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April 23, 2014
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  • Video: In Focus: Bowdoin a cappella

    No treble in paradise: a look at the auditions, rivalries, and inner workings of Bowdoin a cappella

    Throughout the school year, students flock to campus venues to hear their favorite a cappella groups perform. Whether the event is the large holiday concert in Pickard or a more intimate, laidback gathering in Ladd House, the performances are well attended almost without exception. However, there is a lot more to the world of a cappella than belting out your favorite Macklemore song in the chapel. There are logistics involved: organizing auditions, obtaining recording funds and the ongoing effort to dispel the prevalent notion of tense rivalries between groups.

    The A Cappella Council, spearheaded by Noah Gavil ’14, works to facilitate communication between the six groups to ensure that these logistics run as smoothly as possible. Although the groups perform together three times a year, their contact is otherwise fairly limited, and the Council has recently been working to change that.

    “This year, for the first time that I remember, we had a big meeting between all the other groups to work through some of the kinks,” said Kevin Miao ’14 of the Longfellows. “In the past, it was much more fragmented and there wasn’t much communication.”

    One of the most important aspects of this communication occurs during audition period. At the beginning of the year, each group goes around to the first year bricks to do “dorm sings,” making sure not to overlap too closely with anyone else. Interested students then sign up for auditions later in the week.

    “People kind of do their own thing with auditions, but it’s mostly a variation of the same thing,” said Gavil, who added that after the first wave of auditions, leaders from each group consult to create a schedule for callbacks. This way, if someone gets a callback from two groups, they can attend both.

    “There’s a big draft through all the groups where we talk about who wants whom,” said Erica Nangeroni ’14 of the coed group BOKA. “If we have someone we really can’t make a decision on we say, ‘Hey, you got into a couple groups; you have a few minutes to decide which one you want to be in.’ It’s a little high pressure.”

    As a side note, Nangeroni added, “We tend to have more girls audition than guys. The general trend is that boys are pulled a little bit more towards all-male groups and girls are pulled more towards coed group.”

    “There have been occasions where someone has been in two groups, but it is somewhat discouraged,” said Gavil. “They are always in one group first and then if they want to be in another group, they can audition in later years.”

    The lack of overlap in groups could feed the idea of their being rivalries amongst them, but Gavil, a member of Ursus Verses, maintains that this is not the case.

    “It’s all artificial to me—it’s sort of funny,” he said. “I think any rivalries are not real rivalries—they’re not like Seahawks and 49ers—and I think what is cool is that all the groups definitely have their own vibe, and their sort of type of repertoire and type of presentation.”

    Meddiebempster Michael Yang ’14 agreed, highlighting the difference in presentation between the two all-male groups. Where the Meddiebempsters (Meddies) are more “barbershop and tongue-in-cheek,” according to Yang, the Longfellows have a slightly more modern style in terms of song choice, arrangement and choreography.

    “We sing completely different things,” said Miao. “The kinds of kids who are attracted to the Longfellows aren’t necessarily attracted to what the Meddies bring to the table and [vice versa].”However, just because such rivalries do not exist does not mean that they never did.

    “I know that my freshman year, some of the Meddie/Longfellow seniors—I don’t even know who—just personally didn’t like each other, and that grew into a group thing,” said Yang.

    “We have been trying to get rid of the perception of rivalries. I’ve loved a lot of Longfellows…As long as both groups are good, then that is a great thing,” he added.

    Nangeroni expressed similar sentiments.

    “When I was younger, there were more rigid rivalries so to speak,” she said. “I think there was just a little bit more contention when I was an underclassman, and I can’t really say why.”

    She added that Thursday night’s Bursurka­­—a joint concert with BOKA and Ursus Verses—is a good way to dissolve the notion of rivalries.

    “I think the [idea] stems from the fact that there are two male groups, two female groups and two co-ed groups, and automatically people think that all of them are going to be butting heads,” she said. “Bursurka is a good opportunity for us to show the campus that the coed groups are here to work together and we’re just here to have fun with each other.”

    “There’s always a friendly rivalry,” said Margaret Lindeman ’15 of Ursus Verses, “but I think it more comes from the fact that every group wants to make really good music. So we’re always pushing ourselves to perform better and be as good as we can be, not by putting other groups down, but by doing the best that we can.”

    One aspect of the a cappella community that has always been strong is alumni relations, particularly with the Meddies and Longfellows, who hold frequent reunions.

    “We have really tight alumni connections,” said Yang. “I know alums from ’06-’07 pretty well even though I never went to school with them, because they visited here sometimes. I’ve been added to the email thread list of recent alumni from 2001 on, and there’s a Facebook group too.”

