Judicial Board accepts six new members

Four first years, one sophomore, one junior to join in 2014-2015 year

February 28, 2014

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Six underclassmen will fill spots vacated by the five graduating seniors on the Judicial Board (J-Board) in the upcoming year. Tom Capone ’17, Natalie Kiley-Bergen ’17, Hunter Moeller ’17, Michael Pun ’17, Carolyn Veilleux ’16, and Alexandra Mathieu ’15 were selected out of an application pool of 50 students.

Assistant Dean of Student Affairs Lesley Levy announced the new members in an email on Monday, bringing the multi-week Judicial Board application process to a close. According to Judicial Board Chair Chelsea Shaffer ’14, every student offered a position for next year accepted.

The incoming members’ motivations for applying to the positions varied. Mathieu, for example, was inspired by her experience abroad in Japan, a country that introduced trial by jury in 2009.

“After learning and coming face to face with a system that didn’t have a jury like organization to listen and to be more sympathetic to those being tried, it made me realize that I very much value that,” said Mathieu. “Since to me that’s what J-Board is, that link between the people and administration, I wanted to very much be a part of that.”

The new members bring the J-Boards total membership for the 2014-2015 academic year up to 13. The board is traditionally composed of approximately 12 members and selects new members based on merit, not to reach a certain number.

“I think that we are really interested in making sure that the board is representative of the whole campus,” said Shaffer, “and there are a lot of athletes on campus, there are a lot of women on campus, there are different class years, so those are all things we take into consideration when we’re selecting people.”

Shaffer also noted that having more than 12 students can help alleviate the issue of members studying abroad, or members needing recusal from a particular case.

“We never want to be in a situation where we can’t hold a hearing because we don’t have enough members to sit on it,” said Shaffer.

According to Shaffer, new members will not sit for hearings this year or participate in the selection of the next year’s J-Board Chair. New members will train in May, and begin sitting on hearings. Both excitement and respect for the position are high among the new members.

“The pressure of upholding the Bowdoin standard and serving the Bowdoin community may be too much weight for one person, and that’s why we have a board,” said Capone.

“Recognizing that these are your peers, and that even though you see them in a hearing, you just have to be very sensitive to that. You’ll see them around on campus because Bowdoin is a small campus. So I think that’s something that I’m apprehensive about,” said Veilleux.

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Benjamin Jealous packs Pickard Theater with speech on student activism

The former NAACP president on why you don't have to be famous to incite change, the problem with easy assumptions, and why the National Association of Scholars' report on Bowdoin is wrong

Benjamin Jealous, former president of the NAACP, opened his Common Hour speech last Friday by calling out Governor Paul LePage, who in 2011—while Jealous was still in charge of the NAACP—told the civil rights organization that they could “Kiss my butt.”

“You can look at his own family and see that he’s benefited from the work of the NAACP: the Governor descends from French Catholics, who were lynched viciously in the state in the early part of the twentieth century,” Jealous said. “He would not be governor of this state if it was not for our work, and he needs to show us more respect.”

Jealous’ speech, which concluded with a standing ovation by the roughly 450 community members in attendance at Pickard Theater, was titled “That One Big Thing,” and focused primarily on how Bowdoin students can motivate themselves to tackle some of the toughest challenges facing the world today.

“It’s ultimately those acts of solidarity with our fellow citizens, our fellow Americans—no matter where they live or what status they have—that defines us as great to ourselves,” said Jealous in an interview with the Orient after his speech. “If I really was talking about anything today, I was trying to get people to focus on how to be a hero to themselves.”

A committee of faculty, staff, and students brought Jealous to campus to speak in commemoration of Martin Luther King, Jr. and his legacy. Jealous’ speech came a month after spoken-word group Climbing PoeTree performed on campus for MLK day.

Jealous, a born-and-raised Californian with relatives who attended Bowdoin, first visited campus when he was 17 and touring colleges. However, he ended up attending Columbia University, where he began working with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.

Jealous told a number of anecdotes to illustrate his path from young college student to head of one of the largest civil rights groups in the country.

He spoke about his time in Mississippi, when he organized statewide protests against a decision that would close multiple historically black colleges in the state and convert one of them to a prison. Jealous recounted the story of meeting in a Waffle House at 2 a.m. with a group of his colleagues who had just been chased out of a rally by white supremacists in Starksville County. When an old white man approached them and asked if they were the men he had seen on the television, they responded yes, then grew uncomfortable as he set down his bag as if hiding a gun in his waistband.

“I just said, so now everyone in the restaurant could hear, ‘Hold up, let’s hear what he has to say,’ and they eased back, everybody watching his hand. He turns around and says ‘I just want to shake your hand, ’cause if I’d been born a nigger in this crazy state, I’d be mad as hell too! I’m so proud of you boys.’”

The man later joined Jealous and the others in helping to protest the school closures.

Jealous warned against easy assumptions of who your friends are and aren’t in activist circles. He recounted the story of a young woman named Jotaka Eaddy who he met while trying to repeal child capital punishment laws across the country. Eaddy—a former high school cheerleader and McDonald’s employee—convinced three state legislatures to outlaw death sentences for minors. One of her favorite tactics was to approach local pro-life organizations, which many people didn’t expect to cooperate with groups like the NAACP.

“You can’t afford to do that in a democracy, when you ultimately will need the will of the majority to secure the rights of the minority,” Jealous said in his speech. “You've got to be willing to extend the hand of friendship—or at least of partnership for that moment—to anybody who will receive it.”

