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Editorial: Give a little bit

When billionaire hedge fund manager Ken Griffin announced last week that he will donate $150 million to Harvard University, his alma mater, he reignited a national debate over the value of donating to prestigious colleges. In a Slate article, Matthew Yglesias called for college graduates to withhold donations to the country’s most selective schools, which he called “terrible targets of charitable donation” because their funds go to mostly affluent students. Yglesias says that anyone hoping to benefit low-income students would be better off donating to the institutions that educate the majority of that demographic. This idea has gained considerable national media attention. Bloomberg ran an article titled “Cut off Harvard to Save America” and the debate extended into the NESCAC when The Williams Record published an op-ed by junior Chris Huffaker in which he argued that donating to Williams would do little to make the world a better place.
While we recognize the validity of these criticisms, we feel strongly that Bowdoin alumni play a vital role by donating to the College. Arguments like Yglesias’ are utilitarian; they advocate the greatest positive effect for society in general, while ignoring the immense value that a Bowdoin education has for an admittedly smaller number of people. A Bowdoin degree can transform the socio-economic trajectory of a low- or middle-income student. Bowdoin has a clear purpose for its students—offering them a high-quality education and access to good and meaningful jobs—and it serves this purpose exceptionally well. Alumni should reward the College not only for fulfilling its educational mission but also for the opportunities it has afforded them.
Though young alumni in the earliest stages of their careers—still wincing from the costs of textbooks or student loans—may hesitate about donating right after graduation, a gift brings more to the College than its cash value. This year’s ongoing Senior Class Gift Campaign has a participation goal of 85 percent, and for each year out of the next five that the Class of 2014 reaches 60 percent participation, an anonymous donor will contribute $10,000 to a scholarship for a member of the Class of 2018. We encourage seniors to donate any amount they can to help make this scholarship a reality. Additionally, a donation is a symbolic gesture of gratitude to the institution that has subsidized the education of all students, even those paying full tuition. (The true cost of a Bowdoin education is upwards of $85,000 per year.)
Donating to a highly selective college is not going to directly impact the neediest populations. However, alumni can earmark donations for specific projects—whether financial aid, the McKeen Center for Common Good, or sustainability efforts—to ensure that their money is going toward the causes at the College that they deem most worthy. And though a Bowdoin education might not, for example, directly help the students in the Harlem Children’s Zone, it educated Geoffrey Canada ’74, the man who did.
The editorial represents the majority view of the Bowdoin Orient’s editorial board, which is comprised of Erica Berry, Nora Biette-Timmons, Garrett Casey, Ron Cervantes, Marisa McGarry, Sam Miller and Kate Witteman.

Editorial: Unlocking the classroom

Every Friday afternoon this semester, 12 students have traveled to the Maine Correctional Center in Windham, Maine to attend class with 12 inmates. This week, the Orient features a story about Citizenship and Religion in America, taught by Associate Professor of Religion Elizabeth Pritchard. Initially proposed by students and spearheaded by Pritchard, the course was inspired by the Bard Prison Initiative and modeled after Temple University’s Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program.
According to a 2005 study by the Institute for Higher Education Policy, the recidivism rate for participants in prisoner exchange programs was on average 46 percentage points lower than the rate for the general prison population. If expanded, these programs could have a huge impact in the United States, which has the most incarcerations per capita. For those serving long sentences, classes shared with students from the outside offer respite from an otherwise grim environment. But perhaps more importantly, prison exchange programs help to put ex-convicts in a position where they can more fully contribute to society after getting out.
For college students, prisoner exchange programs provide an unparalleled educational opportunity. Our society marginalizes those who have committed crimes, yet in these classrooms, the opinions and insights of all students receive equal weight. According to this week’s article, Citizenship and Religion in America was designed to enable a discussion of what citizenship means to both inmates and Bowdoin students. Grappling with issues of freedom on a daily basis, inmates offer a radically different perspective. The subject material provides common ground, highlighting similarities—and not differences—between classmates. Reflecting on his experience in the course, one inmate wrote in a feedback letter, “When class ended, I found myself saying goodbye to strangers that I now considered friends. Crossing the yard, it took every ounce of self-restraint not to skip and whoop and punch the air.”
Yet this semester’s class was approved on a one-time-only basis. To ensure that there are similar classes in the future—as we believe there should be—the College needs to establish a more formal structure. Pritchard and the two students who proposed the idea have laid the groundwork for future classes and we hope the College builds on this in years to come. Whether this means appointing a faculty liaison or formalizing a semester-to-semester schedule for professors to rotate through teaching, we need support from both individual departments and the administration to meet continued student demand. Peer schools such as Amherst, Bard, Cornell and Dartmouth have had success with similar programs and Bowdoin should follow suit.
As President Joseph McKeen said at his 1802 inaugural address, elite institutions like Bowdoin are “founded and endowed for the common good, not for the private advantage of those who resort to them for education.” By allowing Maine inmates access to the wealth of knowledge that even one course can provide, the College increases the value of a Bowdoin education for students, whether they are behind bars or not.
The editorial represents the majority view of the Bowdoin Orient's editorial board, which is comprised of Erica Berry, Nora Biette-Timmons, Garrett Casey, Ron Cervantes, Marisa McGarry, Sam Miller and Kate Witteman.

