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Earlier this week, Muslim communities across the U.K. and the U.S. prepared themselves for an escalation of violent threats inspired by “Punish a Muslim Day.” Anonymous letters arrived to the homes of Muslims in England and circulated throughout social media intended to strike fear among Muslim communities.
The latest article of Polar Views attempted to acquaint its audience with phenomena that are already readily apparent. Given previous responses to this column and the bevy of articles written by women in the past year, it is worrying that these phenomena were addressed as if they were novel to the author and to his audience.
On Wednesday, conservative economist Larry Lindsey ’76 H’93 gave a talk moderated by President Rose in Pickard Theater. The event with Lindsey, an outspoken right-wing pundit, and the discussion that has followed provided a model for the sort of productive and respectful discourse that can and should arise from events that challenge our campus’ political consensus.
In his book, “Conspiracies of the Ruling Class,” Lawrence B. Lindsey ’76 distorts history to make an elite argument for privatizing government look like economic populism. Lindsey, a supply-side economist who served as an economic advisor to President George H.W.
Rape culture exists at Bowdoin, too. The pervasiveness of sexual assault and sexual harassment in Hollywood is a microcosm of rape culture that plagues the country. Still, one can feel far removed from the high-profile cases of sexual assault among entertainers without a local perspective.
After reading the recent opinion pieces by three seniors of color on the racially themed parties that were held on this very campus two and three years ago, I am struck by the lack of a white opinion on these events.
Editor’s note: this letter is in response to the recent exhibition “Texts,” held in the Blue Gallery from February 27 through Spring Break. Thanks Steph and Lillian for thinking of this idea and to the women who submitted their texts.
I do not remember the invasion of Iraq. I was three years old at the time, and although snippets of news broadcasts may have alerted me to the presence of conflict, I was understandably oblivious to the gravity of the situation.
Morality has a number of purposes. There’s a social purpose; it makes people’s behavior predictable and helps us to resolve conflicts peacefully. There’s also a critical purpose, which is often at odds with the social purpose; morality provides the basis for us to criticize society, government, culture and even morality itself.
Since Bowdoin’s annual Cold War party was disrupted by the Brunswick Police Department (BPD), students, in the pages of the Orient and at the Bowdoin Student Government’s public comment session, have voiced frustration, confusion and dismay about a perceived increase in BPD’s enforcement on campus.
Last week, the Brunswick Police Department (BPD), in effect, canceled the Cold War party. After noticing intoxicated minors quite openly carrying alcoholic beverages between Mac and Quinby, officers issued some warnings. To one particularly brazen student, they issued a court summons.
“To make hosts of friends… / Who are to be leaders in all walks of life; / And cooperate with others for common ends” – The Offer of the College If you haven’t seen Kevin Hernandez’s op-ed in the Orient from last week, stop now and go read it.
I’m on the sailing team but didn’t attend the “gangster” party two years ago. My absence wasn’t a conscious choice. In other words, it wasn’t out of protest but was instead due to the mundane yet gravitational pull of looming assignments.
As this week’s Orient story on political activity and activism at Bowdoin makes clear, much of our campus is slow to take to the streets regarding just about anything. This week has been no exception. As students around the nation mobilize in response to the February 14 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, our sleepy Brunswick campus has remained sleepy.
Author’s note: this is a personal account and not representative of the voices of the beautiful, strong and resilient Latinx students on this campus. “Why do we have to make everything about race? It was just a party.” Okay.
I’ve already written an article about gun violence this year, yet I honestly don’t remember which mass shooting it was in response to. If my column is true to its name, the politics of mass shootings should pop up with saddening frequency, for every week it seems the topic is relevant.
As a senior, I went to last weekend’s Cold War party knowing full well that my friends and I would likely be the only members of our class in attendance. We did not care; we were just looking to enjoy ourselves, cheer on our friends’ band and reminisce about our own College House days.
One of my mentors told me that Bowdoin’s student climate tends to change every four years, either in a positive or negative way. This academic year, I feel like the party scene at Bowdoin became weak and uninspired.
The Equity in Athletics Data Analysis shows that between the 2015-16 and 2016-17 academic years, Bowdoin’s annual athletic recruiting expenses grew 162 percent, from $30,966 to $81,018, an increase made possible by the NESCAC’s elimination of its cap on recruitment spending.
