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First and foremost, allow me to preface this article with a word of caution: this is a personal dialogue. In the process of writing, I concluded that this submission was going to be nothing more than a way for me to organize my thoughts—a process for me to take what was crammed into my mind and place it onto paper.
The frost is here, at last. When I step out to go to class, I’m greeted with a blanket of ice on the grass, the trees and my bike seat. Thankfully, it hasn’t come too late.
Hello, friends. My heart is with each one of you, in your joy and in your pain. I hope you have had the time, space and people to process your emotions with. Your grief, confusion, anger and self-doubt—your feelings—deserve to be honored, to be held gently and with tenderness.
Each Friday since the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, a group of Brunswick residents gather on the town green on Pleasant and Maine Streets, armed with signs calling for world peace. Initially conceived of as a protest to urge the United States government not to retaliate in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, the group has continued to convene every Friday at 5:00 p.m.
Every year, my Halloween costume has something to do with my hair. I’ve kept my super-curly hair cut just above my shoulders since middle school, which is the prime length for costumes such as a mad scientist, a lion or a bush.
Did you know that in the 12th century, doctors prescribed those with illnesses broth made from bone marrow and chicken fat? Truly, the more things change, the more they seem to stay the same! Soup is one of the least time intensive and most low effort big-batch meals that humanity could come up with.
Driven by his observation of the high personal and academic standards to which Bowdoin students, faculty and staff are held, Chris Dehney ’24 seized the opportunity to bring Peer Counseling, a peer-based counseling service, to campus this semester.
This Saturday, I met John Trumper. If you read my previous column, then you are familiar with Rudy Horowitz, who is a good friend of John’s, as they both live in the Highlands, a community for elders near Bowdoin.
There I found myself, in an unfamiliar land, surrounded by familiar faces. After an eventful day of getting lost on the subway, missing breakfast and facing near (phone battery) death, it’s easy to see why I found a certain respite in fresh New York City bagels and conversation with high school friends.
I grew up in Orono, Maine. To anybody who’s actually from Maine and has knowledge of the local geography, Orono is in central Maine. That’s the truth. However, I still tell fellow Bowdoin students that I’m from “northern Maine” because people from the West Coast typically think that anywhere north of Augusta is just an outcropping of moose and deer-filled wilderness.
Though I read last week’s Bowdoin Student Government minutes, I’m not going to write about the Board of Trustees. I’m also not going to comment on the one to two percent of our endowment invested in oil and gas companies, which, if you do the math, means that Bowdoin invests between 25 and 50 million dollars in the world’s foremost fossil fuel giants.
For Senior Class President Carlos Campos ’22, providing students with a platform to share their stories in a safe, inclusive, creative space is a priority. His new project, “People of the Global Majority,” a student-run publication supported by Bowdoin Student Government (BSG) and its president Ryan Britt ’22, aims to give a voice to historically marginalized students on campus.
Every Wednesday night, tucked away in the corner room of the Sexuality, Women and Gender (SWAG) center, a group of students meet to discuss one thing—masculinity. The group, aptly named Healthy Masculinities, focuses on the culture surrounding toxic masculinity on campus in an effort to redefine what it means to be masculine.
Enduring the stresses of the pandemic last school year, Paul Russo ’23 needed to de-stress and wanted to give other students the opportunity to do the same. Combining his love of poetry with a need for community, Paul formed the Nightingale Society, a club meant to foster vulnerability and connection for poets on campus.
As the leaves change and the air cools, another fall tradition is returning to campus: “OUTouber.” The month-long celebration, hosted by the Bowdoin Queer Straight Alliance (BQSA) and the Sexuality, Women and Gender Center (SWAG), consists of a series of events throughout the month of October honoring National Coming Out Day and LGBTQIA+ acceptance.
Hello all, Today, I’m going to try something different: I want to intentionally select a card instead of drawing one from the deck. What came to my mind were two figures of the Major Arcana: The Hermit and The Hanged One.
