Next Thursday at 3:30 p.m., Bowdoin will have a 15-minute emergency lockout drill. The drill is meant to prepare students in case of a lockout, threat or hazard on or around campus. Students will be notified by phone, text and email of the drill through the College’s emergency communication system and told to stay inside or enter the nearest building or safe space. Students will be notified when the drill is complete.
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Amid significant spending in the 2016 election cycle and the emergence of campaign finance as a national concern, the political contributions of Bowdoin’s Board of Trustees have become especially notable. The size and volume of Board member’s contributions shed light on the political affiliations of the College’s highest governing body.
The trustees are active participants in the political process. According to data compiled from the Federal Election Commission (FEC), 10 members of Bowdoin’s Board of Trustees have donated over $20,000 to political campaigns since 1997. Five have donated over $200,000 and six of those 10 have made contributions primarily to Republican candidates and groups.
Influence, Ideology & Board CompositionSignificant financial ties to political candidates have some influence on the decisions these trustees make as Board members, according to according to Associate Professor of Government and Legal Studies Michael Franz. Franz teaches a course called Money and Politics, and his research investigates the role of interest groups in political campaigns.
He said that, though the contributions do not directly affect a trustee’s decision making, the contributions are suggestive of political ideology, and that ideology affects a trustee’s decision making
“Ultimately I think you can separate the things you’re involved in with your political preferences in some fashion or another. So trustees who are primarily Republican donors or primarily Democratic donors likely have a perspective on the role of government and regulations that may influence the way they think about the world,” Franz said. “That perspective may influence how they behave as trustees but I think the donations are a reflection of those beliefs as opposed to the donations as having an influence on what they do as trustees.”
Theory suggests that donations that follow the pattern of party alignment can be understood as indicators of ideological alignment.
Six of the ten top contributors to political campaigns on the board have donated consistently to Republicans and three have donated consistently to Democrats. Leonard Cotton has donated a roughly equal amount to both parties. This imbalance can likely be explained by the tendency for large contributors to support Republicans.
The political affiliations of the Board as a whole, as implied by campaign contributions, appear slightly unaligned with that of the student body. In 2012, the Orient reported that 47 percent of respondents in a survey of students were registered Democrats and 8 percent of respondents were registered Republicans. Only 35 percent of Board members have made political contributions that indicate a Democratic alignment and 33 percent of Board members have made contributions that indicate a Republican alignment.
The implications of these contributions raise important questions about the demographic composition of Bowdoin’s Board and its process for selecting new trustees.
New trustees are selected by a committee of the trustees themselves. The Statement of Trustee Roles and Responsibilities says that the Board’s Committee on Trustees takes recommendations for new members, evaluates them and recommends them to the full Board for approval.
No members of the Board of Trustees responded to requests for comment.
According to President Rose, the process of selecting trustees is a process of matching the Board’s needs.
“You think about mapping what your needs are at a given moment in time against who’s available and out there and who might be interested and willing to do it and then try to figure out how to get from A to B,” Rose said.
One possible explanation for the ideological divergence on the Board is the expectation that Board members make financial contributions to the college. According to The Statement of Trustee Roles and Responsibilities, “Trustees are expected to support the College financially by taking the lead in gift-giving, thereby setting an example for others in the Bowdoin family.”
While trustees are only expected to do this within their capacity to do so, there is an implicit incentive for trustees to have significant financial means.
Nearly two-thirds of the Board is male and almost 50 percent have spent most of their careers in finance.
The Board's Top Contributors .piechart{ height: 400px; width: 50%; }Understanding the donationsThe recipients of the trustees’ donations are incredibly numerous and span the entire partisan spectrum, but according to Franz, the contributions likely share a similar purpose. They facilitate the donor’s access and influence during the policymaking process.
“If you’re an important businessman or woman and you feel that the success of your business partly depends on what the federal government decides to regulate or how it decides to act, you may decide that your campaign contributions allow you to have a seat at the table in the discussion of policy making,” Franz said.The effects of these contributions have been measured and quantified.
“If the donor calls the candidate and says, ‘I’m going to be in Washington, it would be nice if we could get together and talk,’ research suggests that donors are much more likely to get those meetings,” said Franz.
The significant financial assets of each of these trustees suggest they have a direct interest in the policy making process. Each of these 10 high-contributing trustees has direct or nearly direct involvement with large amounts of money. Seven have had careers in the financial services industry. As owners and senior management of hedge funds, private equity firms and banks, six of these trustees oversee investment portfolios worth billions of dollars. For example, Stone’s company, Oaktree Capital, has over $95 billion in assets under management. Roux’s firm, Silver Lake, oversees over $26 billion and Great Hill Partners, the firm Gormley co-founded, has over $2.5 billion in assets.
Trustee John McQuillan’s firm Triumvirate Environmental navigates complex environmental legislation for a variety of corporate and public clients. Karen Walker’s law firm Kirkland and Ellis reported $2.15 billion in revenue in 2014 and routinely represents the interests of multi-billion dollar corporations in commercial litigation. Geoffrey C. Rusack ’78, P’13 owns a winemaking business in California with his wife Alison Wrigley Rusack, who inherited a portion of the chewing gum company that shares her name’s fortune.
The political donations available in the FEC database and compiled by the Orient include donations directly to candidates, to joint fundraising committees and to Super PACS. Regulations that dictate contribution limits vary significantly for each type of donation.