February 14 is always a normal day until dinner time, when I notice Irene’s bowl of pink and red chocolate. A little too late in the day, I begin commemorating the day of love with the rest of the world.
As the faculty experiments with alterations to Bowdoin Course Questionnaires (BCQs), we encourage students and the College to think more broadly about the role that these evaluations could play in the Bowdoin academic program. The latest changes, which will be implemented in a pilot program this spring, aim to mitigate the influence of students’ implicit biases on their answers by rewording questions to eliminate vague or imprecise language.
Author’s note: Although I use she/her/hers pronouns throughout this piece, we welcome non-binary students who have a connection to womanhood to participate in this photoshoot. 2018 marks the fourth iteration of the “Celebrating Women, Celebrating Bodies” photoshoot since its inception in 2012.
As we enter the second month of 2018, it’s worth taking a moment to reflect on this year’s potential to shake up the American political landscape. Although the 2016 election may still be fresh in our minds, the upcoming midterm elections in November will be similarly momentous, defining the “second-half” of the Trump Presidency and either making or breaking some of his grandiose campaign promises.
“If black people hate it here so much, maybe they should just go back to their country.” A white girl in my high school allegedly made this remark while I was reciting an original poem about Trayvon Martin during our weekly assembly meeting.
A friend once told me that the thought of reunification with North Korea (to put it mildly because he used some other colorful metaphors) was, “stupid because it would ruin the economy that South Korea had worked so hard to achieve.
As the Board of Trustees prepares to make its pilgrimage to Silicon Valley, we think that its members and the Bowdoin community should consider the implication of this trip. As President Rose noted in an interview with the Orient, the culture of Silicon Valley has given rise to both good and bad.
As spring fashion week draws closer, I have deeply reflected on our own Brunswick runway. Although there is a fundamental difference between fashion and style, Bowdoin’s culture around both is worth exploring. The collective style at Bowdoin is predictable; only a handful of students maintain a creative and authentic style.
As a singer and songwriter, I naturally tuned in to this year’s Grammy Awards show on Sunday night in hope of seeing some wins by my favorite artists. I was shocked to see Alessia Cara take the award for Best New Artist, since her latest album was released in 2015 and she was even nominated for Best New Artist in other music award shows in 2016.
Bowdoin’s Office of Residential Life (ResLife) should be commended for considering and acting upon student suggestions for changes to the housing policy aimed at revitalizing the on-campus social scene. However, without recognizing the limitations and potential pitfalls of turning Ladd House into a senior-only living space, this latest change is not likely to significantly alter the role of upperclassmen in the campus social scene.
I recently read the account, published on the website Babe.net, of a woman who claimed to have an uncomfortable sexual encounter with comedian Aziz Ansari. I won’t go into the specific details of the article—you are welcome to read it yourself—but the author states that Ansari repeatedly pressured her to participate in sexual acts despite her discomfort, ignoring obvious verbal and physical cues.
One would think for an opinion piece as provocative as “Bowdoin football: your time is running out,” that the author would have supported his argument with facts rather than anecdotal evidence and innuendo. Mr. Covell correctly points out that football participation rates are down across the country but fails to point out that 1.1 million young men and women participated in high school football in 2016, a participation rate nearly twice that of next most popular sport (track and field).
Over Winter Break I spent a week in the Lower Rio Grande Valley in Texas, along the Mexican border. I was there on a birding trip because, ecologically, the area is an extension of Mexican habitat—much of its native wildlife can be found nowhere else in the U.S.
The past two “Polar Views” articles are troubling. The platform the author has created is crucial to deepening conversations in the Bowdoin community, and comparing experiences of oppression has an insidious nature which alienates us from the problems at hand—I don’t wish to contribute to the conversation in that manner.
This past week, Bowdoin students had the opportunity to hear from two of Bowdoin’s most prominent alumni, U.S. Senator George Mitchell ’54 H’83 and Black Lives Matter activist DeRay Mckesson ’07. Both men expressed their grave concern for the current state and direction of American politics and society.
It is easy for a minority student to hate Bowdoin. From the classroom, to College Houses, to student clubs, almost everything is perceived through the perspective of a “traditional-student” population. I was tired of it, so I decided to start writing about my experiences from a different cultural lens.
