The Bowdoin Orient

Before unanimously approving new procedures for impeaching student representatives last Wednesday evening, Bowdoin Student Government (BSG) put to rest any possibility that impeachment proceedings would continue against Class of 2018 Representative Clare McInerney ’18 and At-Large Representative Duncan Cannon ’18 for their attendance at February’s party.

In some of her first public comments since publicly apologizing for attending the party at a BSG meeting last month, McInerney said on Thursday that the BSG’s decision to prevent the articles from being reopened validated her feeling that the impeachment process as a whole had not been fair. 

“At this point it’s not even about the wrongness or rightness of wearing a sombrero or attending the ‘tequila’ party—there wasn’t any form of due process in my eyes. I think the fact that it was voted on last night and we can’t use it retroactively is good. That was the issue to begin with,” said McInerney.

“I don’t want to make this convoluted—I don’t have a problem with being impeached in any shape or form if my actions warrant it, but my issue with all of this has been that the process itself wasn’t fair, not that what we did was not meriting impeachment,” she continued. McInerney reiterated that neither she, nor Cannon, nor anyone on their behalf had threatened to pursue legal action against the College or members of BSG. 

When asked about how she envisioned her future with student government, McInerney declined to answer. 

At their March 9 meeting before spring break, the BSG members who had introduced the articles of impeachment earlier that month announced that they were choosing to rescind the process due to potential legal issues posed by following through with impeachment proceedings while simultaneously creating the formal steps by which impeachment occurs.

While the BSG constitution references an ability to impeach, the assembly’s previous bylaws offered almost no instructions as to how an impeachment would actually proceed in reality.For that reason, BSG President Danny Mejia-Cruz ’16 postponed the impeachment proceedings after administrators warned him that continuing to do so could place BSG members in a weakened position in case of a lawsuit.

“We realized that we didn’t have a set process, and should a lawsuit come up, we would be on shaky ground, and that led me to worry about the three petitioners and the status of the General Assembly as a whole,” Mejia-Cruz said.

Neither Mejia-Cruz nor Inter-House Council Representative Jacob Russell ’17, one of the three students who brought the articles of impeachment, said they had received any specific notices of lawsuits.

Russell said that the administration’s warning, which first filtered down to him and his fellow petitioners At-Large Representative Lucia Gibbard ’18 and Vice President for Facilities and Sustainability Kevin Hernandez ’18 through Mejia-Cruz’s postponement of the impeachment proceedings, caused him to reconsider moving forward with the process.

“I don’t even know if anyone actually threatened legal action,” Russell said. However, speaking independently with legal counsel and hearing more warnings from the administration led him to acknowledge, “There would potentially be a legitimate case because of the procedural issues.”

In an email to campus last Wednesday, the three reaffirmed the decision to drop the articles, stating, “We completely stand by our initial reasons for introducing the articles of impeachment.”

One remaining question brought up at this week’s BSG meeting, where the new impeachment procedures were finally completed and unanimously approved, was whether the articles of impeachment could be reintroduced by other BSG members in order to reopen proceedings against McInerney and Cannon given that there now existed a definite and laid out process for impeachment.

Several members, such as Class of 2016 Representative Brian Francoeur ’16 and Vice President for Student Organizations Emily Serwer ’16 argued that questions of legal fairness would still apply if the new procedures were to apply retroactively. They pushed for an amendment that would prohibit previously defeated articles of impeachment from being reintroduced which passed unanimously.

Gibbard on the other hand argued that since no impeachment had actually been carried out and defeated, it was still within the realm of possibility for different members to reintroduce the articles, having remedied the procedural inconsistency that led the three to drop them in the first place.

Eventually, BSG voted, with 10 in favor, eight against and seven abstaining, to add an amendment to prevent the new procedures from applying to previously introduced articles of impeachment, bringing an end to any possibility that McInerney and Cannon will be impeached.

A noticeably smaller group than in recent weeks attended the meeting’s public comment time, where two speakers spoke sympathetically to McInerney and Cannon’s cases.

Caleb Gordon ’18, who identified as a “liberal Hispanic,” argued that it wasn’t clear that the “tequila” party was wrong and asked BSG to refine its definition of cultural appropriation to distinguish between a more acceptable form of “appropriation” and a negative “misappropriation.”

Joe Lace ’17 argued in a prepared speech that McInerney and Cannon had been unfairly reprimanded over the last few weeks in public comment time. He further argued that BSG had not been adequately representing all viewpoints in the way that they have been considering the impeachment. His speech was met with applause from most onlookers in the room.

“The amendment being considered tonight comes with the claim that ‘impeachment is an unfortunate but necessary aspect of all democratic governments,’” Lace said. “Is democracy not also in line with adequate representation of all viewpoints? Shouldn’t this body honor opinions its members might not explicitly agree with?”

