Bowdoin Orient

BRUNSWICK, MAINE

BOWDOINORIENT.COM

THE NATIONS OLDEST CONTINUOUSLY PUBLISHED COLLEGE WEEKLY

VOLUME 145, NUMBER 8

BY NICOLE WETSMAN
ORIENT STAFF

Conversations about the sailing

teams gangster party and cultural
appropriation have transitioned to
calls for broader dialogue about race
on campus this week.
On Wednesday, Esther Nunoo 17
and Mariam Nimaga 17 organized
a silent protest to draw attention
to the issues students of color face
on campus. Participating students
and faculty wore black and placed
pieces of tape that read we will not
be silenced over their mouths, and
marched through David Saul Smith
Union chanting the last two lines of
the Offer of the College: ...cooperate with others for common ends,
this is the offer of the College for the
best four years of your life.
Nimaga, who serves as secretary
of the African American Society

LOUIS MENDEZ, THE BOWDOIN ORIENT

Students and faculty participated in a silent protest on Wednesday, wearing black and placing pieces of tape that read we will not be silenced
over their mouths. They marched through David Saul Smith Union, chanting the last two lines of the Offer of the College: ...cooperate with
others for common ends, this is the offer of the College for the best four years of your life.

Bias incidents continue to

occur close to campus
ORIENT STAFF

In the wake of President Clayton

Roses campus-wide email on September 8 that denounced bias incidents around campus in Brunswick,
there have been four additional reported incidents involving either
racist or misogynistic invectives
being directed at students, three of
which came from moving cars driving near campus.
The most recent incident occurred on Sunday, November 1
around 1:55 p.m. when an Asian female student near the intersection
of Longfellow Avenue and Park Row
was subjected to offensive language
shouted by passengers of a moving
pickup truck.
On Thursday, Director of Safety
and Security Randy Nichols sent out
a campus-wide message detailing
the most recent verbal assaults and
urging the Bowdoin community to
report any further incidents.
Additionally, Nichols emphasized
the ongoing cooperative initiatives
between the College and the Brunswick community.
President Rose, Dean Foster,
Dean Amaez, other College officials,
and I met again this past week with
town leaders to report these new incidents and to continue cooperative
efforts aimed at developing appropriate responses. Brunswick police
are working with Bowdoin Security
to identify the perpetrators and to
support those affected, but we need
your help, said Nichols in his email.
Security is currently investigating
leads and exchanging information

with the Brunswick Police Department as cases develop.

We work these things as hard as
we possibly can. Ive spent the past
week doing almost nothing but working on these cases, said Nichols.
But even with eyewitness accounts and security footage of
roads around campus, Nichols noted the College has not caught a perpetrator of a drive-by bias incident
in recent memory.
Usually were not able to get conclusive enough information When
[youre] talking about a dark SUV or
a silver sedan, youre talking hundreds of those in Brunswick at any
given moment, he said.
According to Nichols, if the perpetrators of these bias incidents
were to be identified, Bowdoin Security would issue a criminal trespass notice, at a minimum.
[With incidents such as these,]
therell be a security report but
therell also be a police report, said
Nichols. The police would take the
case to be reviewed by the district
attorney and if theres been a crime
that is prosecutable, then action will
be taken.
According to Nichols, since these
bias incidents are not legally classified as hate crimes, a harassment
and disorderly conduct official
warning would first be issued to the
identified perpetrators.
If the conductor pattern of
conduct, if aimed at a different individual or groupcontinued, then
a summons would be issued and the
District Attorneys Office of Cum-

Please see BIAS, page 4

(AfAm), emphasized that the protest was not a targeted response to

the gangster party, but a larger
response to issues of bias and racism on campus. The we will not
be silenced tape, she said, was a
response to a perceived silencing
by both the administration and the
student body.
We feel like students of color are
constantly being silenced by administration and students, faculty and
staff just by their actions and what
they do in not responding to these
incidents proactively, she said.
Ashley Bomboka 16, president of
AfAm, said that she feels silenced by
both the administration and certain
parts of the student body.
Its been a struggle, she said.
Even though Im physically saying words, theres definitely an ac-

Please see PROTEST, page 4

A LOOK INTO FACULTY DIVERSITY

This graph represents the percentage of faculty who are minorities, according
to the Office of Institutional Research.

COMPILED BY HARRY DIPRINZIO AND JAMES LITTLE

THE LONG HAUL: The percentage of minority faculty at the College has gradually increased over the past 15 years, but the growth has been
inconsistent. Current diversity initiatives focus on addressing conscious and unconscious biases during all aspects of a faculty search process.

The slow and unsteady growth of faculty diversity

BY JOHN BRANCH
AND MATTHEW GUTSCHENRITTER
ORIENT STAFF

Twenty-five years ago this week, a

group of 50 students blocked the entrances to the Colleges administration
building for four hours in protest of the
lack of faculty diversity at Bowdoin. At
the time, Bowdoins faculty had just nine
nonwhite members.
Since then, the College has emphasized
the need to improve the racial diversity of
its faculty, embarking on several initiatives
toward that end. Results have been mixed:
the number of professors of color on campus has increased, but that growth has
been slow and uneven, and lagged behind
many of Bowdoins peers.
Last year, there were a total of 32 minority members of the entire 235-person
faculty, good for 13.6 percent of Bowdoins
faculty, according to the Colleges Common Data Set.
Many of the same obstacles that Bow-

doin faced in creating a diverse faculty in

1990 still challenge the College today.
Randy Stakeman, associate professor
of history and Africana studies emeritus,
was the associate dean of academic affairs
from 1991-1994 and at times in the 1980s
and 1990s the only African-American
professor at Bowdoin. He listed four challenges to creating a diverse faculty: the
departmental hiring process, conscious
and unconscious biases, the demography
of specific fields and the unattractiveness
of Bowdoins location.
None of these is an excuse not to
pursue faculty diversity, nor to throw
up your hands at the impossibility,
Stakeman said in a phone interview
with the Orient. They are simply obstacles to be overcome.
Those all remain challenges, but
we have worked towards mitigating
some of the effect of those challenges,
said Interim Dean of Academic Affairs Jennifer Scanlon.

FEATURES: FUNGI FUN

ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT: WRITERS TALK

SPORTS: STAYING PERFECT

Wheelright and Small talk

about mycology at Bowdoin.

Pulitzer-Prize winning novelist

and screenwriter Richard Russo speaks
about destiny, roots and writing.
Page 9.

Field hockey wins 16-0

as Kennedy breaks
scoring record.
Page 10.

Page 6.

NOVEMBER 6, 2015

Protest draws attention to

issues of race on campus

WE WILL NOT BE SILENCED

BY JAMES CALLAHAN

1st CLASS
U.S. MAIL
Postage PAID
Bowdoin College

The

Current initiatives
Scanlon said that the biggest challenge
for Bowdoin now is addressing peoples
implicit biases.
That is inherent in our culture, people
of color exhibit unconscious bias, white
people exhibit unconscious bias, it is part
of the water that we swim in, the air that
we breathe. But that doesnt excuse it in
any way, she said.
Today, the Colleges efforts to create a racially diverse faculty are a part of
each faculty search. The Faculty Diversity Committee has five members, one of
whom sits on the search committee for
every faculty opening.
The representative from the Faculty Diversity Committee is involved in a search
from the time a position opens up until after the new faculty member is on campus.
He or she is tasked with providing an outside perspective on the search committee

Please see DIVERSITY, page 5

OPINION:
EDITORIAL: System administration.
Page 12.
Challenging gentrification.
Page 14.

news

the bowdoin orient

friday, november 6, 2015

SECURITY REPORT: 10/30 to 11/5

Friday, October 30
An employees vehicle backed into a Zip Car on
Coles Tower Drive, causing rear-end damage.
Saturday, October 31
An unregistered event was dispersed at Pine Street
Apartments.
Town residents living on Harpswell Road and Garrison Street complained of students trespassing on
private property and creating disturbances.
BPD warned students living at a Garrison Street
house for disorderly conduct after receiving neighborhood noise complaints.
An officer checked on the condition of an intoxicated student at Brunswick Apartments.
A room smoke alarm at Stowe Inn was caused by
burnt food.
A bike that was stolen from Moulton Union was
found at Thorne Hall.
Two students reported receiving multiple aggressive voicemail messages from an unknown caller. Security identified the caller and spoke with him. The
calls have ceased.
A student reported being the target of biased language shouted by passengers in a pickup truck near
the intersection of Longfellow Avenue and Park Row.

DIANA FURUKAWA

Sunday, November 1
A student was cited for possession of marijuana
and paraphernalia near Chamberlain Hall.
Brunswick Rescue transported an intoxicated student from Winthrop Hall to Mid Coast Hospital.
A proctor requested a wellbeing check for a student at Osher Hall.

A student reported a suspicious man on a bicycle

near South Campus Drive and the Quad. The person
left the campus without incident.
A student with abdominal pain was taken to Mid
Coast Hospital.
Tuesday, November 3
A student who sustained a head laceration in a bicycle spill on Park Row was escorted to the Mid Coast
Primary Care & Walk-In Clinic.
A student reported the theft of a black and gray
Trek 7.1 bicycle from the bike rack at Appleton Hall.
A sick student at Osher Hall was escorted to Mid
Coast Hospital.
A female student living at an off-campus rental
house reported that an unknown person was photographing or taking video of her through a bedroom
window. BPD responded. The suspect fled and was
not located.
Wednesday, November 4
A student at Chamberlain Hall was asked to lower
his music volume after noise complaints were received.
At the request of the health center, an officer checked
on the wellbeing of a student at Harpswell Apartments.
Thursday, November 5
An employee on a bicycle reported having a verbal
confrontation with a man who was driving on Page Street.
Smoke from microwave popcorn set off a smoke alarm
in Winthrop Hall. Brunswick Fire Department responded.
A fire alarm at Baxter House was caused by a hot
water leak and steam in the basement.

Spoonfed poppycock: Professor Conly assailed by blogosphere

BY OLIVIA ATWOOD
ORIENT STAFF

Bowdoin: a place of deep discovery

and knowledge, where students go to enhance their learningand to be spoonfed poppycock, at least according to a
LifeNews article.
What is the source of LifeNews aggression? Is it the fact that there are only
cheese cubes at Super Snack on Thursdays
and Saturdays? Is it perhaps that the chapel bells sometimes dont chime? Or is it,
perhaps, the disgusting and inhumane
fact that not all campus dormitories have
their own laundry services? No, their anger does not stem from those very real
problems. It is in response, instead, to
a Bowdoin professors opinion on child
population control in China.
Recently, China announced the end of
its one child policy, which has been in effect since the 1970s.
The nation has loosened regulations
over the past few years, and will begin formally rolling out the new two-child, onecouple legislation this year. Professor of
Philosophy Sarah Conlys opinions about
the legislation change have exploded

across the internet.

In an op-ed for the Boston Globe, Conly said, The change is being applauded
around the world, but it raises the question: Is this really a good thing?
Conlys opinion, though controversial,
makes a thoughtful case for overpopulation danger.
The sad truth is that trying to support this many people will bring about
environmental disaster, wrote Conly
We can see the damage that is already
being done by our present population of
just 7.3 billion. We all know about climate change with its droughts, storms,
rising sea levels, and heat. But its also
soil depletion, lack of fresh water, overfishing, species extinction, and overcrowding in cities.
Not everyone, namely the National
Catholic Register, agrees with Conlys
blah blah blah nonsense about overpopulation and all that.
Apparently, LifeNews asserts, this
fine school is chock-full of the most
wacky, harebrained ideas from the
folks who are supposed to be the smartest of the smartest.
And what do students think about this

supposed blah blah blah nonsense?