I read with interest my fellow football alum Daniel Covell’s piece in last week’s Orient that takes a very academic and somewhat drastic approach to addressing Bowdoin’s football woes. However, sometimes turning a program around simply comes down to the right leadership, and Daniel neglects to mention this fourth, rather basic option, that I believe has the best chance for success: • Hire a dynamic hard-charging head coach who played NESCAC football and has a track record of building football programs from scratch.
Highly selective activism—this is a term I have coined to describe Bowdoin’s advocacy. Our student body is proud of being a culturally sensitive campus that aims to uphold the common good. In my time here, there has been a lot of mobility and activism on campus surrounding issues regarding women’s rights, LGBTQ rights and, recently, DACA.
Sexual misconduct should not be weaponized as a mechanism to score points against political adversaries. To do so is insulting to the victims of an epidemic which we must address as a societal problem, not a partisan, political one.
Tax policy is not sexy. Seemingly the exclusive concern of policymakers and political junkies, changes to the federal tax code seem distant from the everyday concerns of college students like us, some of whom have never seen a tax return.
In 1889, Bowdoin students took part in the College’s first intercollegiate football game, losing to Tufts 8-4. Since that time, the program has had a few periods of modest success but has mostly endured prolonged periods of futility.
Since the initial allegations of sexual abuse against Harvey Weinstein broke, many more high-profile men from different sectors have been accused of similar transgressions. At such a historic point in time, Americans have been forced to reckon with the reality that many of the men whose work we enjoy are in fact vile, reprehensible people.
An article titled, “The unintended impact of the ‘fuckboy’ and ‘softboy’” published in the last issue of the Orient, argues that the terms the Bowdoin community uses to describe opposite-sex relations creates an unfair binary for “the good guys.” In an attempted plea for empathy, the author claims that while not all men “care about ending rape culture,” he does, but he feels ostracized and at a loss for how to show commendable allyship.
The recent programming surrounding No Hate November has brought questions of class-consciousness and income inequality at Bowdoin into the campus spotlight. Class markers—in the clothes we wear, in our choice of weekend activities and in our classrooms—are constant symbols and reminders of the economic disparities that exist within our small campus.
What does it mean for this country if we recognize that our Constitution isn’t timeless? What are the consequences of accepting it as flawed? Whether we like it or not, these are questions we need to ask if we are to effectively advocate for gun control, an act of advocacy I believe to be necessary.
We, the education department, saw the November 10 “No Hate November” article and were disturbed to read about Salim Salim’s experience at a local elementary school last fall. We stand with Salim and all of our students.
A few weeks ago, while scrolling through “The Shade Room,” a news platform on Instagram, I came across allegations against Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein, specifically his various acts of sexual harassment and assault towards his female colleagues.
Last year as a junior at Bowdoin, I made the mistake of complimenting a female friend on her outfit; that time, she accused me of “benevolent sexism.” As a first year, I made a similar tactical error by opening the door for a friend, a liberal self-proclaimed feminist, who disparaged me afterwards.
The results of Tuesday’s national, state and local elections have brought hope to those Americans who, this time last year, were distraught with the state of the nation’s politics. The contrast is stark to the aftermath of Donald Trump’s election to the presidency, when many on Bowdoin’s campus came together in opposition to the new president, fueled by a sense of anger, frustration and acute injustice.
On April 16, 2007, distressing scenes of first responders reacting to the Virginia Tech massacre played on our living room TV while my parents set the table so that we could enjoy the cake my mother made for my sister’s third birthday.
In the first semester of freshman year, I caught the common cold four times—practically every time the virus meandered throughout campus. Not one to get sick often, I couldn’t understand why I was having this problem.
Following this week’s power outage, Bowdoin students were reminded, once again, of how lucky we are to benefit from a team of campus employees, each one committed to ensuring the safety and well-being of students. All deserve our whole-hearted thanks.
I write to urge Bowdoin students and Mainers to continue to hold Maine Senator Susan Collins accountable. Last week, Collins and Senate Republicans voted to repeal anti-forced arbitration rules, a practice wherein everyday consumers are required to waive their rights to class-action lawsuits and other means of accessing the courts, and instead are forced to settle their grievances with large companies through private arbitration.
