The Bowdoin Orient

Fifty years ago next week, Martin Luther King Jr. spoke at Bowdoin College. The Political Forum, a nonpartisan student organization led by Frederick J. Stoddard, Jr. ’64, Berle M. Schiller ‘65, and Christos J. Gianopoulos ‘64, invited him alongside civil rights leader Bayard Rustin. 

King spoke at a College that was home to predominantly white males. I write from a different one. One that is home to more than one gender, is statistically “diverse,” and has an established Africana Studies department. There is a lot that those three intrepid students who brought King to campus would be proud of. And yet.

When he spoke to a crowd of over 1,000 people at Brunswick’s First Parish Church, King reflected on the journey of African Americans. 

“Tracing the Negro’s struggle for freedom and full citizenship from the day he was brought to North America against his will, it is a fact we have come a long, long way,” he said. “But we still have a long, long way to go.” 

His words were true then, and they still are today. They are true for the world outside this bubble as well as for the one inside. For all the progress we acknowledge, there are equally powerful reminders of the distance to be travelled. To understand the contradictions that surround race today however, one must return to the original contradictions within the College’s early history.

The College is named after James Bowdoin II, a man who unsuccessfully drafted legislation that would “discourage the further importation of slaves into Massachusetts,” according to historians Frank and Fritzie P. Manuel. Yet, the Manuels also make clear that despite his public pronouncements, Bowdoin took advantage of the current laws in his home life. He owned a number of enslaved people himself and did business with known slavers. When he died in 1790, his son, James Bowdoin III, offered a substantial donation to the yet-to-be named College under the condition that the institution be named after his father, and by extension, gain a legacy of race inconsistencies.

Thirty years after its 1794 chartering, the College admitted John Brown Russwurm. We know Russwurm’s story quite well. Graduating in 1826, he was Bowdoin’s first and the nation’s third black college graduate, now commemorated by the John B. Russwurm house on campus. Less discussed is that Phebe Ann Jacobs, an enslaved woman owned by Maria Malleville Wheelock (the wife of William Allen, then president of the College) who stayed in Brunswick during Russwurm’s stay. Wheelock brought Jacobs with her to the College when the family moved in 1820. While there is a scholarly debate as to what Jacobs’ status—domestic servant or slave—was during her time in Brunswick, Craig Steven Wilder’s  recent “Ebony & Ivy,” asserts that she was a slave until Wheelock’s death in 1828. 

Whatever strides the College made forward, there were always constant reminders of the limitations of this progress. As an institution committed to the Common Good since its early days, Bowdoin hosted minstrel shows until at least the 1910s. These inconsistencies are not restricted to Bowdoin’s past either; they still strangle our community’s engagement with race today. 

Barry Mills became president of the College in 2001 and has transformed the diversity of the student body. According to the College’s common data set for the 2001-2002 academic year, less than 14 percent of the College’s student body at the time was non-white. In the 13 years since, that statistic has increased to 31.5 percent. While statistical diversity has more than doubled, race has gone from being considered “very important” in admissions—on par with high school records—to “considered” on the same level as one’s state residency or their interview. The change indicates a satisfaction with the level of diversity that Bowdoin currently enjoys, and implies that the goal has been reached. Yet a similar statistic makes clear just how distant the goal still is. In the 2001-2002 academic year only 11 percent of the College’s faculty were members of minority groups. Thirteen years later, that number has grown by less than four percentage points. 

I have been forced to personally grapple with these inconsistencies during my time here. I sit in class not knowing whether to correct everyone’s mispronunciation of an Indian woman’s name. I usually do, but today I’m tired. I’m tired of being one of a few non-white students in a classroom, if not the only one. I bring up race in discussions only to see the thought flicker in my peers eyes and on their tongues. They sigh without a sound. I’ve brought up race again. I’ve sidetracked the discussion. I’ve chosen to make an issue out of it. 

I grow a beard only to be called a terrorist. I pronounce the “h” in my name only to hear muffled laughs. Clothing becomes exotic once it clads my body. Cotton shirts are called dashikis and sandals ethnic. While I am now comfortable in my own skin, I can remember wishing for whiteness my first year when I thought certain types of girls were impossible to talk to due to my skin being more kiwi than peach. Months later, I remember thinking that attraction might only be possible when a girl had “a thing for brown guys.” 

Since then, I’ve found organizing. I’ve found solidarity, allies, and inspirations. There are many lights here—many who have taught me how to engage with the realities of race on this campus and beyond—and many who will lead the charge in changing  our campus realities. Still, too few people acknowledge that race is an issue on our campus, or that it has ever been one. But if people say they are color blind, do they even see me?

Zohran Kwame Mamdani is a member of the Class of 2014.

This week, you have probably seen some glorious mustaches and some laughable baby faces. Why, you ask? MOVEMBER. What is Movember, you ask? Well, my inquisitive friend, let me lead you on a magical mustache ride full of facts, figures and fuzz. 

Movember is an annual month-long festival dedicated to changing the face of men’s health, sponsored internationally by the Movember Fund and at Bowdoin by your 2014 Class Council, Bowdoin Men Against Sexual Violence (BMASV) and Peer Health. 

The goal is simple: throughout the month formerly known as November, honorable men and women will pledge to raise awareness and funds for men’s health. Specifically, Movember aims to raise awareness for prostate and testicular cancer, as well as mental health issues.

