Clicking through Bowdoin’s recently reformatted website, I have been struck by three things. First and foremost is the fact that the background picture changes every time the page is refreshed. Need a ploy to procrastinate? Keep shuffling through background pics until you arrive at professor Paul Franco and his (probably bioluminescent) white mane. Wait—this doesn’t strike you as awesome? Fine.
Second is hopefully the text of William Dewitt Hyde’s “Offer of the College.” I say “hopefully” because those poetic words can occasionally disappear into an imprudently chosen background color or a Polar Bear’s nostril as a visitor to Bowdoin scrolls down the page.
Last is the underlined and hyperlinked imperative at the bottom of the page: “Read more about Liberal Arts and the Common Good.” Despite my impulse to extol the virtues of Professor Franco or drone on about the aesthetics of our new website, it is this third feature that commands my author’s attention.
Though seemingly unremarkable, that nine word pitch—Bowdoin’s first chance to plead “Hey! Let’s be friends”—is quite worthy of remark.
Our status as a liberal arts college is core to what we are. It is our classification in the eyes of the outside world and it determines how we are ranked and compared with other schools. In other words, what we make of the liberal arts decides what others will make of us.
So I don’t think anyone is surprised that Bowdoin follows up its virtual handshake with “Read more about the Liberal Arts.” We need to tell the world who we are, so we begin by explaining what Bowdoin is at its essence.
But lo! Bowdoin is eager to expand on this notion. And impatient too, for in that first salutation we ask newcomers to investigate a second essential principle: “The Common Good.”
After three years at Bowdoin, I don’t think it possible to argue that our website has made a mistake in creating this equivalence between liberal arts and the common good. As an institutional value as well as a tool for effective branding, the common good is unquestionably the most exalted concept at Bowdoin—so much so that it competes with this school’s very definition as a liberal arts college for prominence and prestige. Here at Bowdoin (and on the website), the common good exists with its own conceptual sovereignty, subsidiary of nothing save the name on the masthead.
And yet, I must ask if the spirit of the common good really permeates the experience of Bowdoin students to a comparable degree as the liberal arts. Is it even close? No. It’s a laughable question.
Upon matriculating, Bowdoin students must buy in to the school’s liberal arts philosophy. This investment is exemplified, but not limited to the first-year seminar, the paltry number of distribution requirements we must complete, and most importantly, the general spirit in which many of our courses our taught.
However, this school has not created any system whereby the common good acts as a formative agent for all students. Sure, there is Common Good Day. But that is voluntary. There are also an impressive number of opportunities to volunteer through the McKeen Center; but once again, those programs are absolutely optional.
I don’t think that Bowdoin has made a mistake in its lofty rhetoric about the common good. With the striking dearth of religious activity and education on this campus, the common good could and should be the anchor of this campus’ values and spiritual life. Bible study, theology coursework, and compulsory church attendance used to nourish the soul, the capacity for love, and the humility of students.
Now, however, we live in a different time. We have students of diverse religious persuasion and of no affiliation at all. We have had to accommodate that, and in many ways, we have done so admirably. But, that is no excuse for an institution of “higher education” to abdicate its responsibility to educate the soul (or some nonreligious analogue) of its students. After all, higher education should truly be about something higher—whether that higher is rooted in God or social conscience.
Too often, Bowdoin students, like myself, go through at this school with the hollowness of “the common good” ringing ceaselessly in our ears. We have resisted doing service work because often the right choice is the harder one. Agency and choice certainly should be central to Bowdoin, but not in this instance.
We should find a way to make a lasting engagement with community service a mandatory component of Bowdoin’s curriculum. Not just as a means of enhancing our academic pursuits, but as a means of immersing students in activities that open us up to connecting with and loving all manner of human beings. It is an education we cannot afford to do without.