I had a fun-packed Family Weekend at Bowdoin with my friends and family, but everything changed when the storm unleashed its wrath on Bowdoin’s campus. On Monday morning, October 30, I woke up to rain showers of epic proportions and winds that could lift one off the ground.
Last week, the Orient published an article profiling Evan McLaren, a former Bowdoin student who is currently the executive director of the National Policy Institute (NPI), a group dedicated to promoting white supremacy and the creation of a white nation-state.
In 2015, Clayton Rose cemented a very clear vision for his presidency: “If you think the same way, and think about the same things in the same way four years from now, something has gone wrong.” Take a moment and reflect on President Rose’s words.
On October 19, President George W. Bush spoke at the “Spirit of Liberty: At Home, In the World” event in New York City, a forum hosted by the Bush Presidential Center promoting American values of freedom and security.
We publish the profile of Evan McLaren, “Former Bowdoin student leads identified hate group,” with trepidation. McLaren’s white nationalism and white supremacy is abhorrent and antithetical to the core principles of our paper, our college and our nation.
On October 8, the Instagram account @nescacbarstool posted for the first time. The account’s debut was a video proclaiming that in the NESCAC, “we work hard but we play harder.” The clip is a montage of partying crowds at various schools and concludes with a sped-up video of a student vomiting into a trash can, red solo cup in hand.
I entered sophomore year a caricature. With sharpened angles and tunneled thoughts, I bore little resemblance to myself. A quick Google search let me know that I could eat at the Lobster Bake. It was only 129 calories for an entire lobster, minus the butter sauce, of course.
In our best form, the Orient works to facilitate constructive dialogue through storytelling—sharing people’s perspectives, reporting events that impact our community and publishing op-eds from named contributors are different avenues through which we pursue the cross-pollination of ideas.
Editor’s note: Shea Necheles is co-leader of Safe Space and is writing on behalf of the organization. Every person who has experienced sexual violence has the right to share their story how they want, if they want and when they want.
Being at a liberal arts college, I constantly hear about the politics of language, but I have never known of in-depth discussions on slurs and epithets. I was reminded of this last week when I attended the performance of queer disabled femme poet Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha who was asked at some point why she calls herself a “crip.” Her remarks that using ‘crip’ is part of a movement to subvert traditionally ableist language reminded me of the reclamation movement of ‘nigga,’ also known as the ‘N-word.’ This year, debates about the N-word have resurfaced in light of Bill Maher’s N-word joke on his talk show and the Instagram video of white sorority girls singing the N-word in the Kanye West classic “Gold Digger.” This debate often enters the social sphere through one question: why can’t white people say the N-word?
This past weekend, we had the pleasure of coming back to campus for homecoming weekend and the 80th reunion of the Meddiebempsters. As it is every time, it was great to sing, chat and share stories with Meddie alumni going back to the early 1950s, and it culminated with a performance in Pickard.
We welcome Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Professor of Education Charles Dorn’s response to the October 13 article titled “Administrative hires exceed those of faculty as needs change.” Dorn was kind enough to meet for 30 minutes with the Orient a few weeks ago as a source for this story.
I am a historian of education who uses college and university newspapers to gain insight into students’ higher education experiences over time. I also look to those archives to identify issues and concerns that, historically, students deemed important enough to write about.
Last week’s discussion between Frank Bruni and Arthur C. Brooks missed the mark. Déjà vu? A bit. Although the discussion proved markedly more substantive than last year’s “debate” between Nicholas Kristof and Jason Riley, ultimately the night suffered from many of the same problems that year’s discussion had.
As an upperclassman, I’ve begun to realize how fleeting four years at Bowdoin are. Yet, thinking this only reminds me of how short life is, which leads me to stress about the vastness of the universe.
Scott Pruitt is one of the most dangerous men in the world. While we anxiously watch Trump and Kim Jong-Un bait each other with threats of catastrophe and bloodshed, Pruitt has been barreling ahead with his own war, of which the body count will extend far beyond the confines of the Korean peninsula.
“This is not us” became an oft-repeated mantra in the aftermath of this summer’s violence in Charlottesville set off by white supremacist protesters. My social media timelines were littered with posts by former high school classmates, many of whom attend the University of Virginia and wanted to distance the horrific events from the institution, the surrounding town and our home state.
