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In the introduction to her book “Bad Feminist,” Roxane Gay accepts the moniker because she is “flawed and human,” but that she feels a responsibility to raise her voice “to show all the ways we have room to want more, to do better.” At Gay’s Monday night talk, the Bowdoin community proved anxious to listen to that voice.
The student body approved changes to the Bowdoin Student Government (BSG) constitution on March 5, although low turnout in the vote prompted some concerns about the validity of the voting procedure. A total of 461 students, roughly 25 percent of the student body, participated in the vote.
Students and faculty came prepared with questions to a talk by Larry Lindsey ’73, H’93 on Wednesday night, challenging him on issues ranging from climate change to racism while President Clayton Rose moderated. Lindsey is an economist who served in the White House as director of the National Economic Council under President George W.
Safe Space launched a support line for students who have experienced sexual harassment or sexual assault on Wednesday. Student representatives of Safe Space, previously accessible via their mailboxes, emails or social media, will now be on-call every night of the week, including later hours on weekends, to provide confidential assistance and support.
Brooklyn-based lawyer Carrie Goldberg knew nothing about revenge porn—until she became the victim of it. The pawn of an ex-boyfriend’s online and offline sexual extortion, Goldberg says she started her own law firm to become the lawyer she needed when she was under attack.
Along with 48 other college presidents, President Clayton Rose signed a letter to Congress at the beginning of March, calling for a repeal or amendment of the recently-passed tax code, which imposes a 1.4 percent tax on certain college endowments.
The Orient was named the 2018 College Newspaper of the Year by the New England Society of News Editors (NESNE) and the New England Newspaper and Press Association (NENPA) in an announcement on Wednesday. In an email to the Orient, Sydney Conway of NENPA, wrote “It is clear that in the past year you have produced great material, and that lots of hard work has been put in by the newspaper’s staff.” The editors of the Orient will travel to a reception at the Boston Globe on April 19 where all NENPA AND NESNE honors will be presented, joining editors and reporters from news outlets across New England.
The Brunswick Town Council formally approved the second phase of Bowdoin’s plans to renovate Whittier Field, the Forecaster reported yesterday. The project includes building a new road to connect Pine Street and Bath Road. The decision this Tuesday followed a vote in December to allow the College to discontinue Pine Street in order to build new athletic facilities alongside Whittier Field.
Rapper D.R.A.M. and indie-pop band AJR will headline this year’s Ivies weekend, the Entertainment Board (E-Board) announced last night at a silent disco in Jack Magee’s Pub and Grill. D.R.A.M., who will be performing in Farley Field House on Saturday, April 28, is best known for the song “Broccoli,” which features Lil Yachty.
Monday, March 19 An employee at the Hawthorne-Longfellow Library was reported to be choking on an object that was stuck in her throat. A security officer performed the Heimlich maneuver and dislodged the obstruction. Tuesday, March 20 A local man was asked to leave campus after he was observed doing skateboarding tricks on the flagpole memorial near Gibson Hall.
In recognition of National Eating Disorders Awareness Week, the Orient spoke to eight students, who shared their personal stories and thoughts about eating disorders. One name has been changed to protect the identity of the student.
The College plans to introduce two new upperclass student living spaces in fall 2019—four suite-style apartment houses as well as the conversion of Boody-Johnson House into a College House. Born out of more than 1,600 survey responses from students, faculty, staff and neighbors as well as the efforts of a working group on off-campus and upperclass housing, these two changes to Bowdoin’s campus work to address student desires and entice students to remain living on campus.
Jose Antonio Vargas is home. His California driver’s license may look a little different than a citizen’s, but—in front of a packed Kresge Auditorium last night for the Kenneth V. Santagata Memorial Lecture—he shared his personal struggle to feel like he belongs in America as an undocumented immigrant, and he challenged Bowdoin students to undertake the uncomfortable conversations necessary in today’s immigration debate.