I love pasta. Maybe not as much as my roommate (shout out to Diego, @lordofpasta on most platforms), but as both an ex-lineman on the football team and a current Italian, pasta is the fuel that keeps me going.
So you’ve been getting down and dirty with one of your fellow polar bears for a few weeks, but your relationship is now going one of two ways: 1. You’re looking to break things off entirely or 2.
Rudolph “Rudy” Horowitz is a 92-year-old Holocaust survivor, architect and grandfather. This past week, I met Rudy at his home in a retirement community called The Highlands, which is just a fifteen-minute bike ride away from campus.
I’ve never been good with apologies. As ashamed as I am to admit it, I used to view apologies as the very end of the long journey that is personal growth. In my mind, becoming a better person would always play out just like in the movies—a sappy apology and a sweet conclusion as the credits roll.
To me, the hardest part about dancing has been trying to find my purpose, my why: figuring out how to find meaning in my movements beyond how they feel on my muscles or how they look in the mirror.
We are obsessed with growth. It was pointed out to me last week how normal it feels to hear about a 57 percent return rate on Bowdoin’s endowment, which pushed the number up into something astronomical for an institution of our size.
Brunswick’s Pleasant Street has a magical new addition: Raven & Crow, a metaphysical supply shop and espresso bar. The business opened its doors on August 23 and, almost two months later, has firmly established itself as a community center for pagan religious groups and magical practitioners.
The moment we’ve all been YikYakking about has finally arrived (no, it’s not the true story about what happened with Randy Nichols the other night). Now that you’ve finally received your Bowdoin Marriage Pact Match, it’s time to move on to the next step—but what step is that, exactly?
Hey, you! I hope the past week has been going well and that you’re feeling more settled into the campus rhythm. Let’s get straight into the cosmic advice. For the current situation, I drew the Six of Cups.
Bread: it’s a scary subject. There is so much that can go wrong during the process of making it—enough that many bakers stay away from it entirely, never again attempting to battle the yeast. So yeah, it’s a pretty tough part of anyone’s culinary arsenal.
At 6:35 p.m. Thorne dining hall was abuzz with students checking their email, screams were heard on the first floor of Hawthorne-Longfellow Library and FaceTimes were ringing in as the Bowdoin Marriage Pact released the initials of the ideal match of each student who participated.
Content warning: This article contains descriptions of child sexual abuse One day, my sister and I were playing in the woods. I followed after her every step of the way. I was looking for fairies, she was hunting for bugs.
Despite living in Chamberlain Hall for three months last fall, I had never been on campus before this year. Sure, the caricature of the person that I desperately tried to be was there, flat-ironing her poor hair to death.
Most people in our community are very busy. Perhaps so busy that they wonder why they decided to become busy in the first place. ‘What Matters in the End?’ is a column that will highlight the stories of elderly people and hospice patients in Brunswick to glean what matters to them in the end.
Please take the vegetables. I’m serious: please take the sweet peppers, please go home with kale, haul the chili peppers back to your dorm room, carry potatoes in your backpack, please just take one more tomato.
Although the COVID-19 pandemic has limited Bowdoin students’ ability to form and foster connections in the Town of Brunswick, Saul Cuevas-Landeros ’23 is still determined to create opportunities for students to engage with the community. This year, Cuevas-Landeros is co-leading Bowdoin Central Mentoring, a Joseph McKeen Center for the Common Good program dedicated to mentoring students in the Brunswick area.
When Anneka Williams ’21 started her first year at Bowdoin, she never expected to write a book during her time at the College, let alone co-publish one with someone nearly 60 years her senior. However, Williams, who is currently pursuing a Master of Science in Climate Change at the University of Copenhagen, did just this.
Many of us were at home for longer than expected over the past year or so. For some of us, that meant starting relationships at home—maybe a neighbors-to-lovers thing or a pair of hopeful high school sweethearts.
Picture this: you’re trying to impress someone you really like by treating them to dinner. It could be your parents, that guy on the floor above you, Doug from the Moulton dining staff or even your grandma!
