It’s their world, we just live in it. Welcome to Bowdoin College, where the women dominate athletics. This past weekend, three women’s teams lost in varying stages of NCAAs. The weekend before, a women’s team won the conference championship and a trip to nationals. The men? Not so much success this season. No playoff wins. No Colby-Bates-Bowdoin title. No NCAA appearances. 

If you wanted to count on your fingers the NESCAC titles of the past decade, you’d have to get your toes involved to account for all of the women’s championships. 

Women’s sports teams have won 17 NESCAC titles since 2001. 

The men? Don’t worry. No need to put your coffee down. You can just stick a pinky up, though, if you have a more generous definition and include the vacated hockey title, you could flash deuces to the world.

When a men’s team makes the NCAAs it feels like a historic event. The hype machine goes into overdrive and we all pause to examine history in the making. When a women’s team makes NCAAs, it feels like business as usual.

That statement could make ears perk up and set off feminist sensibilities. But I’m not sure getting upset about the difference in hype gives Bowdoin’s female athletes their due. When success occurs so regularly, don’t expectations naturally begin to shift? Every time the Patriots lose a Super Bowl it is a disappointment, in the same way we are disappointed every time field hockey doesn’t win a national title.

We do a lot of hand-wringing about the ways “athlete culture” dominates Bowdoin. “Athlete culture” is usually used as a euphemism for bro culture and the sins people associate with it. What about female athletes though? Yes, the ones winning all the titles. Don’t they influence Bowdoin’s culture just as much as their male counterparts do? If Bowdoin is indeed overrun by athlete culture, is it not also female athlete culture? Isn’t it sexist to assume that women don’t help shape the culture we live in?

This column is more about questions than answers. It’s about a certain type of question. The questions we don’t ask because we assume we already know the answers.

Would Bowdoin have an athlete culture if there was nothing worth admiring about athletes? Of the 1,772 students enrolled at Bowdoin, 665 are athletes, according to data from the Department of Education. I’m not great at math, but that’s just a little over a third (37.5 percent). Can a majority big enough to run buck wild in the U.S. Senate really be overrun by the culture of one-third minority?

I have a hard time believing that. I have a hard time believing that we would perceive our culture to be athlete-centric unless there was something for non-athletes to relate to about the lifestyle. So where does that status come from? The NCAA’s propaganda pamphlets probably say it comes from a commitment to excellence—that success in sports confers a set of values and an ability to work hard. But we probably shouldn’t take our cues from the NCAA.

I think Bowdoin students have an appreciation for talent of all types. We like to think that we’re surrounded by the best and the brightest, whether they succeed in robocup, biology research, or basketball. And when we see someone committed to something, we respect that, regardless of the discipline. It just so happens that athletics are a spectacle by definition, so athletes’ commitments are on public display.

If that is the case, then female athletes have a lot of status at Bowdoin that we don’t always acknowledge.

How does that status manifest itself? In what ways is their image reflected in our culture? Can we say that they model how to win quietly and confidently? Does the ethos of winning quietly and confidently carry over to academic life? Is that why Bowdoin students never talk about their grades? It’s definitely not because students aren’t competitive.

What about socially? We often hear disparaging remarks blaming men, often athletes, for perpetuating the hookup culture and its shortcomings. Let’s pause. Are we to believe that women who are kicking asses and significantly outperforming their male counterparts on the sports fields, are suddenly giving in to a culture they don’t want? What if the hookup culture suits and dis-suits individual women as much as it does individual men?

Bowdoin used to be a sexist and chauvinist place. Fact. We were an all-boys club for far too long, and there are definitely unappealing remnants of that culture today. Maybe this article goes too far in the opposite direction. But is it possible we’re living in their world and we just don’t know it yet? The clues are there. Just go to the field house or Morrell Gym, where the banners are hanging as proof.

It’s their world, we just live in it. Welcome to Bowdoin College, where the women dominate athletics. This past weekend, three women’s teams lost in varying stages of NCAAs. The weekend before, a women’s team won the conference championship and a trip to nationals. The men? Not so much success this season. No playoff wins. No Colby-Bates-Bowdoin title. No NCAA appearances. 
If you wanted to count on your fingers the NESCAC titles of the past decade, you’d have to get your toes involved to account for all of the women’s championships. 
Women’s sports teams have won 17 NESCAC titles since 2001. 
The men? Don’t worry. No need to put your coffee down. You can just stick a pinky up, though, if you have a more generous definition and include the vacated hockey title, you could flash deuces to the world.
When a men’s team makes the NCAAs it feels like a historic event. The hype machine goes into overdrive and we all pause to examine history in the making. When a women’s team makes NCAAs, it feels like business as usual.
That statement could make ears perk up and set off feminist sensibilities. But I’m not sure getting upset about the difference in hype gives Bowdoin’s female athletes their due. When success occurs so regularly, don’t expectations naturally begin to shift? Every time the Patriots lose a Super Bowl it is a disappointment, in the same way we are disappointed every time field hockey doesn’t win a national title.
We do a lot of hand-wringing about the ways “athlete culture” dominates Bowdoin. “Athlete culture” is usually used as a euphemism for bro culture and the sins people associate with it. What about female athletes though? Yes, the ones winning all the titles. Don’t they influence Bowdoin’s culture just as much as their male counterparts do? If Bowdoin is indeed overrun by athlete culture, is it not also female athlete culture? Isn’t it sexist to assume that women don’t help shape the culture we live in?
This column is more about questions than answers. It’s about a certain type of question. The questions we don’t ask because we assume we already know the answers.
Would Bowdoin have an athlete culture if there was nothing worth admiring about athletes? Of the 1,772 students enrolled at Bowdoin, 665 are athletes, according to data from the Department of Education. I’m not great at math, but that’s just a little over a third (37.5 percent). Can a majority big enough to run buck wild in the U.S. Senate really be overrun by the culture of one-third minority?
I have a hard time believing that. I have a hard time believing that we would perceive our culture to be athlete-centric unless there was something for non-athletes to relate to about the lifestyle. So where does that status come from? The NCAA’s propaganda pamphlets probably say it comes from a commitment to excellence—that success in sports confers a set of values and an ability to work hard. But we probably shouldn’t take our cues from the NCAA.
I think Bowdoin students have an appreciation for talent of all types. We like to think that we’re surrounded by the best and the brightest, whether they succeed in robocup, biology research, or basketball. And when we see someone committed to something, we respect that, regardless of the discipline. It just so happens that athletics are a spectacle by definition, so athletes’ commitments are on public display.
If that is the case, then female athletes have a lot of status at Bowdoin that we don’t always acknowledge.
How does that status manifest itself? In what ways is their image reflected in our culture? Can we say that they model how to win quietly and confidently? Does the ethos of winning quietly and confidently carry over to academic life? Is that why Bowdoin students never talk about their grades? It’s definitely not because students aren’t competitive.
What about socially? We often hear disparaging remarks blaming men, often athletes, for perpetuating the hookup culture and its shortcomings. Let’s pause. Are we to believe that women who are kicking asses and significantly outperforming their male counterparts on the sports fields, are suddenly giving in to a culture they don’t want? What if the hookup culture suits and dis-suits individual women as much as it does individual men?
Bowdoin used to be a sexist and chauvinist place. Fact. We were an all-boys club for far too long, and there are definitely unappealing remnants of that culture today. Maybe this article goes too far in the opposite direction. But is it possible we’re living in their world and we just don’t know it yet? The clues are there. Just go to the field house or Morrell Gym, where the banners are hanging as proof.