    Although the alumnae networks in the all-female groups may not be quite as established, the leaders say that their alumnae remain an important part of their identity. Over Spring Break, Miscellania did a weeklong tour of New England and New York, where they were able to touch base with several alumnae.

    “We’ve done relatively informal reunions in the past, but I think it would be great to do a bigger, official reunion, too,” said Paige Gribb ’14 of Miscellania. “We’ll have our 45th anniversary in 2017, so that will definitely be cause for celebration.”

    Above all else, the singers all seem to agree that a cappella has been a defining part of their Bowdoin experience, and many of them hope to continue singing after graduation.

    “[A cappella] has helped me with my personal confidence in terms of singing,” said Nangeroni. “It’s honed my leadership skills but also my public speaking skills. After college, I know that I want to keep singing. I don’t know when or where, but I know that I need some sort of outlet, because it’s been a great way to just relieve stress and I enjoy it so much.”

    URSUS VERSES

    Founded 2001  *  co-ed 

    behind the name: Ursus means bear in Latin, and verse is a musical term for a line of wordsMUSICAL STYLE: Pop music, ranging from hip-hop to folkMOST POPULAR SONGS: “Leaving Town” by Dexter Freebish, “Wrecking Ball” by Miley Cyrus, “Intro”  by the xx and folk song “Down to the River to Pray”TRADITION OR EVENT THEY’RE ASSOCIATED WITH: Bursurka with BOKA CLAIM TO FAME: The song “No More Crazies” from their 2012 CD was featured on the Best of A Cappella CDRECORDINGS: Three CDs signature PERFORMANCE ATTIRE: Semi-casual gray scale

    BEHIND THE NAME: Ursus means bear in Latin, and verse is a musical term for a line of words

    MUSICAL STYLE: Pop music, ranging from hip-hop to folkMOST POPULAR SONGS: “Leaving Town” by Dexter Freebish, “Wrecking Ball” by Miley Cyrus, “Intro”  by the xx and folk song “Down to the River to Pray”TRADITION OR EVENT THEY’RE ASSOCIATED WITH: Bursurka with BOKACLAIM TO FAME: The song “No More Crazies” from their 2012 CD was featured on the Best of A Cappella CDRECORDINGS: Three CDs SIGNATURE PERFORMANCE ATTIRE: Semi-casual gray scaleMISCELLANIA

    Founded 1972  *  ALL WOMEN

    BEHIND THE NAME: Created the year women were first admitted to Bowdoin; wanted the name to match the Meddiebempsters; looked in a dictionary and chose Miscellania

    MUSICAL STYLE: Range of classical choral music and current pop

    MOST POPULAR SONGS: Depends on the audience, but currently “Royals” by Lorde

    TRADITION OR EVENT THEY’RE ASSOCIATED WITH: ValJam with the Longfellows and Meddielania with the Meddiebempsters

    CLAIM TO FAME: They were on Maine Public Broadcasting Network with the Meddiebempsters a couple of years ago.

    RECORDINGS: Several CDs are out, most recently Little Black Dress, and another in the works for this year or next 

    SIGNATURE PERFORMANCE ATTIRE: Black dresses

    IF THEY COULD PERFORM ANY SONG, WHAT WOULD IT BE:  “Scarborough Fair” by Simon and Garfunkel

    THE LONGFELLOWS

    Founded 2004  *  ALL men

    BEHIND THE NAME: Named after Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, class of 1825

    MUSICAL STYLE: Pop, contemporary a cappella and traditional American choral pieces

    MOST POPULAR SONGS: “Hey Juliet” by LMNT

    TRADITION OR EVENT THEY’RE ASSOCIATED WITH: ValJam with Miscellania

    CLAIM TO FAME: Semi-finals at the International Championships of Collegiate A Cappella 3 years ago; made the Top 30 on the show Sing Off two seasons ago; sang the national anthem at a Celtics games 

    RECORDINGS: A new EP is on the way, and they have previously recorded three CDs. 

