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Reuben Schafir
Staff Writer — Class of 2022
Number of articles: 26
First Article: October 12, 2018
Latest Article: May 13, 2022
46 photos by Reuben Schafir
Reuben SchafirFROM FRATS TO FRETS: Dana Bourgeois '75, owner of Bourgeois Guitars in Lewiston, proudly stands in his cluttered workshop. Bourgeois reflects on his work as a luthier and how his time at Bowdoin impacted his career.
Reuben SchafirA CELEBRATION OF LIFE: The Bowdoin community honored Henry Zietlow with the third annual ergathon in Smith Union last Friday. The first floor was filled with members of the crew team as well as other peers and members of Bowdoin athletics.
Reuben SchafirMOSTLY LOCAL: Chef Ali Waks Adams creates a dish for her restaurant. Waks Adams purchases her ingredients locally whenever possible and does much of her shopping at the Brunswick Winter Farmers Market.
Reuben SchafirHAND ON THE HELM: Robert H. Edwards, now 86, presided over the College from 1990-2001, a period during which the student experience changed drastically.
Reuben SchafirBridging the divide: It's unclear how much longer the bridge between Topsham and Brunswick can go without replacement or repair.
Reuben SchafirYOU SHALL NOT PASS: Fire engines, school buses, and some commercial trucks are unable to use the bridge as a result of the weight limit being lowered.
Reuben SchafirOngoing controversy: Students and community members alike have continuously raised concerns about trustee Jes Staley
Reuben SchafirBRIDGE TO THE FUTURE: Those in favor of building a new bridge are pointing to the improved safety and community benefits that will come with it.
Reuben SchafirFRIENDS OF THE FRANK J. WOOD BRIDGE: Those in favor of keeping the bridge are arguing for its historic component and the price of rehabilitation possibly being less.
Reuben SchafirThe Face of the Pandemic: Mike Ranen stands tall after zero positive test results on Wednesday. Ranen discusses his work and experiences as Bowdoin's COVID-19 resource coordinator.
Reuben SchafirSWABBIN’ FOR SAFETY: Students and faculty alike have committed to keeping campus safe, as demonstrated by their cheerful willingness for nose swabs.
Reuben SchafirWhile vaccination rates are high, repeated testing keeps the Bowdoin community safer.
Reuben SchafirCommunity effort: students and faculty alike have been committed to keeping campus safe, as demonstrated by their cheerful willingness for nose swabs.
Reuben SchafirCOMING SOON: The construction of the Gibbons Center for Arctic Studies and Mills Hall is one of the final projects laid out by the College’s 2017 Master Plan.
Reuben SchafirORDER'S UP: Ben Gatchell, owner of Dog Bar Jim, works at the coffee shop's pick-up window serving coffee to customers. Since the Town of Brunswick and the state of Maine put a shelter-in-place order, downtown restaurants have found creative ways to serve customers following CDC guidelines.
Reuben SchafirIN THE ZONE: Micah Wilson '22 focuses on his homework. Wilson has been living in an off-campus residence since classes resumed online.
Reuben SchafirPortland Pie Co. Open for: Pick-up and delivery. Accepting orders online and via phone. Call for info on beer and wine selection and specials.
Hours: Monday to Sunday 11 a.m. to 8 p.m.
For more information: Call 207-844-2777, or visit Portland Pie’s website or Facebook page.
Reuben SchafirUNDER COVER: Outside Little Dog Coffee Shop, employee Oliver Lowell serves coffee to loyal patrons.
Reuben SchafirDog Bar Jim Open for: Pick-up, drive-thru style.
Hours: Monday to Saturday 8 a.m. to 1 p.m.
For more information: Call 207-241-4300.
Reuben SchafirWORK HARD PLAY HARD: After moving into an off-campus house on Atwood Street on Monday, Nathan Ashany '21 conducts remote school work on his new bed.
Reuben SchafirALWAYS SMILING: Retired Bowdoin professor of political philosophy shares his perspective on political issues and generational divides at age 91.
Reuben SchafirALL SMILES: Founder of Pretty Flowers Amy Maloney specializes in custom floral arrangements, wreaths and landscaping. The business crafts arrangements from largely locally-sourced flowers.
Reuben SchafirClosing Time Uncle Tom’s Market on Pleasant Street has closed after more than six decades of serving Brunswick. The family-owned business was passed down from father, Thomas “Uncle Tom” Bouthot to son Dan Bouthot.
Reuben SchafirSUN'S OUT BCA co-leaders (left to right) Ayana Harscoet ’21 and Perrin Milliken ’22 at the September rally.
Reuben SchafirTIME FOR A TUNE UP: Joel Amsden and Pete Risano at Kennebeck Instrument & Amplifier specialize in extensive guitar repair. The shop is located in the Fort Andross Mill Complex.
Reuben SchafirJoel Amsden plays the Soma version of a 1959 Gibson Les Paul Special electric guitar.
Reuben SchafirHEAR ME OUT Inaugural Joseph McKeen Visiting Fellow Arthur Brooks speaks to students in the Beam Classroom. Brooks’ lecture was only open to students who registered and read one of his books and watched a documentary beforehand. The talk addressed topics as varied as social media and climate change.