A recent poll released by Associate Professor of Government Michael Franz’s Quantitative Analysis in Political Science class lends some credence to the idea that opinions of the “tequila” party and the BSG’s response to it are more divided than on other previous issues of cultural appropriation and ethnic stereotyping at Bowdoin.

One of the questions in the poll, sent out to a random sample of 475 Bowdoin students and completed by 358, asked respondents to rate the appropriateness of certain events on campus, such as Cracksgiving, the “gangster” party and the “tequila” party. On a scale of 1 to 100, with 1 being acceptable and 100 being unacceptable, the “tequila” party had an average rating of 48, neither clearly unacceptable nor acceptable to the student body.  

In contrast, the impeachment proceedings themselves received a more inappropriate rating of 60 while Cracksgiving and the “gangster” party both received ratings of 73.

Bowdoin Student Government (BSG) welcomed Sarah Washington ’17 as its newest member at its meeting on Wednesday, filling the newly created chair of the representative of the Multicultural Coalition.

As a representative, Washington hopes to utilize BSG’s school-wide email capability and institutional support to better promote multicultural events on campus, saying, “Often, unless you’re a Facebook friend with someone, you’re not really going to get invited to an event, but if you’re getting an email from BSG—that’s different, it’s something that’s simple that can have an immediate impact.”

Last semester’s calls for broader dialogue about the issues that students of color face on campus culminated in a proposal by the BSG’s executive team to propose adding a new interest-group representative for the Multicultural Coalition, similar to the ones already on BSG representing the Inter-House Council, the Athletics Council, the McKeen Center and the Entertainment Board.

The student body overwhelmingly approved a referendum on the new position before Winter Break by a 1,155 to 100 vote. Last Friday, representatives of the 22 groups that make up the Multicultural Coalition met to elect their new BSG delegate. Three students ran for the position, the other two being Hugh Mo ’17 of the Asian Students Association, and Victoria Pitaktong ’17 of Students for a Free Tibet.

Washington, who lives at the John Brown Russwurm African American Center and primarily considers herself a member of the African-American Society (Af-Am), believes that one of her roles is to maximize the role of all the multicultural groups on campus, a challenge given the breadth of Bowdoin’s multicultural community.

“It brought up questions of whether bigger groups should have more of a say than others,” said Washington.

One of the people in charge of resolving those kinds of questions was Kiki Nakamura-Koyama ’17, currently the student intern in the Student Center for Multicultural Life, which oversees the Multicultural Coalition. She oversaw this election and, along with former BSG Vice President for Student Government Affairs Charlotte McLaughry ’15, originally proposed the multicultural representative position to BSG last April. However, it lost traction due to being proposed at the last meeting of the year.

Nakamura-Koyama had initially proposed the representative after perceiving that events beyond the college—such as the deaths of Eric Garner and of Michael Brown and the Ferguson protests—were inspiring little action or conversation on the part of BSG. She, like Washington, sees the position not only as reactive to recent events at Bowdoin and in the wider world but also serving to address a longer-term deficit in dialogue about race and multicultural issues on campus.

“Even if there aren’t any major events happening at the time, it’s necessary to bring a multicultural voice into BSG in order to express the sentiments of almost one-third of the campus,” Nakamura-Koyama said.

Justin Pearson ’17 questioned the constitutionality of an internal election that would allow the current Bowdoin Student Government (BSG) Interim Vice President for Student Organizations Emily Serwer ’16 to remain in her post as a full member for the rest of the year.

He voiced this concern during public comment time at Wednesday’s BSG assembly meeting. Serwer was appointed to the position following the transfer of former Vice President for Student Organizations Wylie Mao ’18, but Pearson maintained that she was not an elected student and therefore could not participate in the vacancy election, which is constitutionally restricted to members of the Assembly.

Disagreeing, BSG President Danny Mejia-Cruz ’16 and Vice President for Student Government Affairs Michelle Kruk ’16 maintained that Serwer’s interim appointment effectively made her a member, and therefore was eligible to run. In response, Pearson accused the Executive Committee of setting a dangerous precedent of extra-constitutionally “creating rules” in order to give the chance for Serwer to stay in the position though unelected by the student body.  

BSG’s constitutional provisions on a vacancy are not extensive—in the case of a vacancy, the Assembly votes to elect one of its current members to fill the spot. According to Mejia-Cruz, the timing of Mao’s resignation from the College left the Executive Committee in a bind, leading them to appoint Serwer to the position in order to have the post filled before the fall. He acknowledged that it was a constitutional “gray area.”

Serwer has previously served as BSG’s non-elected Director of Programming, and ran unsuccessfully for the position of BSG’s Vice President of Student Government Affairs last spring.

A number of voting members of the assembly eligible to run for the vacancy against Serwer—such as several At-Large Representatives—are also appointed by the BSG’s executives and not elected by the whole student body.

After the meeting, Pearson said that his objections tied into broader concerns about the BSG’s operations, arguing that in uncertain situations—such as this one, or during the confusion over the server crash, which stalled last April’s BSG elections—decisions devolve to the president or BSG’s executives in a way that is neither transparent nor fair.