Sometime on the week of March 5, the Office of Safety and Security will hold its first ever on-campus lockdown drill, during which all campus buildings will be locked and inaccessible with OneCards. Although this drill comes shortly after a shooter killed 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, Associate Director of Safety and Security Dave Profit said that this drill has been planned for months and was not influenced by the event.
The Roux Center for the Environment is on track for its scheduled opening next fall, according to Matt Orlando, senior vice president for finance and administration and treasurer of the College. With a $16.5 million budget—$10 million of which was a gift by David and Barbara Roux P’14—the 29,000 square-foot, three-storied building will have four labs dedicated to student coursework, two classrooms and a large flexible classroom space, as well as a variety of common areas.
Amid ongoing efforts to improve Bowdoin’s handling of accommodations and disability, students, faculty and staff convened in Lancaster Lounge this week to hear four student panelists speak about their experiences navigating accessibility at Bowdoin, particularly accessibility in academics, and potential steps toward creating a more accessible campus.
In an upcoming panel on intellectual engagement in conversations across political differences, Bowdoin students and professors—representing a variety of political perspectives themselves—will try to tackle the question of how to address disagreement. “The Art of Disagreement in an Age of Outrage,” moderated by Noah Finberg ’16, will take place this Monday in Morrell Lounge from 7:30-9:30 p.m.
Students have until Sunday to vote on a string of amendments to the Bowdoin Student Government (BSG) constitution. For the constitution to pass, at least one-third of the student body must vote in the election, and at least two-thirds of those students must vote in favor of the changes.
A week after one of the biggest school shootings in American history and a moment that many have considered a watershed moment for activism surrounding gun rights, students have yet to organize substantive action on campus.
Four students have received court summons in the past two weeks for charges of jaywalking and possession of liquor by a minor. One of those summons resulted after the Brunswick Police Department (BPD) showed up at the annual Cold War party at MacMillan and Quinby Houses last weekend, while the remaining three were issued the previous weekend.
With an email on Thursday, Bowdoin Student Government (BSG) opened voting on a new constitution, which BSG voted to pass at its weekly meeting this past Wednesday. Should this constitution pass, it will be the first major BSG constitutional change in a decade.
Over 80 women will perform in the College’s second annual production of “RISE: Untold Stories of Bowdoin Women” today and Saturday in Kresge Auditorium, following last night’s debut performance. The show, built around Bowdoin students’ stories about relationships, hookups and other gendered experiences, replaced the production of “The Vagina Monologues,” seeking more intersectionality and stories that better represented the real experiences of Bowdoin women.
Police investigated threats of violence at two Topsham schools last Friday. Woodside Elementary School was evacuated after a bomb threat while Mt. Ararat High School was placed on heightened security due to student statements about violence, the Portland Press Herald reported.
Students, faculty, staff and community members packed the Shannon Room last night to consider what types of environmental activism are most effective. The panel, titled “Consumerism, Activism, and Individualism: How to be a Better Environmentalist,” was planned by Lauren Hickey ’20 over the course of several months on behalf of the Office of Sustainability.
Journalist and undocumented immigrant Jose Antonio Vargas will be speaking on campus next Thursday in the Kenneth V. Santagata Memorial Lecture. His talk, titled “Define America: My Life as an Undocumented Immigrant,” will take place in Kresge Auditorium at 7:30 p.m.
Half of Bowdoin students who applied for Fulbright awards for the 2017-2018 academic received them, the best ratio among any of the nation’s top undergraduate Fulbright Student producers, according to the Fulbright Program. Forty Bowdoin students applied for Fulbrights last year, and 20 received them, the most from Bowdoin since data became available a decade ago.
After nearly 20 college students employees, faculty and staff saw their paychecks stolen since the College began using Workday to manage employee finances and payments in January 2016, Bowdoin Information Technology (IT) rolled out a two-step authentication, which became mandatory on Tuesday.
