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Total Number of Articles: 57
First Article on this Page: November 17, 2017
Latest Article on this Page: May 5, 2023
To the editors, In the April 21, 2023 edition of the Bowdoin Orient, the Editorial Board included a piece contending that advising and registration for incoming students should remain in the two days leading up to the start of classes in the fall.
To the editors, A PeaceWorks vigil has been active in Brunswick for the past 21 years. This letter is an invitation to all members of the Bowdoin community to join us when you can. Sometimes called “Honk for Peace,” we stand at the edge of the green opposite Walgreens every Friday from 5 – 5:30 p.m.
To the editors, I see the college is hosting a series of lectures on Russia-Ukraine, the first of which was already held (virtually) on October 27 when Ukrainian scholar Nataliya Shpylova-Saeed delivered “Russia’s War On Ukraine: Culture, Memory, Politics.” I missed the lecture, so I can’t be sure how much the Orient’s coverage omitted, but I was troubled by Shpylova-Saeed’s neglect of historical context.
To the Editors, We want to thank everyone who came out and voted on Tuesday. This year was vital for Maine and national politics, and it was more imperative than ever for us to drive progressive thinking and activism at Bowdoin and in our community.
To the editors, The proposals for the redevelopment of Bowdoin’s Pickard Field complex sent to members of Friends of the College a week or so ago are both surprising and troubling: surprising because I am coming to think of Bowdoin as an environmentally-conscious institution and troubling because the proposals set the College back several steps in the community trust earned from solar and geo-thermal installations.
To the editors, I would like to start by addressing the Bowdoin Board of Trustees. Welcome back to campus! I imagine you will be discussing the Pickard Field project at some point during your meetings today and tomorrow.
To the editors, While I appreciate your interest in and coverage of the College’s Digital Excellence Commitment (DExC), your editorial reveals several misunderstandings about the program and how the College is supporting the computing needs of our THRIVE students.
To the Editor: Just this past Sunday, I woke up to the chapel bells. The church bells wake me up every Sunday, serving as a reminder that I’m a foreigner in this land. No matter how many years I’ve been living here, no matter how many friendships I’ve made, no matter that I speak a colonizers’ language better than my mother tongue, the bells tell me that I do not belong.
To the editor: Usually, I am happy when my experiments work. If they do, it affirms my initial assumptions and supports the story that I constructed around the available data. This is called hypothesis testing. But with Covid-19, I’m not sure I need to test the idea that masks prevent transmission, and I’m not sure I need to test my concepts of common sense.
To the Editor: Recently, I have been receiving emails from Bowdoin’s development office inviting me to donate to the recently established “Leaders in All Walks of Life Fund.” This is a “commemorative fund that supports financial aid for women students” and celebrates 50 years of women at Bowdoin.
To the Editor: President Biden set the ambitious goal of reducing US carbon emissions to 50 percent by 2030 and net zero by 2050. According to the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, this is in line with the necessary global emission reductions needed to keep warming to 1.5 degrees for a relatively safe future.
To the Editor: I can remember, so many years ago, the day that my father, Sid Watson, coach of the men’s hockey team, came home and told me he had hired a woman to be on his staff at the athletic department at Bowdoin.
To the Editor, As a journalist, I commend the current editors of The Bowdoin Orient for the care and thought they are bringing to the discussion of changing the paper’s name. There is a simple solution that honors multiple perspectives.
To the Editor, We write to you in support of the name of the Bowdoin “Orient” as former Editors in Chief of this “Oldest Continuously Published College Weekly.” Tradition and history do have a place in forming connections to a shared past and continuing a worthwhile journey with common bonds.
To the Editor: As former editors-in-chief of the Orient, we want to commend and voice our support for Kate Lusignan ’21 and Nina McKay ’21, who have begun considering changing the name of the paper we oversaw last year.
To the Editor: To the guerrilla artist who leaves painted stones on campus: THANK YOU! I find myself walking across campus looking for new stones and surprising myself by how much I enjoy discovering a new piece of pebble art.
To the Editor: The COVID-19 pandemic has altered the college recruitment and selection process for the majority of graduating high school seniors. We have relied on so many unconventional approaches to research colleges and athletic programs.
To the Editor: Though I hesitate to prolong the debate in this publication over Progressives’ voting habits, I object to Theo Danzig’s argument in his recent Letter to the Editor that a vote for Howie Hawkins in Maine is “reckless.” For Hawkins to be awarded four electoral votes, as in Mr.