For example, in the 2016 election cycle, contributions directly to a candidate are capped at $2,700 per election. A donor can give that amount to a candidate twice—once for a primary and once for the general election. Such a donation, however, buys a limited form of influence.
According to Franz, party and congressional campaign committees, for which the contribution limits are significantly higher, buy a donor significantly more influence. Specifically, the donor gains access and influence with the party elites who exert more influence and have a greater ability to shape policy outcomes.
Contributions to party committees also have a far greater potential to shape the party’s outcome across many elections.
“Parties don’t really like to waste their money on sure winners, they like to spend their money on competitive races,” said Franz. “So you could give a $50,000 check to the DNC and that money is gonna go straight into Ohio next fall.”
These trustees have also made contributions to Super PACs, which have no contribution limits but they are prohibited by modern campaign finance laws from consulting directly with candidates. Because these committees are so new—they were established by the 2010 Citizens United Supreme Court decision—there has been little research into the direct effects of Super PAC contributions.
Additionally, many of these trustees have likely made political contributions that do not appear in FEC data. A 501(c)(4) is a non-profit organization that is not required to disclose its donors. Donors often use these organizations to shield their contributions from the public eye.
ProPublica published a helpful breakdown of the difference between Super PACs and 501(c) organizations here.
While the contributions of all but one of the ten high contributing board members skew significantly left or right enough to indicate a party alignment, many have given money to candidates or groups from the opposing party.
For instance, while Karen Walker has given to the Republican National Committee, Mitt Romney, John McCain and George W. Bush, she also contributed to Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Within the long list of Jes Staley’s democratic donations, there is one to Rob Portman, a republican senator from Ohio.
Franz believes these contributions are likely hedges and that they support the understanding that these board members buy influence and access. A donor who has an incentive for political access is likely to contribute to candidates despite ideological differences.
One year since the Meeting in the Union, the College has adopted and addressed many policies and practices in response to student concerns. However, an overarching sentiment exists among administrators and students that while progress is being made, it will be made slowly and there is still work to be done.
The meeting was a student-organized demonstration that took place February 13, 2015. It brought to the forefront several social justice issues that impact members of the Bowdoin community, as well as the intersectionality between those issues. After the meeting, an Open Letter to the Community was delivered to former president Barry Mills, outlining 19 calls to action regarding race and diversity on campus.
Race and diversity issues continue to permeate the lives of Bowdoin community members. “Race is a dividing line in our society, on campuses across our country, and at Bowdoin. Those of color in our community experience Bowdoin differently than those who are white; the difference can be profound and occurs in every aspect of our lives here,” wrote President Clayton Rose in a December 3, 2015 campus-wide email.
“It can be daunting—it’s a lot to take on,” said Associate Dean of Students for Diversity and Inclusion Leana Amaez. “We’re asking institutions that were built 200 years ago for a very different population to reimagine themselves, and that takes a lot of intentionality and examination of where are our traditions, where are our policies, where are our practices not meeting the needs of students today, where are they not reflecting the diversity of our world, where are they creating barriers to inclusion and equity.”
Amaez and the rest of the office of student affairs have been heavily involved in several efforts that directly address concerns raised in the open letter. Notably, additional programming during first-year orientation will specifically address race and bias; Bowdoin’s intergroup dialogue programming is expanding; and divisions of the College are adopting hiring and retention best practices in order to increase diversity among faculty and staff.
Residential Life (ResLife) has also taken steps towards educating their staff on how to facilitate conversations on difficult subjects by doubling the amount of training on race, gender and sexuality, as well as working with College House officers to improve the inclusivity and accessibility of College House programming. Additionally, ResLife has added a question specific to diversity to the College House application.
A year after the Meeting in the Union, the event continues to have a profound impact at the College, both on an institutional level and for many people individually.
“I think that was the first time I’ve really seen the activist boundaries being crossed in everyone working towards general betterment and getting many pieces together at once which I thought was really, really, cool,” said Maddie Lemal-Brown ’18. “I really liked the Meeting in the Union part; [it was] electrifying.”
One of the meeting organizers, Claudia Villar-Leeman ’15, had several negative racial experiences during her time at Bowdoin.
“For pretty much my entire Bowdoin career,” said Villar-Leeman, it felt [like the majority of campus] was either ignoring or kind of willfully oblivious to a lot of these issues because a lot of these issues are painful to talk about or uncomfortable to talk about.”
Participating in the event has allowed Villar-Leeman to now look back at her time at Bowdoin with positivity.
“I was very encouraged that students were giving voice to their concerns in a really clear and powerful way, and that the message for me is that our students were really hurting as a result of the institution and its failures in certain places to live up to the Offer of the College,” said Amaez.
“That’s an important message, and an important check that can be hard to hear and sometimes painful, because I think my colleagues across the board are well-intentioned, they really care, so to hear that they might be might be missing the mark and that people might be in pain as a result is really hard, but really important for us as a community.”
Director of Residential Life Meadow Davis said that she has seen a shift in campus conversations towards topics of diversity.
“A couple years ago it was all about alcohol, it was all about the hookup scene,” she said. “Now I’d say three quarters, a huge percentage, of people who are applying to ResLife are saying, ‘We need more conversations about diversity. We’ve had great conversations and we appreciate it—here’s how we want to do more.”
Emily Jacques ’17, one of the organizers of the meeting, agreed, saying that she has seen a substantive change in campus discussions on race in the time since the meeting, both as a result of the meeting and other incidents.