Today, Acting Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Susan Thornton ’85 will return to Bowdoin to deliver a lecture titled “The Asian Century: Myth and Reality,” at 12:30 p.m. in Kresge Auditorium.
Bowdoin’s trustees and senior administrators traveled to Silicon Valley last week for their annual meeting and spent time with executives from a number of technology firms including Google, Apple, Microsoft, Uber and Coursera. According to President Clayton Rose, there was no specific takeaway or plan for the College to implement.
Civil rights activist and educator DeRay Mckesson ’07 announced on Wednesday that he has signed his first book deal with Viking Books. His book, “On the Other Side of Freedom: The Case for Hope” will be released on September 4.
Correction: In our desire to break this story, an earlier version of this article jumped to the conclusion that Boody-Johnson House was to become student housing next year. In an email to the Orient, Dean of Students Tim Foster said the administration was only exploring the possibility of the house being converted into student housing, timeframe unknown, and confirmed that if this transition were to happen, it would not be next year.
The number of College House applicants reached a five-year low this year, with 247 students competing for approximately 179 spots. The College House applicant pool for next year is smaller than any in the past five years.
At Wednesday’s Bowdoin Student Government (BSG) meeting, Amber Rock ’19 was elected Vice President for Sustainability and Facilities by the assembly, replacing Ana Timoney-Gomez ’18, who resigned from her position last week saying she had too many other commitments.
Eleven percent of seniors have used cocaine during their time at Bowdoin, according to data from an Orient survey conducted this past December. Use of the drug among the class of 2018 substantially outpaces the other class years, and represents an increase from the last Orient survey on drug use, conducted in 2013.
This spring, the Office of Academic Affairs will pilot alterations to the Bowdoin Course Questionnaires (BCQs) with a goal of reducing the role of unconscious student biases in course evaluations. The change was announced at last week’s faculty meeting.
Aquaponic farming pioneer Trevor Kenkel ’18, founder and chairman of Springworks Farm, announced that he has received $1.6 million in capital to finance the expansion of his system in Lisbon, Maine. Located about 30 minutes from Bowdoin’s campus, Springworks Farm uses aquaponics to grow organic lettuce.
Prolific author and sociologist, Baptist minister, rap and pop culture connoisseur and dynamic storyteller, Dr. Michael Eric Dyson packed Kresge Auditorium on Tuesday to deliver the annual Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Lecture. Dyson’s talk, titled “MLK for the 21st Century,” set out to imagine King’s vision in the context of contemporary issues such as police violence, sexism, homophobia and patriarchal power, sexual violence and the #MeToo movement.
Since mid-December, more than 60 students’ email accounts have been hacked, resulting in a series of phishing attempts. Emails claiming association with Temple University and such fictional institutions as “Recruitment Team,” “Market Force Information” and “Mystery Shoppers” arrived in inboxes with promises of easy pay—provided that recipients enter sensitive personal information first.
The Senior Class Giving Campaign (SCGC) officially began at its launch event last Thursday with hopes of continuing the College’s tradition of strong alumni giving. SCGC has a two-fold purpose: to raise awareness about the importance of giving back to Bowdoin after graduation and to solicit donations from seniors this semester.
As falling temperatures, rain and snow hit midcoast Maine this week—knocking out parts of campus power on Wednesday—Facilities staff got to work extra early to clear ice from the College’s streets and paths. Over the course of Wednesday afternoon and evening, Brunswick received about seven inches of snow, according to the National Weather Service.
Bowdoin students, and anyone with an iPhone or Android device, will soon be able to use a lobster emoji thanks to lobbying efforts from Senator Angus King H’07 (I-Maine). The Unicode Consortium, a Silicon Valley-based group of individuals and corporations that is responsible for designing emojis, unveiled the lobster along with 156 other new emojis on Wednesday.