Editorial

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

March 28, 2014

This week, the Orient published the first in a three-part series about athletic recruiting at Bowdoin and across the NESCAC. The conference adopted a system in 2002 that standardized the admissions process for these recruits, placing them into one of three categories based on the academic strength of their applications. A-band athletes are those who fall in line with the academic performance of the average accepted student, while B-band athletes fall just below those standards and C-band candidates dip even lower. Schools must report how many admitted students fall into the B- and C-band categories each year to ensure that they do not exceed the prescribed limit. Additionally, admissions offices at NESCAC schools conduct “early reads” for applicants who are recommended by coaches. This system was established to ensure that each institution fields teams whose academic achievements do not deviate dramatically from the rest of its student body.

The bulk of this information came to the Orient through Amherst’s dean of admissions, Thomas Parker, who openly acknowledged that his college recruited 66 B- and C-band athletes this year. The athletic department and admissions office at Bowdoin declined to speak candidly about specifics at the College and how B- and C-band spots are distributed among Bowdoin’s 31 varsity sports. According to Parker, NESCAC-wide policy dictates that member colleges are allotted 14 spots for having a football team and two additional spots for every other varsity sports team, with a few exceptions. These total slots can be distributed among coaches as they see fit.

The adoption and reinforcement of this standard is laudable, and we appreciate the effort that goes into maintaining its integrity. It distinguishes the NESCAC from other collegiate conferences. However, this process was established to provide transparency between college officials, and we think the same level of transparency should be afforded to the student body. A 2005 New York Times article exposing the system quoted Parker saying that a lack of open information about recruiting “engendered a corrosive cynicism.” We agree. With over 70 student-athletes supported in admissions each year at Bowdoin, roughly 15 percent of an incoming class receives preferential treatment. This is a large portion of the College and it is in the interest of our student body—and applicants to the College—to understand how they are selected.

The administration might worry that providing specific numbers about athletes aided in admissions could create a stigma against all student-athletes. But as the Orient reported in April 2013—and as the third section of this series will discuss—statistics show that Bowdoin’s student-athletes had a negligible .01 GPA difference from non-athlete students. Any stigma is unfounded. Yet even those statistics have not been updated since 2005, and we deserve to know if this number has changed.

With approximately 15 percent of our peers granted an edge in admissions, we would like to see the parameters of recruitment bands, not to mention more open discourse about the process. Like any other applicant, an athlete is entitled to a degree of confidentiality, but we feel that in a system built to standardize admissions within the NESCAC, we should standardize transparency too.

The editorial represents the majority view of the Bowdoin Orient’s editorial board, which is comprised of Erica Berry, Nora Biette-Timmons, Garrett Casey, Ron Cervantes, Marisa McGarry, Sam Miller and Kate Witteman.

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