Mike Ranen usually starts his morning by checking the College’s COVID-19 test results around 6 a.m.. The results of those tests will dictate the course of his day. On a good day, Ranen can balance his job as the Associate Dean of Student Affairs and Director of Residential and Student Life, as well as his role as the College’s COVID-19 Resource Coordinator.
While I was studying back home in Thailand, my morning routine was taking a driving lesson taught by my grandpa. I would drive through the streets of suburban Bangkok, surrounded by electrical poles holding up black cables that tangle more viciously than your previous romantic situation.
I have a good friend who’s no longer a good friend. We’re no longer on speaking terms, and I don’t know how much longer this will be the case. Even though we only met last September, they became one of my closest friends, and I became one of theirs.
A chipmunk is stuck in the greenhouse; I must’ve surprised it when I wandered through yesterday. I left the door open so they could find their way out, and upon opening the door, I saw one of the garden’s human neighbors taking a pleasant stroll through the rows.
They say you never forget your first (-year roommate). For Wilder Short ’22, Brett Thomas ’22, Josh Lin ’22 and David Bombard ’22, this is especially true. What began as a standard first-year roommate assignment has grown into four years of cohabitation, friendship and amateur rap tracks.
Greetings, everyone, and welcome (back) to campus! I hope you’ve all been safe, happy and settling in well—and I hope you’re excited, because Nora’s Tarot Vibe Check is back and better than ever for another semester.
After a disjointed year on (and mostly off) campus, the Class of 2024 returned to campus this fall as sophomores. Having experienced an atypical year at the College, the class is still expected to step into leadership roles within the community.
The Office of Inclusion and Diversity is spearheading a new program this semester designed to educate student leaders in promoting social justice and equity. The eight-session Social Justice Leadership Institute incorporates elements of past student workshops and campus-wide dialogue initiatives.
For Justis Dixon ’23, the summer wasn’t spent going to the beach or relaxing in his home, rather, it was instead spent in an office in Topsham contributing to the Common Good. Over the summer, Dixon and a handful of other Bowdoin students participated in the Bowdoin Public Service (BPS) Maine Government Summer Fellowships which aim to give Bowdoin students hands-on government experience by pairing them with local governments in Maine.
One of the most valuable relics of my childhood is a baseball I received at Fenway Park back in 2011 during a game between the Boston Red Sox and the New York Yankees. Even better, this ball was fouled into the stands by none other than Big Papi himself, David Ortiz.
Last March, during its 218th academic year, the College sent the student body home for the first time in institutional history. In the midst of every major world event from 1794 to present day, Bowdoin felt that it had the ability to maintain the safety of its students, faculty, staff and surrounding community.
Content warning: This article contains descriptions of substance use disorder and violence. I remember staring at the ceiling of some waiting room of some hospital that I can’t remember the name of. I had spent the previous night riding with my uncle down from Cleveland, Ohio to Johnson City, Tennessee.
The Pinky D’s food truck, a mishmash of black and white checkers complemented by pink racing stripes, is nearly as colorful as the meal served out of it: poutine. The dish, a staple in Canada, is made of thick-cut fries topped with piping hot gravy and cheese curds, making it the perfect late night snack for hungry Bowdoin students.
Assistant Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry Kana Takematsu follows the sunlight and wants Bowdoin students to do the same. “I’ve always been interested in light,” Takematsu said. Back in her grad school days at the California Institute of Technology, a guest lecturer in geology took Takematsu’s inorganic chemistry seminar on a field trip to a natural science museum.
Following a programming series for ‘international students week,’ the International Student Alliance (ISA) organized a celebration reflecting on a bittersweet year, which took place at 30 College on Thursday afternoon. While the celebration was an uplifting and recreational event, many international students also voiced frustrations and concerns in response to the uncertainties that lie ahead.
I think often of my walk back home from my bus stop after school when I was younger. I was often shaking in fear, with my eyes stinging with tears at the thought of what I might come home to—either an empty, quiet trailer to finish my homework, or an angry, drunken mother who would take her frustrations out on me and disrupt the rest of the evening.