I arrived in Cairo on Wednesday, June 19, eleven days before the onset of nationwide protests that were to depose President Mohammad Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood. I moved into an apartment on 15 Bostan Street, a couple minutes walk from Tahrir Square. In true foreigner fashion, I found myself paying double-price for the taxi, dragging my suitcases into the lobby. Most apartment buildings in Cairo have a doorman—a bawab—and I spent our first conversation trying to explain that I was claustrophobic and was going to walk up eight flights of stairs to my apartment. He smiled and grabbed my suitcases as he stepped into the elevator. I started climbing.

The summer before, I had studied at Middlebury’s Arabic program with a friend who then recommended a language institute in Cairo. I took his advice, and this summer, I signed up for six weeks of an intensive language course and gave myself a week at the end to travel around the country.

In Egypt, like in every other Arabic-speaking country, people speak a local dialect of Arabic known as aamiyya. Aamiyya and fusha are like two languages that, while obviously related, are still noticeably different. I, like every other foreign language student, learned the latter—it is taught in schools, spoken in official capacities and used for all written Arabic. However, I soon learned that no one spoke it outside of a presidential address—ever. As I explored the streets near my apartment, I tried to pick up conversations with whoever was willing. Midway through one, the man I was speaking to paused, saying, “I can’t believe I’m speaking fusha right now”—obviously saying most of it in aamiyya. I was a Shakespearean character walking around twenty-first century London; all I was missing was the medieval outfit.

As last semester wound down, one of my professors asked the class why such a large percentage of students would want to take depressants every weekend. It took me a second to register that he meant alcohol. A couple answers were offered: peer pressure, cultural norms, liquid courage. All were correct, but the last stuck with me. 

While alcohol doesn’t quite take us to the level of Ron Weasley on Felix Felicis, it can make even the most awkward of us just that little bit smoother. Our understanding of parties as places without consequence adds to our confidence.  

Not only is this idea dangerous in and of itself, but it blurs the boundaries of acceptability. The confidence that alcohol provides can translate into sexual aggression, and in many cases consent is not sought out but assumed. As a guy, I can prowl College House basements, and think that it’s normal if I forgo questions and choose actions. I can just dance up onto a girl. If the girl keeps dancing, sweet. If she walks away, ah well, I guess she wasn’t feeling it. Her loss. And so it goes, with the aggressiveness translating into attempts to make out or to do whatever else can be done. 

I keep telling myself, "walk backward, but speak forward." I'm just about to run into one of those damn poles when a kind parent on my tour alerts me.

For the first time in its quarter of a century history, the women's volleyball team has won the NESCAC championship title. In an almost unheard of 3-0 NESCAC final victory, the team handily defeated defending champion Middlebury last Sunday with set scores of 25-21, 25-22 and 25-17.

In the buildup to tomorrow's game against Williams, there are signs that the matchup will not only herald the beginning of a new season for the Polar Bears, but possibly a new era.

"I'm telling you man, there're no cameras in West, we'll be fine." First mistake. My accomplice, who has asked to remain anonymous (name rhymes with Villain Lammer), was a bit unsure about the whole thing, so I told him a few things that I thought were true. They weren't.

Close to four months after the April 17 fire at 45 Maine Street, the building's owner Orville Ranger has been issued with both a civil and a criminal summons. He is expected to stand trial in the coming months, and will appear at a dispositional conference scheduled for November 17.

In the aftermath of the April 17 fire at 45 Maine Street, the Brunswick Police Department (BPD) has decided to commission a criminal investigation after the Brunswick Fire Department (BFD) discovered several violations of the building's fire code.

In the aftermath of the March 6 Daggett Lounge discussion regarding acts of racial and sexual intolerance and the March 9 "I Am Bowdoin" community protest, members of the student body and the administration are taking steps toward ensuring that there is no repeat of the March 1 bias incident that occurred in Coles Tower. In particular, "I Am Bowdoin" recently transitioned from being a protest group to an organization of around 40 students geared toward spreading diversity awareness.

For residents of Coles Tower, another week has brought another break-in. On either Monday or Tuesday, an apartment was broken into and prescription medication was stolen. The break-in is the third to have occurred on campus in the last six weeks, and the fourth in Coles Tower since September 1, 2010. "Some prescription medication was taken out of a bedroom in the Tower, and [while] not all of the pills were taken out of the bottle, several were taken," said Director of Safety and Security Randy Nichols.

Residents of MacMillan House who returned to campus last weekend after break were generally relieved to discover the majority of their personal property undisturbed following a break-in that occurred over the long winter vacation. The Office of Safety and Security reported that the break-in most likely occurred at about 4 a.m. on December 28, while most students were away for Winter Break.

Every year as the weather gets colder in Brunswick, the College manages to keep its students warm through the Central Heating Plant and other individual heating systems. This year, the College will bring its heating system one step further with the addition of the environmentally friendly solar hot water project to Thorne Dining Hall.

On Tuesday night, former law and liquor enforcement officer Frank Lyons held an information session about Maine liquor laws at MacMillan House. The event was organized in a collaborative effort by the Brunswick Police Department (BPD), Higher Education Alcohol Prevention Partnership (HEAPP), Communities Against Substance Abuse (CASA), and the Office of Residential Life. The session was geared toward educating students about alcohol laws applicable to hosting a party on a college campus.

So far this year, Bowdoin Cable Network (BCN) News has not aired a single episode. While there are plans in place to air the first one early next week, the program will not continue to run weekly segments on the network as it has in past years due mainly to a lack of student interest.