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Number of articles: 52
First Article: September 25, 2020
Latest Article: September 1, 2023
Juliana Vandermark
Juliana Vandermark
Juliana Vandermark
From his first years on Bowdoin’s campus debating with peers and professors, to his last debating with friends and students, Professor George Isaacson ’70 moved and inspired people around him one socratic seminar at a time.
On Thursday, June 29, President Clayton Rose sent an email statement to the College in response to the Supreme Court’s 6-3 decision to effectively ban race-based affirmative action in college admissions. Rose, who echoed the Court’s dissenting opinions, wrote the ruling was a step backward in the College’s pursuit of an equal and equitable admissions process.
In an email to the College sent on Wednesday, April 26, the College’s Covid-19 Planning Group announced that Bowdoin will scale back on-campus Covid protocols following the federal government’s announcement that the country’s three-year long public health emergency will cease on May 11.
Bright lights, a disco ball, a swing and a two-foot layer of fog accompanied Assistant Professor of Dance Aretha Aoki as she took to the stage last Saturday in her multidisciplinary dance performance: IzumonookunI. On either side of Aoki were her fellow performers: her husband Ryan MacDonald and their six-year-old daughter, Frankie.
On June 12, THRIVE will be welcoming its newest member, Anthony Parker-Gills, as the new director of the program. Dean for Student Affairs Janet Lohmann announced Parker-Gills’s appointment in an email to the College on Monday.
Editor’s Note April 2, 2023 at 4:48 p.m.: An earlier version of this article misspelled the Maine town Madawaska. The correct spelling is Madawaska, not Maddawaska. Last week’s Maine State Spelling Bee, hosted in Studzinski Recital Hall, started off like most others.
On Thursday, February 16, unredacted portions of a federal suit filed against J.P. Morgan unveiled new details about email communications between former Bowdoin trustee James ‘Jes’ Staley ’79 P’11 and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. The filing alleges that Staley and Epstein shared “photos of young women in seductive poses” over email and partook in “discussion of sex with young women.” This news comes after over three years of speculation regarding the nature of Staley’s ties to Epstein.
For the first time at Bowdoin, the College has hired a Disability Culture Coordinator, Claude Olson. According to Assistant Dean of Student Affairs for Inclusion and Diversity Eduardo Pazos, the idea was the brainchild of conversations between the Disabled Student Association and various administrators, including Pazos, Director of Student Activities Nate Hintze, Director of Student Accessibility Lesley Levy, Dean for Student Affairs Janet Lohman, and Associate Dean of Students for Inclusion and Diversity and Director of the Center for Sexuality, Women and Gender Kate Stern.
Every Thursday night from 9 to 11 p.m., curious and excited Bowdoin students gather on the ice rink at Sidney J. Watson Arena to compete in a sport like golf, to play a game like chess and to share an experience like hanging out with your closest friends.
Moulton Union’s Main Lounge is typically home to alumni dinners, multicultural events and formal gatherings. Thursday night, though, the lounge was home to a special event with visitors from two mental health groups, some of whom stood on four furry legs.
Next Friday, November 18, the Peary-MacMillan Arctic Museum will close its doors in Hubbard Hall forever and enter hibernation until spring 2023 when it will establish a new, permanent home in the John and Lile Gibbons Center for Arctic Studies.
Editor’s Note November 4, 2022: An earlier version of this article referenced the position established by the Rachel Lord Center for Religious and Spiritual Life as the “Muslim Spiritual Advisor.” This was incorrect. The position is actually titled the “Muslim Life Advisor,” and the article and headline have been corrected to reflect this.
What is the fabric of our society, a tool of imperialism and a decades-long research topic? According to Director of Ohio Valley Center for Collaborative Arts and Assistant Professor of Instruction and Art History Sam Dodd, it’s a brick.
Last Wednesday, about 30 students took a break from studying for midterms to gather around the damp museum steps, donning rain jackets and holding flickering candles. The Bowdoin Muslim Students Association (MSA) hosted a candlelight vigil to honor and raise awareness around the tragic killing of Iranian woman Mahsa Amini, who was murdered in police custody after being detained for not wearing her headscarf tightly enough.
Four weeks into the semester, campus is adjusting to an endemic approach to Covid-19. In a shift from the last two years, the College now has a decentralized model in which there is no longer one point person for Covid-related information, but instead a task force of several individuals throughout the College.
