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Over the last few days, students may have noticed posters along bathroom stalls urging them to wear denim on Wednesday. While this may seem like a puzzling, innocuous request, the statement those jeans and denim jackets sends is a much deeper one the College is working to transmit.
Editor’s note 03/03/23 at 2:32 p.m.: An earlier version of this article mistakenly reported that Governor Janet Mills campaigned in 2018 on indigenous sovereignty for Maine’s Wabanaki nations. This has been corrected to reflect the truth that the governor campaigned “on improving and repairing Maine’s relationship with local tribes.” The sovereignty of Maine’s indigenous tribes hangs in the balance, and Bowdoin students have mobilized.
Editor’s note 10/21/2022 at 3:16 p.m. EDT: A previous version of this article mistakenly reported that Planned Parenthood’s Topsham location performs abortion services. The article has been updated to reflect that the clinic offers abortion pills.
Last Wednesday, about 30 students took a break from studying for midterms to gather around the damp museum steps, donning rain jackets and holding flickering candles. The Bowdoin Muslim Students Association (MSA) hosted a candlelight vigil to honor and raise awareness around the tragic killing of Iranian woman Mahsa Amini, who was murdered in police custody after being detained for not wearing her headscarf tightly enough.
On Tuesday evening, the Center for Multicultural Life and the Bowdoin Student Government (BSG) partnered to bring Portland City Councillor and community organizer Victoria Pelletier to Bowdoin. The event featured a conversation and Q&A with Pelletier led by Interim Director of the Center for Multicultural Life Kyra Green.
Jhon Narváez has made it his life’s work to re-center the history of his native Cartagena, Colombia around the Black population that defined its centuries-long history as Spanish America’s largest slave port. Through working in the film industry, as well as through activism and grassroots organizing, Narváez has worked tirelessly to subvert historical narratives.
Editor’s note 09/07/2020 at 2:28 p.m.: A previous version of this article mistakenly reported that, under the formal resolution process, the determination of responsibility is done internally (within the Bowdoin community) and the decision about sanctions is done externally (outside Bowdoin).
Chanting “Kavanaugh has got to go” and “this is what democracy looks like,” approximately 30 students marched down Congress street in Portland this afternoon en route to the office of Senator Susan Collins. Bowdoin Climate Action organized the rally in response to Collins’ position as a key vote on the confirmation of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, who students criticized for his position on women’s rights issues and his opposition to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Peter Staley was working as a bond trader at JP Morgan when he was diagnosed with AIDS-related complex in 1985. The country was in the midst of an AIDS crisis, and homophobic sentiment was at an all-time high.
Although Carmen Papalia lost the use of his vision, he does not identify as blind. “I feel that word doesn’t serve me,” he said. “I often think of myself as a non-visual learner—someone who just made a choice to shift the value from the visual to the non-visual … I’d rather describe myself in relation to my learning style and my approach to learning than refer to a word that kind of means, ‘lack of preparedness or awareness.’ You just have to [search for] synonyms for the word ‘blind,’ and you get a long list of negative associations.” Papalia, a Vancouver-based “social practice artist and disability activist,” delivered a lecture about his work at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art (BCMA) on October 19.
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.
To Lisa Vinikoor, the journey from elementary school teacher to social justice worker to rabbi was a natural progression. Vinikoor, the College’s new part-time rabbi as of August, first felt the pull to her future career on September 11, 2001, during her first week as a third- and fourth-grade teacher in Boston.
Journalist and author Helen Zia discussed her career as an activist and the future she envisions for America at a talk entitled “Building Bridges Across Communities” in Kresge auditorium on Wednesday. The event was sponsored by the Asian Students Association as part of Asian Heritage Month.
With poems ranging from “Ode to My Resting Bitch Face” to “Manic Pixie Dream Girl,” feminist spoken word poet Olivia Gatwood will confront topics of sexual assault, rape culture and gender inequity tomorrow evening in a performance in culmination of the Alliance of Sexual Assault Prevention’s (ASAP) annual Date Week programming.