To the Editor: In her op-ed last week, “Maine Progressives: Rank Biden Second,” Livia Kunins-Berkowitz argued that since Maine offers ranked-choice voting, progressives should place as their first choice a more progressive candidate, such as Howie Hawkins of the Green Party.
To the Editor: I write to express my deep approval of last week’s op-ed, written by my classmate, Alexander Banbury ’20. Now, with the passing of Justice Ginsburg and the intensification of the climate crisis, the call for electing Joe Biden has never been more urgent.
To the Editor: Today marks the 51st day since the College announced the decision to move online. It goes without saying that the moment in which we now find ourselves is unprecedented. Last month, President Rose announced the creation of three working groups: the Budget Review Group to tackle budgetary changes for the 2020-2021 academic year, the Return to Campus Group to consider the physical logistics of reopening campus and the Continuity in Teaching and Learning Group to develop remote learning models should the College decide to continue with online instruction in the fall.
To the Editor, On April 2, we started a mutual aid fund to support Bowdoin community members affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. The concept was simple: we would fundraise to fulfill individual requests submitted by students, staff and community members who needed immediate, direct financial assistance.
To the Editor: Among 38 elite institutions, Bowdoin College is ranked third in the number of students who seek counseling and mental health services. This statistic is not inherently negative—in fact, it demonstrates how, in some ways, Bowdoin is doing something right.
To the Editor, Who will be the rising star on the political horizon this coming year? I am every day more and more convinced that Lisa Savage ’77 is the one. Thank you for featuring her op-ed in last week’s Orient.
To the Editor, In your January 31 editorial board opinion, Classical Mythology is called out for seeming “tangentially related to current issues of social differences.” Classical literature, and Myth especially, have always reflected a deep concern with the issues of social difference, not to mention the roles of power and inequity.
To the Editor, We appreciate Professor of Chemistry Richard Broene’s recent Letter to the Editor drawing attention to the results from the October Energy Challenge and felt it would be beneficial to explain where and how the Sustainability Office arrived at the numbers posted in the Installment.
To the Editor, I recently was shown the latest issue of the Installment, which is published by the campus Sustainability Office. The following was provided as resulting from the energy challenge between dorms. They were able to save 6,452,949.1 pounds of CO2e resulting in reductions up to 27.1 percent.
To the Editor, Last week you published an editorial titled “What are you afraid of?” I agreed with almost all of the sentiments you expressed in this editorial. However, it contained a problematic series of assumptions about Dr.
To the Editor, I would like to thank everyone for all your support for a living wage. I feel it was a little weird for President Rose to announce our wage increase right before “the fall social” and “parent weekend.” Now with my increase, my pay in July, as I understand it, will be a little more than $2.00 more than someone starting new.
To the Editor: I strongly support the editorial in the October 18 issue of the Orient, “All that is great about Bowdoin,” calling for the resignation of Jes Staley ’79 from Bowdoin’s Board of Trustees. Staley worked closely with Epstein, even after his 2008 conviction for soliciting a minor and sex trafficking.
To the Editor: We applaud the College’s administration for the decision to substantially raise wages of staff in a progressive manner. We also applaud the workers who bravely spoke out about concerning conditions here, and pushed the College to do our best to honor our commitment to the Common Good.
To the Editor, As a recent subscriber to the Orient, I was really pleased to see your editorial in big support of the Bowdoin staff and the Bowdoin Labor Alliance! Clear and properly outspoken! Well done.
To the Editor, Opinions about how we should run our economy and society should be welcomed and discussion from multiple viewpoints is important. In that regard, we might be interested to engage with Arthur Brooks. While we may disagree with another viewpoint, it can help to listen and debate.
To the Editor, I’m a Bowdoin junior and member of the new campus chapter of Defenders of Wildlife. Our current focus is on preventing the exploitation of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge from drilling by oil and gas companies.
To the editor: An opinion piece by 12 of Bowdoin’s 54 housekeepers and the lead editorial in the October 4 edition of The Bowdoin Orient remind us that housekeepers do critical and challenging work at the College.
To the Editor, The day following a 16 year-old female’s indictment of the devastation wrought by white western men at the United Nations General Assembly Climate Change Action Summit, Bowdoin hosted a conversation by two proud members of another flank of that canon—the part reserved for great important self-awarding white male writers (Richard Ford and John Banfield).
To the Editor, I wanted to publicly thank all the Bowdoin students who are spending their Saturday mornings this month teaching Brunswick’s youngest schoolchildren how to play soccer. I’ve seen firsthand all the smiles these student-coaches are bringing to kids’ faces as they play.
