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Ian Ward

Orient Staff — Class of 2020

Number of articles: 50

First Article: March 3, 2017

Latest Article: May 1, 2020

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Coronavirus

Student organizers end mutual aid fund after pushback from College

Members of the Bowdoin Labor Alliance (BLA) shut down their online mutual aid fund on Tuesday after College administrators notified them that the effort violated College policies that prohibit independent student fundraising. Before closing on Tuesday, the fund had raised and distributed over $15,000 to Bowdoin students, staff and other community members struggling with the economic fallout of the coronavirus (COVID-19) crisis since April 1.

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Coronavirus

College incurs $6.8 million in virus-related costs, receives $1.12 million in federal aid

As of March 30, Bowdoin has lost $6.8 million due to expenses related to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and the transition to remote learning, according to senior administrators. Most of the sum—$6.2 million—comes from room and board refunds issued to students, and the remaining $600,000 of expenses came from the costs associated with conducting classes online and moving students out of campus housing.

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Coronavirus

College braces for “significant economic impact” of coronavirus crisis

As the coronavirus pandemic continues to roil global financial markets, colleges and universities around the United States are entering uncharted economic waters. In Brunswick, Bowdoin is battening down the hatches. “It is really too soon to know how severe the impact will be or how this compares with economic challenges of the past, but there is no question that this is a very difficult environment for investments,” wrote Matt Orlando, the senior vice president for finance and administration and treasurer of the College, in an email to the Orient.

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Administration

The president in the living room: Rose answers student questions

President Clayton Rose joined a small group of students in the living room of Reed House for an intimate question-and-answer session on Thursday evening. During nearly two hours of discussion, students pressed Rose on an array of hot-button campus issues, ranging from James “Jes” Staley’s ’79 P’11 status on the Board of Trustees to campus mental health services and the fight for a living wage for Bowdoin’s housekeeping staff.

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Brunswick

Squirrel knocks out power on north campus

An equipment failure near the Androscoggin hydroelectric plant caused a power outage that left roughly 2,500 customers in Brunswick and parts of Bowdoin’s north campus in the dark last Saturday morning. The outage occurred when a heedless squirrel damaged circuit equipment near Sea Dog Brewing in Topsham, according to Manager of Corporate Communications for Central Maine Power (CMP) Catharine Hartnett.

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Black History At Bowdoin

Civil rights advocate Michelle Alexander calls for a ‘revolution of values’

It didn’t take long for the audience in a packed Pickard Theater to give Michelle Alexander a standing ovation. As soon as she walked on stage, everyone stood up. Alexander, a renowned legal scholar, New York Times columnist and author of the best-selling book “The New Jim Crow,” visited Bowdoin on Thursday to participate in a moderated discussion, entitled “Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness,” this year’s annual Martin Luther King Jr.

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Jill Lepore discusses US political climate

Jill Lepore H’15 is worried about the nation, and she thinks that you should be too. “It has often been said, in the 21st century and in earlier centuries, too, that Americans lack a shared past and that, built on cracked foundations, the Republic is crumbling,” writes Lepore in the introduction to “These Truths,” her 930-page single-volume history of the United States, published in September 2018.

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More Than a Game

Farewell, Bowdoin football

The Bowdoin football season ended much like it began: badly. After carrying a 14-point lead into the fourth quarter against Colby, the Polar Bears allowed 27-unanswered points in the final period, falling 47-34 to cap off the team’s third winless season in four years.

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Volleyball

Despite slow start, volleyball hits stride at the right time

Bowdoin women’s volleyball (6-6, NESCAC 1-2) entered last Saturday’s matchup against national number-five ranked Johnson and Wales (11-3) having lost four of their last five games—including two straight-set losses to conference rivals Wesleyan (10-2) and Tufts (12-0)—and with three times as many losses in the past month as it had accumulated across all of last season.

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Football

Sports in Brief: Football suffers historic loss

Bowdoin football (0-2, 0-2 NESCAC) suffered one of the most lopsided losses in program history on Saturday, falling to Trinity (1-1, NESCAC 1-1) 61-7. The 54-point margin of defeat is the third largest in the team’s history during the modern record era, which began in 1921.

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More Than a Game

A loss, but a step forward for Bowdoin football

Bowdoin football’s season-opening loss to Hamilton was a game of almosts. The offense almost clicked. The defense almost kept the game within reach. The Polar Bears almost came out on top. But almost is still almost, and the Polar Bears still fell, 37-24, in their first game under the direction of head coach BJ Hammer and his staff.

