Bowdoin's Project

Editorial: Telling both sides

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.

Editorial: Vote Nelson

One of the student body’s most important collective decisions will be made this weekend as the votes are tallied in the election for the 2013-14 Bowdoin Student Government (BSG) Executive Committee. Sarah Nelson has our vote for president of next year’s assembly.
Nelson’s diversity of experience, established relationships with members of the administration, and realistic outlook make her a strong choice to broaden BSG’s impact. Her work for Residential Life and Student Activities has proven her ability to collaborate with a wide variety of groups on campus, and she demonstrated her natural talent for organization on a campus-wide level when she co-chaired Winter Weekend in February. As a former class treasurer and community outreach officer, Nelson understands fiscal responsibility and the importance of Bowdoin’s relationship with the Brunswick community.
Clear, feasible goals make up the bulk of Nelson’s campaign platform. She stresses improving communication through the development of a unified Bowdoin app, facilitating student leadership outside of existing organizations, and fostering open dialogue with administrators. She has already begun to work toward creating a $10,000 “Good Ideas” fund to provide financial resources for students outside of clubs. A Nelson presidency would improve cohesion across all class years to work toward larger goals, such as revising the College House application process.

Editorial

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

April 5, 2013

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.

In that spirit, we admit that there is truth to a number of the report’s arguments. Intellectual diversity is a real issue on campus, as it is at many like institutions. The vast majority of students and professors identify as liberal, which understandably limits the audience for conservative ideas both in and out of the classroom. Some departments have very few survey courses, and many classes focus on esoteric and narrow topics. But that doesn’t mean the College doesn’t teach us anything of worth, as the NAS concludes.

One of the report’s most objectionable claims is that the College is wrong to educate students about sexual assault and wrong to make contraception widely available on campus. Equally disturbing is its denunciation of Bowdoin’s efforts to increase racial and ethnic diversity. While Mr. Klingenstein has said he is in favor of a meritocratic approach to diversity that fosters “inclusion,” any college that adopted his philosophy in its admissions policies would likely resemble the homogenous Bowdoin of decades past.

Klingenstein and Wood maintain that they chose to focus on Bowdoin in particular because the College offers a quintessential liberal arts experience. We agree, but seriously question the methodology by which their research was conducted. The report’s political agenda precludes it from offering an accurate portrait of our College.

The Bowdoin Project is an opportunity for the our community to address the very real problems that do exist on campus and engage in a discussion of how the College can improve. The conclusions of the NAS should not dictate how Bowdoin addresses its academic shortcomings in the future.

We are lucky that the College has taught us what it has, for it’s our Bowdoin educations that have taught us to approach dissenting views with an open mind. The study’s authors implicitly portray us as apathetic, uninformed students who don’t care about our country or our place in its history. That’s not who we are, and already students’ reactions to “The Bowdoin Project” have demonstrated precisely that.

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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