the start of Mental Health Moments, an initiative developed by mental health advocate Dr. Sally Thomas ’89 to address mental health in an accessible way by providing weekly, easily-digestible action steps for members of the College community.
Two students tested positive for COVID-19 on Monday. The cases are not believed to be “connected to each other or to any of the cases reported last week,” COVID-19 Resource Coordinator Mike Ranen wrote in an email sent to the Bowdoin community on Tuesday afternoon.
Just over a year after celebrating its 50th anniversary, the Africana Studies Program is now recognized as a full-fledged academic department. The change—effective immediately—was announced at Tuesday’s faculty meeting.
The transition was headed by the department’s four full-time faculty members: Peter M.
The College welcomed over 1,000 students back to campus earlier this month, but the majority of the Class of 2024 was not among them. After spending the fall semester on campus, many first years returned home, but some were able to find alternate housing to spend the semester elsewhere with friends or family.
The College released its Campus Community Agreement on Blackboard Thursday for students who intend to live on campus or be in residence for the spring semester. Dean of Students Kristina Bethea Odejimi also sent the agreement to these students in an email yesterday evening.
Editor’s note 10/04/2020 at 7:56 p.m. EDT: This article has been modified to reflect an update from Dean of Student Affairs Janet Lohmann.
Students currently taking a personal leave of absence (PLOA) must submit their request for re-enrollment by 5 p.m.
On Wednesday, the Bowdoin College Museum of Art (BCMA) hosted the first installment of “Art Up Close”—a five-part series where students, staff and faculty come together to discuss art. The first webinar brought together 20 community members to discuss “Protest Art and Black Lives Matter.”
Claire Traum ’21 and Lucy Siegel ’22, two members of the Bowdoin College Museum of Art Advisory Council, developed the idea after gaining experience with webinars during summer opportunities.
With the semester well underway, the looming possibility of the College experiencing an emergency closure and sending all residents home is a persistent threat. For international students living on campus, this threat raises a number of questions regarding embassy closures, time differences and access to technology in their home countries.
In an email to all students on July 24, Dean for Academic Affairs Jennifer Scanlon laid out the College’s plan to provide an Apple iPad Pro with available Wi-Fi and cellular data connectivity, an Apple Pencil 2 and the Apple Magic Keyboard for iPad to every enrolled Bowdoin student and interested professor.
Bowdoin OneDay, the College’s largest annual fundraising event for the Alumni Fund, has been postponed indefinitely due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. This year’s event had been scheduled to take place on April 7.
Scott Meiklejohn, senior vice president for development and alumni relations, explained that the Alumni Fund is working to reschedule the celebration.
Ryan Britt ’22, Bowdoin Student Government (BSG) Chair of Student Affairs, introduced a motion to request increased support for mental health and counseling services on campus at Wednesday’s BSG assembly meeting.
The motion proposes an increase in hired counselors, additional funding for mental health services and programs and a new college body to look specifically into issues of mental health and wellness.
With its elegant interior, locally-sourced ingredients and a pared-down menu, Maine St. Steak and Oyster strives to create a casual ambience with high-end versions of classic dishes. The restaurant, which opened last Thursday, saw a busy first weekend and looks forward to an exciting future on Brunswick’s Maine Street.
In an effort to kickstart students’ success in career planning, Career Exploration and Development (CXD) welcomed sophomores back to campus during the final week of winter break for a career development bootcamp. CXD provided programming to students for the week, inviting alumni back to campus to share their post-graduation experiences.
Posters on a Moulton Union bulletin board detailing the calorie counts of standard Thanksgiving foods were taken down after students anonymously pinned angry comments to the board.
The posters, which included “strategies to decrease intake and manage weight,” were posted on the Thursday before Thanksgiving—the day of Bowdoin Dining’s annual Thanksgiving dinner.
Deena Engel, clinical professor in the department of computer science at New York University, and Glenn Wharton, professor of art history and conservation of material culture at the University of California Los Angeles, addressed questions of preserving art, artistic media and artistic integrity in a digitizing world in their talk on Monday titled “The Artist Archives Initiative: The Digital Future of Preserving Artistic Practices.” The two visitors are co-directors of the David Wojnarowicz Knowledge Base—an online database of the works and life of the late artist.
Over a century after its emergence, modern art is more relevant than ever. The movement often thought of in a strictly historical context is apparently less removed from our contemporary world than it appears.
In a presentation entitled “The Transnational Framework of Modernism’s Many Emergences, 1900-1950,” author and collector Laurette McCarthy and former Executive Editor of MIT Press Roger Conover ’72 discussed the history and impact of the exhibition, which was curated by the museum’s co-director, Anne Goodyear.
From top-ranked dining services to state-of-the-art dorm rooms, Bowdoin is known for leading in student comfort. However, after sleeping on a twin XL bed in a first-year brick, Jake Maus ’22 became inspired by restless nights.