The Amtrak Downeaster, which currently runs from Boston to Brunswick, could go as far north as Rockland this summer if the Northern New England Passenger Rail Authority (NNEPRA) approves a pilot program in March. NNERPA wants to ensure that Maine communities will be active Amtrak partners before it finalizes the service, the Maine Free Press reported last week.
Beginning today, a new discussion initiative called World Matters, designed to help students explore and reflect on national and international current events outside of an academic setting and without a planned agenda, will meet every Friday afternoon at 2 p.m.
On Wednesday, President Clayton Rose attended the Bowdoin Student Government (BSG) meeting to solicit student opinions on future use of the College’s funding. This funding comes primarily from donors and investments. According to Rose, Bowdoin has the second highest alumni donation participation rate in the nation.
The second meeting of the Board of Trustees this academic year will be held in Palo Alto, California beginning next Thursday. It is the first time the meeting will be held outside of the Northeast. “We wanted to engage with the culture of the ‘new economy’—not that new anymore—the culture of technology and innovation and entrepreneurship,” said President Clayton Rose.
In an effort to reduce plastic waste, all eight College Houses will begin using reusable cups in place of traditional single-use cups this semester. Last year, the College Houses used over 25,000 plastic cups, according to the College’s Sustainability Office.
EDITORS NOTE: The original version of this story ran with the headline “Bowdoin website to see first major overhaul since 2005.” In our original reporting we missed the fact that the College launched a website overhaul in 2012 but after a little more than one month, reverted back to the old version.
The College has created an online form for students to apply for emergency financial aid, Dean of Students Janet Lohmann announced in an email to the student body last Friday. The fund—which will cover the costs of “emergencies, special programs, test prep, supplies, travel and unanticipated events,” according to the website—is composed of donations from the Bowdoin community.
After years of requests from both students and faculty, the College is hiring two new Arabic language instructors for the upcoming academic year. However, a potential Arabic or Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) studies major or minor seems unlikely in the near future.
Bowdoin has already seen some effects of the influenza epidemic, characterized by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) as moderately severe this year. According to Director of Health Services Dr. Jeffrey Maher, the bulk of the cases will present in the coming months.
In an email to the Bowdoin community on Wednesday, Dean for Academic Affairs Elizabeth McCormack and Registrar Martina Duncan ’97 officially shared changes to the daily time block schedule and final exam period that will take effect in the fall 2018 semester.
Citing student concerns about the short timeline for applying to live in Ladd House, the Office of Residential Life (ResLife) extended the deadline for the senior-only College House to next Wednesday. ResLife initially notified the junior class that living in Ladd for the 2018-2019 academic year was an option on January 18.
This week, the student-designed mobile food ordering app PolarEats announced a new collaboration with Jack Magee’s Pub and Grill, which will allow students to place orders for pickup through the app. App developer Sawyer Billings ’18 said that while delivery service from the Pub is not yet available, discussions are taking place.
The College received 9,047 applications for the class of 2022, up from 7,251 from last year. It was an increase of roughly 25 percent and the highest raw number since admissions data became available in 1989.
Ladd House, one of the eight College Houses on campus, will be senior-only housing next year if enough rising seniors apply next week. The decision to convert the House, traditionally occupied by sophomores, into senior housing was proposed by a group of juniors, and occurred amid numerous conversations about how to make College housing more appealing to upperclassmen.
At its first meeting of the semester on Wednesday, Bowdoin Student Government (BSG) discussed revising its constitution and improving student counseling resources. BSG hopes to pass a new constitution before spring break, which would require one third of the student body to vote on the constitution and two thirds of those votes to be in favor.
On Saturday, the New York Times reported that Representative Patrick Meehan ’78 P’17 (R-Pa.) used thousands of dollars of taxpayer money to settle a personal sexual misconduct complaint made by a former aide. Last night Meehan announced that he would not be running for reelection.
Twelve students will participate in a trial intergroup dialogue (IGD) curriculum on socioeconomic class beginning this February. Kate Stern and Leana Amaez, associate deans of students for diversity and inclusion and co-directors of the Center for Sexuality, Women & Gender will facilitate discussion with students from various class backgrounds.
