In the October 3 issue of the Orient, the Bowdoin community was asked to respond to the question, "Is Bowdoin an intellectual campus?" The following replies were submitted.
Josh King '10
Many people at Bowdoin are very intellectual, but there is a huge range of intellect on campus. The huge jock who sits next to you in class who you don't think has much going on in his head seems to make insightful comments all the time, but it doesn't always translate to him being intellectual outside of class.
I have seen a lot of debates over issues such as global warming and politics. Bowdoin is so liberal that every time someone makes a comment that doesn't fit that mold, it spurns a massive debate.
I like Bowdoin the way it is though. If you want to be an intellectual and debate politics with your friends, you can find that, but if you just want to hang out and crush beers with your friends, there is no shortage of that either.
Chris Sanville '12
Tuesday morning I sat down in the library beneath Sills to do some homework before class. But, as invariably happens before I can ever accomplish anything, I had to fritter away precious time checking my e-mail accounts, Facebook, and reading the whole of Student Digest (you know how it goes). Usually by this point I'm ready to move on, however something in the Digest caught my eye. There was a post posing the question, "Is Bowdoin an intellectual campus?" It asked for a 400-word submission for the Orient.
Well, I had no intention of writing anything more than I absolutely had to for class, but the question got me thinking. And, my body, obviously trying to prevent me from academic success, let me know that it was time to use the bathroom.
As I walked to the bathroom and proceeded to take care of business, my mind remained fixated on the question postulated by the Digest. I thought about the exact meaning of it and considered my classes and the discussions in them. They were pretty intellectual, but as I thought about it, I decided that was different. Classrooms are meant to be so and don't make a campus. I contemplated the conversations I have with friends and concluded they were the same at home: a little philosophy, a little gossip, and everything between. It was intelligent conversation, but it didn't make the campus intellectual.
I just couldn't come to a decision about Bowdoin. I stared at the stall walls pondering, when suddenly I noticed something. Where I'm from, and seemingly everywhere I'm not, people, for whatever reason, have the irresistible urge to carve the dumbest, most lewd images on bathroom stalls. Here however, it was different. Instead of various pieces of human anatomy, there was poetry and quotes by Emerson. I could not believe my eyes. Who writes poetry on a bathroom wall?
So, even though I haven't started, let alone finished my homework yet, I definitively have an answer. Bowdoin is undoubtedly an intellectual campus. For it is not the philosophical discussions we have in class, nor the academic activities we participate in, nor even the philosophical conversations we have on the quad that make an intellectual campus. Those are on any college campus. It is instead the small things, such as poetry rather than pornography on a bathroom stall, that truly make Bowdoin an intellectual campus.