On Monday, Marcus Gadsden ’24 spent his time before class just as he did last year—heading to the library 15 minutes early to print out an assignment. It was a tried-and-true routine he had refined over the past year.
William Farley Fieldhouse was repurposed on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday as students received their new College-provided MacBooks, iPads and Apple Pencils and set them up with the help of Bowdoin Information Technology (IT) department staff. This day was years in the making.
While this year’s Ivies celebration differedfrom those of past years in many ways, live music remained an integral part of the festivities. This past Saturday, the Bowdoin Student Government (BSG) organized six hours of band performances held on the Museum steps.
This past Monday, numerous students reported the smell of smoke on Coe Quad, inside David Saul Smith Union, in Druckenmiller Hall and in other spaces around campus. While the cause remains unknown, Executive Director of the Office of Safety and Security Randy Nichols speculated the smoke came from intentional fires off campus.
A hodgepodge of wallpaper details, nooks, crannies and even a time capsule, Bowdoin’s David Saul Smith Union is more than just your average student center. Before the building was constructed, the campus had no comparable student center.
Did you come? Sex Fest attendees sure did (and for those who won the raffle prizes, perhaps even more than once). On Saturday in Smith Union, Peer Health hosted its first-annual Sex Fest, which featured ‘pin the clit on the vulva’ eductional resources, a scavenger hunt, rapid HIV testing and booths from student clubs and community partners.
For the past year, Lotte Parsons ’22 and Sarah Byars-Waller ’22 have been volunteering for the Every Voice Coalition in Maine to write a bill protecting students who are victims of domestic violence on Maine college campuses.
After eight years working with the College’s Title IX office, Benje Douglas is transitioning from his position as the College’s Title IX coordinator to vice president and interim chief diversity officer. Douglas attributed his preparation for his new role to the relationships he built in his time with the College.
Marcia Resnick was five years old when her art was first hung in a gallery. Now, 66 years later, Resnick’s art is featured here at Bowdoin, culminating a curation project that began before the pandemic. A natural artist from a young age, Resnick grew up painting and drawing.
For Mason Daugherty ’25 and Phillip Spyrou ’25, rummaging for a OneCard while in line for Thorne is a distant memory. Instead of grabbing their wallet, phone or lanyard, these students have everything they need right in the palm of their hand—literally.
On Friday, February 18, the usually subdued Smith Union erupted with cheers, music and joy. Students gathered in Smith Union donning unitards and headbands, ready to participate in the College’s third annual Henry Zietlow Ergathon. Zietlow was tragically killed in a car accident in January 2019, over winter break of his first year at Bowdoin.
For the first time, Bowdoin College Republicans will send two students to this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) with funding from the College. The club presented its request to the Student Activities Funding Committee (SAFC) at one of its weekly Monday night meetings.
At many institutions, and at Bowdoin in particular, professors’ personal lives are far more intertwined than we might expect, and their partners are closer still—sometimes even in the classroom next door. Within Bowdoin’s faculty and staff there are many couples, with some occupying neighboring offices and others situated on opposite ends of campus.
Over the past few years, the Center for Multicultural Life (CML) at Bowdoin has experienced significant staffing turnover. Two years ago, the Inaugural Director of Multicultural Life Benjamin Harris left the College, and after her first semester as Director of Multicultural Life, Kyra Green departed from the College.
In an email to the campus community on January 18, Jason Pelletier announced that the IT Tech Hub had moved to the enclosed seating area on the second floor of Smith Union. Pelletier is the senior director of client services and technology.
Bowdoin students have all received that email sent from Bowdoin DBMail: “You have a(n) item(s) ready for pick up at the Bowdoin Mail Center.” From here, schedule permitting, students make their way over to Smith Union, wait in a meandering line, recite their ID number, flash their OneCard, smile at the mailroom worker as they grab their package et voilà: a parcel of the student’s own.
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.
On January 1, 2022, the College will switch health insurance providers for College employees from Anthem to Cigna. The College has been with Anthem since 2003. Working in collaboration with outside consultants, the administration sent out a request for a proposal (RFP) this past Spring 2021, comparing plans to see which would be best for the College.
For Senior Class President Carlos Campos ’22, providing students with a platform to share their stories in a safe, inclusive, creative space is a priority. His new project, “People of the Global Majority,” a student-run publication supported by Bowdoin Student Government (BSG) and its president Ryan Britt ’22, aims to give a voice to historically marginalized students on campus.