At its meeting on December 18, the Brunswick Town Council granted Bowdoin permission to discontinue a section of Pine Street between Bath Road and Bowker Street. The 7-1 vote came after several weeks of conversations, during which some town residents expressed concern about increased traffic on residential streets.
President Clayton Rose announced two important additions to the administration over Winter Break. Michael Cato and Michael Reed, will assume their positions on campus on March 1. Cato is the new senior vice president and chief information officer (CIO) while Reed will serve as the senior vice president for inclusion and diversity.
This semester, Bowdoin has accepted two students into its guest semester program for students studying in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands seeking to continue their education following disruption by Hurricanes Irma and Maria. Veronica Gutierrez Camacho and Leonardo Núñez, both third-year students at the University of Puerto Rico, arrived in Brunswick on January 18 braced for a new educational and physical environment.
A group of protesters organized by Bowdoin Climate Action occupied Senator Susan Collins’ Portland office Friday to speak out against her support for the GOP tax bill. Friday’s protest was the latest in a series of demonstrations against Senator Collins’ support of the Senate tax plan.
This week the Orient sent out a revised version of its biannual approval ratings survey, now called the Bowdoin Orient Student Survey, which asks students about their opinions on campus institutions. The survey was sent to all 1,816 students and yielded 429 responses.
At Monday’s faculty meeting, faculty and staff discussed a plan to alter the schedule of both the academic and extracurricular day by adding 10 minutes between classes. While the detailed schedule has yet to be finalized, this specific change will be implemented for the fall 2018 semester.
Senator George Mitchell ’54, H’83 returned to campus early this week to participate in a dialogue with President Clayton Rose titled “Public Service in Times Like These,” during which he challenged his fellow Democrats to reexamine their governing priorities.
Currently, both the Senate and the House have passed versions of a revised tax code that would hit wealthy private colleges and universities with new taxes and restrictions. While there are significant differences between the Senate and House proposals, both would affect Bowdoin’s ability to, among other things, provide financial aid through a proposed tax on endowment earnings and a decrease in the number of taxpayers eligible to itemize charitable donations, which may disincentivize donating to the College.
On Tuesday evening, activist, organizer and educator DeRay Mckesson ’07 returned to campus as the keynote speaker for No Hate November. He delivered his address to a packed audience in Morrell Lounge in Smith Union. Mckesson, an active leader in the Black Lives Matter movement, has used social media, especially Twitter, to spread awareness about the movement, its nationwide protests and the systems of oppression that they seek to change.
The Bowdoin Public Service Initiative (BPS) announced its first cohort of 10 sophomores and five juniors to take part in a 7-week program in Washington, D.C., and the BPS fellowship program, respectively, last Friday. BPS in Washington allows sophomores to explore public service by traveling to the nation’s capital to meet and network with alumni and other public service representatives.
This week, students were urged to fill out Bowdoin Course Questionnaires (BCQs) to rate their experiences with courses and professors. Students’ responses are used to improve courses, evaluate faculty and supplement the process for making decisions on reappointment, promotion and tenure.
Senator George J. Mitchell ’54 H’83 returned to campus to participate in a dialogue with President Clayton Rose titled “Public Service in Times Like These” in Pickard Theater on Monday. In an exclusive interview with the Orient prior to the event, the senator discussed his deep disappointment with the Republican tax bill passed in the Senate on Saturday.
Bowdoin announced yesterday that it is initiating a Guest Semester Program for spring 2018 designed to accommodate students who currently attend inoperable universities in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Students who cannot attend their schools because of transportation, housing or financial difficulties have until December 18 to apply for the program.
Editor’s note: At their request, the names of some individuals interviewed in this piece have been abbreviated to protect their identity. The walls of the blue box gallery in David Saul Smith Union currently display a memorial to the 326 people killed by acts of anti-trans hatred in the preceding 365 days worldwide.