Mejia-Cruz noted that his decision to ask Serwer to fill the post was only taken after getting the support of the BSG’s Vice Presidents, and having talked out all of his options with several Deans. 

Should Mejia-Cruz’s motion be passed at a BSG meeting two weeks from now, an election amongst the Assembly will be held to choose between Serwer and any other voting BSG members should they choose to oppose her. When the motion was opened up to the rest of the Assembly members for questions or concerns on the subject, none were raised.

After the meeting, Serwer seemed largely unfazed. 

“I understand where Danny was coming from,” she said. “I understand the need to now have an election to officially fill this position, and I don’t object to public comment about the constitution. It’s nice to actually hear that the student body has some interest in it.”

Last Wednesday night, Bowdoin Student Government (BSG) hosted Dr. Birgit Pols, director of Heath Services, for a conversation about the current state of the College’s Health Center.

When asked by BSG President Chris Breen ’15 about her own views on the decision to not change the Health Center’s structure, Pols said that Bowdoin’s current system offers the benefit of a staff that is “specifically trained and specifically looking out for the issues that affect college students.” She also highlighted student privacy and close relationships with the athletics programs as additional benefits of having in-house Health Center staff.

BSG representatives weighed in with their own thoughts about improving the Health Center. Vice President for Facilities and Sustainability Bridgett McCoy ’15 asked about the possibility of having an electronic check-in so students could preserve privacy, not announcing their reason for checking in to the whole waiting room. Pols responded that a system of online check-in and appointment scheduling was incompatible with the Health Center’s current electronic records system.

Addressing the concern of At-Large-Rep Josh Raff ’15 that there seemed to be fewer chances to get flu shots this year than in the past, Pols informed the assembly that the Health Center has been operating this semester down one nursing staff position and one health care provider. Health Services is currently in the process of hiring replacements.

Following Pols’ departure, Breen urged BSG members to start thinking about ways to improve this year’s Winter Weekend to be held from February 6-8.

On Wednesday evening, Bowdoin Student Government (BSG) passed changes to its election bylaws, ending a debate initiated two weeks ago by BSG President Chris Breen ’15 over more stringent guidelines for candidate spending.

The bylaws already prohibited election parties hosted by candidates or on their behalf, giving gifts and sending mass emails via the College’s club, class or dorm lists.

However, after Wednesday’s near-unanimous vote—with one abstention and one vote in opposition—the election bylaws now restrict all candidates to the use of $12—provided by BSG—to be spent at Bowdoin’s Copy Center.

The change seeks to limit self-funded expenditures by student candidates. Under BSG’s previous rules, candidates received a $10 poster allotment, but no bylaw prevented candidates from spending their own money on campaign materials.

In previous election cycles, candidates have spent their own money on more than just posters. Informational handouts, flyers, glossy banners hanging from dorm room windows, and sponsored posts on social media sites like Facebook have all been funded out of students’ pockets, leading several BSG members to raise the question of whether certain candidates could have socioeconomic advantages over others.

“If someone has the money to spend on a campaign, and someone doesn’t, do we want that to become an issue?” asked At-Large Representative David Levine ’16.

The proposal approved on Wednesday night was both simpler and more restrictive than several of the ideas brought up in debate two weeks ago. One such idea was allowing individual expenses by candidates, but capping them.

Vice President for Academic Affairs Chrissy Rujiraorchai ’17 voted against the proposal because she felt that not everyone had the chance to think it through completely.

“This is a fairly new council and some people don’t have experience in BSG yet, so to make such a rash decision of a bylaw that’s been there for years, I think it’s a little bit quick,” she said. “We had a two-week turnaround, and we didn’t have enough time to really think about the implications.”

At-Large Representative Kiki Nakamura-Koyama ’17, who abstained, said that she did so not because of the content of the proposal, but because she had missed the initial debate on the topic.

At its second meeting of the academic year, Bowdoin Student Government (BSG) unanimously approved two routine motions. 

The first was to spend $200 to fund refreshments at the “Food for Thought” student lecture series, organized by BSG’s Committee on Academic Affairs. In past years the lectures have happened on Monday evenings in the Hawthorne-Longfellow Library. Educational, but generally lighthearted affairs, previous presentations have included talks on volcanoes, boy-band fandom, and even conspiracy theories regarding President Mills’ nefarious designs on Bowdoin’s squirrel population.

The assembly also voted to retroactively put $500 toward the cost of the taco truck that was stationed outside of Ladd House during Epicuria. According to BSG President Chris Breen ’15, the student government split the overall cost of the truck with other campus organizations like the Office of Residential Life.

Breen said helping to fund the truck made sense, given BSG’s mandate to provide services to the student body.

“Any time that there’s an event on campus that we think many people will attend, we try to chip in. It was also a safety consideration,” he said.