    SIGNATURE PERFORMANCE ATTIRE: Black suits

    BOKA

    Founded 1994  *  co-ed

    BEHIND THE NAME: It stood for Bowdoin’s Only Co-ed A Cappella, but the Best of College A Cappella CD acronym caused confusion, so the C was changed to a K

    MUSICAL STYLE: Pop, with a little bit of indie

    MOST POPULAR SONGS: A mashup of  “As Long As You Love Me” by Justin Bieber and “Wide Awake”  by Katy Perry

    TRADITION OR EVENT THEY’RE ASSOCIATED WITH: Bursurka with Ursus Versus

    CLAIM TO FAME: Low-key concerts for friends in college houses

    RECORDINGS: The last CD was recorded 3 years ago, and another one is due this spring

    SIGNATURE PERFORMANCE ATTIRE: Jewel tones

    IF THEY COULD PERFORM ANY SONG, WHAT WOULD IT BE:  “No Scrubs” by TLC

    BELLAMAFIA

    Founded 2007  *  ALL WOMEN

    BEHIND THE NAME: Randy Nichols said that the group was pretty in crime so they decided to incorporate it into the group’s name.

    MUSICAL STYLE: Mostly folk with some higher energy music.

    MOST POPULAR SONGS: A mashup of “Girl On Fire” by Alicia Keys and “Love the Way You Lie” by Eminem ft. Rihanna

    TRADITION OR EVENT THEY’RE ASSOCIATED WITH: PrezJam with the Meddiebempsters

    CLAIM TO FAME: They perform in many elderly homes in Brunswick and for the Portland Review.

    RECORDINGS: One currently out, with another coming next year.

    SIGNATURE PERFORMANCE ATTIRE: Seasonal. They wear sweaters and try to coordinate.

    IF THEY COULD PERFORM ANY SONG, WHAT WOULD IT BE: “Elastic Heart” by Sia

    THE MEDDIEBEMPSTERS

    Founded 1937  *  ALL men

    BEHIND THE NAME: The original story is that someone was blindfolded while throwing darts at a map of Maine, and one dart struck Lake Meddybemps.

    MUSICAL STYLE: Founded on barbershop, but they also do jazz arrangements and modern pop songs

    MOST POPULAR SONGS: “Mood Indigo” by Duke Ellington and “Goodbye, My Coney Island Baby” by Les Applegate

    TRADITION OR EVENT THEY’RE ASSOCIATED WITH: PrezJam with Bellamafia, and their annual tour

    CLAIM TO FAME: They’ve sung at the White House, in Korea and in California

    RECORDINGS: Decades of CDs, including Christmas with the Meddies

    SIGNATURE PERFORMANCE ATTIRE: Khakis, white shirts, blue blazers, and Bowdoin polar bear ties

    IF THEY COULD PERFORM ANY SONG, WHAT WOULD IT BE:  “Baby Got Back” by Sir Mix-a-Lot

  • Video: Final say: Steven Cerf, Peter Coviello and Jarrett Young '05

    Cerf, Coviello and Young share some final thoughts about their time at the College.

    George Lincoln Skolfield, Jr. Professor of German Steven Cerf, Professor of English Peter Coviello, and Assisstan Dean of Student Affairs Jarrett Young '05 will be leaving the College at the end of the academic year. The Orient sat down with them to hear some of their final thoughts about their time at the College.

Video

Behind the scenes: Thorne Bake Shop

A multimedia look at early morning routines, recipe selection, and the logistics of large-scale baking.

Callie Ferguson
Orient Staff
Hy Khong
Orient Staff

April 23, 2014

« »


Comments are permanently closed.

★ Featured

  • Banded together: recruited athletes with sub-average academics can receive preference in admissions

    First in a three-part series about athletic recruitment at Bowdoin and across the NESCAC.

    A set number of students are endorsed by Bowdoin coaches each year even though their high school grades and test scores do not necessarily meet the standards of the average accepted Bowdoin students. Admissions gives many of these students’ application materials early reads to alert coaches to the likelihood that the student-athlete will be accepted.

    This system is not confined to Brunswick, and for the last decade, the entire NESCAC has used a process to ensure that its sports events are perenially competitive, enabling uniformity in the 11 member institutions and establishing a mutual understanding of how rosters are filled. 

    “NESCAC institutions recognize the important role that athletics play on our campuses,” said Ashmead White Director of Athletics Tim Ryan. “With that, a system has been put in place to help ensure that institutions are able to develop athletic programs that are competitive within the conference.”

    Discussion of the role of student-athletes in liberal arts academia is a common conversation topic, but this admissions process is widely unknown. 

    Though a set system has been in place since 2002 and admissions and athletic administrators are generally open to talking vaguely about it, access to the specific information remains guarded and there are few means through which laypeople can find explanations. Multiple Bowdoin coaches declined to comment to the Orient on the specifics of the process, and according to Ryan, school policy dictates that numbers not be distributed publicly.

    The NESCAC’s highly regulated recruitment system was first widely revealed in a December 2005 New York Times article featuring Amherst’s dean of admissions and financial aid, Thomas Parker.