“My first year you could avoid these sorts of conversations if you wanted to, but now it’s more present,” she said. “The stuff that’s been happening with locals in cars or the stuff on Yik Yak—I feel like the campus community is definitely more aware of various issues of injustice.”
Dean of Student Affairs Tim Foster echoed Davis and Jacques’ sentiments.
“[The meeting] was really about the notion of inclusion and what that means,” he said. “Do all members of our community feel that this place is theirs? And the answer to me was no, they don’t. That’s what we should aspire for. That means a ton of work, not work that we can do in a day or a week or a month, or a year, but over many years.”
But for students who only spend four years of their life at Bowdoin, this long-term institutional approach can be frustrating. Michelle Kruk ’16, one of the organizers of the meeting and an author of the letter spoke to these concerns.
“I know that the College wants to be very thoughtful about the way that it’s handling certain issues, especially with race,” she said. “But I think that we’re capable of working on both a short-term solution and a long-term solution at the same time. I think that we have enough energy.”
Another organizer, Lemal-Brown, still believes that many discussions fail to reach the larger community in both academic and social settings.
“Last semester I know I was a little disappointed that my professors were not talking about race,” she said. “My [sociology and philosophy] classes were places where it should have been brought up.”
“I know that I was very frustrated with the aftermath of the sailing party—meaning that Bowdoin still [falls back on] discussing things which tend to become conversations in closed rooms by separate groups,” Lemal-Brown said.
Ashmead White Director of Athletics Tim Ryan acknowledged the role athletics play in the racial climate on campus, both in its hiring and recruitment, and how the department addresses incidents such as the recent bias incidents involving the sailing and lacrosse teams.
“We certainly look at the events that have taken place and try to balance the learning opportunity,” he said. “Thinking about it along the lines of apologizing, educating and trying to leverage the learning opportunities associated with people making mistakes, then thinking about the ways in which we are able to positively impact the community. I think that approach was consistent in both the lacrosse and sailing incidents.”
Ryan also said that athletics is placing an increased emphasis on diversity in recruiting both students and coaching staff.
While the majority of the calls to action in the letter were accepted and acknowledged by College officials, some feel that there are certain demands that have not or should not be met.
For instance, following the meeting, members of Bowdoin Climate Action (BCA)—who played a large role in organizing the meeting—made a demand to former President Barry Mills to appoint a liaison to the Board of Trustees to communicate about the potential for divestment from fossil fuels. BCA does not feel their demand was adequately met, as Mills appointed himself the liaison, knowing he would be stepping down at the end of the year.
“When we asked [the trustees] who to follow up with, as one does in official meetings, they shut us down and didn’t respond. Attempts after that to figure out how to move forward were similarly not moved forward,” said BCA member Allyson Gross ’16.
From an administrative standpoint, Foster disagreed with the necessity of a call to action that asked the college to “consider a student’s racial and socioeconomic background when making decisions about disciplinary action,” and “uphold consistent disciplinary policy for all students, regardless of parental interaction with the institution.”
“We try to consistently and thoughtfully uphold [community standards],” he said. “I think we do that, whether we’re dealing with the son or daughter of a trustee or whether we’re dealing with a first generation college student. I would say [we do] a very good job of being clear about our community standards and expectations and being thoughtful. I’ll stand behind the good work of the Judicial Board.”
The work of campus activists has not gone unnoticed by the administration, and the calls to action presented in the open letter have led to a real effort to shape the College into a place that is both diverse and inclusive. A year after the meeting, its message has not been forgotten.“Powerful,” said Davis. “That’s how I would sum it up.”
“My parents have never known what it’s like outside a city basically. Like [for me] coming into Brunswick, Maine with all the trees and different colors… It definitely creates two different worlds,” Chow said.
Chow, like roughly 10 percent of students in the class of 2019, is a first-generation college student. That percentage has been fairly consistent for the first year class over the past five years.
In many ways, “first-gen” students face typical challenges: managing school and work, sleep and stress, friends and health. Some, however, face obstacles other students will never have to deal with, like the lull on the other end of the line when trying to explain Bowdoin to their parents.
“My family didn't even know Bowdoin existed,” said Diamond Walker ’17, who grew up in the Bronx. “I don't even think they understand what a liberal arts school means.”
Even though he was born and raised relatively close to campus in Portland, Maine, Mohamed Nur ’19 said some aspects of college—like the social scene—are entirely foreign to his family.
“My parents, they know Bowdoin, but in a very superficial kind of way. They know it’s a college, they know after four years I’ll get a degree,” he said.
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Read and listen to the stories of 11 first generation students.Many first-generation students spoke of the difficulty of explaining the details of their lives at the College to their parents.
Anu Asaolu ’19 said that her Nigerian mother has a hard time seeing college as more than just an academic pursuit.
“Every time I call my mom, she’s just like, ‘Remember, you’re here to learn,’” said Asaolu. “Yeah, college is about learning, but it’s really hard to explain that it’s also about developing yourself and really finding out who you are.”
When Asaolu got a concussion while playing rugby this fall, her mother told her she should join a science club instead. Asaolu is interested in a career in medicine.
“It’s really hard explaining that [rugby] is what I want to do, that this is what makes me happy,” she said. “‘Get your degree,’ that’s my mom’s entire goaI.”
Christina Moreland ’17 recalled avoiding telling her parents that the transition to college was difficult, as she felt they wouldn’t be able to relate.