BSG began its Wednesday meeting in a closed Executive Session at which Chair of the Judicial Board (J-Board) Jacques Larochelle ’15, Assistant Dean of Student Affairs Leslie Levy, Associate Dean of Student Affairs Meadow Davis, and Director of Gender Violence Prevention and Education Benje Douglas reviewed last year’s judicial proceedings and explained how the J-Board functions.

BSG typically meets with representatives from the J-Board early on in the academic year for this purpose. During the year, the assembly also appoints a BSG member to provide input during the J-Board selection process, which happens in the spring semester.

Following the slam of the ceremonial opening gavel, the Bowdoin Student Government (BSG) Assembly convened for the first time this year in Daggett Lounge in Thorne Hall at 8:30 p.m. on Wednesday night. The assembly got right to business by retroactively approving three expenditures that had been organized by BSG’s executive officers over the summer and in the first month of the semester.

The BSG Assembly is headed by President Chris Breen ’15 and is comprised of elected Executive Vice Presidents, Class Representatives, appointed at-large members, and representatives from other organizations like the Inter-House Council and the McKeen Center. On Wednesday night they unanimously voted to support all three proposals.

The first was to continue funding BSG’s PolarFlix film streaming service. Available through BSG’s website, the service allows students on Bowdoin’s Wifi connection to choose among a set of 15 different movies each month, chosen by the executive committee. The cost of the streaming service and the rights to the films is $12,000.

The assembly then voted to approve spending $350 to fund a contract with TurboVote, a nonpartisan service that provides free voter registration to college students. The service also mails students absentee ballots for their home states and sends reminders about upcoming elections and information about voting deadlines. 

The final proposal was to approve $800 for gelato given away to first year students at BSG’s meet-and-greet event at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art during orientation week. This proposal, like the two before it, passed without any opposition or debate.

During the meeting, several of the executive committee members shared optimistic prospects for the year ahead. Vice President for Student Affairs Justin Pearson ’17 said that he saw the goal of student government to be “improving the Bowdoin experience.”

He stated that a vital part of doing that was to continue to make BSG into “something that people can approach and utilize,” in order to be an “outlet where they can express themselves and petition to make their ideas a reality.” He cited the existence of BSG’s Good Ideas Fund, a pool of $3,000 that students can apply for in order to finance programming and project ideas independent from the usual club-funding process.

Vice President for Student Government Affairs Charlotte McLaughry ’15 echoed his comments, stressing the need to keep the students informed  about the services BSG offers. “People think we don’t do anything—we need to make sure that they know what we’re doing here, that we’re meeting three or four times a week to try and get things done for the student body,” she said.

The meeting ended around 9:30 p.m. with a motion to adjourn. Not surprisingly, it was unanimous. 

On Wednesday, Bowdoin Student Government (BSG) unanimously voted to approve changes of the student government’s bylaws at its final meeting for the 2013-2014 academic year.

BSG’s bylaws govern the roles of the student representatives, regulate election procedures, and determine the structure of student government bodies such as the Student Organizations Oversight Committee.

Many of the changes are simply the movement of clauses from the body’s constitution to the bylaws. A newly added article has created more stringent rules regarding attendance for student representatives, setting a specific number of unexcused absences from the assembly before automatic expulsion.

Speaking as to why certain policies had been moved from the constitution to the bylaws, Vice President for Student Government Affairs Allen Wong Yu ’14 stated, “they are here that so when duties change as things arise it’s easier for us to fix them in the bylaws.” If BSG wants to make changes to its constitution, it requires the approval of two-thirds of the entire student body. Editing the bylaws only requires two successful two-thirds votes of BSG itself.

After all business was done, outgoing BSG President Sarah Nelson ’14 symbolically handed the gavel to BSG President-Elect Chris Breen ’15, who adjourned the meeting. 

The Bowdoin Student Government (BSG) Assembly unanimously voted for an initial approval of changes to the BSG’s bylaws at their meeting on Wednesday night. According to the BSG’s constitution, a two-thirds majority of the assembly must approve the changes again next week to put them into effect.

Among other things, BSG’s bylaws govern the roles of the elected student representatives, regulate election procedures and determine the structure of important student government bodies, such as the Student Organizations Oversight Committee (SOOC).

Last week’s elections moved several whole articles from the BSG’s constitution to the bylaws, including articles delineating responsibilities of the President and Vice Presidents on Student Government, discussing the student representatives on the trustee committees and the final approval of Judicial Board nominations. None of these articles have actually been modified, just shifted to a different section of the constitution.

A new section including stricter rules for representative attendance was added, exceeding the limit of three unexcused absences for meetings of the BSG Assembly or subcommittees. Going over the limit (or a total combination of five absences from both types of meetings) will result in an automatic expulsion from the assembly without a vote. Expelled members may however be reinstated by a two-thirds vote of the executive committee.

Changes to the SOOC’s guidelines have now codified some of the organization’s new roles, such as its stewardship of the Orbit, organization of the Student Activities Fair, and holding club leader training sessions. Some of the changes contained in this year’s reassessment of the SOOC’s guidelines are also mentioned here.