Drawing in hungry Bowdoin students with fresh and mouthwatering sushi rolls, the Mr. Tuna food truck has quickly become a staple of the Bowdoin foodie’s diet. The truck offers an array of sushi roll options of every style and flavor, satisfying customers no matter their personal taste.
If you are like me, you were taught at an early age that the largest organism on earth is the blue whale. Well, get ready for your mind to be blown: we were taught a lie.
It’s internship season. Handshake-scrolling, interview-scheduling, rejection-coping internship season. Around this time ten years ago, Marguerite Mariscal ’11 was also searching. After graduation. she landed a short-term position with Momofuku, a startup culinary brand led by famed restaurateur David Chang.
The Lemont Block, a four-story historic brick building on the corner of Maine Street and Pleasant Street that has been an iconic part of the Brunswick skyline for over 150 years, is about to have a new chapter added to its storied history.
As part of programming for International Week, which celebrates international students and occurs in the last week of every April, Bowdoin’s International Student Association (ISA) hosted a talk led by Visiting Assistant Professor of Sociology Shruti Devgan “This International Life.” Devgan, a former international student and current international scholar herself, shared her own experiences with these identities as well as her perspective on how recent events have challenged and complicated the experience of international students in the United States.
A family friend of mine once said: “Peru is the only country in South America where a poor man can eat like a king.” This exchange came in Lima during a night out at a Madam Tusan chifa restaurant where I had Cru Yok pork with vegetables and pineapples, roasted duck and a side of Min Pao.
Content warning: This article contains descriptions of child sexual abuse and of mental health difficulties following such experiences. Sometimes, when my mother was gone, her boyfriend would come into my room. He would always knock on my bedroom door the same way, a sound that still creeps into my thoughts from time to time to this day.
Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, many students have called for the College to focus more on student wellness, both on and off campus. Peer Health feels it has the platform to meet student needs for health and wellness programming.
This week, I find myself once again unable to justify recommending a book. While this could be due to both my overall diminishing creativity as the semester comes to a close and the fact that my mind is focused on finding a job in one of the worst economies in recent memory, I’m inclined to believe that a book recommendation just isn’t what everyone needs right now.
On Thursday night, the Disabled Students Association (DSA) hosted a talk on Relationships and Disability with YouTube personalities Hannah Aylward and Shane Burcaw. Their YouTube channel, Squirmy and Grubs, has garnered over 842,000 subscribers and over 147 million views.
The year: probably somewhere around 560 BCE. The place: Mount Etna. The star of this story: Empedocles, Greek philosopher and self-proclaimed god. Now, just for a little background on the god situation, this kind of claim was not new for Empedocles.
Bowdoin’s liberal arts curriculum doesn’t offer the same classroom opportunities in business and finance that many other schools do—but that’s not stopping a group of students from taking the initiative to carve out their own paths in the financial industry.
Content warning: This article contains descriptions of alcoholism, domestic violence and verbal abuse. I will never forget the thumping. I find myself on the ground, my head spinning so haphazardly that I can’t stand up. I lay on the floor of my kitchen and stare at the ceiling above me; it falls in and out of focus.
Five years ago, the Asian Students Alliance (ASA) and South Asian Students Association (SASA) created #ThisIs2016, which took the internet by storm. After remembering the series five years since its conception, Cheng Xing ’23 proposed the ASA’s Affinity Group Photo Project, an iteration of #ThisIs2016, in hopes of providing a platform for members of Bowdoin affinity groups to express themselves on campus.
Sitting in front of a plate of salad, popcorn and cranberry juice, a rendition of green, red and white Italian flag, Thando Khumalo ’23 presented her creation to her peers via Zoom as part of the Italian department’s Italian flag food challenge.
Identity is extremely complicated, particularly for people of Latin American origin here in the United States. Numerous ethnic classifications for people like this exist here, but the two most commonly used terms are “Hispanic” and “Latino/a.” Although sometimes used interchangeably, these two terms differ greatly in meaning and origin.