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Inaugural lecture probes model minority myth

Imagine walking into a bookstore and seeing a bookshelf labeled “Asian History” that includes volumes on Chinese history alongside volumes on Asian-American history. Now imagine a bookshelf labeled “African History” that includes volumes on the history of Nigeria alongside volumes on African Americans in the United States.

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Polar Bears rally to top St. Thomas to reach NCAA final

Six hundred ninety-eight miles from Brunswick, the women’s basketball team is making a home for itself on one of the nation’s largest stages. For the second consecutive year, Bowdoin advanced to the NCAA Division III championship game on Friday evening after finishing off the St.

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More Than a Game

Women’s basketball falls to Tufts in championship

Strange things happen when you’re very high up. You lose perspective. Things get a little blurry. Vertigo sets in. And if this past week of women’s basketball has been one thing, it has been vertiginous. After walking all over Middlebury in Saturday’s semifinal, the Polar Bears suffered their first loss of the season, falling to third-ranked Tufts, 69–75, in the finals of the NESCAC tournament on Sunday.

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W Basketball

Women’s basketball falls to Tufts in NESCAC championship

Women’s basketball suffered its first loss of the season on Sunday, falling to the Tufts Jumbos 69–75 in the finals of the NESCAC tournament. Tufts, coming off a last-minute upset of second-ranked Amherst in yesterday afternoon’s semifinal, claimed its third NESACAC title in program history, its second since 2015, and secured an automatic berth to the NCAA tournament.

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W Basketball

Polar Bears knock off Middlebury to advance to NESCAC finals

The top-seeded women’s basketball team (26-0, 11-0 NESCAC) finished off fifth-seeded Middlebury (16-7, 5-6 NESCAC) in the semifinals of the NESCAC tournament on Saturday afternoon to advance to tomorrow’s final game. The Polar Bears have not advanced to the NESCAC final since 2015, when they fell to Tufts, and have not won the tournament since 2009, Head Coach Adrienne Shibles’s first year at the program.

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More Than a Game

Women’s basketball ends regular season undefeated

Textbook. Flawless. Ideal. Unrivaled. Masterly. Exemplary. Superlative.  Pick your adjective. But one descriptor will attach itself to Bowdoin women’s basketball regular season regardless of what thesaurus you pick up: perfect. The final weekend of the women’s basketball season was a one-two-punch that dispelled any doubt—if there was any still hanging around—about the Polar Bears’ on-court dominance.

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More Than a Game

Women’s basketball defeats reigning champions

For Bowdoin women’s basketball (20-0, NESCAC 6-0), the story of Saturday’s 65-56 victory over the Amherst Mammoths (17-2, NESCAC 4-1) began 315 days earlier in Rochester, Minnesota. It was there, in the Mayo Civic Center, that the undefeated Mammoths finished off the Polar Bears, 65-45, to earn their second consecutive Division III National Championship title.

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Football

Head football coach leaves college with 3-31 record

J.B. Wells will not return as head coach of the football team, the College announced in a November 15 press release. Wells, who led the Polar Bears to a 1-8 record in his fourth season as head coach, will finish his career with an overall record of 3-31, having led the team through the longest losing streak in program history of 24 games between November of 2015 and November of 2018.

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More Than a Game

Money can’t fix everything, not even Bowdoin football

On the door to Coach J.B. Wells’ office is a poster emblazoned with the likeness of quarterback phenom Peyton Manning and the following quotation: “I wouldn’t have a single touchdown without someone to catch it, and someone to block for it, and someone to create the play, and someone to call it, and someone to celebrate it with.” Still mired in a 23-game losing streak, the longest in the program’s history, the Polar Bears have learned the truth of Manning’s wisdom in a literal way.

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More Than a Game

Football team fumbles in season opener against Williams

I’ve been accumulating a list of pithy yet uplifting one-liners to open the story about Bowdoin football’s first victory in three years. “Gameday in Brunswick began with the campus enshrouded in a thick, gloomy mist. By game time, the fog had burned off to reveal a breathtaking September day.” Just imagine the possibilities.

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More Than a Game

JV soccer player turns football hero

When I arrived at Whittier Field 15 minutes before the start of practice, the place was vacant—or so I thought. While I was sitting in the Hubbard Grandstand, enjoying the fruits of the $8 million dollar renovation, a voice called up to me from the field.

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