Vice President of the Treasury and SAFC Chair Megan Massa ’14 also presented an initial set of changes for the SAFC guidelines, arguing that it was more effective to change the guidelines at the end of this year, rather than at the beginning of the next academic year. Massa stated that her proposed changes came from a desire to save money next year.

One change Massa proposed was to cut down the amount of off-campus meals the SAFC supplies for clubs that travel. Calling the practice “unsustainable,” Massa explained “we give you the means to go, we give you the transport, food is a luxury that you have to pay for.”

Massa noted that under her proposed changes, there would still be ways to fund meals for club trips, such as board transfers—each club would still be allowed two per semester, although certain athletic clubs could get permission for more additional funds from Associate Director of Dining Services, Ken Cardone. Massa’s proposal also adds an additional $50 of travel snack money to supplement food funds.

Since BSG has no meeting next week, the Assembly will vote on these proposed changes at their meeting the week after.

Bowdoin Student Government (BSG) voted to ratify changes to its constitution at its Wednesday meeting. The vote was unanimous, except for one abstention. The proposed changes now require the assent of two-thirds of the student body, which will vote on them—and for BSG executive officer positions—this weekend.

According to BSG Vice President for Student Government Affairs Allen Wong Yu ’14, the changes were designed to be non-controversial and procedural. They seek to make the constitution a “document that will be useful for the future, and also make future assemblies’ lives easier,” said Wong Yu.

The first article of the constitution, which states the purpose and goals of the BSG, has been largely rewritten to include the College’s nondiscrimination policy and a new “Authority” section, which reinforces the BSG’s ability to change its own bylaws through a two-thirds majority vote of the assembly.

A new accountability section includes text stating that all documents, meeting times and minutes produced by BSG will be available to the public. Most of these documents already are. 

However, there are limits to the transparency that the proposed changes would require. BSG would still be able to hold closed executive sessions and to withold materials at its discretion.When asked by Class of 2015 Representative Daniel Cohen what circumstances might require withholding documents to the public, BSG President Sarah Nelson ’14 struggled to remember many recent examples. She said the BSG Executive committee withheld documents of correspondence with Dean of Student Affairs Tim Foster last summer over updating the College’s hazing policy.

BSG occasionally meets in closed executive sessions, usually when the anonymity of students is at issue, such as when it offered final approval of the Judicial Board (J-Board) nominations in February. Another notable example from last year was when BSG executives met with President Barry Mills for a closed-door meeting on the issue of fossil fuel divestment. No minutes were produced, and the Orient was not allowed to report on the conversation.

The rest of the constitutional amendments were not rewrites. Articles concerning the roles of BSG representatives, the student representatives on faculty and trustee committees, and BSG’s role approving J-Board nominations are to be taken out of the constitution, and added instead to the BSG bylaws.

Moving these articles to the bylaws makes editing them easier, according to Yu. Changes to the bylaws require the support of two-thirds of the BSG assembly. Constitutional amendments require a four-fifths majority of the BSG assembly and the approval of two-thirds of the student body. 

Yu said that moving the articles of the constitution to the bylaws was not streamlining procedure at the expense of transparency. 

“Our meetings are always open, and there’s a lot of access points, and we really want to hear from students,” he said. “We don’t hear nearly enough from them, and then after we make these types of changes we hear from them, and we wonder where they were in the deliberation process.” BSG voted to waive its own rule requiring a two-week interval between the introduction of a motion and a vote on it, so that the constitutional changes could be put on the ballot at the end of this week.

Cohen was the one assembly member who abstained from the vote on the amendments. He said that he did not disagree with the content of the amendments, only the method by which they were introduced. 

“Since I’ve been on BSG that suspending the two-week rule has been overused, and I think that especially with the student government constitution, it should be taken more seriously, and that we should have taken some more time to look at it as an assembly before we sent it to the student body,” he said.   

According to Student Activities Funding Committee (SAFC) documents, the Bowdoin Student Government (BSG) budget has more than doubled in the last three years. While the SAFC allocated BSG just $33,900 for the 2011-2012 academic year, the governing body’s budget rose to $55,394 for the 2012-2013 academic year and increased again this year to $75,142. These expansions in SAFC funding are largely attributable to BSG’s new control over existing events and services.

The most notable changes are due to shifts in funding for Spring Gala and the Yellow Bike Club--both added to the BSG budget in 2012--and the online PolarFlix film streaming service, added in 2013. Spring Gala and the Yellow Bike Club annually cost about $20,000 and $5,400, respectively, while PolarFlix costs $12,000.

According to BSG President Sarah Nelson ’14, Spring Gala was also brought under BSG’s umbrella because of its applicability to the whole student body and the fact that it doesn’t fit neatly into another student organization’s purview.

“Ultimately when it’s something that’s reaching that large of a number of students, it makes sense that the student government does that, as it reaches the entire school,” Nelson said.  