    “The real danger was in not acknowledging that we give preferential treatment to athletes,” said Parker in the article. “It engendered a corrosive cynicism. When it was on the table exactly what we do, it wasn’t as bad as some faculty thought.”

    History of new guidelines

    Parker was integral in formulating the current NESCAC-wide system in the early 2000s. When he arrived at Amherst in 1999 from Williams—where he had held the same position—the conference’s recruiting was very different from what it is now.

    “There was virtually no regulation or oversight of the relationship between admissions offices and the athletic departments,” he said in an interview with the Orient. He explained that Williams’ and Amherst’s presidents were both interested in re-evaluating the number of recruited athletes and their academic calibers.

    “Amherst and Williams lined our athletes up and said, ‘We’re virtually identical schools academically, so our athletes should be identical,’” said Parker.

    Implementing these new regulations conference-wide, however, was an arduous process. First, Amherst and Williams brought in Wesleyan, the third member school of the NESCAC’s so-called “Little Three.” Then the topic of these schools’ recruiting caps came up at a meeting of NESCAC presidents, who asked for admissions representatives from the whole conference to collaborate on reformulating the system. By 2002, a group of admissions deans had successfully modified the nascent system of the Little Three to be uniform across the league.

    As explained in Bowdoin’s 2006 reaccreditation self-survey, the NESCAC’s target-based athletic admissions model aimed to “reduce the number of recruited athletes admitted…and raise the academic profile of athletes.” The overall volume and competition of D-III sports had increased significantly in the past few decades, which at Bowdoin brought about “legitimate questions about the opportunity costs of admitting athletes to fill 31 teams at the expense of other highly qualified applicants in the Bowdoin pool.”

    The plan in action

    According to Parker, each NESCAC institution is allowed a maximum of 14 recruits for having a football team, with an additional two per remaining varsity sport. He said that every NESCAC school currently subscribes to the process. For Amherst, that number is 66 recruits, or athletic factors (AFs).

    “In those 66 cases, the athletic input controls the decision,” said Parker. “You have to say that in that group of 66 students, preference was given to them in the process, no question about it.”

    Parker said that for teams that do not compete at the D-III level, an extra AF recruit spot is added every other year in order to attract higher caliber athletes. For instance, Bowdoin’s 31 varsity teams factor into an allotted total, but he noted that a sport like nordic skiing, which competes outside of the NESCAC at the D-I level, is awarded further support. Other examples include Trinity’s squash and Colby’s alpine skiing teams.

    Following Parker’s formula, the number of allotted recruits at Bowdoin would be around 75, or about 15 percent of the incoming class. An Orient article last spring cited this number at 77, based on a speech by President Barry Mills at a faculty meeting, but further investigation has not been able to confirm this number.

    Those recruiting caps of supported athletes are then subdivided into “bands”—sometimes referred to as slots—which separate recruits academically based on how they compare to the averaged statistics of accepted students. Students in the B band have scores slightly below the averages, while C-band recruits are lower. Parker said that schools cannot consider prospective student-athletes whose numbers would make them fall below the C band’s lower boundary. Students whose scores place them well within the averages fall into the A band, but these individuals are not factored into the athletic support numbers.

    AFs are considered those prospective student-athletes in the B and C bands, though Parker noted “there’s only a very limited number of C bands that each school can take.”

    At Bowdoin, an agreement dictates that the admissions and athletic departments “don’t talk about numbers or qualifications related to those bands externally,” according to Ryan.

    As a point of comparison, Parker said in the 2005 New York Times article that the mean SAT score for that year’s freshman class was a 1442. The lowest band was for “students with strong high school records in challenging courses and with scores of 1250 to 1310 on the two-part College Board exam. The next-highest band required a very strong record and course load and SAT scores from 1320 to 1430.” 

    “At Amherst,” the article continued, “the mean SAT score for athletes filling slots was 60 to 75 points below the mean for the current freshman class.”

    Once the admissions deans fully understood the differentiation between the bands based on academic achievement, “we had to line up the other schools, which turned out to be a pretty big task,” Parker said.

    Implementing the numbering system wasn’t inherently difficult; the challenge came in identifying where cut-offs for B and C bands occur across various institutions.

    Some member institutions required no testing, some required subject tests, and there were significant gaps in average scores. After a few years, the deans standardized a system with modified test score and GPA averages depending on the means of each college’s student body.

    This breakdown of banding isn’t set in stone. In 2005 Amherst admitted 19 C-band recruits, but Parker said that number is now down to 12. Additionally, the academic qualifications for the lower band recruits has been raised due to heightened academic competitiveness in admissions.