Christina Sours 16 echoes Conlys
thoughts, saying, I think [the population
issue] becomes complicated when you
bring in the environmentit becomes
less black and white in terms of what
you should promote for the environment and what you should promote for
human rights.
Marcella Jimenez 16 also agrees about
the complexity of the issue, noting that
she once learned about the ways in which
China prioritizes having sons, which has
occasionally led to brutal abortions or the
murders of daughters.
Jimenez wonders what the demographic shift will be in terms of the gender
breakdown in the population now that the
one child policy has been repealed, if that
high risk of what if I dont have a son is
going to decrease.
But many a blog has just shut down
Conlys opinion and all other arguments.
One particular Brunswick blogs fumes
that, Bowdoin College never ceases to
amaze us with its various other forms
of cosmic silliness.
Conly, at present in the United Kingdom, was unavailable for comment.

MIRANDA HALL

STUDENT
SPEAK
Whats the best thing youve done at Bowdoin so far?

Emily Nguyen 16

Experiencing the bioluminescence at

Mere Point.

Carlos Holguin 19
Going to all the different dorms
and getting to meet new people
there.

Donald Detchou 19

Doing independent research in the

neuroscience lab with two professors and
Ive started my own independent research
project right now and thats really exciting.

Kenny Shapiro 17

Mettler Growney 17

Watching Joe Seibert get a

spray tan on a lost odds-are. He
looked good.

Winning a national championship with

the field hockey team.
COMPILED BY HY KHONG

friday, november 6, 2015

the bowdoin orient

news

Bowdoin Consulting Group works to reduce food waste in Thorne

BY LUCIA GIBBARD
ORIENT STAFF

JENNY IBSEN, THE BOWDOIN ORIENT

WASTE NOT, WANT NOT : Carly Berlin 18 (right) and Sam Kyzivat 18 (left) put their food
leftovers in the no tray bins in Thorne Hall last night. No tray and tray bins were set up as
part of Bowdoin Consulting Groups project to reduce food waste at Thorne.

The Bowdoin College Consulting

Groups Dining Project has been working alongside the Dining Service to try
and decrease the amount of food waste
at Thorne Hall, in an effort focused on
increasing awareness of the food students
consume.
The group has undertaken a number of
auditstwo in April and one yesterday
to assess how much waste is accumulated
in an average Thorne dinner.
We make sure the menu is the same
each time, to keep the process fair, said
Phillip Wang 18, a member of the group.
So far, we have found an average waste of
0.24 pounds of waste per person.
The findings also indicate an increase
in waste from 18 to 25 percent for those
who use a tray versus those who do not.
However, Associate Director of Dining
Service Ken Cardone emphasized that few
students actually use trays.
People eat with their eyes, so they tend
to pick up more food if they have a tray.
Then we see full pieces of fruit, or uneaten
sandwiches, said Cardone. The amount
of students using a tray is decreasing every
year, though.
Bowdoin Consulting Group found 80
percent of students rarely use a tray, and
60 percent of students never use one,
added Mary Kennedy, director of Dining
and Bowdoin Stores.
Currently, the waste from Thorne is

Campus planning committee convenes to

discuss renewal of campus master plan
BY LUCY RYAN

ORIENT STAFF

The campus planning committee

convened for the first time this year
to discuss the renewal of the campus
master plan with Chicago-based architectural firm Skidmore, Owings
& Merrill (SOM). The firm worked
with the College on the upgrades of
the first year bricks in 2007 as well
as the construction of West and Osher Halls in 2005. The college last
updated the master plan in 2011.
The committee is comprised of
members of the faculty, staff, administration and student representatives Grace Butler 16 and Kevin
Hernandez 18.
The committee first analyzes the
existing plan, contextualizing it with
the current needs of campus.
We have to check in and make
sure that thats still what we want, if
it fits the needs of the college and everybody whos living in it, said Butler.
We get to provide input and its the
fun, qualitative side of the process.
In these initial stages of the renewal process, the committee and
SOM also envision what the needs
of the campus will look like in five,
10 and 15 years.
What do we want to do to remain
a preeminent, deeply relevant, very
special liberal arts college? That
necessarily is going to challenge

us to ask questions about what it is

well do in the classroom, how well
learn, what kind of learning spaces
well want to have, said President
Clayton Rose.
SOMwhose other projects include One World Trade Center
in Manhattan and Burj Khalifa in
Dubai, as well as other internationally prominent buildings and several
college and high school campuses
works with the committee to take
a step back and look at the big picture, according to Butler.
[We consider] what are our values as a community and how does
that translate into the built environment, she said.
Rose visited the firm in June of
this year to meet the architects.
One of the interesting things I
learned is that a great architect and
a great architectural firm does not
think about buildings per say, Rose
said. What they think about is what
is your intellectual mission, what are
your culture and values and what is
it about physical space that enhances that and makes that possible and
strengthens it.
According to Butler, the committee approaches these broader
questions by first gauging a sense
of what it is that people who use
the campus want out of it, and how
to make a plan and a statement of
what the campus should look like

moving forward.
Members of the committee contribute their own perceptions of the
needs of the campus, as well as their
impressions of what the Bowdoin
community needs from the campus.
Im supposed to have a sense of
what the whole student body wants,
said Butler. I dont know the whole
of the student body. There is talk of
getting together a student group, but
that hasnt been established yet.
Senior Vice President for Finance
and Administration Katy Longley
has collaborated with SOM since
President Barry Mills renewed the
Colleges contract with them in 2003.
Now, the firm is adjusting to working
with a new Bowdoin president.
We havent engaged [SOM] yet
that was an exploratory meeting and
now theyre putting a scope document together and we have to figure
out if it aligns with what Clayton
wants, Longley said.
According to Longley, the first
plan must be submitted in time for
the meeting of the Board of Trustees
in October 2016.
Theyll be back, we will engage
conversations with students, faculty
and staff and trustees and alumni
and this will be part of a broader
conversation that we will begin
sometime next year about our aspirations and priorities for the future,
said Rose.

used in different ways. Some of the food

waste is sent to a company called WeCompost. Bowdoin then buys back the
compost at a reduced rate and uses it
in some of the college gardens. At least
one source of food a day is sent to the
Mid Coast Hunger Prevention Program,
while some leftovers are used at Super
Snack. However, the consulting group
still believes food waste at Bowdoin is
too high.
We are implementing a number
of strategies to try and reduce food
waste, said Wang. Our main strategy
is advertisement. Our first batch of
posters will go out this week, and they
emphasize being mindful of food waste
and creating awareness.
The group was also involved with the
recent updates to the Bowdoin Dining
app. Students can now see if the dining
halls are busy, using a color code of red
for busy, yellow for not too busy and
green for quiet, based on how many students have swiped into each dining hall.
We had a hunch people would get
more food if the dining hall was busy,
as they would be less inclined to want
to line up again. We worked with Ruben
Martinez 15 to develop the changes;
however our main problem right now is
that people havent updated the app.
The group hopes to add a banner to
the app reminding people to be mindful of food waste, in addition to auditing
more dinners in Thorne.
Our next project is to look at the

amount of waste with line servers as opposed to without line servers, said Whit
Seaverns 18, a member of the group.
We will audit dinner on November
12 without line servers, then repeat the
menu but with line servers on December 10. We are also developing a portion
guide for line servers, which will hopefully equalize portions.
It will be very interesting to look
at these results, as it is something we
havent audited before, said Kennedy. The Bowdoin Consulting Group
has been very helpful in providing us
with data, which helps us to assess the
amount of waste we have and how we
can reduce it. They are a very talented
group of people.
The group has been around for many
years, but was revived in the fall of 2014.
Their other projects on and off campus include a networking project and a
Chegg project.
A different subsection of the group
is currently working with Chegg, to see
how we can most efficiently provide textbooks to students. There will be a survey
out shortly to assess how students feel
about Chegg, said Wang. We also have
a networking project, in which members of our group are assigned Bowdoin
alumni contacts in the consulting field.
Not only are we making connections
with them, but we are using the data we
collect to provide information to Career
Planning about different firms, experiences and contacts within consulting.

news

the bowdoin orient

No Hate November focuses on

bias incidents and diversity
BY JOE SHERLOCK
ORIENT STAFF

Just two weeks after the sailing teams

Gangsta Rap themed party sparked controversy regarding cultural appropriation
on campus, Bowdoin Student Government (BSG) kicked off No Hate November, a month dedicated to shedding light
on bias incidents and issues of diversity.
This will be the second time that BSG
has dedicated the full month of November
to focusing on issues of race and identity.
Were really hoping for it to be more
proactive than reactive but now it looks
reactive....especially considering how
low-profile [No Hate November] was last
year, said Michelle Kruk 16, vice president of BSG.
Kruk, who has worked on developing
the No Hate November structure since
fall 2013when the bias incidents that
galvanized BSG to create the month occurredlamented the fact that this Novembers programming may look reactive
to recent campus incidents, but hoped
that the charged conversations happening
on campus would spur people to participate in this months events.
Vice President for Student Affairs Luke
von Maur 16 noted that one of the biggest shifts in this years event planning has
been a stronger effort to reach out to different groups on campus, as both he and
Kruk noted that minority students may
have felt disaffected by a lack of outreach
last year.
Especially after what happened two
weeks ago, were trying to make this issue
more well known, said von Maur. I think
after what happened at Cracksgiving [last
year], I think a lot of students felt removed
from the event.
Kruk explained that she hopes the

BIAS
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1
berland County would become involved. On its website, the Office of
the Maine Attorney General defines
a hate crime as criminal conduct
motivated by bias.
The word itself is not a hate
crime, Nichols said, referring to
slurs directed at students. Its a
bias incident.
Nichols explained that a hate crime
is one where an individual issues a
racial epithet and physically assaults
a person because of race. This is a
Class C crime, a felony, a class higher
than assault unmotivated by race, a
Class D crime, a misdemeanor.
And while no hate crimes have
been reported during his 10 years at
Bowdoin, Nichols advised students to
be cautious and vigilant.
Number one: Stay safe. Right now
all the instances involve hurtful words.
There has been no physical contact.
But make sure you are in a safe situation. Immediately go to a safe place.
Report it to the authorities.
Bowdoin has grappled with bias
incidents in the past, most notably
in the Fall of 2013 when two major
incidents rocked campus.
The first involved homophobic
slurs and physical violence targeting
a gay student outside of Joshuas Tavern in downtown Brunswick, while
the second involved swastikas and
racial invectives drawn on a chalkboard in Brunswick Apartments.
In response to those incidents,
Bowdoin
Student
Government

scheduled events for November will cater not only to students who regularly
engage with racial conversations, but also
those who do not usually engage with issues of race or have been dissatisfied with
race relations on campus.
I think there are a lot of things that
happen between interactions between
students, faculty and staff that are incredibly problematic, said Kruk.
Kruk explained that over the past
week she has learned of numerous incidents of what she believes would have
been considered bias incidents if they
had been reported, and that there are
students of color who walk around this
campus harboring very deeply hurtful
racist instances that are shaping their
Bowdoin experience.
In addition to bringing back the
photo installation in the David Saul
Smith Unionsomething BSG organized in 2013 in light of bias incidentsKruk and von Maur are hoping
to assemble a collection of anonymous
stories submitted by students who believe they were the victims of bias incidents or micro-aggressions.
In an attempt to better engage
with the community on matters of
race and identity, members of the
BSG executive committee released
an open letter at this weeks meeting, announcing some of their plans
for the upcoming year. The letter was
published in the Orient last week.
BSG President Danny Mejia-Cruz
16 said, I think one of the problems
BSG has is generally people dont
know about us and what we do, while
the fact is, we have immense impact,
and can have more impact.
Harry Rube contributed to this report.
(BSG) initiated its annual No Hate
November initiative.
In an email from October 29 of
this year, the BSG Executive Team
wrote, Through this initiative, we
display solidarity with our peers
who have experienced bias at Bowdoin and beyond.
When asked in an interview with
the Orient as to whether all Bowdoin students should feel welcomed
in the Brunswick community, Nichols defended the town.
Brunswick is a safe town. Youve
got a certain percentage of the population that engages in pathetic, hateful, intolerant, ignorant behavior.
And were having a series of incidents that have occurred here recently But Brunswick is a fantastic
community. Its a safe community.
And were dealing with the instances
as they are occurring.
And, after three bias incidents in
the summer months of 2015one
of which was directed at a faculty
memberRose urged the College to
rise above the base verbal assaults in
his September email.
We do not know where these people come from, nor can we understand or rationalize their behavior
As I suggested in my Convocation
remarks last week, this is an issue
for all of us and we should each...
find ways to support and care for one
another in these moments, and more
generally try to understand that ones
racial identity (among other aspects
of identity) can bring with it particular challenges, some of which can be
quite profound. In doing so, we will
further strengthen our community.