The film streaming service, PolarFlix, had originally been provided by the Bowdoin Cable Network, but was taken over by BSG after what SAFC Chair Megan Massa ’14 called “a snafu with club leadership from year to year.”  According to Massa, the BSG has taken on funding these additional services and events because they “are services that we thought students wanted, and should always receive, and if the BSG oversaw them they would be seen continuously from year to year and wouldn’t be dropped.”    

The Yellow Bike Club was brought under the BSG for more bureaucratic reasons. According to Associate Director of Student Activities Nate Hintze, the BSG bylaws state that no independent student club funded by the SAFC is allowed to pay students for performing their duties as club members. Hintze explained that the fact that Yellow Bike Club mechanics are paid an hourly wage went against SAFC guidelines, so the actual funding of the service was transferred to BSG, which is allowed to pay students for their services. Rather than applying for funding from the SAFC, the Yellow Bike Club now asks for money directly from BSG. According to Andrew Pryhuber ’15, a mechanic and student leader of the Yellow Bike Club, the BSG’s role funding the YBC has not changed how the club functionally operates.

While funding for certain services has been moved around in the past few years, the $680,000 pot that the SAFC receives from the College has not changed, and the operating budgets of most other clubs have not changed radically. Of the organizations that are on an operating budget from the SAFC, BSG is the second-most highly funded group, still dwarfed by the $146,100 that the E-Board received this year. Following BSG, the organizations receiving the most funding are the Outing Club, at $68,000, and the McKeen Center, at $50,270.

The SAFC approved another small increase in BSG’s budget for this year in order to support newer services and events, such as free bowling on Thursdays, Winter Weekend events, the Student Activities Poster Designer, the “Food for Thought” Lectures, free food during Ivies, and the $3,000 Good Ideas Fund.

Nelson thinks that BSG’s expanded role is positive for the College’s future, saying that she believed the student government seeks to think broadly about what they can do for the student body.

“I’ve spoken to students at peer institutions where it is really separate, where student government would never dream of working with Spring Gala, or providing food for Ivies. That stuff is really important, no one is going to do it if we don’t do it.”

At Wednesday’s Bowdoin Student Government (BSG) meeting, President Sarah Nelson ’14 announced that the BSG will not meet next week, so that student representatives can attend the public hearings on the rate increases proposed by Central Maine Power Company (CMP). If approved, the rate increases could cost the College over $200,000 per year.

There are two public hearings scheduled for discussion of the rate changes. The first will take place next Wednesday April 2 at the Maine Public Utility Commission office in Hallowell. The second is scheduled for Thursday, April 3 at the University of Southern Maine’s Abromson Center in Portland.

Vice President for Facilities and Sustainability David Levine ’16 announced that a 15-minute electricity blackout is planned for April 4 in order to publicize the CMP case. BSG is currently circulating a petition among the student body to protest the rate change.                                                       

Bowdoin Student Government (BSG) unanimously voted to approve a set of reforms that would increase the amount of supervision the Student Organizations Oversight (SOOC) retains over chartered student clubs and organizations at its Wednesday meeting.

Some of the changes to the SOOC’s rules and regulations—such as the inclusion of Bowdoin’s non-discrimination policy—simply serve to highlight and re-emphasize that all student groups should abide by existing college policies. A new clause to the SOOC rules states that “no group, if part of a greater local, regional, national, or international organization, will allow said group’s guidelines to supersede college and BSG policy.”

BSG Vice President for Student Organizations and sponsor of the reforms, Danny Mejia-Cruz ’16, acknowledged that the addition of these two clauses was partly inspired by the recent developments with the Bowdoin Christian Fellowship, whose advisors have resigned from their posts claiming that the non-discrimination clause in the College’s new volunteer agreement would violate their faith.

Bowdoin Student Government (BSG) began its Wednesday meeting in a closed executive session, welcoming Chair of the Judicial Board Chelsea Schaeffer ’14 and Dean of Student Affairs Lesley Levy for a presentation of the nominees for the Judicial Board (J-Board).

According to BSG President Sarah Nelson ’14, one of the student assembly’s constitutional roles is approving the names of the students who made it to the final round of nominations. Nelson said that the BSG’s role is largely procedural, with BSG serving as a final source of oversight at the end of the selection process.

Following the J-Board presentation, Vice President for Student Organizations Daniel Mejia-Cruz ’16 opened debate on a set of proposed changes to the rules and regulations of the Student Organization Oversight Committee (SOOC). Prefacing the changes, Mejia-Cruz said that the reforms would mostly codify the already existing rights and privileges of the SOOC.

If any of the recently inaugurated Brunswick Town Councilors expected the first few months of the New Year to be simply routine business, they would were sorely mistaken.

Instead, the town’s nine-member deliberative body now has to address an unexpected issue for Brunswick—the selection of a new town manager.

