Editor’s Note April 2, 2023 at 4:48 p.m.: An earlier version of this article misspelled the Maine town Madawaska. The correct spelling is Madawaska, not Maddawaska.
Last week’s Maine State Spelling Bee, hosted in Studzinski Recital Hall, started off like most others.
Maine is a paragon of serene, pristine natural beauty, but has also been affected by pollution and other environmental harm. Lizzy Kaplan ’23 honors Maine’s environmental history—and celebrates 50 years of environmental studies at the College—in her exhibit “Woods, Water, and World: Environmental Studies at Bowdoin College.”
Though Bowdoin’s environmental studies department was founded in 1972, the College’s relationship with the environment dates much further back.
On Tuesday, the College hosted a meeting of the U.S.-Greenland Joint Committee, an intergovernmental body that meets annually to bolster ties between the United States and Greenland.
According to a press release from the U.S. Embassy and Consulate in the Kingdom of Denmark, the Joint Committee strives to improve relations and cooperation between the United States and Greenland in the areas of trade, investment and education, among others.
After weeks of exploring the natural beauty around Bowdoin’s campus, each location has both astounded me and reminded me of the endless opportunities we have to explore the beauty of Maine. As my last column of the year, Woodward Point Preserve is no exception.
Hosted in a quiet town of 4,200 on the outskirts of Baxter State Park, the annual Millinocket Marathon and Half is more than a road race. An annual tradition for many students, alumni and staff at the College, the races aim to give back to the Millinocket community in Northern Maine.
For 89 years, the Frank J. Wood Bridge has traversed the Androscoggin River at the northern end of Maine Street in the Town of Brunswick. For the past five years, the Maine Department of Transportation (MDOT) has pushed for a plan to tear it down.
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.
On Thursday, COVID-19 Resource Coordinator Mike Ranen addressed Governor Janet Mills’ decision to loosen the state’s mask mandate in an email to the College community. Despite new state guidelines that people do not need to wear masks outdoors when they are practicing social distancing, Ranen asked in his email that members of the community continue wearing masks on campus.
On Tuesday evening, students and community members gathered on Zoom for the fifth discussion in the College’s “After the Insurrection: Conversations on Democracy” series. The event, moderated by President Clayton Rose, featured U.S. Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) as she discussed “The State of Our Democracy and Political System.”
In her introductory remarks, Collins highlighted four main causes of political polarization in the United States: the role of social media, fragmentation of news, residential sorting and the expectation of political purity.
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.
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.
A faculty member who is infrequently on campus and teaching completely remotely tested positive for COVID-19 on Wednesday, according to an email sent Thursday morning to the Bowdoin community from COVID-19 Resource Coordinator Mike Ranen. The individual is the first faculty member and the second College employee to test positive since the beginning of the semester.
Heavy winds and snow knocked power out on the south campus loop on April 9. The power went out at around 10:30 p.m. that evening and was restored by 8:30 a.m. the following day.
Manager of Corporate Communications for Central Maine Power Catharine Hartnett said in a phone interview with the Orient that about 260,000 customers across the state lost power.
While seniors on campus update their LinkedIn profiles and rush to the Career Exploration and Development office, Jean Claude Kagame has crossed borders and oceans in search of work. He moved from Kigali, Rwanda to Brunswick, Maine in late June.
“Name a college from every state that touches the ocean,” Bob Stuart ’77 announced last Thursday in Kresge Auditorium. Teams of elementary schoolers grabbed their pencils and began listing off schools: Bowdoin in Maine, Tufts in Massachusetts, Stanford in California.
In April of 2016, in my junior year of high school, I came to Bowdoin on the first stop of a series of college tours that took me across New England. I don’t remember much from that inaugural visit, but I do remember one particular landmark: a small, red brick building on the north end of the quad.