friday, november 6, 2015

PROTEST
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

TESSA EPSTEIN, THE BOWDOIN ORIENT

SILENT PROTEST: Students participate in the silent protest in the Union on Wednesday. Mariam Nimaga 17, who serves as secretary of
the African American Society (AfAm) and helped to organize the protest, emphasized that the protest was not a targeted response
to the gangster party, but a larger response to issues of bias and racism on campus.
tive level of resistance whether it
is expressed or unexpressed...even
though theres support in terms of
email, theres been no concrete action yet other than dialogue, but obviously dialogue has not solved the
issue at Bowdoin.
Bomboka said that silencing also
comes when the student bodyspecifically, the portion of the student
body not already actively engaged in
these issuesdoes not actively participate in dialogues and programs.
By opting out of it, thats a silencing mechanism, she said.
Last week, administrative response to the specific gangster
party incident included emails
from Dean of Student Affairs Tim
Foster and President Clayton Rose,
as well as meetings with students involved.
Bowdoin Student Government
(BSG) also released a Statement of
Solidarity with those affected by
the incident.
A group of students put up signs
in the entrance to the administrative offices in Hawthorne-Longfellow Library as well as Smith Union,
Moulton Union and Thorne Hall
after those responses imploring the
administration to take more concrete action.
Some signs contained messages
such as It is not the job of minority students to educate others,
#AStatementIsNotEnough,
and
Cultural appropriation is violence.
President Clayton Rose agreed
with student criticism of administrative action to date.
Both of those statements [from
BSG and Foster] were good beginnings, he said. Both of those represented beginnings. The notion that a
statement is not enough is absolutely
right. A statement is not enough, its
never enough, and the challenge now
is what follows, what are we going
to do. Im working on a number of
things that I hope to put in motion
before too long, some in the short
term and some in the long term.
Members of AfAm have been in
meetings throughout the past week,
engaging in conversations on plans to
move forward with Rose and Foster.
Bomboka said that the meetings
with the administration have been

positive.
I think its gotten more positive,
she said. Obviously the fact that we
had the meeting was positive...from
my perspective the administration
was like, we had no idea that it was
to this extent, or that this is how
students of color are feeling. So it
went from where is this coming
from, to now we know where this
is coming from, now we can work
on something.
Wider issues of race
Bomboka said that the conversation changed from one with a specific focus on the sailing team to
one with a broader focus on race
on campus soon after the gangster
party took place.
The sailing team may not commit an act of cultural appropriation
again, they may not have the party
again, but the fact that it was allowed
to happen in the first place and it
wouldnt have been stopped, thats
concerning, she said. We need to
think on a bigger picture. thats not
to say were not dealing with the sailing team issue, and were going to
have dialogue, but we cant allow an
environment where we are reactive.
We have to be proactive.
Vice President for BSG Affairs
Michelle Kruk 16 has been in the
meetings with the administration
and AfAm over the past week, and
described stories shared by students
that highlighted the broader relevance of the discussion of the gangster party.
It was an attempt to bring to light
that this is no longer about the sailing team, this is so much bigger than
that, she said. This is from the bottom up and the top down that the
school reinforces structural racism,
and hasnt made an effort to address
that. By sharing these stories students were trying to point out that
its bigger than this.
Bomboka pointed out that the
College has historically been in step
with or ahead of national trends
surrounding race. John Brown Russwurm, who graduated from Bowdoin in 1826, was the third AfricanAmerican to graduate from college
in the United States. The College es-

tablished the Africana Studies program in 1970.

Everything was sort of happening on time, she said, but its stagnated in a way.
The end goal
Kruk and Bomboka both highlighted the scarcity of resources
for students of color to turn to in
response to incidents of racism or
bias, and the lack of structure and
programming currently in place on
campus to deal with race.
The end goal for all of this would
be making sure that as a community we can discuss race with the
same comfort we can talk about, say,
the environment, said Bomboka.
When we talk about sexual assault,
its an uncomfortable topic, but we
have programming in there...thats
where, as a campus, we want to be.
Though they are imperfect comparisons, Kruk and Bomboka mentioned programs and support systems that surround issues of sexual
violence, gender and sexuality as potential models for a system to address race.
I really dont have an answer, but
I think all of those models could potentially be used, said Kruk. I wish
there was some training. We should
totally have some support system
here that isnt counseling.
Kruk said that none of the incidents of bias or racism shared in
meetings in the past week had been
reported formally.
I think that went to show that
there is not really a space here
where students feel comfortable...
these students literally have nowhere to go, she said. Theyre
holding onto these stories that are
like acid to their hearts...That influences everything that you do here
and we arent talking about it, and
if we arent creating a space where
those stories can come to light, then
what are we doing?
Both said that theres no real excuse for not trying to create those
resources or those spaces.
Bowdoin is a closed experiment,
said Bomboka, and if they can control for so many other factors, why
cant race be a part of it?

friday, november 6, 2015

the bowdoin orient

THE BOWDOIN ORIENT ARCHIVES

BLAST FROM THE PAST: On November 2, 1990, the Coalition of Concerned Students blockaded the entrances to the administration building
to protest the lack of diversity on campus. Many criticized the Coalition for blocking the entrance to the library, but that was not their intention.

DIVERSITY
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1
and ensuring that candidates from a range
of backgrounds, subfields and graduate
programs are considered.
Its not just about the pool of candidates, said Scanlon. Its also about our
ability to fairly read applications and CVs
and think long term and clearly about
what fit means, what excellence means,
what success means in a broader way.
The College has also hired Romney Associates, a consulting firm, to help search
committees think about how they can be
conscious of diversity during every step of
a search process.
While Bowdoin has changed its hiring
process to include a member of the Faculty Diversity Committee in every search
to recruit more broadly and to educate the
committee about potential biases, it cannot do anything to change its location.
Bates, Bowdoin and Colby had three
of the four lowest percentages of minority
faculty in the NESCAC in 2014.
Maine is overwhelmingly white.
Maine is overwhelmingly rural. We are
in a small town, said Associate Professor of Africana Studies and History Brian
Purnell. If you are black, or you are Hispanic, or from another countryif you
are used to a vibrant, bustling metropolis,
this world will be small, it will have limited
options for you to pursue yourself, and it
is quiet.
Marilyn Reizbaum, the Harrison King
McCann professor of English, was part of
a 1992 Subcommittee on Diversity and
the ad hoc committee in 2008 that issued
a report on increasing faculty diversity.
She cautioned against seeing location as
an impenetrable problem.
I think [Bowdoins location] can be a
concern, but sometimes it is an excuse
a self-fulfilling prophecy and productive
of circular reasoning, Reizbaum wrote
in an email to the Orient. Bowdoin is a
desirable place to work and can be very
attractive. There can be a directed address
by the College to the diverse needs of a diverse community, which will be welcoming to faculty who are being recruited.
Indeed, Purnell emphasized that despite Maines relatively homogenous nature, his personal experience as an African-American professor at Bowdoin has
been largely positive.
I feel supported in my work, I feel like
Im able to raise a happy healthy family,
Im able to teach my children about race
and class in America, and difference, so
I flow well here. That might not be the
norm for everybody, but it is for me, Purnell said.

Its a slow process, but I dont know,

this is the question I would have: what are
the other schools doing differently to get
there faster? said Staci Williams Seeley
90, who was president of the AfricanAmerican Society during her senior year
and President of the Alumni Council
from 2010 to 2012. And the answer cant
be Maine is a white state. Vermont is a
white state, Connecticut, there are places
where there are NESCAC schools where
there is far more progress. For a good opportunity, for the right opportunity, the
right scholar is going to come along.
Other approaches

to keep this alive and to educate people

about the importance of diversity among
the faculty, and have people feel like its a
community effort.
I think we should always be on the
lookout for new approaches and keep an
eye on how other institutions are doing
their searching and trying to retain faculty, said William D. Shipman Professor of
Economics John Fitzgerald, who has been
at the College since 1983 and was the chair
of the ad hoc group on increasing faculty
diversity in 2008. Its a matter of trying to
continually improve how we operate.
Long-term commitment

Bowdoin has a
According
to
2014 NESCAC Minority
program for TarBowdoins
Office
get of Opportunity
of Institutional ReFaculty Percentages
Hires, which allow
search, 14 out of 119
departments
to Trinity
18.3 tenured faculty in
hire outside of the
2014 were minorities.
18.2 The percentage of
normal openings Williams
if talented minorfaculty who
Wesleyan
17.9 tenured
ity candidates come
are minorities has
along.
Middlebury
17.8 increased gradually
I would still
the past 10 years,
Amherst
17.3 over
maintain that we
but has been conshould have a target Hamilton
16.5 sistently below the
of opportunity prooverall percentage of
16.2 minority faculty.
cess, but the hardest Tufts
work should take Bates
Part of the rea15.0
place on the part
son for this may be
13.6 that while diversity
of the faculty and Bowdoin
that is hiring a di- Conn. College
13.4 is considered in the
verse faculty pool
hiring process, it is
12.2 not part of the tenure
through the regu- Colby
lar search process,
process.
Scanlon said.
Tenure is based
The College is NESCAC Average
16.0 on excellence in
also part of the Data from the colleges respective Common Data Sets.
teaching, distinction
Consortium
for
in scholarship and
Faculty Diversity (CFD), which sends service to the College. So those are the sole
post-doctoral fellows to schools around criteria, said Scanlon.
the country. Bowdoin currently has five
The fluctuations in faculty diversity
CFD fellows, but according the Scanlon, are likely due to professors who are not
the goal of the program is bigger than in- brought to Bowdoin for the long term.
creasing Bowdoins faculty diversity.
The big concern is getting people who
The CFD program is not as narrow are tenured at the College. You can always
as diversifying the faculty at Bowdoin, it have full time faculty and staff that come
is also about diversifying the professori- in for a year, maybe two, but if youre not
ate, Scanlon said. Its a commitment that tenured, theyre not going to really have
Bowdoin makes that applies to Bowdoin, any vested interest in staying at the college
but its also larger than Bowdoin.
for an extended period and thats what it
Yale announced earlier this week that seems that Bowdoin still needs to work
they would invest $50 million in an ini- on, said Karen Edwards Hinds 93 (then
tiative to fund new minority faculty hires Karen Edwards).
in all of the Universitys schools. It joins
other large universities that have made
Faculty diversity matters
high-profile financial commitments to
faculty diversity in recent years, including
Minority faculty members have been
Columbia in 2012.
an important part of the student experiWere not Yale, Scanlon said. We ence at the College.
dont have $50 million, so we have to find
People bring a lot more when theyre
our own ways, our own Bowdoin ways, trying to learn than just going from tabula