On December 23, Town Manager Gary Brown announced that he would be resigning his position effective March 31, leaving the Council three months to search for an adequate successor.

Bowdoin’s Student Activities Funding Committee (SAFC) has spent just under half of its funds for the year, according to a report given at the last Bowdoin Student Government (BSG) meeting of the semester this week.

BSG Vice President for the Treasury Megan Massa ’14 reported that, after accounting for the SAFC’s seasonal operating budget, the organization has $134,000 to spend on funding student activities this academic year. 

As of the end of the first semester, the organization has spent $58,000 of that amount, leaving $76,000 available for the spring semester. 

At its meeting on Wednesday evening, Bowdoin Student Government (BSG) hosted Coordinator for Sustainable Bowdoin Keisha Payson for a summary of the college’s initiatives for campus sustainability. 

Payson’s talk focused on the College’s continued efforts to decrease the carbon footprint in order to become carbon neutral by 2020. The College had initially set out a carbon reduction goal of 28 percent of Bowdoin’s actual emissions, compensating for the remaining emissions with offset credits. 

According to Payson, “we are 22 percent below our 2008 baseline, so we are on track for what we hope to achieve. The fact that we’re already at 22 percent is pretty exciting because we still have seven years to go.” 

At its Wednesday meeting, Bowdoin Student Government (BSG) sought to offer a response to the recent bias incidents on campus. The assembly unanimously passed a two-part proposal introduced by BSG President Sarah Nelson ’14 that condemned the incidents and sought to brand this month  as “No Hate November”. 

The proposal seeks to allow both BSG and the College—in Nelson’s words—to be “more proactive than reactive” in the future when dealing with dealing with bias events on campus. To Nelson, “No Hate November” is about changing the way that the College and the student body respond to bias incidents. 

“This is something that really affects every single member of our community that deserves more attention than just an event that takes up a few hours one afternoon,” she said. 

In its first meeting of the 2013-2014 academic year, Bowdoin Student Government (BSG) dove right into business by unanimously voting to retroactively authorize funding proposals that had been implemented by BSG over the summer and during first-year orientation. 

The first of the three proposals discussed on Wednesday night—introduced by Vice President for Facilities and Sustainability David Levine ’16—retroactively authorized an expenditure made over the summer for $12,000 to provide a film service to stream new movies online and over Bowdoin’s cable system. According to Levine, the program is run through Swank Motion Pictures, a company that provides colleges and other institutions with licenses to stream recently released Hollywood films.

According to BSG President Sarah Nelson ’14, the program had previously been under the operating budget of the Bowdoin Cable Network, “but it fell by the wayside last year, so we talked a lot about it and decided that it was a service that was popular enough that we felt it was something that BSG could be providing to students.” The $12,000 covers the rights to the 15 new films—chosen by BSG—per month which will be streamed online, as well as played on loop on a channel of the college’s cable.

On Wednesday, Bowdoin Student Government (BSG) convened for its final meeting of the 2012-2013 academic year.

BSG passed two motions brought by the Student Affairs Committee. The first was a funding proposal of $150 for refreshments for this Friday’s “Uncommon Hour.” The event will feature Stephen Naculich, professor of physics, giving a talk entitled “Finding the God Particle.” Vice President for Student Affairs Allen Wong ’14 was happy to announce that this was the first “hard scientist” to give an Uncommon Hour talk. 

The second proposal was the authorization of $750 of BSG funds to sponsor the first “Bowdoin Wellness Day,” on the Friday of reading period. According to the written proposal presented by Wong and BSG Programming Chair Bernie Clevens ’15, the purpose of Wellness Day is to “provide students with an opportunity to release stress” during finals week. The event will feature yoga classes and massages funded by BSG, as well as outdoor activities such as a slip-and-slide on the Quad. 

Bowdoin students turned in their paper course registration forms for the last time this week. Starting in the 2013-2014 academic year, the College will use an online course registration system. The move is part of the plan to replace the current student information system Bearings, with the newer system, named Polaris.

Under the guidance of the Polaris Project Team, consisting of staff from IT and the Office of the Registrar, as well as the Polaris Advisory Committee, a board including students, faculty, and IT members, the College has slowly begun implementing the new software throughout the past year. It is already employed in the Office of Admissions, enabling staff to review applications online and  giving applicants the ability to track their application materials through an online portal.Professor Suzanne Lovett, co-chair of the Polaris Advisory Committee, noted that the changes to the College’s data systems prompted a closer look at other aspects of College administration—such as registration.

 “Since this was an opportunity to review all of our policies and practices that will be touched by this system, we decided to stop and make sure we’re doing the most effective thing we can for students in particular, and faculty,” she said.

With the start of Ivies just a week away, the behind-the-scenes work to prepare the campus for a weekend of programming is in full swing. 

At 1 p.m. last Monday, representatives of many different branches of College life met to discuss and finalize logistics for Ivies 2013.

The meeting included members of the Entertainment Board, Security, Grounds and Facilities, Student Activites, and Residential Life.

