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Over the month of November, the Craft Center—in collaboration with Student Wellness—has started a new initiative to make this critical period of the semester more fulfilling by establishing Friday “Happy Hours”: mindful art projects that allow students to explore a new side of campus—and, its leaders hope, themselves.
Campus culture is always evolving, but there are few instances when the change is as abrupt as the Covid-19 shutdown. As the College enters its second year with no Covid testing protocols or restrictions ingrained into campus life, student and staff leadership reflect on the state of student extracurricular engagement.
Upon entering the barn behind 52 Harpswell, warmth radiates from a small gas stove on the ground, complemented by the nostalgic scent of Thanksgiving cranberry sauce. This scent is the fragrance of elderberry permeating the crisp fall air.
Due to the efforts of its current and former players, this fall marks the first year that the Bowdoin women’s club soccer team is funded by the College. In previous years, the club has gone unfunded and has been entirely student run.
The humble pub trivia game may be a lighthearted, spontaneous event for most Bowdoin students, but the game is a regular—and very serious—part of the week for the Bowdoin Quiz Bowl team. “I think [Quiz Bowl] is a vehicle to test your knowledge and advance your intellect, not to be the smartest people around,” Avery Ellis ’23, one of the team’s leaders, said.
With fake cigarettes in-hand, New York accents engaged and full-body vagina costumes donned, seniors Gita Kant and Lola Motley took the stage last fall in a sketch about sexual health before an overflowing Kresge Auditorium. After almost two years of Covid-19 restrictions, Purity Pact’s end-of-semester show marked a milestone in the return of campus comedy.
For the first time, Bowdoin College Republicans will send two students to this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) with funding from the College. The club presented its request to the Student Activities Funding Committee (SAFC) at one of its weekly Monday night meetings.
For the first time since COVID-19 sent students home last spring, the College hosted a campus-wide in-person event. Dubbed a “May 1 Celebration,” the Office of Student Activities scheduled a day of outdoor activities, live music and food trucks last Saturday afternoon to usher in the final month of the semester.
Despite the challenges of engaging students studying remotely and abiding by COVID-19 restrictions to reach those on campus, the Student Activities Office and Bowdoin Student Government (BSG) are working to continue fostering community through campus programming.
On Saturday evening, Masque and Gown held its annual one-acts festival over a Zoom Webinar. For the first time in the festival’s history, rehearsals and performances for all three one-acts were entirely virtual—complete with introductory slides, audio components and digital backgrounds.
The Bowdoin Film Society looks forward to re-engaging the College community with cinema through the inaugural launch of Bowdoin Journal of Cinema in May. The Journal is an extension of the Bowdoin Film Society, and came about after Society member Kate McKee ’22 reached out to Finn McGannon ’23, one of the Society’s officers late last fall.
With the return of upperclass students to campus, the Bowdoin Outing Club (BOC) has resumed COVID-19-conscious excursions and opened applications for its Leadership Training (LT) program, an intensive program that prepares students to lead trips. Beyond limiting possible trip locations, COVID-19 has also impacted the BOC’s internal operations.
Despite the obstacles of running a radio station amid pandemic restrictions, WBOR, Bowdoin’s radio station, has found inventive ways to keep the College community connected to music. When Bowdoin transitioned to remote learning in the spring 2020 semester, the radio station’s setup did not function anymore.
Because the Bowdoin Craft Center, with its sewing machines, pottery wheels and student art displays, is too constrictive to accommodate COVID-19 restrictions this semester, the student managers of the Center have had to find creative ways to involve the community in artistic programming.
Editor’s note 12/28/2020 at 10:38 p.m.: This article has been updated to accurately reflect details around the establishment of the Movement Collective. Seeking to replace the tedium of Zoom meetings with the joyful experience of shared dance, Lucy Sydel ’22 and Emma Dewey ’22 are transforming the landscape of dance at Bowdoin through the Movement Collective: an expressive, dance-based initiative that emphasizes the need for student connection without the formality of usual Zoom meetings.
Following the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg last Friday, the Bowdoin community is mourning her passing this week. A virtual celebration of her life as an icon and trailblazer for gender equality under the law, hosted by the Sexuality, Women and Gender Center (SWAG) and the Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies (GSWS) Department, will take place tonight at 7:30 p.m.
With the 2020 election steadily approaching, groups across campus are kicking voter outreach into high gear. Andrew Lardie, associate director for service and leadership at the Joseph McKeen Center for the Common Good, has taken a central role in promoting voter engagement through Bowdoin Votes, a nonpartisan voting initiative run through the McKeen Center.
Student organizations can once again request funds for club activities despite the College’s move to remote learning, the Student Activities Funding Committee (SAFC) announced on Tuesday in an email to club leaders. Chair of the Treasury for Bowdoin Student Government (BSG) Charlotte Hall ’20 oversees the SAFC, which is responsible for allocating funds to student groups and organizations throughout the year.
In an email sent to the student body earlier this month, Student Activities introduced a new online form for students to report hazing incidents. No hazing forms have been submitted yet. The Office of Safety and Security will investigate all reported incidents, whether or not they were submitted anonymously.
Last year, Bowdoin’s Dance Marathon chapter raised $30,000 for the Barbara Bush Children’s Hospital. However, two-thirds of the money was raised by just 13 individuals, so this year the group is testing out new methods to increase donations and club member participation.
With SuperSnack closed for the first weekend of the semester, students will—for the second year— be able to tuck into free snacks at Food Truck Maineia, which opened last night and continues tonight on Dudley Coe Quad.
Around the bar at Moderation Brewing on the first Friday in March, 10 students and 10 professors discussed the purpose of American colleges. The group, formally titled the Concordia Forum, had departed from the couches in the Massachusetts Hall Faculty Room and walked to Moderation Brewing to continue their conversation, which lasted for over two hours.
Peter Skerry’s lecture yesterday on immigration is the second event sponsored by the Eisenhower Forum this academic year that was also funded in part by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), a conservative-leaning think tank based in Washington D.C.