Reuben SchafirFOUR-FIGURE CLUB: Caroline Flaharty ’20 became just the third Bowdoin player to record 1,000 kills and digs last week.
Reuben SchafirU.S. Senate candidate Betsy Sweet spoke at Bowdoin Climate Action's Global Climate Strike Rally that took place on the steps of the Bowdoin College Museum of Art Friday morning.
Reuben SchafirUP CLOSE AND PERSONAL: The Meddiebempsters, one of Bowdoin's six a cappella groups, performed in a first-year dorm last week. Each a cappella group undergoes a yearly recruitment process which includes performances in the first-year bricks at the annual recruitment concert.
Reuben SchafirSO LONG, FAREWELL After 23 years at Bowdoin, Dean of Student Affairs Tim Foster will retire at the end of this semester. Students, faculty, staff and guests will celebrate his legacy at a party in Thorne Hall on Friday evening.
Reuben SchafirGATHERING FOR GREEN Bowdoin students joined other activists to protest outside U.S. Senator Susan Collins’ (R-Maine) Portland office last Friday.
Reuben SchafirDEBATE AND DASH: The Merciless Debate Society’s quick, 10-minute debates happen in a flash, but provide students, like Jack Moynihan ’19 (pictured center), to engage in a spectrum of political discussion.
Reuben SchafirFRIENDS IN FORTUNO: Since the spring of their first year, Tobi Omola ’19 and Ellis Laifer ’19 have shared a close frienship and creative enterprise, collaborating on original songs through their music duo, Fortuno.
Reuben SchafirDIVING INTO THE WEEKEND: Members of the women’s swim and dive team dive into Greason Pool for an event last weekend. The Polar Bears dominated the weekend, winning both meets on Saturday and Sunday. The men’s and women’s teams will face Colby this weekend as they prepare for the NESCAC finals.
Reuben SchafirDOCUMENT OF DISCONTENT: Michael Ruetz’s photos capture an important social and political turning point in post-World War II Germany.
Reuben SchafirFLOAT LIKE A BUTTERFLY: Jean-Baptiste Andre '20 competes in the butterfly at the Maine State Meet last weekend.
Reuben SchafirCREATIVE COLLECTIVE: Students, like Aida Muratoglu ’21 (above), work in the same space where Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote parts of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.”
Reuben SchafirDYNAMIC DECEMBER: Over 60 students will perform a large variety of compositions, from modern dance to cultural choreography, dancing to iconic tunes such as “Can You Feel It” by The Jacksons.
Reuben SchafirALL SMILES Students at the watch party in Morrell Lounge in David Saul Smith Union cheer as election results are announced. Many students sat at the party for several hours, working on homework while watching CNN.
Reuben SchafirALL DECKED OUT Much of campus was decorated in honor of Election Day, including the Polar Bear Statue.
Reuben SchafirVOTING AND VIEWING At 8 p.m. on Tuesday, as Maine polls were closing, students gathered together in David Saul Smith Union to watch the results come in.
In a memorandum to the faculty dated April 21, Senior Vice President and Dean for Academic Affairs Jennifer Scanlon announced that her office had revised the College’s Shared Appointments policy. The policy had previously allowed candidates for tenure-line positions to request that they share the position with another applicant, typically their spouse or partner.
“It was awful—it was crude. But it worked,” Dana Bourgeois ’75 said with a humble chuckle while speaking of the first guitar he built. Today, however, Bourgeois, 69, is a luthier with nearly fifty years of experience.
Bowdoin’s annual Ivies party—a tradition spanning nearly 150 years—is anticipated to look dramatically different form this year according to multiple sources present at a planning meeting that took place Thursday with members of Bowdoin Student Government (BSG), The Entertainment Board, Senior Vice President and Dean for Student Affairs Janet Lohmann and Director of Student Activities Nate Hintze.
Eliana Roberts ’23 came home to her Brunsick apartment on Tuesday afternoon to find that a hot water pipe supplying water to the radiator in the apartment above hers had burst, showering hot water over the bedroom of her roommate, Esther Park ’23.
Users of the underground college directory known as the “Better Bowdoin Directory” were greeted by an upsetting message Wednesday when they tried to visit the site. Instead of the usual search bars, they found a screenshot of an email written by Erik Pearson, who works as a team lead of integrations and customization at the College’s Office of Information Technology (IT), to the site’s creator James Little ’19 asking that he remove the site.
Chef Ali Waks Adams likens Willie and Chet’s, her pop-up restaurant, to the spontaneous, ephemeral excitement of having a crush.
“A good dinner can take away some of the outside bad stuff,” Waks Adams said. “It’s temporary, it’s a panacea—but it’s a beautiful one.
“This story, in a funny way, begins in Paris,” remembered Robert H. Edwards, President of the College from 1990 to 2001. Now 86 years of age, Edwards sat upright at his spotless dining room table in his farmhouse near Wiscasset, Maine.