“The nuances of how to be a college student were not something I was explaining… I would kind just leave things out and just be like, ‘Yeah, everything is great, I love everything. I’m doing really well,’” she said. “I think some of that comes from not being able to say, ‘Yeah, the first semester of college is hard’ and have them connect with that.”
Many students expressed concern that if they shared the full details of their Bowdoin experiences, their families would worry unnecessarily.
“When I cough, I cough away from the phone. So [my mom] isn’t super worried about me,” Chow said.
Other first-generation students found it easier to stop communicating their Bowdoin experience altogether.
Michelle Kruk ’16 said she rarely calls home.
“A lot of those conversations can be frustrating because it’s a lot of [my parents] dumping whatever is happening at home onto me and then not allowing me to dump what’s going on here to them, and even if I do dump that, they don’t understand it,” she said. “If I have to explain to you a thousand times what I’m majoring in or what I’m minoring in or what classes I’m taking, it just over time gets really repetitive and I don’t want to answer those questions any more.”
There is no such thing as a typical first-generation student. The label is not necessarily indicative of wealth, nor is it representative of race, hometown or socioeconomic status. In other words, the only thing first-generation students are guaranteed to have in common is the definition of the term itself: that neither parent holds a two or four year degree from a college or university.
Kenny Cortum ’16 is a first generation student from Iowa. He has blond hair, pale skin and wears rectangular glasses.
“It’s hard to be a first-generation student and look like I’m part of the one percent,” he explained. “I’ve actually had trouble connecting with other first-generation students here because I don’t look first-generation.”
Despite not looking like many of his first-gen peers, Cortum said his background affected his academic experience.
“One of my most distinct memories was when my neighbors across the hall would send their parents their essays to have them look over them, which I thought was kind of unfair,” he said. “I had to really look at these differences and find a way to adjust to make Bowdoin work for me the same way they’re making Bowdoin work with their parents. I had to do it without my parents.”
The academic transition to Bowdoin varies widely among first-generation students, as it does among all first years. Students who attended private schools or strong public high schools often felt well-prepared for college, while students who attended less privileged schools often found academics more difficult, especially in their first year.
"I came to college for academics, first and foremost, and I deserve the best out of my experience like anybody else," said Walker, whose public high school in the Bronx offered few advanced classes and was frequently subject to budget cuts. "I know I could do better, but I'm doing a lot with what I have so far. It's hard to be compared to students who've been challenged like this for years and this is my first time confronting stuff like this."
Walker believes her status as a first-generation student makes her time at the College even more valuable.
“My grades are everything right now,” she said. “To be honest, I don't have anything else. I don't have money. I don't have family with connections. All I have is my education.”
Shawn Bayrd ’19, who grew up in Brunswick, explained that he didn’t fully grasp the prestige of a Bowdoin education until after he got his acceptance letter. While he feels like he fits in academically, Bayrd said he still notices instances where he feels like an outsider because of his status as a first-gen student.
“Since my parents didn't go to college, they don't have this academic standpoint on the world… When I talk to people who have parents who went to get their PhDs or are high in their fields, I've noticed that the kids are also very aware of what's going on around them,” he said. “I haven't gotten the home aspect where we talk about what's going on in the world.”
Bayrd attended Brunswick High School and worked alongside his mom at Thorne Hall in his junior year of high school.
“It was awful. I hated Bowdoin kids because if you're not a student you don't get treated as well,” he said. “One of my jobs was to put the coffee pots in the machines and turn it on so it would filter through. And there was this whole crowd around the coffee thing waiting for the coffee and I was just standing there with the pots waiting for them to move and they were like, ‘Are you gonna make more coffee?’ I'm like, ‘Yes, I will if you fucking move.’”
While intellectual support is one privilege of being raised by college-educated parents, financial stability is another, more widely-recognized advantage. According to data collected by the National Information Center for Higher Education Policymaking and Analysis there is a $26,700 median difference in yearly earnings between those with a high school diploma versus a bachelor's degree.
“Because my parents didn’t go to college, finances are always an issue,” said Zac Watson ’16. “So I actually moved in by myself. My parents weren’t here to help me move in. And that was kind of—it was very different. Everyone’s parents help them move in on the first day. And it was just me here. I had to go to the mail center, get all my boxes, move in, get to the Field House.”
Watson said he still feels different because of his financial status at times.
“It was the social aspect that I really noticed,” he said. “Friends want to go to Quebec for Fall Break or something, and it’s like, ‘I can’t do that. I support myself.’”
“People said ‘Oh yeah, we went to Europe for a trip or we went to somewhere like Hawaii,’’’ recalled Chow. “A lot of [first-generation students] can’t afford trips like that... Having us talk about our summers is like ‘I worked this summer.’”
Most first-generation students expressed that, while their first-generation status impacted their social life, it also didn’t preclude them from forming friendships with non-first-generation students.
“Despite seeing that there are a lot of differences, I can still be friends with all these other people with a lot of privilege,” said Chow. “I can still connect with them in ways and have a lot of fun with them.”
For many students, the first-gen label often takes a backseat to other, more salient aspects of their identity.
"It's been very hard for me to explain my first-gen experience because until last semester, actually, I haven't really had one," Walker explained. "My experience has always been curtained by being black. If anyone asked me what it was like [to be first-gen], I'd talk about what it was like to be black here."
“You don’t wear your first-generation identity on your sleeve, nobody can really tell. And so there’s many other transitional issues that students here face that are more physical, that I think are prioritized for students,” said Kruk. “Like I’m more concerned about being a woman of color than being first-gen, because that’s what impacts me first.”