news

rasa to informed individual, said Purnell. tion deemed unacceptable, they decided
Some people have to work through more to protest. The demonstration was the
stuff than just mastering the material. It culmination of discussions that started
helps to have a mentor for some people between the various groups earlier that
I think thats a role that some minority stu- year and were also catalyzed by the dedents want, or need.
parture of one of Bowdoins two AfricanI certainly felt very cared for and nur- American professors, Gayle Pemberton,
tured and attended to by faculty of color, that summer.
that they considered mentoring students
Edwards met with five student repreof color, black students in particular to be sentatives that day and released a statepart of the deal, part of their job. And they ment with a plan that satisfied the students
did it with a lot of skill and care and atten- enough for them to stop the blockade.
tion and time, said Seeley.
Hinds was one of the students who
In addition to personal mentoring, met with Edwards that day, and said that
minority faculty serve as role models for faculty diversity is important for the same
students.
reasons today that it was in 1990.
I think its the same with when you see
Bowdoin needs to represent whats
a woman in front of the classroom. It re- going on around the globe, Hinds said in
ally encourages youespecially if youre a phone interview with the Orient. And
interested in academia, but really inter- yes, Bowdoin is located in Maine and yes,
ested in any position of power, I think its its a difficult place to attract people to
so important to just have representation because of location and the weather and
at the head
everything else
of the classthat
goes
2013 Faculty Breakdown
room, said
along, but if
Elina Zhang
youre a higher
Non-resident alien
7
16.
education enHispanic/Latino
12
Michelle
vironment you
Kruk
16
need to repreAmerican Indian or Alaska Native 1
agreed about
sent whats gothe imporing on in the
Asian
11
tance of the
world.
Black or African American
4
perspective
In the fall
that minorof 1992, The
Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander 0
ity
faculty
Report of the
White
154
can bring to
Subcommittee
students of
on Diversity
Two or more races
3
color.
was released,
Race and ethnicity unknown
6
Theyve
which
probeen
able
vided recomData from the 2013 National Center for Education Statistics IPEDS Survey.
to speak to
m e n d at i on s
me in a way
about recruitthat others havent, Kruk said. Ive had ing more diverse students, improving the
faculty of colornot just at Bowdoin, minority student experience and creating
but even in high schoolwho have seen a more diverse faculty. The report listed
that Im not getting something, and then Bowdoin as having the lowest percentage
theyll use an example from their life expe- of minority faculty members amongst 16
riences, or from the experience they know other peer schools.
will resonate with me, and then Ill be like,
In 2014, Bowdoin had ninth highest
oh shoot, I got it, this is what this means. percentage of minority faculty members
The diversity of the faculty also impacts in the NESCAC out of 11 schools, accordwhat kinds of courses the College can of- ing to their respective Common Data Sets.
fer.
The report also set goals for gender diHaving faculty who are diverse in versity among the faculty and for the racial
certain departments, it definitely encour- diversity of the student body. Last year, the
ages a diversity of students to pursue faculty was 50.2 percent women; 15 years
those disciplines, and that was really really earlier, 37.4 percent of the faculty were
important to me. I also think that it cre- women, according to the Office of Instiates a more diverse course loadfor ex- tutional Research. This year, 31.5 percent
ample, when you bring in these new fac- of students are minorities; 15 years earlier,
ulty members, they will teach courses that 13.3 percent of students were minorities.
arent in the typical canon, said Zhang.
Weve definitely been slower [to diFaculty also feel that diversity is also versify the faculty than the student body].
important for the College as a whole.
Theres a whole admissions office; there
It makes the college be part of the are mechanisms in place that have been
evolving diversification of the US. In part, in place for some time to increase student
to teach students an enhanced perspec- diversity, said Scanlon.
tive is one of the objectives of the college,
and a diverse faculty allows us to do that,
What does success look like?
Fitzgerald said.
While some argue that a focus on diWhile The Report of the Subcommitversity leads to lower standards, Rose tee on Diversity in 1992 set specific goals,
doesnt see it that way.
the College no longer uses numbers as
This issue is not one of surrender- benchmarks.
ing any of those standards. This issue is
Zhang said that faculty diversity should
of doing the work to find the really great reflect the diversity of Bowdoin students.
teachers and scholars of color and then to
The faculty demographic should be
consider them in a real and robust way in matching the student demographic, and
the process, Rose said.
its definitely not, she said.
In a sense, you never achieve success.
Here having been there
There is no number that you can get to
or point to that is the kind of break even
The protest on November 2, 1990 was mark that you can say, ah, we have 10 facorganized by the Coalition of Concerned ulty of color, it just doesnt work like that.
Students, a collection of students from dif- What youre trying to do is create a camferent groups which included the African- pus and a faculty in which there are many
American Society, the Latin American Stu- many diverse viewpoints. How many didents Organization, the Bowdoin Womens verse viewpoints should there be on the
Association, the Bowdoin Jewish Organi- faculty? You cant answer that question,
zation and Bowdoin Gay and Lesbian Ad- said Stakeman.
vocates and Defenders. They demanded
Scanlon suggested that no one measure
action by recently-inaugurated President will indicate when Bowdoin has achieved
Bob Edwards and wanted a more diverse the level of faculty diversity it desires.
student body, a more diverse faculty and a
Well just have a richer community,
gay and lesbian studies program.
and well know that well have a richer
The Coalition wanted a response to community, and well find it less hard to
their demands by November 2, but after do the work that were doing, and it will
Edwards released a memorandum on Oc- become a natural part of who we are and
tober 31 that the students from the Coali- what we do, Scanlon said.

the bowdoin orient

FEATURES

friday, november 6, 2015

Fun guys: foraging for mushrooms with Wheelwright and Small

BY JESSICA PIPER
ORIENT STAFF

Although trees and squirrels may be

the most well-known natural features on
the Bowdoin campus, the Colleges surroundings are also home to hundreds of
species of fungi. Several members of the
Bowdoin community are taking full advantage of these resources.
Delmar Small, Concert, Budget, and
Equipment Manager of the Music department, developed an interest in mushrooms after noticing their abundance in
Maines natural environment.
We got a dog, he said. So I started
walking her every morning, taking her
out in the woods and letting her run free
in the woods. And I was like, hm, look
at that!
When Small began investigating the
fungi he saw, he was surprised to learn
that many of Maines mushrooms are edible.
Some of the ones that Id seen all the
time were ediblereally good edibles.
Its like oh my gosh, five years weve had
chanterelles in the backyard and [I] didnt
know it, he said.
Like Small, Chair of the Biology Department Nat Wheelwrights interest in
mushrooms stemmed from his explorations in the woods.
I was constantly on field trips with students and I could point out the trees and
the insects and the birdsongs, but when
they would point to fungus, I would have
to plead the fifth. So I decided I needed to
smarten up, said Wheelwright.
Wheelwright and Small both joined
the Maine Mycological Association, a
group committed to studying fungi and
Maines natural environment.
Picture all these little old ladies in tennis sneakers, bright clothes, [with] great
enthusiasm, [a] tremendous amount of
knowledge, just picking their way through
the woods excitedly, hollering out when
they came across some great find
Theyre just great naturalists, Wheelwright described.
The organization, which meets in
several Maine towns, hosts panels and
presentations on mushrooms during the
winter and conducts forays when the
weather is more bearable. In August 2014,
they hosted the Northeast Mycological

PHOTO COURTESY OF ZOE WOOD

PHOTO COURTESY OF DELMAR SMALL

FRIENDLY FORAGING: (left) Music department staff member Delmar Small and Professor Nat
Wheelwright inspect a collection of mushrooms gathered in the Bowdoin Pines. (top) Woody fungi
grows in the Bowdoin Pines. (bottom) Gary Lincoff, author of the Audubon Guide to North American
Mushrooms, discusses a specimen in Thorne Hall at the 2014 Northeast Mycological Foray.
ZACH ALBERT, THE BOWDOIN ORIENT

Federation Foray at Bowdoin.

Clubs from Quebec all the way down
to West Virginia in this federation met
at Bowdoin for three days for excursions
and lectures and demonstrations and
workshops, said Small. So we had 200
people here we had Thorne Hall full of
mushrooms.
While the Maine Mycological Association certainly brings together mushroom
enthusiasts, foraging doesnt require big
groups of experts, only some enthusiasm
and common sense.
The king bolete [is] super easy to recognize, very hard to poison yourself with,
and delicious, Wheelwright said.
He frequently forages for edible fungi
near his home and also farms his own
mushrooms using old aspen trees and
mycelium plugsbatches of fungal cells

that can be bought on the internet. His

favorites include the suillus mushroom,
which produces a flavor he likens to
chicken fat.
For some scientists, however, foraging is an exercise of intellectual curiously
rather than a desire to eat mushrooms.
Mycologythe study of mushrooms and
fungiis a very specific field with broad
applications in sectors such as energy,
ecology, agriculture and medicine, so
there is much room for new research.
Its one of those areas that the more
you study it, the more you realize there is
to study, said Small. You never come to
the end of it. You never feel like, oh, Ive
completely mastered mushrooms. I know
every mushroom Im going to encounter.
You just cant.
Studying mushrooms here at Bowdoin

could help students contribute to fungal

research in the future. Several of Wheelwrights former biology students went on
to complete graduate work in mycology
and a few now hold faculty positions as
mycologists.
The hobby is not limited at Bowdoin to
Wheelwright and Small. Gary M. Pendy
Professor of Social Sciences Jean Yarbrough and Professor Religion Emerita
Jorunn Buckley also share an interest in
mycology.
Sofi Lopez 18, a biology major, is currently researching fungi as part of Wheelwrights Behavioral Ecology and Population Biology course.
Its very interesting to just look at the
different colors of the caps, and whether
the caps are slimy, or smooth, or bumpy,
she said. I have been making a lot of
spore prints with them, so you take the

cap off the mushroom and put it on like a

piece of paper... and it shows you the pattern of gills or pores, which is really cool to
see. Its really beautiful.
Lopez and her biology classmates will
present their findings at an open house
on November 30 and December 1. However, enrollment in class or membership
in a group isnt necessary to forage for
mushrooms.
Around the parking lot edges, sometimes there are things that grow kind of
regularly, said Small. There are some
big trees here on the central part of campus that periodically host some nice
edibles.
Lopez recommends the Bowdoin
Pines as a starting place.
Theyre just all over the Pines if you
look for them, she said. Just take a walk
in the woods and see what you can find.

Making peace with the pressure to make the most of abroad

KATHERINE CHURCHILL

KATHERINE GIVES ADVICE

Hello, precious readers! Today I will

be answering a question about abroad
(which has been slightly edited).
I am currently studying abroad and I
can't help feeling that pressure to make the
most of it (whatever the hell that means).
I see posts on social media of my friends
traveling and making friends. Do you
have any advice for a Polar Bear away
from home? How do I shake this sensation that I'm not doing enough?
Sincerely,
Anxious Abroad

DIANA FURUKAWA

Dear Anxious,
There are few things that ruin abroad
more thoroughly than the feeling that the
entire world is taking you by the shoulders, getting really close to your face, and
shaking you while it screams, MAKE

THE MOST OF THIS. Im not sure

where this pressure comes from, or why
it exists at all.
And yet you are not, due to this unspoken social pressure, supposed to say that
abroad is hard. You are supposed to be a
traveling, binge-drinking, foreigner-kissing machine. God forbid you should feel
lonely or wonder why everyone you love
is thousands of miles away, you ungrateful, inadaptable cretin!
Im going to tell you a secret: abroad is
really hard. Anyone who tells you otherwise is lying. There is nothing natural or
authentic about leaving your entire life
and friends and family behind to gallivant around the planet willy-nilly for five
months. But thats also why its worth doing. If going abroad is ever easy, the world
has become homogenous and boring and
probably covered in K-Marts.
You might not make Czech or Australian or Cameroonian friends. You
might not like the haggis. You might
not travel, you might travel every
weekend. You might, like me, never
adjust from coffee to espresso (hon-

estly though, why would you).