After his talk, Jealous attended a luncheon with many campus leaders and activists, offering words of advice for how Bowdoin students can get out and make an impact.

“Einstein talked about his guilt of being at Princeton during World War II,” Jealous said. “It’s important when we’re in places of privilege to stay focused and engage in the world’s fight. I was inspired by students here who are on their way to D.C. to get locked up next week in a Keystone XL pipeline protest and other students who are really engaged in trying to ensure that Bowdoin stays on the path of being an increasingly inclusive campus.”

In his speech, Jealous talked about the myth that to change the world a person needs to be a famous leader. As the first president of the NAACP to be born after the Civil Rights Movement—for which the organization is so well known—Jealous worked hard during his tenure to make the group more than just a piece of history.

“In all these months—Black History Month, Women’s History Month—we put the great heroes on such high pedestals, often by omitting what was absolutely ordinary about them, like the fact that Martin Luther King’s classmates at seminary thought him so quiet they worried he might be an Episcopalian,” Jealous said. “We make their example seem unattainable, and in doing so, we sell ourselves short.”

Student reaction to Jealous’ speech emphasized the speaker's charisma, even though some felt the talk fell short of how-to advice.

“He was a great speaker, a great orator, storyteller,” said Jun Choi ’15. “I don't really know what I was expecting, but I thought it was going to be more instructional. It seemed more of a descriptive piece of his certain experiences...rather than this is how I did it.”

Others found more value in the anecdotal approach to his speech.

“I’d say I felt very motivated,” said Sam Shapiro ’14. “He made it seem as though there’s a lot of power in the voices of young people in that his stories involved him [as an] undergrad and then involved a young woman when she was high school age. He also talked about rallying college students and getting out student voices, so for me, as someone who’s 22, to have him put the center of power in the voices of young people and college students, was a pretty empowering experience.”

Jealous also commented on some of the topics raised in “What Does Bowdoin Teach,” a 360 page report by the National Association of Scholars (NAS) that among other things, questioned the College’s commitment to diversity and its lack of promoting American exceptionalism and citizenship.

“The role of the university ultimately is to train leaders for our country…and the world,” Jealous told the Orient. “Quite frankly, increasing training of people of all colors who can work effectively with people of all colors and cultures is critical. Groups such as the [NAS] are ultimately victims of their own nostalgia, and they should—rather than mourning the end of the past—be preparing for a more prosperous future. That’s what Bowdoin’s doing.”

Nicole Wetsman and Joe Sherlock contributed to this report.

A look inside the J-Board selection process

In an email to all students on January 16, Assistant Dean of Student Affairs Lesley Levy invited students with “sound judgment and insight, maturity and a strong sense of integrity” to apply for the J-Board. Though more than 40 students apply to the J-Board every year, the application and selection process remains a mystery for those who do not participate in it.

Applications for the 2014 to 2015 school year were due on January 30 and 50 students applied—13 more applicants than in 2013. New members will be announced as early as next week. Applicants are nominated by themselves or by other members of the Bowdoin community, often a coach, professor, or friend.

The initial application asks applicants to provide personal information, such as hometown, class year, and extracurricular commitments.

The bears and the bees: The pretty game: objectification, humiliation and the liberal arts

Anonymous ’17 is a guest contributor to this column and a female member of the Class of 2017. All names, events and locations in this narrative have been altered in order to disguise recognizable identities.

We all know the drill of arriving at a party. It smells like old beer and exhilaration. The designated bouncer stands in our way, a football player with an unimpressive drunken glaze, reclining against the door to stay upright. This barely legal boy will decide if we are pretty enough to be graced with the opportunity to grind our bodies against his other unremarkable team members and drink warm alcohol, hypnotized and exhausted by a throbbing black light in a dirty basement. It is just another off-campus party.

We call it the pretty test. And we take it, all girls and women, every day. Every time you can’t button your jeans, you fail. Every time you get whistled at or hit on, you pass. It just so happens that Bowdoin has a culture that makes this test prevalent and obvious. It is well known you should be prepared for the boy that decides whether you are accepted or rejected, beautiful or ugly. He’s the difference between intoxicated dancing and calling your mom while eating microwave popcorn. So you better wear a crop top in sub-zero weather and stop eating the soft serve.

‘NARPs’ and athletes: examining campus divisions

At Bowdoin, there are two kinds of people: varsity athletes, and everyone else. Colloquially, this second group is commonly referred to as “NARPs:” Non-Athletic Regular Persons.

True or not, the idea that a student’s sport (or lack thereof) defines his or her life on campus is so pervasive that even last year’s National Association of Scholars’ (NAS) report on the College discussed the notion of two distinct spheres on campus: the athletes and the non-athletes. This conclusion was largely based on information gleaned from decade-old Orient articles and the College Prowler book “Bowdoin College 2012: Off the Record.”

But contrary to the NAS report’s conclusions, this divide—if it exists—is not an academic one; the differences in athlete and non-athlete GPAs is negligible, according to an April 2013 Orient article.

Interactive: 'Mules are sterile:' A look at the 91-year rivalry between Bowdoin and Colby

“We see them in our sleep.”

This is how Ben Smith, Coach of the 1998 U.S. women’s hockey team, described the team’s Canadian rivals in an interview with the New York Times leading up to their Olympic matchup.

It’s fair to guess that some Bowdoin hockey players may spend tonight similarly fixated on an opponent from the North, though the rival in question is Colby, not Canada. Today the Polar Bears will defend the first of last year’s decisive victories over the Mules. The rivalry between the two teams is a classic grudge match, and this year’s games continue a long and storied tradition.