For other students, national identity plays a role. Camille Farradas ’19 attended a competitive private high school in Miami where many students were of Cuban descent, like her. She said she sees her identity as a first-generation student as inextricably tied to her Cuban background, because college wasn’t an option for her parents in communist Cuba.
“Part of being Cuban in particular is that I couldn’t grow up where I was supposed to grow up,” she said. “Part of [going to college] is rebuilding our family from nothing.”
Given the diverse individual experiences of first-generation students, it can be difficult to provide resources to support the entire group. At the same time, first-generation students typically experience more difficulties than non-first-generation students. Nationally, the graduation rate for these students from private institutions is 70 percent, while only 57 percent who attend public institutions graduate. Data on the graduation rate of Bowdoin’s first-generation students was unavailable.
Bowdoin provides some programming attempts to support first-generation students by bringing them together at the first-generation multicultural retreat, which takes place every fall.
“It [is] really an opportunity to bring first-generation students and students of color off campus after they’ve been at Bowdoin for about a month and kind of get them a safe space off campus to talk about any issues they might have,” said Director for Multicultural Life Benjamin Harris.
He added that the retreat was also a good way to connect first years with upperclassmen role models.
“The first-generation multicultural retreat…was an amazing bonding opportunity,” said Simone Rumph ’19. “Whether it be first-gen, or having struggles with economy, or being multiracial, coming from different backgrounds. It’s just a bond that is there.”
At the same time, the retreat conflates the labels of first-generation and multicultural. And while some first-generation students find support through affinity groups like the African American Society (Af-Am) or the Latin American Student Organization (LASO), connecting with first-gen peers can be more difficult for students who are first-generation college students but are not a racial or ethnic minority.
Cortum recalls feeling isolated when he went on the retreat as a first year.
“There was only one other who was as pale as I was and I felt like we were kind of alienated at first,” he said.
Bowdoin also hosts a couple of dinners a semester aimed specifically at first-generation students. Learning to utilize these resources can be an adjustment too.
"As a first-gen, I think it’s very easy to say—for most of us—that throughout our lives we’ve been doing things on our own," Chow said. “So coming to college, one of the biggest lessons I’ve learned is that it’s okay to reach out for help. It’s okay to use resources around you.”
Though Chow’s parents are thousands of miles away, he managed to find support from connecting with upper class role models.
“People seem like they’re doing alright, but they’re also going through a lot. [For] me realizing, ‘Hey, you know, someone’s been through this,’” he said. “It’s okay to feel that way.”
Twenty-five years ago this week, a group of 50 students blocked the entrances to the College’s administration building for four hours in protest of the lack of faculty diversity at Bowdoin. At the time, Bowdoin had just nine faculty members of color.
Since then, the College has emphasized the need to improve the racial diversity of its faculty, embarking on several initiatives toward that end. Results have been mixed: the number of professors of color on campus has increased, but that growth has been slow and uneven, and lagged behind many of Bowdoin’s peers.
Last year, there were a total of 32 minority members of the entire 235-person faculty, good for 13.6 percent of Bowdoin’s faculty, according to the College’s Common Data Set.
Many of the same obstacles that Bowdoin faced in creating a diverse faculty in 1990 still challenge the College today.
Randy Stakeman, associate professor of history and Africana studies emeritus, was the associate dean of academic affairs from 1991-1994 and at times in the 1980s and 1990s the only African-American professor at Bowdoin. He listed four challenges to creating a diverse faculty: the departmental hiring process, conscious and unconscious biases, the demography of specific fields and the unattractiveness of Bowdoin’s location.
“None of these is an excuse not to pursue faculty diversity, nor to throw up your hands at the impossibility,” Stakeman said in a phone interview with the Orient. “They are simply obstacles to be overcome.”
“Those all remain challenges, but we have worked towards mitigating some of the effects of those challenges,” said Interim Dean for Academic Affairs Jennifer Scanlon.
Current InnitiativesScanlon said that the biggest challenge for Bowdoin now is addressing people’s implicit biases.
“That is inherent in our culture, people of color exhibit unconscious bias, white people exhibit unconscious bias, it is part of the water that we swim in, the air that we breathe. But that doesn’t excuse it in any way. So we have to make sure that we employ principles but also talk honestly and openly about these things," Scanlon said.
Today, the College’s efforts to create a racially diverse faculty are a part of each faculty search. The Faculty Diversity Committee has five members, one of whom sits on the search committee for every faculty opening.
The representative from the Faculty Diversity Committee is involved in a search from the time a position opens up until after the new faculty member is on campus. He or she is tasked with providing an outside perspective on the search committee and ensuring that candidates from a range of backgrounds, subfields and graduate programs are considered.
“It’s not just about the pool of candidates,” said Scanlon. “It’s also about our ability to fairly read applications and CVs and think long term and clearly about what fit means, what excellence means, what success means in a broader way.”
The College has also hired Romney Associates, a consulting firm, to help search committees think about how they can be conscious of diversity during every step of a search process.
The Maine ProblemWhile Bowdoin has changed its hiring process to include a member of the Faculty Diversity Committee in every search to recruit more broadly and to educate the committee about potential biases, it cannot do anything to change its location.
Bates, Bowdoin and Colby had three of the four lowest percentages of minority faculty in the NESCAC in 2014.