Im going to tell you another secret:
none of this means you are doing abroad
wrong. The only way that you can do
abroad wrong is if you let the expectations your or others set for your experience make you unhappy. The happier and
more fulfilled you are by your own experience, the less you will worry about what
your friends are doing.
Here are two tangible things Id suggest
doing to increase your daily happiness:
1. Find a place that you love, make it a
part of your routine, and cultivate it as a
familiar space.
There is a caf on Drury Street in Dublin called Kaph where I squatted almost
every day in between classes. Many of
you may know it from my incessant,
Wifi-grubbing check-ins. Aside from the
fact that Kaph makes you sell your social
media soul in order to access the Internet,
it is a great place, and its a place I love.
The baristas knew me because I would
never leave them alone. Once, while I
fastidiously perused Buzzfeed, one of the
baristas brought me a free latte, for my

writing. Find your Kaph and mark it with

your personhood. Being non-anonymous
for a few hours a day can do wonders for
your psyche.
2. Do what you need to do to be comfortable, even though its just five months.
The worst thing about Ireland was my
mattress, which was actually just a pile of
metal springs. I should have just sucked
it up and bought a mattress pad or put
soft clothes between the mattress and the
sheet or something. Instead, I bitterly envied the girl had bought one. I hated her
for it. Do not hate people over mattress
pads. Take the time and energy to make
yourself comfortable.
If you look back at your abroad experience and say it was worth it, if you take
from it some fond memories and good
stories and a stronger sense of self, then it
doesnt matter how many new stamps you
have on your passport or how many of
your Instas got over 100 likes. For the record, Ive never had an Insta that got over
100 likes, and Im doing just fine.
Out,
Katherine

friday, november 6, 2015

the bowdoin orient

features

Stout 18 brings Love Your Melon organization to campus

BY NICOLE VON WILCZUR
ORIENT STAFF

On a mission to improve the lives

of children battling cancer, two sophomores at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota founded
Love Your Melonan organization
with the aim of putting a hat on the
head of every child battling cancer
in America. Upon hearing about the
organizations success in her home
state of Minnesota and inspired by its
mission, Rachel Stout 18 decided to
become an ambassador for the cause
and started a Love Your Melon Campus Crew last month.
[The groups purpose was] something that seemed to resonate with
me, Stout said. I wanted something
here at Bowdoin that I could get involved with, and I hadnt really found
anything like Love Your Melon.
When I thought of it and found out
that it was so easy to start, I got excited.
All of the kids in our campus
crew have been affected in some way
by cancer, and thats kind of the reason so many of them are so rooted
in this, said Clare McInerney 18,
a member of Bowdoins Love Your
Melon Campus Crew. I think everyone has someone theyve known and
loved that theyve lost because of it.
In addition to spreading the word
about the cause, Stout hopes to increase the number of students on campus wearing Love Your Melon hats.
Basically [my goal is] to get as many
people on campus aware and wearing a
hat, Stout said. Were going to try and
get a bunch of posters with everyone
who has a hat and get different teams
and groups to wear hats.
With every hat that is purchased through Bowdoins chapter,
the school receives an equivalent
amount of credit, and when certain
amounts of credit are attained, the
campus crew is given hats to person-

VICTORIA YU, THE BOWDOIN ORIENT

HATS FOR HOPE: (left): Cullen Geary 18, and Rachel Stout 18, of the Love Your Melon Campus Crew wear the organizations hats.
ally deliver to children with cancer.
On October 22, just a week after beginning the group, Stout and
two other members of the Bowdoin
College Campus Crew were already
dressing up as superheroes, visiting
children in hospitals and handing
out hats.
We were given the opportunity to
go to Barbara Bush Childrens Hospital in Portland and give out hats to

the little kids, Stout said. For Stout,

these personal interactions are what
got her involved with the cause in the
first place.
Cancer is an awful thing, but
theres something about spending time with kids who are going
through chemo and losing their hair
and getting to put a hat on their head
thats special,
Stout said. Its a really neat thing

to be able to impact a little girl in

a hospital for 15 minutes and have
her forget about what shes going
through.
Though McInerney has not gone
on one of these special visits, the
group has still been powerful to
her in other ways, as it has allowed
her to see how widely cancer affects
people.
Since its founding in 2012, the or-

ganization has now spread to more

than 200 colleges across the nation.
Each participating school represents
the brand through promotions, sales
events and charitable programming
initiatives.
The ultimate goal of these initiatives is to encourage people to buy
beanies and caps from Love Your
Melon. For every hat that is purchased, one is donated to a child
with cancer and half of the total proceeds made by sales are donated to
cancer research.
Stout began asking friends and
members of different athletic teams
around campus whom she knew
would be passionate about the cause
to join. Once the minimum of ten
members was reached to form the
campus crew, she sent in an application. Upon receiving approval a
few days later, the club was up and
running, making Bowdoin the first
college in Maine and one of the only
NESCAC schools to represent Love
Your Melon. Both Tufts and Trinity
also have campus crews.
Although the group is only allowed a maximum of 20 people,
anyone who wants to get involved,
whether by participating in bake
sales, volunteering or raising awareness, is welcome to do so.
Though the group has many big
plans for raising awareness and going on further hospital visits, Stout is
already happy with the work that the
group has done so far.
There was one little girl Haley
who was five and when we walked in
dressed as superheroes she just sat up
right away and you couldnt even tell
she had cancer because she was smiling so excited for the hat said Stout.
She was so strong the entire time.
That was the pivotal moment of
this is what I wanted to do this entire
time. Even if it was just that girl that
I saw smiling, it was good enough for
me, Stout said.

Most people dont like math: the flaws in modern math education
BEN YORK

AN AUTISTICS GUIDE TO AUTISM

Most people dont like math.
While this may not be so true of the
Bowdoin populace (the population
of Searles at any given time should
attest to the inaccuracy of most in
the case of Bowdoin), it is certainly
true of the general public. There is a
stigma that surrounds mathematics,
a perception of math as an esoteric
subject only the odd enjoy. Some
might have found high school geometry pleasing, others may have
enjoyed algebra, and some may say
that they at least found calculus
interesting, if not enjoyable. However, the vast majority of students
can attest to having found at least
one math class insufferable. I hate
math is not an uncommon phrase
in a math class.
Why is this? What part of mathematics is so intolerable that it can
evoke such wrath, from children and
adults alike?
I believe the flaw lies not with
mathematics itself, but in the way it
is presented.
Take as juxtaposition an art class:
art assignments might range from
painting a picture, to sketching an
object, molding clay or capturing a
photograph. These tasks are often
simple, for the purposes of teaching,
just as in math class one starts with

the basics: addition, subtraction,

multiplication and division. Unlike
in mathematics, there is an unspoken, almost unthought-of assumption and understanding that runs
through any art class: that there is
more beyond this.
An artist practices his or her art
so that he or shethey may move on
to do better art, knowing full well
that others have done this in the past.
There is a cultural knowledge of art
that, while not deep, is widespread. A
child in their third grade art class is
aware that art isnt just making macaroni sculptures and drawing crayon
flowers. They have heard of figures
like Van Gogh and Picasso, perhaps
not specifically of their accomplishments, but at least that they are artists and that they are important.
The same cannot be said for
mathematics. Even a well educated
individual may be under the impression that math stops at calculus, and
even those interested in math labeled as being gifted in the subject
may be under the impression that
professional mathematics is like a
competition, where mathematicians
pose each other problems to solve,
and whoever does so quickest wins.
In reality, mathematics is a subjectspanning body of knowledge built
up from logic to reveal truths about
itself and the world. Modern mathematics comprises an enormous body
of work, done by hundreds of thousands of men and women over the

MIRANDA HALL

course of millennia, and stretching

in scope from the simplest properties of numbers and shapes, to the
truly abstract objects by which no
real world object could ever hope to
be modeled.
Modern math education teaches
mathematics as a cut-and-dry way
of finding answers to problems that
,to most students, didnt need answering anyway. If instead, time

was spent introducing children to

the great accomplishments of mathematics: from simple to state problems like Fermats Last Theorem, to
theorems which place limits on our
ability to find definitive answers, like
Gdels incompleteness theorems, to
the problems which have yet to be
solved, like the Riemann Hypothesis, then they may not have as much
reason to hate the subject. If chil-

dren knew the stories of great mathematicians like Euler, Gauss, Cantor
and Galois, perhaps they might realize that there was more to math than
saw in the classroom. Perhaps, their
curiosity would be sparked, and
one day they would go on to solve
the great problems they had learned
about. Pleasing if s indeed, but it is
difficult to be curious about a world
you do not know exists.

friday, november 6, 2015

the bowdoin orient

ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT

Musical theater hits high note across campus with increased interest
BY BRIDGET WENT
ORIENT STAFF

JENNY IBSEN, THE BOWDOIN ORIENT

JUST A BROADWAY
BABY: (above) Students rehearse
for the theater departments semester
musical,Sondheim on Sondheim. An
increased demand for musicals from
both theater students and the broader
Bowdoin community has taken place
since the new theater group Beyond
the Proscenium (below) performed
Spring Awakeninglast semester.
Sondheim on Sondheim will
premier on November 12th in Wish
Theater, Memorial Hall.

BO BLECKEL, THE BOWDOIN ORIENT

In recent years, there has been a

crescendo in the number of musical theater groups on campus. Jae
Yeon Yoo 18, the musical director of
Spring Awakening last semester, believes this increase may reflect broader trends in the theater industry.
Recently, musicals have gone
from being spectacles to being more
focused on a revolutionary way of
storytelling, Yoo said.
For Yoo, musicals have the ability to connect to people on a deeper
emotional level, which attracts an
audience that extends beyond regular theater-goers.
People are less intimidated [by
musicals] because they are so permeated through our current culture, said Yoo. Theres so much
potential for a musical to reach a lot
of people.
According to Professor of Theater
Davis Robinson, musical theater hasnt
always been such a resounding force
on campus. The theater department
only stages a musical once every three
years in an effort to showcase a full
spectrum of theatrical styles. However,
the addition of more student groups
devoted to performing has opened the
doors for singers, actors and musicaltheater lovers alike.
There are certainly more opportunities [for musicals] because there are
more groups that are stable, that have
formed, that are chartered, that are presenting opportunities, said Robinson.
Curtain Callers, which was
founded in 2010, typically stages a
full-length musical in the fall and
a revue-type performance in the
spring. This semester, leader Max
Middleton 16 will direct Sweeney
Todd. Next semester, Yoo hopes to
work with the group as well as Peer
Health to produce rock musical
Next to Normal.
Beyond the Proscenium, the newest
addition to the cluster of theater groups
on campus, was founded by Sarah

Guilbault 18 and Cordelia Orbach 17

last year, with the intent of making theater more accessible on campus and in
the community at large.
We saw this vacuum that needed to
be filled with theater groups on campus, said Guilbault.
We wanted to create another
space for more theater that was
somewhat easier to partake in because of the time commitment that
theater often imposes.
According to Guilbault, for some
people, there werent enough opportunities between the department
show and other theater group productions. The groups inaugural performance, Spring Awakening was
designed to create more opportunities to fill that gap.
People were interested in doing
something that stretched them both
theatrically and in a musical sense,
Guilbault said.
Musicals tend to attract performers
from both musical and theatrical backgroundsstudents involved with a
capella or other music groups use musicals to explore their theatrical skills,
whereas students from the theater department may use the production to
hone their musical talent.
Robinson noted the ability of musical productions to mix many different
disciplines, including music and theater
but also dance and design.
For me, its more interesting when
theres more crossover, so we try to keep
these boundaries open, said Robinson.
The main barrier to producing musicals is funding. According to Guilbault
and Yoo, obtaining the necessary copyrighted materials can be expensive.
It makes me angry because I
think art should be accessible to everyone, said Yoo.
Guilbault hopes the increase in enthusiasm for musical theater on campus will encourage the Student Activities Funding Committee (SAFC) to
finance more musicals in the future.
[The SAFC] has more faith now
that students are really interested in
going to see musicals, Guilbault said.