Finnegan Woodruff ’21 was a Renaissance man: a spirited fiddle player, a scrupulous tailor and an ambitious whitewater kayaker. Finn passed away on November 16, a month from his 23rd birthday, doing what he loved—paddling on the White Salmon River in White Salmon, Wash.
Dining Services announced this week its plan to raise the starting wage of student employees to $14.25 per hour in response to the nationwide labor shortage that has led to a staffing deficiency across many of the College’s departments.
Mike Ranen usually starts his morning by checking the College’s COVID-19 test results around 6 a.m.. The results of those tests will dictate the course of his day.
On a good day, Ranen can balance his job as the Associate Dean of Student Affairs and Director of Residential and Student Life, as well as his role as the College’s COVID-19 Resource Coordinator.
Though recipients have not yet been informed, the Office of Residential Life decided last week that students awarded Career Exploration and Development’s (CXD) Funded Internship Grants will not be permitted to live on campus this summer.
Sam Wilson, co-founder of Black Pug Brewing, dons a black latex glove and hands a customer a 32-ounce “Pug Jug” of craft beer through an open car window in the parking lot of the brewery. On the other side of Brunswick, Ben Gatchell, the owner of Dog Bar Jim: The Coffee Shop, hands paper cups of coffee to customers through a window labeled “Pick-Up.” He too, wears gloves.
Since March 18, Shuhao Liu ’22 has been the only student living in Quinby House, a College House that, just two weeks ago, 24 students called home.
“It’s kinda spooky, honestly,” Liu said.
In one week, Liu will return home to Beijing, China, where he will be placed under a 14-day quarantine.
Though COVID-19, commonly known as coronavirus, hasn’t reached Bowdoin’s campus and only 60 cases have been confirmed in the country compared to the 83,300 cases globally, the virus has affected the lives of several Bowdoin students studying abroad.
Not long after students arrived on campus this semester, posters supporting various political candidates began to appear.
The ongoing primary season prompted the Division of Student Affairs to remind students of a longstanding policy regarding political posters and events.
Before the members of the Board of Trustees convened in Beverley, Mass., this Thursday, they read a 60-page packet about Gen Z.
Among the materials trustees were required to read prior to the meeting was an article by Jeffrey Selingo, a journalist who covers higher education, titled “The New Generation of Students: How colleges can recruit, teach, and serve Gen Z.”
“Today’s students are attentive to inclusion across race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and gender identity, and they want colleges to live up to those ideals as well,” writes Selingo.
“I’m excited for it … I’m free!” said Dan Bouthot, owner of Uncle Tom’s Market, as a sizeable grin emerged from underneath his unruly white beard. After 62 years and seven months, the market, located on the corner of Pleasant Street and Westminster Avenue, has closed its doors.
“We fix catastrophic mistakes,” Joel Amsden said, pulling a replica of a 1959 Gibson Les Paul electric guitar out of its case. The neck was unfinished and barren. The guitar, worth around $5,000 according to Amsden’s off-the-cuff estimate, needed extensive repair.
Nearly a month before Bowdoin proudly unveiled the four new state-of-the-art apartment buildings on Park Row, the College found itself under fire due to the practices of one of its subcontractors, Timberland Drywall, Inc.
Approximately 15 protestors, half of them from the New England Regional Council of Carpenters (NERCC), held signs outside the construction site accusing Timberland Drywall of tax fraud via the misclassification of their workers.
Pete Seeger stood on the stage of Pickard Theater in front of a single microphone. He picked the strings of his signature long-neck banjo and whistled a gentle harmony, his foot tapping out the beat. After a minute, he stopped playing and began to explain the history of the long-neck banjo and the folk music he played on it.
Around the bar at Moderation Brewing on the first Friday in March, 10 students and 10 professors discussed the purpose of American colleges. The group, formally titled the Concordia Forum, had departed from the couches in the Massachusetts Hall Faculty Room and walked to Moderation Brewing to continue their conversation, which lasted for over two hours.
Rachel Connelly, Bion R. Cram professor of economics, and her family have what she describes as “a long-term love affair with China.” So when her oldest son, Martin Connelly, graduated from Colby in 2008 and suggested that the family start a Chinese tea company, it seemed only natural.
“I want to briefly share a few thoughts on my mind lately. Though I’m far from religious, I have an indelible tie to my Jewish heritage. My grandfather, Michael Schafir, was a Holocaust survivor. He spent five and half years in various forced labor and concentration camps throughout Poland and Germany.
Leaving behind a disappointing 2017-18 season, the Bowdoin men’s ice hockey team will open the season with home games against Williams and Middlebury tonight and tomorrow afternoon, respectively. The team is feeling optimistic, says Head Coach, Jamie Dumont.
The new Bowdoin website, bowdoin.edu, launched on Tuesday night after undergoing its first major revamp in 13 years. The complete overhaul of the website, which has been in the works for the last three years, went extremely smoothly, said Janie Porche, the director of content for Bowdoin’s Office of Communications and Public Affairs.
Moving past the drawn-out construction process of the Roux Center for the Environment, Senior Vice President for Finance and Administration Matt Orlando says the Park Row Apartments will be ready for student occupancy as scheduled in the fall of 2019.