“Maine is overwhelmingly white. Maine is overwhelmingly rural. We are in a small town,” said Associate Professor of Africana Studies and History Brian Purnell. “If you are black, or you are Hispanic, or from another country—if you are used to a vibrant, bustling metropolis, this world will be small, it will have limited options for you to pursue yourself, and it is quiet.”
Marilyn Reizbaum, the Harrison King McCann professor of English, was part of a 1992 Subcommittee on Diversity and the ad hoc committee in 2008 that issued a report on increasing faculty diversity. She cautioned against seeing location as an impenetrable problem.
“I think [Bowdoin’s location] can be a concern, but sometimes it is an excuse— a self-fulfilling prophecy and productive of circular reasoning,” Reizbaum wrote in an email to the Orient. “Bowdoin is a desirable place to work and can be very attractive. There can be a directed address by the college to the diverse needs of a diverse community, which will be welcoming to faculty who are being recruited.”
Indeed, Purnell emphasized that despite Maine’s relatively homogenous nature, his personal experience as an African-American professor at Bowdoin has been largely positive.
“I feel supported in my work, I feel like I’m able to raise a happy healthy family, I’m able to teach my children about race and class in America, and difference, so I flow well here. That might not be the norm for everybody, but it is for me,” Purnell said.
“It’s a slow process, but I don’t know, this is the question I would have: what are the other schools doing differently to get there faster?” said Staci Williams Seeley ’90, who was president of the African-American Society during her senior year and President of the Alumni Council from 2010 to 2012. “And the answer can’t be ‘Maine is a white state.’ Vermont is a white state, Connecticut, there are places where there are NESCAC schools where there is far more progress. For a good opportunity, for the right opportunity, the right scholar is going to come along.”
Other ApproachesBowdoin has a program for Target of Opportunity Hires, which allow departments to hire outside of the normal openings if talented minority candidates come along.
“I would still maintain that we should have a target of opportunity process, but the hardest work should take place on the part of the faculty and that is hiring a diverse faculty pool through the regular search process,” Scanlon said.
The College is also part of the Consortium for Faculty Diversity (CFD), which sends post-doctoral fellows to schools around the country. Bowdoin currently has five CFD fellows, but according the Scanlon, the goal of the program is bigger than increasing Bowdoin’s faculty diversity.
“My thought about the CFD program is that it is a larger institutional commitment—that there are many people of diverse backgrounds who are not that familiar with the small liberal arts college,” Scanlon said.
Bowdoin usually does not have openings to offer CFD fellows full-time offers, but hopes that they will end up in a small liberal arts college.
“The CFD program is not as narrow as diversifying the faculty at Bowdoin, it is also about diversifying the professoriate,” Scanlon said. “It’s a commitment that Bowdoin makes that applies to Bowdoin, but it’s also larger than Bowdoin.”
Yale announced earlier this week that they would invest $50 million in an initiative to fund new minority faculty hires in all of the University’s schools. It joins other large universities that have made high-profile financial commitments to faculty diversity in recent years, including Columbia in 2012.
“We’re not Yale,” Scanlon said. “We don’t have $50 million, so we have to find our own ways, our own Bowdoin ways, to keep this alive and to educate people about the importance of diversity among the faculty, and have people feel like it’s a community effort.”
“I think we should always be on the lookout for new approaches and keep an eye on how other institutions are doing their searching and trying to retain faculty,” said William D. Shipman Professor of Economics John Fitzgerald, who has been at the College since 1983 and was the chair of the ad hoc group on increasing faculty diversity in 2008. “It’s an ongoing process. I don’t think there’s an end goal and I don’t think there is a silver bullet. It’s a matter of trying to continually improve how we operate.”
Long-Term CommitmentAccording to Bowdoin’s Office of Institutional Research, 14 out of 119 tenured faculty in 2014 were minorities. The percentage of tenured faculty who are minorities has increased gradually over the past 10 years, but has been consistently below the overall percentage of minority faculty.
Part of the reason for this may be that while diversity is considered in the hiring process, it is not part of the tenure process.
“Tenure is based on excellence in teaching, distinction in scholarship and service to the College. So those are the sole criteria,” said Scanlon.
The fluctuations in faculty diversity are likely due to professors who are not brought to Bowdoin for the long term.
“The big concern is getting people who are tenured at the College. You can always have full time faculty and staff that come in for a year, maybe two, but if you’re not tenured, they’re not going to really have any vested interest in staying at the college for an extended period and that’s what it seems that Bowdoin still needs to work on,” said Karen Hinds ’93.
Faculty Diversity MattersMinority faculty members have been an important part of the student experience at the College.
“People bring a lot more when they’re trying to learn than just going from tabula rasa to informed individual,” said Purnell. “Some people have to work through more stuff than just mastering the material. It helps to have a mentor for some people… I think that’s a role that some minority students want, or need.”
“I certainly felt very cared for and nurtured and attended to by faculty of color, that they considered mentoring students of color, black students in particular to be part of the deal, part of their job. And they did it with a lot of skill and care and attention and time,” said Seeley.
In addition to personal mentoring, minority faculty serve as role models for students.
“I think it’s the same with when you see a woman in front of the classroom. It really encourages you—especially if you’re interested in academia, but really interested in any position of power, I think it’s so important to just have representation at the head of the classroom,” said Elina Zhang ’16.
Michelle Kruk ’16 agreed about the importance of the perspective that minority faculty can bring to students of color.
“They’ve been able to speak to me in a way that others haven’t,” Kruk said. “I’ve had faculty of color—not just at Bowdoin, but even in high school—who have seen that I’m not getting something, and then they’ll use an example from their life experiences, or from the experience they know will resonate with me, and then I’ll be like, ‘oh shoot, I got it, this is what this means.’”