At its first meeting after break, Bowdoin Student Government (BSG) began business by discussing proposed changes to its constitution. The BSG Affairs Committee had produced several pages of changes that were described as necessary to update the outdated constitution. Vice President for BSG Affairs Chris Breen ’15 commented on the changes.

 “Basically the constitution is a little outdated right now. It has a lot of terms and responsibilities that don’t exist, or have been changed,” said Breen. The motivation for the changes was to “flesh out all these problems in it, and make it easier to read, and clarify some of the stuff that wasn’t really clear, and eliminate the stuff that wasn’t relevant anymore,” he added. 

The largest structural change made to the BSG assembly was to replace the seat of the Inter-House Council (IHC) President with a representative of the McKeen Center. Both IHC president and vice president are voting members of the assembly. The written proposal argued that this change would “be beneficial to campus as it would formally connect the Center, and the volunteer organizations that operate within it, with the assembly.” Breen argued that this would not diminish the voice of the IHC in the assembly, considering that the seat of the IHC Vice President would still remain. 

Bowdoin Student Government (BSG) spent its weekly Wednesday meeting discussing a series of proposals that included changes to grading policy, funding an AIDS fundraiser, and authorizing expenses for Uncommon Hour. 

The Academic Affairs Committee presented a more concrete proposal of its changes to the Credit/D/Fail grading policy, initially introduced two weeks ago. The previous version of the proposal featured several options that the committee had devised to “make the Credit/D/Fail policy more effective for students,” according to Inter-House Council Representative Jordan Goldberg ’14.

The initial proposal, included extending the Credit/D/Fail deadline, changing the number of classes one can take with that grading option, and giving students the ability to opt back into a graded system two-thirds of the way through the semester. The proposal discussed on Wednesday would limit the number of Credit/D/Fail courses that students can take to three instead of four, and push back the deadline for changing the grading option to the ninth week of classes, rather than the current deadline of the sixth week. 

Bowdoin Student Government (BSG) spent the majority of its 90-minute meeting on Wednesday in an executive session. President Barry Mills and Vice President for Finance and Administration Katy  Longley attended the meeting—closed to the public—to discuss issues relating to divestment.

BSG President Dani Chediak ’13 stated afterward that the meeting “was very enlightening. We discussed divestment and carbon neutrality as well as ways to promote awareness of environmental issues on campus.”

In December, Mills announced that the College would not commit to divesting the endowment from fossil fuels. At a meeting earlier this month, Bowdoin’s Climate Action Group asked BSG to take an official stance on divesting, but BSG decided to wait to meet with the administration before possibly issuing a statement.

At its weekly meeting on Wednesday, Bowdoin Student Government (BSG) discussed a series of proposals brought up by its Academic Affairs Committee. The first proposal, which was voted upon and unanimously passed by the assembly, authorized BSG to spend $300 in order to fund snacks for a new student lecture series on Monday nights called “Food for Thought”.

The Office of Admissions received a total of 7,029 applications for the Class of 2017, a 4.7 percent increase over last year’s total of 6,716, and a new record total in the history of the College. The Early Decision I (ED I) application process earlier this academic year also saw a new record total of applicants, 606. This year, the College admitted 189 students in ED I, an increase from 172 the previous year. In contrast, this year’s ED II application pool declined slightly compared to last year.

At its weekly meeting on Wednesday, Bowdoin Student Government (BSG) discussed issues of campus sustainability, after a presentation on Bowdoin’s Carbon Neutrality initiative from Keisha Payson, the coordinator for Sustainable Bowdoin. Bowdoin’s commitment to carbon neutrality began in 2007 when President Mills signed the American College and University President’s Climate Commitment, pledging to set a date for the college to become carbon neutral. Bowdoin’s “Blueprint for Carbon Neutrality” was released in 2009. The plan called for setting a 28 percent decrease in emissions, and the purchase of carbon offset credits to achieve carbon neutral by 2020.

At its Wednesday night meeting the Bowdoin Student Government (BSG) discussed a public comment submitted by Ricardo Zarate ’13, which urged the group to take a stance on Question 1, Maine’s referendum on the same-sex marriage ban.

The Governance and Faculty Affairs (GFA) Working Group on Student Orientation is moving towards a decision on possible changes to the first year orientation program. Depending on which proposal the GFA endorses, there may be substantive changes made to both the academic and orientation calendars. The working group was formed last February at the request of Dean of Student Affairs Tim Foster following the announcement of mandatory Orientation trips for the Class of 2016. In a school-wide email, Foster asked the GFA to create a committee to assess the results of this year’s Orientation and to use their findings to refashion the program.

Bowdoin Student Government (BSG) engaged in a lengthy discussion with Dean of Student Affairs Tim Foster on the options for changes to next year’s First-Year Orientation calendar schedule at its meeting on Wednesday. Foster presented three options formulated by the Working Group on Student Orientation for the class of 2017’s Orientation experience.