To the Editor, As members of the Residential Life Head Staff, we collectively live in all of Bowdoin’s residence halls and communicate regularly with Bowdoin’s hardworking housekeepers. We deeply respect our housekeepers and commend the Orient staff and contributors for their ongoing attention to the living wage movement.
To the editor, We have been concerned about misperceptions and incorrect or incomplete information published here, and circulating elsewhere, about Bowdoin’s compensation program for our housekeepers. I want to take the opportunity to set the record straight about our compensation, the importance we place on this issue, and our substantial, ongoing efforts to make sure our housekeepers are compensated appropriately.
Dear Editor, I am writing to express my deep appreciation to President Clayton Rose, Coach Doug Welling and the entire Bowdoin community for the profoundly moving memorial service held for Henry Zietlow ’22 on Saturday. Henry was clearly deeply loved by his teammates and friends, as well as his coaches and professors.
Dear Editor, We were concerned with last week’s editorial, “Midd divested. Will we?” We believe divestment would severely limit Bowdoin’s ability to address climate change and lead toward the Common Good. Bowdoin’s divestment would be inconsequential to the fossil fuel industry at great cost to our endowment.
To whom it may concern: As a military Veteran, I find it very disgraceful that you would refer to people in the military as “non-traditional” students! As a former military person and someone that has gone back to school within the past six years, it was very hard for me to go back to school and deal with generational difference.
Dear Editor, I had the privilege of hosting Professor Ilan Stavans on campus last week for the annual Harry Spindel Memorial lecture. While I appreciate coverage of the lecture in the Orient, I am concerned how the article emphasizes a singular, and rather alarming, interpretation of the lecture rather than a more complete account of general content.
Dear Editor, I wish to express my thanks and appreciation to Bowdoin Hillel for planning and carrying out a very touching and insightful candlelight vigil to remember the members, families and friends of the Tree of Life Synagogue.
Dear Editor, The Federal Department of Health and Human Services’ draft redefinition of gender as binary, immutable and defined by genitalia at birth (resorting to genetic testing in the inevitable instances of ambiguity) is intellectually bankrupt, scientifically baseless, unworkable and cruel.
Dear Bowdoin neighbors, On Tuesday, November 6, 2018, you have a prodigious opportunity to exercise a precious and fragile right that we have as Americans. Your privilege to vote was made possible by hundreds of thousands of men and women that gave “the last full measure of devotion” to protect the freedoms that I treasure more than life itself.
Corrections Corner: Here’s our issue with the latest issue: the crossword puzzle “Word-Up!” published on Friday, September 28. We would like to call attention to the incorrect clue of 65-across. As avid Olympic-heads/Olympic-aficionados, we couldn’t help but notice that the answer “Los Angeles” is not in fact the host city for the 2024 Summer Olympics.
Dear Editor, The recent Class Council election results are counter-majoritarian. Winners in four different elections won with less than 50 percent of the vote, due to the plurality system that the Bowdoin Student Government uses. Most egregiously, a supermajority (73 percent) of first years voted for a candidate other than Wilder Short ’22, their new president.
Dear Editor, I can only assume that the Pine Street Apartments were named for the magnificent evergreens that surrounded them on three sides, sheltering residents from loud traffic. For years, many students chose to live there because of the beautiful and quiet environs.
To the Editor, I want to thank Harry DiPrinzio for his thought-provoking article in last week’s Orient concerning the financial challenges that confront many Bowdoin employees. A few factual errors aside, Harry’s article certainly rings true to me.
To the Editors, I’m writing to comment on what the Orient reported in the article “Facilities workers struggle to make ends meet” as “forms of charity” to which Bowdoin has referred employees in times of economic hardship.
To the Editors, I want to say thank you for your story on the economic conditions of Bowdoin’s facilities workers. Your reporter deserves great praise for thoughtfully taking on a challenging subject. After graduating from Bowdoin in 1994, I helped organize a union for teaching assistants in the University of California system while I was in graduate school.
To the Editor, I appreciated reading Jonah Watt’s call for more queer-inclusive spaces, but I don’t recognize the theater he describes as displaying “largely heterosexual relationships” at Bowdoin. Theater has been accused of many things throughout its 2,500-year history, but heteronormativity is not often the foremost complaint.
To the editor, I must make two points in response to the article in the most recent issue of the Orient concerning Susan Rice as an Honorary Degree recipient at graduation. First, the number of communications to the College disagreeing with the above action hardly constitutes a “backlash” of alums.
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.
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.
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.