Frank Bruni and Arthur Brooks see eye to eye on a lot of things, despite what the table tents in Moulton might have you think. One of those things, according to last Monday’s talk, is that American higher education suffers from a fundamental lack of ideological diversity.
When President Rose addressed the Class of 2020 for the first time last year, he spoke about Bowdoin being our new home—an ode to new beginnings. My attention was drawn to the row of flags behind him—the French flag, American, Afghan, Jamaican.
“Wouldn’t you love to see one of these NFL owners, when somebody disrespects our flag, to say, ‘Get that son of a bitch off the field. Out. He’s fired. He’s fired.’” Donald Trump’s incendiary screed played well among his most rabid supporters.
Like many of us here on campus, I try to receive my news from reputable and unbiased sources as much as possible. These sources are ones that present the news as it is, without spin or agenda, for readers to assess as they’d like.
Tomorrow night is Epicuria. Along with Ivies Weekend, this event holds a distinct place in the mythology of the Bowdoin community. But before we don our togas, we should consider the night soberly. On the one hand, Epicuria manifests much of what has been and continues to be successful about the College House system.
“I get it; you have the right to protest, but you don’t kneel during the national anthem. That’s just unacceptable.” My good-intentioned white male friend made this comment in Thorne dining hall two years ago in light of Colin Kaepernick’s decision to ‘take a knee.’ Simply put, I was shook.
We assume that every student has, at least once during their time at Bowdoin, rolled their eyes at something they read in the pages of the Orient. Some students, we suspect, have even felt alienated by the content of this paper.
Recently you sat in a circle with a bunch of other students. You recognized some of them, but others were new faces. This group might have been a class or a club or a team. Whatever it was, the leader asked everyone to introduce themselves by name, class year and pronoun.
Editor’s note: At her request, the name of the author of this piece has been abbreviated to protect her identity. Here at Bowdoin, we have a practice of introducing ourselves with our pronouns along with our names.
For better or for worse, the powerful combination of pop culture and the Internet has long been a large presence in my life. Whereas my parents have distinct memories of a time before computers, my earliest memories consist of afternoons taking turns playing games on the Disney Channel website with my younger sister.
“Don’t you think things are better now?” This is not an uncommon question I’ve heard, from people both inside and outside the LGBT community, but it’s always a difficult one for me to answer. Yes, the crowd in 24 College on Thursday evenings is exponentially larger than it had been a decade ago, and yes, I feel safer being out in the majority of situations at Bowdoin than I’m sure my predecessors felt.
President Clayton Rose published an op-ed in TIME Magazine arguing for the importance of the liberal arts. Roughly, his argument is that today “intellectual engagement is too often mocked,” leaving us in a “distressing place… where facts are willfully ignored or conveniently dismissed” and where “Hypocrisy runs rampant and character appears to no longer be a requirement for leadership.” His proposed solution is one we’ve heard from him before: intellectual fearlessness, the notion that one “can consider ideas and material that challenge their points of view, which may run counter to deeply held beliefs, unsettles them or may make them uncomfortable.” I take issue with much of Rose’s argument, and what I find most troubling is his seeming inability to articulate, with substance, a goal, mission and role for the liberal arts that extends beyond banalities.
Last week, the Bowdoin community was in shock upon learning that President Trump would terminate Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). As usual, Bowdoin students rallied together in solidarity for a week to support those who would be affected, yet somehow ignored the gravity of the situation the following week.
On Thursday morning, Dean of Student Affairs Tim Foster announced the recommendations of the committee charged with reviewing the College’s off-campus housing policy. Although the College aims to use these recommendations to “serve as the basis for a clear and transparent off-campus housing policy,” the recommendations themselves are neither clear nor transparent.
In today’s world, natural disasters are inherently political. They drastically disrupt and change the lives of countless Americans, and it is often the government’s job to provide support and aid in response. This responsibility falls squarely into my choice definition of politics: “Who gets what, where and why.” Because the need for government action is often so sudden, and so concentrated, there is relatively little room for partisan squabbling in the wake of a catastrophic event.