New professor to blend theater, media

BY SARAH LIM

ORIENT STAFF

This spring, the Department of

Theater and Dance will welcome internationally renowned theater and
dance artist Sarah Bay-Cheng, now
Professor of Theater and Dance,
who will teach courses about the
intersections between live performance, digital media and performance scholarship.
Bay-Cheng is currently at Utrecht
University in the Netherlands as a
Fulbright Senior Professor in American Studies.
Shes at the top of her field; she
has an international profile, and she
has terrific experience as the acting
head of the theater program at Colgate, Chair of the Department of
Theater and Dance Paul Sarvis said.
Amongst talk of integration of digital media and new technologies into
the department and course registration for next semester, Bay-Cheng
comes at a perfect time to offer classes that look at the intersection among
theater, performance and media.
In the upcoming semester, she
will teach two classes, Theater

as Social Media and Performing

America: Identities on Stage, the
latter of which is co-listed with the
English Department.
Basically one of the ways we can
understand society is by the representations that it makes of itself.
And theater is an interesting and
unique example of this, said BayCheng. This idea of an American
identity is one that had to be performed into being because it was
made up of people who had largely
come from other places. So a lot of
the class is looking at this intersection of performance and identity
and how that helps us understand
the history of a culture.
Bay-Chengs other class, Theater
as Social Media, will be looking at
the use of social media as a theatrical art form.
We start by looking at Facebook
and how theatricalized Facebook
is, how the construction of identity
in social media is in some ways everybodys little mini performance
of themselves. So the lens of performance studies can be a really interesting way to look at what makes
something effective on social media,

what makes social media compelling, said Bay-Cheng.

As a graduate of Wellesley College, another small liberal arts sch
ool, Bay-Cheng is excited to come to
Bowdoin because of the atmosphere
of the student body.
I loved the environment on campus.
I loved the vibrancy among the faculty
and staff in the department, said BayCheng. When I taught a class here, the
students were really quite remarkable,
so the atmosphere around theater and
dance was really exciting.
Bay-Cheng is also a strong advocate for the study of theater and
dance as part of a complete liberal
arts education.
I think the challenge here and in
most places is to continually make
the case for why theater is relevant
and why we should study theater and
dance. And I really believe it is of significant value regardless of what you
want to do with the rest of your life,
said Bay-Cheng. I think it is a fundamental part of who we are as human beings and that understanding
and appreciating that whether you
like to attend certain forms of theater
or dance or not.

KATIE FOLEY, THE BOWDOIN ORIENT

INTERSECTIONS: Dept. of Theater and Dance hire Sarah Bay-Cheng will arrive this spring to
teach interdisciplinary courses about live performance, digital media and scholarship.

friday, november 6, 2015

the bowdoin orient

a&e

Writing and roots: Pulitzer Prize

winning author discusses identity

VALERIE CHANG, THE BOWDOIN ORIENT

THE IDENTITY THIEF: As part of Bowdoins Visiting Writers Series on Wednesday evening, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Richard
Russo shared his personal essay about a journey transitioning to novelist and screenwriter from a struggling graduate student and finding his
voice by remembering his home in Gloversville, New York. Russo is the author of the novel and the screenwriter of HBOs adaption of Empire Falls.
BY SURYA MILNER
ORIENT STAFF

It was the idea of destiny that Pulitzer

Prize-winning novelist and screenwriter
Richard Russo explored in his essay entitled The Identity Thief, which he shared
with a packed Kresge Auditorium on
Wednesday evening. In a story of self-discovery, he wove together seven segments
to tell the process by which he became a
novelist and screenwriter. Originally from
Gloversville, New York, Russo spun a narrative that included denying his roots only
for him to return to them again.
When asked, I would say I was
from upstate New York, Russo said.
Not Gloversville. It was a deft move to
avoid embarrassment.
During graduate school at the University of Arizona, after a professors harsh
critique of his manuscript, Russo began
to find his voice. The only silver lining
of prose otherwise inert on a page, the
professor told him, was a 40-page section
about a small town in upstate New York.
It wasnt until years later, while Russo
was beginning work on his debut novel,
Mohawk, that he returned to his hometown of Gloversville, reworking those
40 pages from his failed graduate school
manuscript into the storys setting.
It wasnt exactly good, those 40 pages,

but it was mine, Russo said. Discovering

who I was as a writer might be the final
piece of the puzzle but [it] also sent me
back to the beginningI figured, if myself isnt good enough, so be it.
Within its anecdotal sections, humorous at parts and poignant at others, the essay was rife with advice for those pursuing
any type of creative avenue.
Trying to match up material that is
truly yourstrying to find it, first of all
and to match it up with a self that maybe
doesnt even exist yet, is delving into a couple of mysteries that are kind of on parallel tracks. Theyre not always right beside
each other where you can look from one
to the next, Russo explained. I had been
working diligently before I started to succeed, and I was getting technically better.
Because I was getting technically better, it
seemed to me that I was really far along.
But if theyre parallel tracks, and youre so
close in terms of technique that you can
almost reach out and touch the finish line,
what youre not seeing is just how far behind you are in that other parallel track.
Often it comes down to charactertheres
something about yourself that you havent
recognized yet.
Russo also exhorted his listeners to persevere and be genuine in their writing.
On the face, it seems incredibly simple
but sometimes for all kinds of reasons, it

just isnt, Russo said. Its

like admitting, Who do
I love? What do I love?
All of that gets confused
with that other voice in
your head which says,
Who should I love?
What should I love?
Trying to figure all that
out at the same time
youre trying to learn the
basic skills of storytelling is, more than anything else, what causes
people to bail.
The first installation in a series of three,
Russos visit to Bowdoin occurred as part
of the English Departments Visiting Writers Series, which aims to bring esteemed
writers to campus in an effort to provide
students with a lens through which to
view the world of professional writing as
well as their own work.
To hear a novelist read from his own
work, theres no substitute for that, Associate Professor of English and Chair of
the English Department Aaron Kitch said.
Because he also gives you insights into
his characters, style and plots. To see the
personality behind the words is memorable. Whenever I hear an author read his
or her own work and then go back to that
work, I read it differently.

JENNY IBSEN, THE BOWDOIN ORIENT

After receiving his Master of Fine Arts

degree in Creative Writing and a Ph.D.
in American Literature at the University
of Arizona, Russo remained in academia
with stints at Southern Illinois University
Carbondale, Pennsylvania State Altoona
and Colby College. He eventually retired
from teaching to write full-time. He published four novels before Empire Falls
in 2001, which won the Pulitzer Prize for
Fiction a year later.
I think anyone whos ever tried to write
anything would relate to what he said. I
really like his writing, but also I could put
a face to the name of this author whose
work Ive been reading in class, Katie
Morse-Gagne 19 said. I think reading his
work will mean a lot more to me now that

Ive heard him talk about his own voice

as a writer as well as his personal life and
how those fit together.
Professor of English and organizer
of the series Brock Clarke believes the
event was not only beneficial for exposing students to Russos writing, but also
for making the prospect of being a writer
more accessible.
Its always useful for students, in part,
to demystify the process, Clarke said. I
think we have an unhealthy tendency to
lionize other writersto think of them as
these creatures who are unlike usand
when we see them first-handit doesnt
mean were disappointed in them, it just
means that what they do seems like something we might be able to do also.

World Cinema Festival exposes community to multitude of cultures

BY AMANDA NEWMAN
ORIENT STAFF

Bowdoins third annual World

Cinema Festival showcased not only
innovative and artistic films from
around the world, but offered a platform for professors to foster analytical
discussions about culture and films.
The countries represented in this
years festival include Russia, Germany, Cuba, Mauritania and China. Participating Bowdoin professors chose
films to which viewers from both
Bowdoin and the Brunswick community could relate.
Each night, the professor who was
presenting would introduce the film
with contextual information. Once
the film was over, the floor was then
opened to questions and discussion.
Organized by Visiting Assistant
Professor of Cinema Studies Sarah
Childress, the festival consisted of five
films from a variety of cultures and

continents. One film

little insight into a world
was shown each night in
that I had never seen beThe film was of course made to cast in a very problemthe Beam Classroom of
fore, said Nicholson.
the Visual Arts Center.
On Tuesday night,
atic light the intersection between national identity or
The festival origiAssociate Professor of
ethnic identity, political refugees and sexual and gender
nated as a Spanish and
German Birgit Tautz
Latin American film
presented
Unveiled
identity... Now, 10 years after it was originally released, it
festival, but after its first
(Fremde Haut).
year, Childress decided
The film follows a
develops a new currency and becomes very topical again.
to expand the festival to
woman who flees to
ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF GERMAN BIRGIT TAUTZ
be more inclusive and
Germany from Iran
representative of culbecause her sexual oritures from around the
I have to say Im really excited
entation is rejected.
world.
about The Assassin because Hou Along her journey, she is put into a
Childress explained that while she Hsiao-hsien hasnt had a film out in holding room in the airport because
cannot choose a favorite, she is most a while and I really admire him. He her passport is invalid. While in the
excited for the films Suite Habana makes gorgeous films, she said.
holding room, she befriends anothand The Assassin.
On Monday night, Visiting As- er refugee whose application goes
The Oscar nominated film Suite sistant Professor of Russian Lindsay through. To her unfortunate advanHabana only uses sound and im- Ceballos presented The Fool (Du- tage, this man commits suicide, and
ages to follow the lives of 10 ordinary rak). Wilder Nicholson 16 attended so the woman assumes the mans
Cubans during their day-to-day ac- the screening and explained that the identity to get into Germany.
tivities. The Assassin chronicles the films impact stayed with him for
The film was of course made to cast
mission of a seventh century Chinese days afterward.
in a very problematic light the intersecassassin to kill a politician.
It was a great opportunity to get a tion between national identity or ethnic

identity, political refugees and sexual

and gender identity, said Tautz. Now,
10 years after it was originally released,
it develops a new currency and becomes
very topical again.
Tautz received a grant from the German Embassy to show the film. Each
year, the embassy has a particular
theme and gives grants for programming. This year, the theme was 25 years
of German unity.
Tautz explained that in the past
years of the festival, the departments
had chosen to screen more popular,
blockbuster films. This year, however,
the professors involved decided to
choose films that pertain more to the
classes they are teaching.
Im teaching a first year seminar
on German women filmmakers, so
I wanted to select a film made by a
woman, she said.
The festival concludes tonight
with Hou Hsiao-hsiens The Assassin, which is still in theaters.

10

the bowdoin orient

SPORTS

friday, november 6, 2015

Volleyball enters NESCAC

tournament as No. 1 seed
BY ANJULEE BHALLA
ORIENT STAFF

Kennedy 16 sets record

as field hockey marches
on to NESCAC semifinals
BY COURTNEY GALLAGHER
ORIENT STAFF

The field hockey team made predictably short work of Bates in its
NESCAC Championship quarterfinal
matchup last Saturday, taking down
the Bobcats 4-1 at home to advance to
the semifinal round. The top-seeded
Polar Bears will host fourth-seeded
Amherst tomorrow at 11:00 am, and,
with a win, will host the winner of
Middlebury v. Tufts in the conference
championship match on Sunday.
Within the first three minutes
of the victory over Bates, Rachel
Kennedy '16 became the programs
all-time leading scorer with her
93rd career goal. Later in the half
she picked up her 94th. Kennedy
eclipsed the 92-goal mark set by
Lindsay McNamara 09.
The accomplishment, while astounding, is nothing less than what
the team expected of Kennedy, who
they say has done nothing but dedicate herself to both her team and the
game for the past four years.
She is one of the most fiercely
determined players on the field, Liz
Znamierowski '16 said of Kennedy.
She puts her heart and soul into every practice and every gameI dont
think a single person on this team had
any doubt shed break that record.
Znamierowski, who has been a key
contributor herself, fed Kennedy the
pass that led to her history-making,
goal. Kennedy was quick to attribute
the record to the entire teams efforts.
Truthfully, they deserve the credit
for it because they are the ones that
were able to feed me the ball or set
me up for easy shots, Kennedy said.
Being a forward, its my responsibility to score goals, so its definitely a
bit easier to be recognized over other
positions on the field.
With at least one NESCAC tournament game and an assured NCAA
tournament berth still ahead of her,
Kennedy boasts 94 career goals and
206 career points. Of course, the
numbers mean nothing if unaccompanied by a W on the stat sheet.
Winning as a team is what matters

most for me, and everything else is

just bonus, Kennedy said.
Shes in the right place. Now 16-0
on the season and ranked No. 1 in all
of D-III, the Polar Bears were heavily favored in their game against the
Bobcats, who were in their first NESCAC playoff since 2010. After Kennedys first goal in the first few minutes,
Bates quickly tied it up to 1-1. However, the Bears fired back soon after,
starting with a goal from Kimmy
Ganong 17. 24 seconds later, Kennedys second goal of the day opened
the lead to two. The lone goal of the
second half was courtesy of Nicole
Barbieri 19.
Undefeated as it is in perhaps the
nations toughest conference, the team
has no plans to make any significant
tactical adjustments going forward.
We will continue to work on implementing the fundamentals in all
of our games, said Znamierowski.
Looking forward to Amherst, well
definitely be looking to play clean,
stick-to-stick hockey, and make use
of our core, fundamental skills.
The team appears to be focused
entirely on Amherst, despite the possibility of a championship matchup
against archrival Middlebury. Bowdoin has faced off against Middlebury
the last three years in the NESCAC
finals, falling short of a win each time.
I know this is a really important
weekend for everyone on the team,
especially the seniors because weve
never won a NESCAC championship, Kennedy said. The most important thing is that we play to the
standard that we know we can.
When speaking of the possibility
of a match-up against Middlebury
again, the Bears always react in a similar waythey do not want to look
too far ahead.
Weve had an incredible season so
far and we just want to prolong the
season as long as possible, Kennedy
said.
If the teams tournament run is
prolonged past the semifinal stage,
theyll play for the conference title at
noon on Sunday at Howard F. Ryan
Field.

