Telling both sides

Editorial: Redistributing requirements

Only so many credits fit into four years, and none should go to waste

Next fall marks 10 years since Bowdoin’s current academic distribution requirements were approved, and eight years since students first chose their courses bearing them in mind. Then as now, the wording of the requirements was a cause of concern and confusion, and the rationale for why some courses qualified for a requirement while more relevant ones did not was unclear. Back in 2004, this board expressed support for the requirements in hopes that they would encourage students to broaden their academic experiences, but expressed concern that the Exploring Social Differences (ESD) requirement would apply to too many courses. Now, it seems that the opposite is true. Courses that fulfill a specific distribution requirement are often tough to come by, and the current system frequently causes students to enroll in classes that do not challenge them academically. There are only so many credits that can fit into four years at the College, and none of them should go to waste.
Given the systemic problems of the distribution requirements, it is heartening that they are now being reviewed by the Curriculum and Education Policy Committee (CEP), a body composed of students and faculty. In addition to revising the language of the ESD, Inquiry in the Natural Sciences (INS), International Perspectives (IP) and Visual and Performing Arts (VPA) descriptions to make them more succinct, the CEP is proposing to change the criteria and application process necessary for a course to fulfill a distribution requirement.
In this last aim, the CEP could potentially improve the registration process significantly by developing a standardized protocol for allocating distribution requirements. Currently, there are many courses that would seem to meet the parameters of INS or VPA that do not actually satisfy a distribution requirement, often for the simple reason that the professor did not apply for the designation. For example, Introduction to Anthropology does not count toward an ESD credit, nor does The German Experience fulfill the IP credit. The allocation of distribution requirements should be more consistent within individual departments, and easier to obtain for a given course. Professors should be encouraged to register their courses to fulfill distribution requirements, and the difficulty in gaining approval should not dissuade them from doing so.

Editorial: Bowdoin's Project

There are many ways that the College could respond to “The Bowdoin Project,” a report published by the National Association of Scholars (NAS) that attacks the College’s educational mission and waxes nostalgic for the Bowdoin of the past—before co-education, affirmative action and the elimination of fraternities made this place what it is today.
The report claims that the College’s liberal arts curriculum educates students in progressivism, but is itself deeply infused with conservative ideology. It at once criticizes Bowdoin students for refusing to engage with viewpoints that diverge from their own, while expressing disdain for a cur- riculum that teaches us to look beyond our community and our borders.
Despite the authors’ claims to the contrary, “The Bowdoin Project” insults the intelligence of Bowdoin students, and misrepresents the nature of a liberal arts education. The best response to the report is to regard it with the critical acuity that Bowdoin has taught us.

Editorial

This piece represents the opinion of The Bowdoin Orient editorial board.

March 29, 2013

This year Bowdoin again reported its lowest acceptance rate in history, 14.5 percent. With a record 7,052 applicants, it is clear that the College’s reach continues to grow. The application pool consisted of students from over 3,184 high schools across the country, continuing an encouraging trend of increased geographic diversity among the student body. As Bowdoin became even more selective this year, more qualified students were rejected from the College than ever before.

Though the story of admitted students is the one most often told, those who are rejected, wait-listed, or who do not even apply to the College also deserve attention. As The New York Times recently reported, many highly-qualified, low-income students do not even apply to top schools like Bowdoin, instead opting for bigger-name institutions that may be closer to home, or that come with a cheaper price tag. Only by looking at the admissions process from all perspectives—taking into account the experiences of all applicants—can we get the complete picture.

This is what the Orient intended to do last week, when a reporter retweeted applicants’ reactions to Bowdoin’s admissions decisions, both positive and negative. What was meant as an attempt to tell both sides of the story came off as a cruel mockery of those who were not accepted to the College, and reflected poor journalistic judgment.

The mistake was a result of the Orient’s permissive Twitter policy, which we maintain in the interest of having a robust online presence. The retweets certainly did not aim to disparage individuals who had been rejected from the College, and we regret the error. However, we stand by our original intention of covering the admissions process from different perspectives—going forward, we will make better choices about how we do so.

With the new changes to programs for admitted students, the College is doing a better job of presenting a complete image of the student experience.

This April, the Bowdoin Experience—a weekend-long program designed specifically to encourage minority students to matriculate at the College—will coincide with open house events for all admitted students. In past years, Admissions has hosted several open houses separate from the annual Bowdoin Experience. In an editorial last April, this board wrote that bringing prospective minority students to campus separately from all other accepted students creates a false image of campus life, and the revised program should provide the Class of 2017 with a more representative idea of what life is like at Bowdoin. Some of the those who will attend the weekend’s events may not end up matriculating, but they will at least leave with a more authentic understanding of this place.

We are heartened to see that the College is taking steps to more accurately portray student life to admitted students. In our print and online reporting, we will continue to try to do the same.

The editorial represents the majority view of the Bowdoin Orient’s editorial board, which is composed of Nora Biette-Timmons, Garrett Casey, Linda Kinstler, Sam Miller, Sam Weyrauch and Kate Witteman.

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