    “But we’ve done that league-wide,” he added. “We’re not going to do anything unilaterally.”

    “Since we’ve become a playing conference, recruiting and schools trying to identify and attract and have people enroll at their schools is as intense as I’ve seen it since I started here 30 years ago,” said men’s hockey head coach Terry Meagher. “It’s always been a part of what we do—for this program we’ve always recruited very extensively and we’ve had a thorough model—but across the board it’s as competitive as I’ve ever seen it.”

    It would be impossible to field nearly any team using just two recruits per year, which is why the rest of the rosters are composed of A-band students no different academically from the other admitted students, who, said Parker, “would have made it under any conditions.”

    “We hope that a few others are going to be able to get in on their own because we have to do it that way, but I think in general it works out,” said women’s soccer head coach Brianne Weaver.

    “We have a limited number of people who we can talk to the admissions office about,” said football head coach Dave Caputi. “Some kids require a little more political capital than others—you have to pick and choose your battles. That’s constant across all sports. In a given year coaches may lobby a little higher for a really good player who’s in a position of high need.”

    Dividing the support

    Just because each NESCAC institution may use a certain number of spots each year on athletic recruits with somewhat lower academic pedigrees, the way in which schools do this varies.

    Though the overall allotment is based off an equal number of admittees per sport, each team does not use exactly two spots per season. Some coaches will sacrifice a spot one year for an extra recruit the next year. And depending on specific NESCAC schools’ preferences and traditions, some teams will consistently support more athletes in admissions than others.

    “You want to adjust it according to the priorities [of each school],” said Parker. “There are probably some NESCAC schools that emphasize one sport over another for reasons of tradition or something else.”

    Sailing coach Frank Pizzo said he understands that his program doesn’t hold as much gravitas as a sport like football or hockey, but recruits accordingly.

    “We’re a sports team that doesn’t have a whole lot of recruiting pull,” he said. “I rely on a lot of kids to whom I’m like, ‘Hey, if you can get in through admissions, we’d love to have you.’”

    Women’s rugby coach MaryBeth Mathews acknowledged a similar reliance on athletes admitted without a coach’s endorsement.

    “I have a very limited amount of support,” she said. “One because it’s a participation sport that offers the non-recruited athletes a chance to play, but until other NESCAC women’s programs are varsity, the College doesn’t see the need.”

    But students involved in less-supported athletic programs do understand the system’s engendering of inequitable support is “probably fair,” according to men’s swim captain Linc Rhodes ’14. Some teams, he said, “probably have a little more pull of people they can get in, but they’re also a way bigger influence on campus and they’re a bigger draw to people and alumni so they’re granted that.”

    Softball pitcher Julia Geaumont ’16, who was named Gatorade Player of the Year—the top high school player—in Maine as a senior at nearby Saco’s Thornton Academy, still thinks it’s less than ideal.

    “It’s kind of hard, looking at how some team gets a few more spots so maybe they can be a little bit better,” she said. “But, I mean, I think you’re going to find that any place.”

    Beyond academic distinctions

    For those prospective students who fall above the B band—whose scores are indistinguishable from the average student at a given college—a coach can still be supportive in admissions.

    However, this support will not be as strong, and in the words of Parker, “Would be no more helpful than the symphony director or the head of the studio art department. There’s a point at all the NESCAC schools when you can’t make any more academic distinctions because everybody is so good.”

    Parker said that these students are referred to as non-athletic factors (NAFs). Just like students applying to Bowdoin with an interest in intercollegiate athletics, many students apply here with plans to participate in other extracurricular activities.

    “You’re not going to come here and just be an athlete, you’re going to be involved in the theater or the arts or the newspaper,” said Ryan. “And that’s as important, if not more important, than your athletic ability.”

    When choosing between so many highly-qualified A-band applicants, each student’s non-academic strengths are carefully considered to figure out how they could best fit at the school. At this point, some students will be recognized in admissions by their coaches for a vote of confidence, and others may be identified by musical directors or other extracurricular leaders.

    But not having a conference-wide system in place for evaluating these activities makes it less clear as to how different schools support these types of students. Parker said that athletics is the most uniform because any NESCAC school knows or can easily find out what the ten other schools are doing, thanks to the structured process already in place for recruiting athletes.

    Part two: an investigation of the recruiting timeline, including a look at “early reads” in admissions and the benefits of the athletic recruiting visit. In two weeks: examining the academic performance of athletes once they get to Bowdoin and being a student-athlete at the College.   

  • 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. 

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