ABBY MOTYCKA, THE BOWDOIN ORIENT

RECORD BREAKER: Rachel Kennedy

16 (above) works on her dribbling in a practice
earlier this week. Kennedy now owns the all-time
scoring record for Bowdoin with 94 goals. She
broke the 92 goal mark, which was set by Lindsay
McNamara 09 in 2008. Kennedy scored two
goals in Bowdoins 4-1 victory over Bates on Saturday, with the record-breaking goal coming less
than three minutes into the game. The team faces
Amherst in the NESCAC semifinals tomorrow.

After beating Colby and Bates this past

weekend, the Bowdoin Volleyball team finished the regular season with a conference
record of 9-1, securing the top seed for the
NESCAC Championship and the right to
host the tournament, which will take place
this weekend in Morrell and Sargent Gymnasiums.
Were all extremely excited, said Assistant Coach Kristin Hanczor. Hosting
is not only exciting just to be playing in
your own gym but its also an advantage
to be playing in your own gym with your
own fans and not having to travel and not
having to do hotels and everything. But
the drawback of being number one is that
youre the clear target for everyone else.
This years tournament will showcase
the evenly matched competition and some
standard NESCAC rivalry. Two-time defending champion Williams is seeded second with a conference record of 8-2 after
losing 3-1 to Tufts in their season opener
and 3-2 in a close match against Bowdoin.
Amherst is also a top contender as they are

HITTING THEIR STRIDE: Players

on the womens soccer team position themselves
to make a play on an air ball during a practice
under the lights this past week. The team defeated
Tufts on Saturday, 3-0, to advance to the NESCAC
semifinals against Trinity tomorrow. Bowdoin
played Trinity earlier this year and lost, 1-0. Since
then, the Polar Bears have won six of seven
games, and six in a row. The game will be played
at Williams, which is the No. 1 seed in the NESCAC
tournament. Bowdoin is seeded No. 2, while
Trinity is the No. 4 seed.

seeded third and lead the league in hitting

percentage, kills and digs.
Something thats really unique about
the NESCAC is were so strong from top
to bottom that at any given time, any team
could beat another team, said captain
Christy Jewett 16. You have to be at the
top of your game. There is no guarantee
that youre going to beat the seventh or
eighth seed just because youre the first
seed.
Jewett was named NESCAC Player of
the Week for the second time this season
after breaking Bowdoins all-time record
for career kills as the team swept all four
matches at the UMass Boston Invitational.
Im obviously very honored and grateful and I think the reason that it happened
was that the NESCAC was trying to highlight how well our team was playing and in
order to do that they selected me as kind of
a representative of giving this honor to my
team, said Jewett. The NESCAC doesnt
choose to honor people unless their team
does well, and I would be nowhere without
my teammates and without how hard every single person has been working. Theres

Please see VOLLEYBALL, page 11

ABBY MOTYCKA, THE BOWDOIN ORIENT

Womens soccer advances to semis after win

BY JULIA OROURKE
ORIENT STAFF

The womens soccer team punched its

ticket to the NESCAC semifinal game after defeating Tufts at home on Saturday,
3-0. The Polar Bears got off to a quick start
when Maggie Godley 16 scored in the seventh minute of the game.
That really set the tone for the rest of the
game, and then we came out again at half
time really strong and put another few goals
away, said captain Bridget McCarthy 16.
Jamie Hofstetter 16 and Jill Rathke 18
kept up the Polar Bears momentum, each
scoring in the second half. McCarthy credited Godley, Hofstetter and Eliza Nitzan 18,
who had two assists for Bowdoin, as standout players on Saturday.
I think we all played well definitely,
overall. I think our offense really shined
and those three players were the key players
to us winning, said McCarthy.
Goalkeepers McCarthy and Rachel
Stout 18 each made three saves, securing
the teams shutout.
We just really played as a team, said Assistant Coach Ellery Gould. We were able
to possess the ball and play feet, and I think
what we did really well was just doing the
little things right.
The team had defeated Tufts earlier that
week in Medford with a 3-2 win, earning
the second seed in the NESCAC.
We knew we had to come out even
harder than Tuesday because we had just
beat them then, and they were going to

come out even harder, so that was our

mindset coming into Saturday, just team
focus and getting it done, said Hofstetter.
On Saturday, the Polar Bears will face
fourth-seed Trinity at Williams for the NESCAC semifinal game. Despite having lost
to Trinity midseason, the women are still
confident going into Saturday.
We did not show up to that game at all
really, said Hofstetter. We came out really
flat.
Since then, the team has been playing
better and has begun to work together as
a unit.
It really was the turning point of our
season when we look back, that weekend
in particular, said McCarthy. Our offense
finally clicked and our defense is continuing to improve, so Im really excited to play
them, and I think our whole team is really excited to get a second chance to play
them.
The Polar Bears see the earlier loss as an
advantage rather than a setback going forward.
It just makes us want this game so
much more. I very much think this could
be dominated by us, said Hofstetter.
I think its been a shift in our mindset,
said McCarthy of the teams improvement
in the second half of the season.
Additionally, according to Hofstetter,
individuals have been improving, making a
difference in each game.
Every time someone subbed in the
field, there was a difference being made,
said Hofstetter.

The team is not overconfident, however,

and are keeping the strength of Trinitys
team in mind.
Theyre a tough team. They are really
physical too, said Gould. Theyre just big
players.
Since the teams are similar in many
ways, the Polar Bears plan to prepare to
play Trinity in the same way as Tufts, allowing them to continue focusing on what has
worked for them in their past two games.
In the other semifinal matchup, top-seed
Williams will be facing sixth-seed Middlebury on Saturday.
Although they are taking it one game at
a time, the Polar Bears are still keeping the
potential championship in mind. Should
they advance, the women will play in the
NESCAC championship, competing for
the league title and a bid to the NCAA
Tournament.
[Williams is] very strong team with a
lot of offensive threats, said Gould. We
played them way back in September, so it
has been awhile.
As for Middlebury, the team is similar to
Bowdoin in their technical nature.
They have, as of late, done really well
so they actually beat Williams, said Gould.
All the games will be tough.
According to Gould, the mental and
physical toughness is crucial.
Being the stronger players and just staying mentally tough for the entire game and
having no let ups [is important] because
you dont get another chance in NESCAC
playoffs, Gould said.

friday, november 6, 2015

the bowdoin orient

sports

11

Mens soccer upends Tufts to keep season alive

BY CALDER MCHUGH
ORIENT STAFF

HY KHONG, THE BOWDOIN ORIENT

FOR FRODO: Sabina Hartnett 18 finished the New York City Marathon in just under four and a
half hours. She has run both the New York City and Boston marathons for charity causes.

Hartnett 18 runs New York

marathon with hamstring injury
BY MIRANDA HALL
ORIENT STAFF

Last Sunday, Sabina Hartnett 18 finished the New York CIty Marathon with
a time of 4:26:30, averaging 10:10 minutes
per mile, despite a hamstring injury.
However, for Hartnett, the most meaningful part of race was not the finish, but
between mile 19 and mile 21.
You start to question yourself at mile
19. Youre like, why the fuck did I sign up
to do this? she said.
Digging in and answering that question is what Hartnett said gave her the
motivation to finish the race.
Mile 24 you enter Central Park, which
is a game changer, she said. Mentally its
a lot harder to run in the street than in nature. When you reach the finish line they
put a medal around your neck and people
cheer for you which is so nice.
Hartnett noted that one of the greatest
challenges of marathon running is a mental one.
You can stop whenever you want and
its such a tempting thought. 61,000 people are going to cross the finish line anyways so its up to you how much you want
to push yourself. Theres so many people,
she said.
Last weekends race was Hartnetts
second marathon. She completed the
2014 Boston Marathon as a senior in
high school with a time of 4:07:00.
Growing up, she often went to watch the
Boston Marathon with her grandpar-

VOLLEYBALL
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 10
no way to look good unless your team is
really good.
After starting the season with a shaky
2-3 record, the team eventually hit their
stride, winning every game for the rest of
the season other than a close loss in the
fifth set to Amherst, finishing the season
with a 20-4 record. This is the eighth season in school history that the program has
reached the 20-win milestone.
The team will face Bates in the quarterfinals Friday at 5 p.m., the second time
theyll face the Bobcats in a week after beating them 3-1 last Saturday.
The good thing about playing them
again is that were familiar with what they
do, said Head Coach Erin Cady. The disadvantage is theyre familiar with what we
do on the court, so were trying to figure
out a way to correct any mistakes or weaknesses that we had last weekend and then
build on that and try to expose any weaknesses that they might have going into this
weekend.
Weve definitely been looking at what
offensive shots are going to work best
against their team and weve been encouraging our hitters to work on those in practice, said Hanczor. We are also looking at
their tendencies so that our defense can be
ready for their attacks and who they choose
to set and what shots they have.
The match will feature strong serving
from both sides of the net as Bowdoin and

ents because the halfway mark was in

their home of Wellesley, Massachusetts.
She said that running in it had been a
long term goal.
In order to participate in both the
Boston and New York City marathons, a
person must either meet a certain qualifying time, or run to raise money for charity. Hartnett ran as a charity runner both
times.
For the Boston Marathon Hartnett
raised money to benefit a fellow high
school classmate, Hannah Randolph, who
had passed away her sophomore year of
high school.
It really made me think about all of the
things you can do as a young person that
she would never get to do and I wanted to
run in honor of that and in honor of her,
said Hartnett.
For the New York marathon, Hartnett ran to benefit the Brooklyn Kindergarten Society.
I have always been interested in education and have been so lucky in my early
childhood to have the education and the
resources Ive had, she said.
Hartnett plans to continue running
marathons in the future, but for her the
most meaningful thing gained from this
experience was finding out she was capable of it.
I do enjoy running long distances, but
when it gets to 26 miles, its not fun anymore. Its more about being able to do it,
and the feeling after, rather than the feeling during the marathon.
Bates rank second and third respectively
in the NESCAC in service aces per set.
The team has spent the week preparing for
Bates strong outside hitters, such as junior
Chandler McGrath, who has averaged 3.26
kills per set this season, just behind Jewett
with 3.95. The Bobcats have also had the
tendency to force sets to the right side, leading the Polar Bears to focus on and adjust
to the new angle.
Were working on our defensive movement and being more disciplined with our
movement so that were not just wandering around in the backcourt, were actually moving and being able to make a play
on the ball, said Cady. I also think their
strength is theyre a very passionate team
and they work really hard, so were looking
to work just as hard if not outwork them.
Even under the pressures of tournament
play, the team looks to use their technical
strengths, volleyball intelligence and versatility to continue their trend of high performance this weekend.
We know that we dont necessarily hit
anything much harder than anyone else,
we dont necessarily do anything very differently than the other teams, but we are a
very strong team unit. Every one of us can
get the job done, so we dont have to focus
on just one person. We can adjust our game
plan based on the weaknesses of the other
team, said Hanczor. We really believe that
the winner of the tournament is going to be
the most disciplined, the most calm, confident and poised team, and were hoping to
be that team.