Two op-eds by Brunswick residents published this month in local newspapers expressed that the College should make a greater financial contribution to the town. In a letter to the editor published on November 14 in the Coastal Journal, Brunswick resident Jean Powers called for the town to request a greater gift-in-kind from the College.
During the 2016 election cycle, Bowdoin employees donated less to political causes as a group than employees of many other NESCAC colleges. When Bowdoin employees did donate, none gave to conservative candidates or groups. According to publicly available records from the Federal Election Commission, Bowdoin employees donated the second lowest aggregate sum of any of the 11 schools in the NESCAC in 2016 with $12,164.
This week, Bowdoin hosted the largest event series in the College’s history in recognition of HIV/AIDS. The schedule surrounding today’s World AIDS Day recognition has so far included a screening of the Oscar nominated documentary “How to Survive a Plague,” as well as a discussion with a cast member and a panel on the local and global view of HIV/AIDS.
As part of Bowdoin’s No Hate November programming, Africa Alliance and the Student Center for Multicultural Life co-sponsored a performance by Nigerian-British comedian Gina Yashere on Thursday night. The show brought a full crowd of students, faculty and community members to Kresge Auditorium.
At a town meeting on the evening of Monday, November 20, Brunswick residents commented on Bowdoin’s proposed plan to discontinue Pine Street in order to build a new athletic facility. If accepted, this plan would mean discontinuing the portion of Pine Street that runs between Bowker Street and Bath Road, adding a perpendicular extension between Pine Street and Bath Road through what is currently a wooded area.
When round one of course registration for the spring semester ended, many students were ousted from over-selected classes and have since been scrambling to find new courses that fit their schedules. While many courses saw a significant disparity between the number of available seats and the number of requests, several in particular received nearly twice as many requests as were seats available.
At a hearing this coming Monday, the Brunswick Town Council will discuss a proposal introduced by the College to relocate the section of Pine Street that runs adjacent to Whittier Field and the Pine Grove Cemetery.
After enjoying a Thanksgiving feast in the dining hall, students gathered last night in the living room of Macmillan House to engage in conversation about socioeconomic class, an event which is part of another fall tradition at Bowdoin: No Hate November, which is a month of events dedicated to fostering conversations surrounding identity.
Spurred by student and faculty efforts to bring more diverse perspectives to campus, guest speaker Henry Olsen shared a decidedly conservative viewpoint this Tuesday in a talk titled “The Once and Future New Deal Republican: Saving Reagan From Reaganism.” As a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, a conservative think tank based in Washington, D.C., Olsen focused much of his talk on arguments he advances in his new book, “The Working Class Republican: Ronald Reagan and the Return of Blue-Collar Conservatism.” He argues that President Reagan’s core principle was human dignity, not human liberty, and that Reaganism is similar to both Roosevelt’s New Deal policies and President Donald Trump’s economic policies.
The Office of Admissions received 743 applications by the end of its early decision I period on Wednesday, signifying an approximately 25 percent increase from last year’s 604 applications. This year’s ED I applicants represent more than 550 high schools, marking an increase from the 470 schools represented in last year’s applicant pool.
Last week, the Career Planning Center (CPC) and Bowdoin Student Government (BSG) announced a new initiative called “Just the Facts,” an attempt by both groups to better inform students of the career resources and opportunities available to them on campus, while also demystifying and debunking common misconceptions about the role of the CPC and its priorities.
Bowdoin is one of about 70 private colleges and universities that would be affected by the implementation of a tax included in the House Republicans’ tax proposal. The tax overhaul approved by House Republicans on Monday proposes a 1.4 percent excise tax on the net investment income of college endowments.
The College announced its new off-campus housing policy on Wednesday, which includes restricting eligibility for off-campus living to juniors and seniors and capping the total number of students who can live off campus to 185 in the 2018-2019 academic year, down from this year’s cap of 200.