The diversity of the faculty also impacts what kinds of courses the College can offer.
“Having faculty who are diverse in certain departments, it definitely encourages a diversity of students to pursue those disciplines, and that was really really important to me. I also think that it creates a more diverse course load—for example, when you bring in these new faculty members, they will teach courses that aren’t in the typical canon,” said Zhang.
Faculty also feel that diversity is also important for the College as a whole.
“It makes the college be part of the evolving diversification of the US. In part, to teach students an enhanced perspective is one of the objectives of the college, and a diverse faculty allows us to do that,” Fitzgerald said.
“People bring different things to the table, people bring different questions to what it means to learn and how to learn and what it is we need to learn. And so the richest intellectual environment will be one that is more diverse,” added Scanlon.
While some argue that a focus on diversity leads to lower standards, Rose doesn’t see it that way.
“This issue is not one of surrendering any of those standards. This issue is of doing the work to find the really great teachers and scholars of color and then to consider them in a real and robust way in the process,” Rose said.
Here Having Been ThereThe protest on November 2, 1990 was organized by the Coalition of Concerned Students, a collection of students from different groups which included the African American Society, the Latin American Students Organization, the Bowdoin Women’s Association, the Bowdoin Jewish Organization and Bowdoin Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders. They demanded action by recently-inaugurated President Bob Edwards and wanted a more diverse student body, a more diverse faculty and a gay and lesbian studies program.
The Coalition wanted a response to their demands by November 2, but after Edwards released a memorandum on October 31 that the students from the Coalition deemed “unacceptable,” they decided to protest. The demonstration was the culmination of discussions that started between the various groups earlier that year and were also catalyzed by the departure of one of Bowdoin’s two African-American professors, Gayle Pemberton, that summer.
Edwards met with five student representatives that day and released a statement with a plan that satisfied the students enough for them to stop the blockade.
Hinds (then Karen Edwards) was one of the students who met with Edwards that day, and said that faculty diversity important for the same reasons today that it was in 1990.
“Bowdoin needs to represent what’s going on around the globe,” Hinds said in a phone interview with the Orient. “And yes, Bowdoin is located in Maine and yes, it’s a difficult place to attract people to because of location and the weather and everything else that goes along, but if you’re a higher education environment you need to represent what’s going on in the world.”
In the fall of 1992, “The Report of the Subcommittee on Diversity” was released, which provided recommendations about recruiting more diverse students, improving the minority student experience and creating a more diverse faculty. The report listed Bowdoin as having the lowest percentage of minority faculty members amongst 16 other peer schools.
In 2014, Bowdoin had ninth highest percentage of minority faculty members in the NESCAC out of 11 schools, according to their respective Common Data Sets.
The report also set goals for gender diversity among the faculty and for the racial diversity of the student body. Last year, the faculty was 50.2 percent women; 15 years earlier, 37.4 percent of the faculty were women, according to the Office of Institutional Research. This year, 31.5 percent of students are minorities; 15 years earlier, 13.3 percent of students were minorities.
“We’ve definitely been slower [to diversify the faculty than the student body]. There’s a whole admissions office; there are mechanisms in place that have been in place for some time to increase student diversity,” said Scanlon.
One of the goals stated in “The Report of the Subcommittee on Diversity” in 1992 was that “The percentage of faculty members of color should equal that of minority holders of Ph.D.’s.”
In 2013, 22 percent of doctorate recipients in the life sciences, physical sciences, social sciences and humanities were minorities according to the National Science Foundation.
“Pinning it to the number of PhDs, that’s arbitrary,” said Stakeman. “You have to take advantage to get every possible diverse faculty member you can.”
What Does Success Look Like?While “The Report of the Subcommittee on Diversity” in 1992 set specific goals, the College no longer uses numbers as benchmarks.
Zhang said that faculty diversity should reflect the diversity of Bowdoin students.
“The faculty demographic should be matching the student demographic, and it’s definitely not,” she said.
Others emphasized more intangible benchmarks of success.
“In a sense, you never achieve success. There is no number that you can get to or point to that is the kind of break even mark that you can say, ah, we have 10 faculty of color, it just doesn’t work like that. What you’re trying to do is create a campus and a faculty in which there are many many diverse viewpoints. How many diverse viewpoints should there be on the faculty? You can’t answer that question,” said Stakeman.
“We’re doing our work. That doesn’t mean we’re satisfied, that doesn’t mean we’re resting on our laurels— we’re in fact doubling down on the work that we have to do. Whatever the numbers say or don’t say, we’re doing the work we’re doing, not in response necessarily to a set of numbers, but in response to what we clearly know we need to do,” said Scanlon.
Scanlon suggested that no one measure will indicate when Bowdoin has achieved the level of faculty diversity it desires.
“We’ll just have a richer community, and we’ll know that we'll have a richer community, and we’ll find it less hard to do the work that we’re doing, and it will become a natural part of who we are and what we do,” Scanlon said.
Unlike many larger universities, whose budget increases are often due in large part to increasing costs of research, the vast majority of Bowdoin’s annual budget is devoted to the salaries and benefits of the College’s faculty and staff—those figures account for 63 percent of this year’s budget.
Thus, as the College adds new positions and the costs of benefits such as health care increase, many see few ways to prevent rising costs.