To me, the hardest part about dancing has been trying to find my purpose, my why: figuring out how to find meaning in my movements beyond how they feel on my muscles or how they look in the mirror.
At 6:35 p.m. Thorne dining hall was abuzz with students checking their email, screams were heard on the first floor of Hawthorne-Longfellow Library and FaceTimes were ringing in as the Bowdoin Marriage Pact released the initials of the ideal match of each student who participated.
Despite initial expectations that self-reporting and antigen testing would provide an effective surveillance system for this semester, the College has shifted to becoming more reliant on PCR testing as it was last year, when students were PCR tested two to three times each week.
In light of the recent COVID-19 outbreak on campus, some students have been experiencing breakout-room déjà vu as a handful of professors have been faced with the decision to either navigate hybrid learning or temporarily make the switch to remote learning for their classes.
The College will raise the minimum wage for all hourly workers by $1.50—from $15.50 to $17.00 per hour—on Monday, September 6. This raise comes ten months ahead of Bowdoin’s 3-year plan, which had anticipated this wage increase by July, 2022.
Following a programming series for ‘international students week,’ the International Student Alliance (ISA) organized a celebration reflecting on a bittersweet year, which took place at 30 College on Thursday afternoon. While the celebration was an uplifting and recreational event, many international students also voiced frustrations and concerns in response to the uncertainties that lie ahead.
As part of programming for International Week, which celebrates international students and occurs in the last week of every April, Bowdoin’s International Student Association (ISA) hosted a talk led by Visiting Assistant Professor of Sociology Shruti Devgan “This International Life.” Devgan, a former international student and current international scholar herself, shared her own experiences with these identities as well as her perspective on how recent events have challenged and complicated the experience of international students in the United States.
College Houses were once centers of social life on campus. But due to COVID-19, they have been forced to reimagine their position. This year, they have become smaller living environments for “pods” of as few as 10 people, forgoing their typical role in campus-wide programming and community building.
Ana Gunther ’23 and Sawyer Gouldman ’23 have been collaborating with Bridget Spaeth, the academic department coordinator for the Earth and Oceanographic Science (EOS) Department, to highlight the “art” in “Earth” with their upcoming exhibition, “eARTh,” which will open in the Roux Center for the Environment on May 17.
After 14 months of research, Professor of Anthropology Krista Van Vleet shared her book published in 2019, “Hierarchies of Care: Girls, Motherhood, and Inequality in Peru,” with the Bowdoin community in a webinar-style book talk on Wednesday.
For many Bowdoin student-athletes, being a part of a team is a support system: a group that acts as a family. But exactly a year ago, that world froze as the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted athletic competitions across the country and forced teammates apart.
Whether inside or outside of the classroom, Blythe Chace ’23 has always felt connected to visual art of all media. Even as she pursues other academic and extracurricular interests, she has always deliberately crafted her schedule to allow time for making art.
For James Giltner ’23, what started out as a search for how to fill his semester away from Bowdoin turned into a groundbreaking learning experience—one that culminated in a historic rocket launch. Last fall, Giltner worked full-time at bluShift, a Brunswick-based company that launched a rocket from the Loring Commerce Center in Limestone, Maine, on January 31.
An estimated 10,000 spectators flocked to Whittier Field one Saturday afternoon in the fall of 1960 to witness what the Boston Globe referred to as the game of the week between Bowdoin and the University of Maine.
On Tuesday, the Office of Alumni Relations hosted an hour-long talk with Alvin Hall ’74 discussing his new podcast, “Driving the Green Book,” which documents a road trip he took from Detroit to New Orleans. The talk, moderated by President Clayton Rose, delved into the origins and purpose of this project.
When Bowdoin announced that seniors would not be returning to campus this fall, Sophia Salzer ’21 decided to take the semester off, instead dedicating her time and energy to Maine Planned Parenthood’s campaign for Sara Gideon, the state’s Democratic candidate for U.S.
On Monday, the College opened Thorne dining hall for indoor dining for on-campus students. For months, students have picked up meals from Thorne and Moulton dining halls, filing through the six feet apart stickers, grabbing to-go meals without a salad bar and choosing items from a snack section in lieu of the usual SuperSnack.
On Monday night, in the first Santagata Lecture ever to be held virtually, Thomas Bracket Reed Professor of Government Andrew Rudalevige moderated a political debate between political journalists Jonah Goldberg and Mara Liasson. Goldberg is a conservative columnist and a former editor of “National Review,” a right-leaning magazine.