If you have been following this column, you have come to expect a book recommendation every two weeks. This week, I write no such column. And for that, I am sorry. However, even if I do apologize for the pain you might go through by not receiving a book recommendation, I’m not sorry about the column I am writing.
Springtime in Maine comes bearing many gifts: maple trees drooping with unfurling leaves, gloriously lengthening hours of warm sunlight, and the return of patches of ineradicable yellow dandelions on the quad’s grass. Another marker of Maine spring?
This week, the Office of Gender Violence Prevention and Education (OGVPE) hosted the second biannual Masculinities Summit. The summit consisted of three events: a keynote on Tuesday with speaker Aymann Ismail, an alumni panel on Thursday and a panel on Friday featuring faculty members and staff.
The year 2021 is bringing another plague into town. Luckily, this one isn’t another deadly virus. It’s just a crap ton of insects. Every 17 years, billions of cicadas, called broods, emerge from deep underground for weeks of frenzied mating.
The Bowdoin experience can now be inscribed onto a digital space, dedicated to documenting memories and celebrating Bowdoin’s unique community. Created by Max Freeman ’22 and Camilo Pareja ’22, Bowdoin Moments is an online platform where anyone with Bowdoin memories—whether they be students, faculty, staff members, alumni and visitors—is invited to share their stories in geospatial tags accompanied with a few sentences of reflections.
I never saw it coming. It hit me like a truck, and every time I tried standing up, it just turned back to hit me again. It is an expert thief because it stole my hopes, happiness and energy while only leaving me with numbness.
I will never forgive people who make fun of other people for reading shitty, gay fan-fiction. In a country where people still ban books because of the sexual and romantic identities included in the pages or where a movie about gay characters can’t include a single fricking accurate sex scene, you’re just a downright terrible person if you hate on queer people for looking towards obscure Tumblr posts or websites for some form of media representation.
During the College’s two-day break, many Bowdoin students living on campus found a moment of refreshment while enjoying free smoothie bowls sponsored by the Bowdoin Student Government (BSG). More than 1,000 students picked up a bowl from the newly-opened Bay Bowls on March 21 and 22, and the store’s owners are excited to continue serving the Brunswick community.
This semester, Elena Sparrow ’22 and Dalia Tabachnik ’21 started the Mail Art Collective, a student group dedicated to building a sense of community by creating and sharing postcards. According to the group, participants are now in their second round of cards, centered around the theme of “the old and the new.” “[Art] is a gift.
For our inaugural installment, we will be turning words into gold. Think Aristotle, think Jabir ibn Hayyan, think Phillipus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus Von Hohenheim. Think Rumplestiltskin, but if that little man were a chemist. This week, we’re exploring the bizarre “science” of alchemy!
This spring, Bowdoin Innovation and Entrepreneurship (BIE) is hosting a “Capitalism for the Common Good” workshop series aiming to engage students with startup development—an agenda that has been met with mixed responses from the campus community.
Bowdoin welcomed a new publication to its scientific community last week. Headed by Joanna Lin ’22 and Anthony Yanez ’22, the Bowdoin Science Journal (BSJ), a biweekly, student-published science journal, released its debut issue on March 1.
Google often artistically alters its logo to commemorate notable events, holidays or historical figures. Known as a Google Doodle, it often contains interesting information about what’s being commemorated, and I enjoy reading about the different people and occasions being recognized.
When people think of English literature, they often think of tweed, Oxford, an old white dude and the film “Dead Poets Society.” All of these have one thing in common: inaccessibility. Well, perhaps not old white dudes.
On November 25, Wild Oats Bakery and Cafe closed its doors at the Tontine Mall for the last time. One week later on December 4, the popular eatery reopened to the public at its new location in Brunswick Landing, next to the Brunswick Executive Airport.