“This is a really people-driven product,” Director of Student Aid Michael Bartini said of what Bowdoin offers. “Unless the product changes, somehow we’ve got to be able to manage this.”Financial aid, another area where spending has increased dramatically in recent years, accounts for another 23 percent of spending. The remaining 15 percent is dedicated to a variety of expenses like utilities, equipment and travel costs.
“With 85 percent of one’s cost structure being embedded in people and financial aid, it’s a real challenge to figure out,” said President Clayton Rose. “It’s very hard to dramatically impact the increase in cost or the absolute cost by fiddling around with [the other] 15 percent.”
Determining the comprehensive feeAs with most colleges, Bowdoin’s endowment subsidizes every student to an extent. For the 2014-2015 fiscal year, the College’s budget worked out to about $81,000 per student, or about $20,000 more than what students without financial aid paid.
Schools have some discretion in choosing how much they ask students to pay because of this subsidy from their endowment. Some schools charge one fee for all of their students. Bates, for example, simply charges one fee of $62,540, without publicizing the individual costs for things such as room and board. Bowdoin, on the other hand, does not have an official comprehensive fee. Instead, the figure can be disaggregated into several individual costs: tuition ($47,744), fees ($468), room ($6,142) and board ($7,000).
Despite this, Bowdoin does pay significant attention to the total comprehensive fee.“The discussion of the comprehensive fee is very sensitive. We take it really seriously,” said Senior Vice President for Finance and Administration & Treasurer Katy Longley. “We spend a lot of time on trying to strike that balance between what’s the right amount to charge and what’s affordable.”
Over the past 20 years, the fee has increased by an average of about 4.3 percent annually; for the past five years, the College has held that figure steady at three percent. This is a slower rate than the growth of the College’s overall budget and the financial aid budget (which grew four percent and six percent from FY 2015 to FY 2016, respectively).
The result is that the proportion of the budget covered by endowment returns is increasing slightly. With the endowment returning 14 percent this year, this appears to be a viable strategy, but the long-term implications are less clear.
Longley emphasized that the College works year-by-year to determine the fee.“There’s no ten-year plan of what the comprehensive fee should be. There are certain assumptions in the budget, and we’ll model those out, but there’s no magic number,” said Longley.
The process of choosing how much to charge is, in part, an evaluation of the College’s costs and families’ ability to pay; however, peer schools also play a key role. Antitrust law prevents colleges from communicating about their current fees or salaries, but comparisons from past years are a factor in determining the comprehensive fee.
“We do look at what other colleges have charged—not that it necessarily influences us, but we are mindful of what others are doing,” said Longley.
In a group that the College uses to evaluate its fees including the rest of the NESCAC (except for Tufts) and other peer schools such as Oberlin and Swarthmore, Bowdoin’s comprehensive fee ranked third-lowest of 19 for FY 2015-2016. Its percentage increase for the same year tied for fourth.
What’s more, Bowdoin’s comprehensive fee is growing comparatively cheaper: in FY 2011-2012 it ranked eighth, while the percentage increase ranked second.
Comprehensive fee as a symbolOf course, with financial aid, Bowdoin students pay a wide variety of amounts to attend. Financial aid expansion has been a top priority at Bowdoin in recent years. In 2008, Bowdoin announced the elimination of all student loans, replacing them with grants. Today, about 46 percent of Bowdoin’s endowment is dedicated to financial aid. With financial aid spending increasing at a faster rate than the ever-rising comprehensive fee, Bowdoin is prioritizing accessibility to all students.
In spite of affordability in practice, a continually increasing comprehensive fee can be an intimidating message. It is difficult to quantify how many students are discouraged by the sticker price, but without a clear understanding of Bowdoin’s financial aid, some prospective students are likely turned off from the idea of attending Bowdoin.
“We know from our experience that we are meeting a significant number of students who are worried about the cost,” said Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid Scott Meiklejohn. “When you can actually meet with those people and speak with them, you can accomplish something and tell them about Bowdoin financial aid. If they never get as far as meeting us or asking the questions, you don’t have that same opportunity.”
As a result, promoting the idea that Bowdoin is affordable and need-blind has been a major goal for the Admissions office.
“I don’t see difficulty in Bowdoin affording the financial aid expense for the students enrolled,” said Meiklejohn. “I think the bigger challenge is communicating the strength of financial aid program to students and parents who may be considering.”
Financial SustainabilityMaking Bowdoin affordable has continued to be an important issue in face of rising costs.“I think the big thing right now for us to think about is how we slow the rate of growth [of the comprehensive fee],” said Rose. “People need raises every year, healthcare costs are going up every year, we need to be sensitive to the needs of our staff and our faculty. But what can we do to slow the rate of growth down?”
With 85 percent of the budget devoted to financial aid and faculty payroll, the short-term options are limited. This year the budget for financial aid will be around $34.4 million, about six percent up from last year, according to the College’s operating budget for FY 2015-2016. Approximately 44.5 percent of the student body is on financial aid, which is funded by the endowment fund and alumni giving. The College draws a significant amount from the endowment for financial aid every year, and financial aid tops the list of categories of alumni gifts.
With all these various factors coming into play, it is uncertain how much the comprehensive fee will increase in the future.
“We’re going to be really digging into this in the months and years ahead here,” said Rose. “It’s a really important issue. A middle class family that is doing just fine—two parents that are working good jobs, if they’ve got one child or two children in college—those tuition bills, that becomes untenable, even at a very good middle class living. So that’s an interesting social question.”