My experiences with social anxiety disorder have often resulted in a fair number of awkward moments. Social anxiety, for me, arises in almost every social context, although there are some exceptions. Nevertheless, in an attempt to grasp onto the unreachable heights of social acceptability, during conversation I often begin to overcompensate.
The common good is deeply moral in theory but deeply elusive in practice. Just in the past year, at least four articles have been written critiquing our execution of Bowdoin’s founding value. I add my voice with the hope that criticism does not enable apathy, but rather sparks action.
If the true test of character is what one does when no one is watching, then the past few months of summer break have presented Bowdoin with plenty of opportunities to prove its mettle. From the fall of the last mortarboard at graduation to the first day of classes this fall, seemingly every headline presented a fresh opportunity for shock, awe and uncertainty.
Because I inherited my mother’s aversion to makeup, I was an easy target for Glossier’s stunningly effective marketing scheme. Rather than use Kendall Jenner’s heavily contoured and enviously symmetrical face for ads, the brand instead tends to recruit “everyday” women to model its minimalist line of makeup on its Instagram account.
This summer I went off-the-grid. It wasn’t in an exotic, adventurous way; I didn’t backpack across the Himalayas or return to Bowdoin with a foreign lover in tow Eat Pray Love style. I lived in New York City and had constant access to all of life’s essentials (and those not as much so, like a Starbucks on every corner), I merely deleted all social media accounts and lived my life as if no one was watching.
At the very end of the summer, just a few days before the rest of the student body returned to campus, the other College House officers and I spent several hours with the Peer Health and Residential Life student team discussing a book we had all read over the summer, Matthew Desmond’s Evicted.
I leapt into life at Bowdoin with force and vigor. I joined an a cappella group, auditioned for a musical, became a tour guide, went to parties and religiously attended office hours. My story is not unusual—nor is my experience with sexual assault at Bowdoin.
In the May 5, 2017 issue of The Bowdoin Orient, Bowdoin Counseling Service published an ad featuring the headline “Everything is Awful and I’m Not Okay: Questions to ask before giving up.” The list, which was discovered to be ripped off from a Tumblr post, poses a list of 16 pithy questions that, apparently, one should consider before following through with whatever “giving up” is a euphemism for (self harm?
I am incredibly grateful for Bowdoin Counseling Service. Without their initial consultation, I never would have been referred to my current off-campus therapist. I would still be stuck in the same negative thought patterns that were not my own, that inhibited me from living the full life that I wanted to live, that placed blame for everything not perfect in my life on me alone and that comprised my disease.
One in four Bowdoin students uses the College’s Counseling Service. However, Bowdoin cannot adequately meet the needs of these 462 students. Counseling Service can’t provide weekly one-on-one sessions, instead offering bi-weekly meetings and group sessions to most students.
This column is a response to the piece “The state of the union remains strong through Trump’s first months.” In their column, Ezra Rice and Francisco Navarro write hopefully about our ability to preserve the American system through Donald Trump’s four years as president: “Though millions of Americans remain worried for the future, we can be reassured by the power of our American system and be certain that the state of our union remains strong.” To me, this positive regard for our system ignores the ways our status quo was failing the majority of Americans before Trump; it also conflates the prosperity of the American people with the stability of our government.
My advice ought to reflect this world as it really is, not a utopian ideal of what it could or should be. I am drawing the parameters of “this world” to encompass Hubbard Hall, the sixth floor of the stacks, the Moulton Light Room and the occasional class in Sills Hall, Adams Hall or on the 16th floor of Coles Tower.
It is no secret that the humanities are fighting to survive in the 21st century. Seeking to justify their existence to federal or state financiers, college presidents and skeptical parents, defenders of the humanities are producing page upon page, book upon book seeking to explain why they do what they do.
By now, we’ve probably all heard about the recent events that unfolded at Middlebury when Charles Murray was invited to speak or the violent protests that arose when Milo Yiannopoulos was asked to speak at UC Berkeley.
Class has occupied a larger space in conversation at Bowdoin this year, or at least people want it to. Symbols and experiences of class, wealth and intergenerational mobility have been built up, broken down and disseminated to the campus through efforts from the McKeen Center for the Common Good, the Orient, Inter-Group Dialogue, The Office of Residential Life and other organizations.