As the Class of 2021 enters their final semester, seniors are planning for life after Bowdoin. For international students, however, the matter is much more complicated. Some will return to their home country and some will explore other countries, while others are intending to stay in the United States to pursue citizenship and a career here.
I have read more books for pleasure in the past few months than I have in the entirety of my time at Bowdoin—and I’m a senior English major. I’m also not alone. It seems like every day I get off a Facetime call with friends or a Zoom call with a professor where we just talked about this great new book we read.
I miss home, or at least what I once called home. If you have had a class with me during the Zoom era, you may have noticed a large Peruvian flag in the background of my camera.
Making friends is no simple task, with or without a pandemic. The return to campus earlier this month marked the first time the majority of students could see long-missed friends in nearly a year. The 2023 Class Council is helping their classmates foster new connections through a “friend-matching” program.
As students geared up for a return to campus unlike any other, one Bowdoin staff member found herself at the center of unexpected Internet stardom. With thousands of views across more than 20 videos and features on multiple local news networks, Director of Content Janie Porche became a community favorite through her popular TikTok account: @Janie_at_bowdoin.
For James Giltner ’23, what started out as a search for how to fill his semester away from Bowdoin turned into a groundbreaking learning experience—one that culminated in a historic rocket launch. Last fall, Giltner worked full-time at bluShift, a Brunswick-based company that launched a rocket from the Loring Commerce Center in Limestone, Maine, on January 31.
Every December, music streaming service Spotify releases their annual “Wrapped” review, which examines the most popular music of the year for both individual users and the platform as a whole. Across social media, Spotify users shared their most beloved artists, songs and genres, as well as the occasional “top 0.5 percent of listeners” badge.
During my first year on Bowdoin’s campus, thousands of questions would swim through my head on any given day. Some of them would be necessary (Thorne or Moulton today?), others slightly less so (What would my psychology professor look like without his famed beard?).
I still remember the call the day after I received the acceptance letter from Bowdoin. It was from my best friend. Well, “best friend” before she simply disappeared during our junior year of high school and nobody knew where she went.
Buildings and classrooms were closed. Dining halls only offered take-out meals. Common areas around campus, normally overflowing with talking, laughing students, were deserted. “Closed to Visitors” signs were placed across the quad, making it eerily empty and devoid of activity.
Hey everyone. I’m writing this on Sunday, November 15; it will be published on Friday, November 20. I can only hope that the past week hasn’t been too stressful or emotional, but I know it most likely has been, and that tomorrow will be the culmination of that.
On Thursday night, two days before the move-out deadline for most on-campus students, dining services served Thanksgiving dinner at both dining halls. This year, one of the College’s most extravagant meal traditions has been adapted to a smaller scale.
Last Saturday, Joe Biden was declared the presumptive president-elect of the United States. I struggled then, as I do now, to express how the election made me feel. I imagine many of us have complicated feelings.
I was taught to appreciate distance on a small playground during a rainy day. Having attended a boarding school in suburban China since I was 12, I remember the compulsory military training that first confounded my idea of an inseparable family life, forever based in unconditional love, connectedness and rationality.
As businesses on Maine Street round off a fall unlike any other, many of them must quickly shift gears to plan for the upcoming winter—a season which will bring cold weather, holiday shoppers and the return of many Bowdoin students to Brunswick.
The world held its breath this last week as the American election dominated headlines, news and the thoughts of millions of people. Democracy won once again in the United States as Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump in one of the most polarized elections in American history.
Two thousand and three-hundred miles, 32 days and a fiery motivation to take on a mental and physical challenge were all it took for Triana Willmert ’22 and Dylan Sloan ’22 to complete the Tour Divide cross country bike route between the Canadian and Mexican borders during their gap semester this fall.
As anxiety over the elections runs high in the student body, Mindfulness Over Matter, a student-run meditation group, encourages students to find the time in their busy schedules to pause and practice mindfulness. Through a variety of meditation sessions—available four times each week—as well as meditation tips and facts that they share with the Bowdoin community on their Instagram page, the club hopes to emphasize the restorative and healing properties of meditation.