Bowdoin has joined 49 other colleges and universities in submitting a legal document of support for a case challenging President Donald Trump’s executive order terminating the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. The brief was filed on November 1 in the northern California U.S.
Last week, Bowdoin Student Government (BSG) kicked off its annual No Hate November programming, a month dedicated to eliminating bias and increasing discussion around identity on campus. The event series has been held for five years, but this year the focus has changed to promote student voices on campus.
Bowdoin Healthy Relationships (BHeRe), a new student group this year, has assumed the programming responsibilities the Alliance for Sexual Assault Prevention (ASAP), which the Office of Gender Violence Prevention and Education reformatted last spring to become a coalition for other student groups that work to prevent sexual assault on campus.
The Peary-MacMillan Arctic Museum and Arctic Studies Center is celebrating the 50th anniversary of its founding with a large addition of new artwork, a birthday party and events that will continue throughout the year. The Museum received 50 pieces of Canadian Inuit art from Judith and Robert Toll to commemorate its fiftieth birthday.
The College announced on Friday that the endowment generated an investment return of 12.4 percent for the fiscal year that ended June 30, 2017. The endowment had a market value of $1.46 billion on June 30, up from $1.34 billion at the close of FY 2016.
The first round of course registration for the spring semester opens Monday, November 6. The Orient analyzed course offerings and enrollments over the three semesters since spring 2016 to find the departments in which classes were consistently filled, as well as those in which classes rarely fill.
Q1: Should the Maine Gambling Control Board allow to operation of slot machines or a casino in York County, Maine? If passed, Question 1 would allow for the creation of a gaming and entertainment venue in York County, the most southwestern county in Maine, which includes the towns of Saco, Kennebunk and Old Orchard Beach, among others.
Tuesday is Election Day, and some Bowdoin students who come from out of state have chosen to register to vote in Maine. Those who vote in Brunswick next week will see local municipal elections as well as four state ballot measure referendums on the ballot.
Bowdoin’s Department of German will be honored on November 18 as a Center of Excellence by the American Association of Teachers of German (AATG). Birgit Tautz, George Taylor Files professor of modern languages, was notified of the department’s designation last month, after submitting an application on behalf of the department to AATG for this honor earlier this year, which included visits by faculty from other institutions to review the department.
Accommodating potentially 1,500 students, faculty and staff in a space meant to seat 630 could be a recipe for disaster. However, thanks to much foresight and organization, Bowdoin Dining Service was able to provide refuge and electricity in Thorne Hall during this week’s power outage.
Following a storm early Monday morning that left nearly 500,000 homes and businesses in Maine without electricity, Bowdoin was plunged into the state’s worst ever power outage that, for some, lasted over two days. Students, faculty and staff flocked to Thorne Dining Hall for hot food, heat, electricity and Wi-Fi, while Security and Facilities worked to assess and repair the aftermath.
In addition to waking up without power Monday morning, Bowdoin’s campus awoke to the loss of some of its oldest residents—three trees on the Main Quad. Two oaks and one maple fell as a result of the storm that blew across campus early Monday morning.
Even in the chaos of the storm, many students didn’t feel much of a reprieve from their typical day-to-day academic pressures. Tables in Thorne throughout the day could be seen covered in laptops and notebooks as students tried to keep up with their coursework. A photographic look at how Bowdoin reacted to the worst power outage Maine has seen in decades.
A storm Sunday night and Monday morning caused extensive power outages, affecting campus and a record number of people in Maine. All classes scheduled before 10 a.m. were canceled by Elizabeth F. McCormack, dean of academic affairs, and many more later in the day have been canceled at professor discretion.
“Take Back the Night” took place on the steps of the Bowdoin College Museum of Art Museum Tuesday evening, bringing together community members to discuss and reflect on sexual assault on Bowdoin’s campus and in the nation through a candlelit walk from the Museum to 30 College Street.