Having only allowed in seven goals

all season, the mens soccer team was
again anchored by its defense in its
NESCAC Championship quarterfinal
game last weekend.
We really havent been letting in
goals, said defender Kiefer Solarte 16.
So, when senior defender Nabil Odulate connected on a close-range shot
from the left side in the twenty-fifth
minute of Polar Bears contest against
Tufts in the quarterfinals of the NESCAC Championship, the team was
confident Odulate had propelled them
into the semifinals.
The confidence was well-placed:
Odulates goal was the only of the
match, and sixth-seeded Bowdoin upset third-seeded Tufts 1-0 on in Boston
last Saturday to advance to a semifinal
matchup against Connecticut College
tomorrow.
The Tufts matchup, which was
played on a muddy field after heavy
rain in days prior, was actually the
second of the week between the two
teams; the first, played on Wednesday,
October 28, ended in a 0-0 draw. Having gotten to know each other already,
both teams arrived on Saturday playing with an intensity unseen in the
Wednesday matchup.
Tufts came out of the game swinging, and had a good chance at the top
of the box during the second minute
of play. In fact, Tufts outshot Bowdoin

13-2 on the day, with six shots on goal

for the Jumbos and two for the Polar
Bears.
Tufts put pressure on Bowdoins
back line throughout the contest, but
Bowdoin head coach Scott Wiercinski
believes that Tufts actually had fewer
quality chances on Saturday than on
Wednesday.
I thought they had a little bit more
possession in the game on Saturday
but they didnt create as many clear
cut, open scoring chances as a result,
he said. Thats a product of our back
line defending very well and then our
midfield getting back.
Although stakes were raised for Saturdays game, Wiercinski opted to stay
with the personnel and tactics that got
his team to the postseason. He was rewarded with strong defending and two
key saves from goalkeeper Stevie Van
Siclen 18 after star Tufts midfielder
Nathan Majumder was ejected when
he earned his second yellow card early
in the second half.
Despite playing with only 10 men on
the field from that point forward, Tufts
kept up its pressure on the Bowdoin.
Even though they had a man down
you might not have noticed it, because
they were playing with such aggression and emotion to get back into the
game, said Wiercinski.
The Polar Bears intensity in preventing the late charge by Tufts should
serve them well when they take on
Conn. College at 1:30 p.m. tomorrow
at the Championship host site of Mid-

dlebury. The team already faced Conn.

this season, rallying from a goal behind
to win 2-1 on October 24. The comeback was one of the high points of the
regular season for Bowdoin.
Despite going a goal down, we really came out with a huge amount of
intensity and energy and continued to
dominate the game and kept applying
pressure, said Odulate.
While Wiercinski believes that
Conn. College is not as well-balanced
as Tufts, he also said that the Camels
front end is more mobile and dynamic.
Senior Matthew Bitchell and the firstyear duo of Chris Lockwood and Mark
Leon lead the charge the Conn. up
front, and theyre supported by midfielders Pat Devlin and Colin Patch.
The matchup sets up a strong attack
versus a staunch defense, and the winner will get the chance to play for the
NESCAC title on Sunday against the
winner of first-seeded Middlebury versus eighth-seeded Wesleyan. For Bowdoin, the weekend is an opportunity to
bring home the NESCAC title as a six
seed for the second straight season.
Coming off a NESCAC tourney
win from last year, the expectation
has always been looming over us, said
Solarte. That being said, I think we
were underdogs throughout that whole
tournament, and for the good part
of this season. I would say that weve
learned to deal with those expectations
from being the champions last year,
and weve learned to deal with them
better throughout the season.

SCOREBOARD
Bowdoin
Colby

WOMENS VOLLEYBALL
204

FIELD HOCKEY
160

OCTOBER 30, 2015 COLBY

OCTOBER 31, 2015 VS. BATES

27 25 25
25 22 19

3
0

OCTOBER 31, 2015 BATES

Bowdoin
Bates

24 25 25 25
26 21 15 20

3
1

Bowdoin
Bates

4
1

Rachel Kennedy
Kimmy Ganong
Rachel Kennedy
Nicole Barbieri

MENS SOCCER
834

OCTOBER 31, 2015 HUSSON

Bowdoin
Husson

25 25 25
12 13 13

2:44
16:12
16:36
66:44

3
0

OCTOBER 31, 2015 TUFTS

Bowdoin
Tufts
FOOTBALL
15

Nabil Odulate

OCTOBER 31, 2015 VS. WESLEYAN

Wesleyan
Bowdoin

1
0
24:09
WOMENS SOCCER
1041

20
14

OCTOBER 24, 2015 VS. TUFTS

Bowdoin
Tufts

WOMENS RUGBY
60
OCTOBER 24, 2015 VS. WILLIAMS

Bowdoin
Williams

28
0

Maggie Godley
Jamie Hofstetter
Jill Rathke

3
0
7:12
69:12
71:50

12

the bowdoin orient

OPINION

System administration

igns containing the phrase #AStatementIsNotEnough were posted

throughout campus last Thursday night, signifying some students
dissatisfaction with the administrations response to the sailing
teams gangster party. In a protest this Wednesday, students wore duct
tape over their mouthsrepresenting the silencing of minority voicesto
further express disapproval with how the College handles racial issues on
campus. Many felt that the reaction emails sent by administrators were lacking in concrete solutions, and placed the burden on students to foster future
discussions.
In his campus wide email, President Clayton Rose recounted meeting
with student leaders from various multicultural groups over the weekend,
writing, they offered thoughtful ideas that we will be discussing with them
soon. While this statement is vague, and more direct attention to racial issues could have been paid even before the gangster party, its unclear what
concrete action we should expect from the College so soon after the party
happened.
Even so, the tension between the Colleges desire to appear responsive to
student concerns and its inability to take immediate action on complicated
problems has fallen hardest on the students affected by these issues in the
first place. They have been asked to devote long hours on top of their usual
course load and activities to facilitating dialogue. There is no institutional
course of action for responding to incidents like the gangster party, but
the administration cannot place the responsibility of reacting to racial issues
entirely on students of color.
There is plenty of work the administration simply cannot do. What happens off campussay, when a car of strangers yells racial slurs at a student
walking on Maine Streetis out of the administrations control. What the
administration can do, however, is to ensure that there are support systems
in place when issues like this arise.
In the Orients article on faculty diversity this week, several people spoke
about the importance of faculty mentors who, coming from similar backgrounds as students of color, can empathize with the unique issues they face
and provide guidance as these students navigate their time at Bowdoin. The
last two weeks have brought the importance of this idea into sharp focus. Bowdoin as an institution may have little power to control isolated bias incidents,
but the decisions it makes about who works here, the roles that they play and
the training they receive, shape the environment in which we preempt and
respond to these incidents. Whats more, the benefits of a more diverse faculty
extend far beyond responding to incidents of racial bias. A more diverse faculty could foster a culture thats more capable of discussing race to begin with,
preventing events like the gangster party from happening in the first place.

Administration must take real action

and stop making students do its job

This editorial represents the majority view of the Bowdoin Orients editorial
board, which is comprised of John Branch, Sam Chase, Matthew Gutschenritter,
Emma Peters and Nicole Wetsman.

LETTER TO THE EDITOR

Dear Editor:
Bowdoins commitment to the common good has a stellar opportunity to
shine at this moment in history. Divesting from investment in fossil fuels
would place the College in the lead as carbon loading reaches the tipping
point for life on our planet. A healthy endowment allows the College to offer
scholarships to students like me who would otherwise be unable to afford
tuition at a top ranking school. But what use is our education if we dont use
our knowledge and understanding to help make the world a better place?
Divesting from profits derived from belching carbon into the atmosphere
would not only make the world a better place, it might save the world from
becoming a place where humans can no longer thrive and be educated.
New leadership in administration can help the College see its way to act on
behalf of all the little polar bears to come.
Sincerely,
Lisa Savage 77

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friday, november 6, 2015

DIANA FURUKAWA

CAROLINE MARTINEZ

SAY IT LIKE IT IS

The past two weeks have brought

to light an issue on campus that was
already present way before the gangster party, hosted by members of the
sailing team. Here we go again. It
seems like a repetitive song I want to
skip, but seem to be forced to listen to
over and over again. Last Saturday, I
went to a meeting at Russwurm with
President Rose and Dean Foster. Although President Roses presence surprised and pleased me, I couldnt help
but feel that all this had already been
done before. They listened politely,
took the list of demands from the African-American Society and said they
would think about it. Thinking is nice
and good, but at this point, considering the efforts that have already been
made, it is a very weak answer and
shows the Colleges neglect and irresponsibility in dealing with race.
The administrations response
to the gangster party and race at
Bowdoin continues to be problematic. Lets begin with Dean Foster and
President Roses emails, which have
been the only official college responses so far. They both focus on people
being offended and hurt and mention
no concrete steps to address white
privilege on this campus. In fact, they
dont explicitly acknowledge that racism and white privilege exist on our
campus. Focusing on feelings makes
it seem like the problem is simply
peoples feelings, specifically the feelings of people of color, as mentioned
in President Roses email. Thank you,
Dean Foster and President Rose, for

coming to protect people of colors

feelings, minimizing the historical
context and current ramifications of
racist acts and failing to actually take
any proactive steps. Peoples anger,
frustration and sadness about the
party are very human reactions to
the very real problem this college and
country face, but they neglect to deal
with the racism in practically every
single corner of our communities and
the rampant white privilege that constantly goes unchecked.
I wonder: have Dean Foster and
President Rose not had time to think
and talk about race since everything
that was brought up last semester?
Did they forget about the list of demands that was made public in an
open letter to the community last
February? Did President Rose not inform himself of the state our college
was in before taking on his position?
Meanwhile, Ive had multiple people,
both employees of the College and
students, tell me to engage in dialogue. Yesterday I received an email
from the McKeen Center that invited
me to be part of a small group of students that will plan dialogue sessions
on this campus. I love the workers in
the Mckeen Center, but Im not going
to be a part of this dialogue. It is time
for the Colleges administration to act,
not for the students of color to teach. I
will not be the one who leads this conversation when my college as an institution refuses to do so. The presidents
of the Asian Student Association have
decided they will not participate in
the creation of their annual fashion
show, which is supposed to show the
respected diversity that exists on campus and Af-Am will no longer host
parties for prospective students until

the College takes action and shows

that this is a place for people of color.
I fully support these choices.
The list of demands published
last February continues to be online
for anyone who wants to see it, and
I dont want to repeat whats already
been done by mentioning all of them,
but I will expand on one very simple
thing that the College could easily accomplish: mandating a training on
race for all of its employees. Despite
the fact that there have been some
baby steps taken in this direction,
a lack of skills on how to talk about
race and general knowledge of how
it functions in society is still a prevalent issue on our campus. Members of
the administration urge students to
engage in dialogue, but many of our
professors dont even have the skills
to have a conversation about race
and feel uncomfortable doing it. How
then can we have dialogue? Different
small trainings have come and gone
in various parts of campus, but there
has been no cohesion and consistency. Theres an obvious hole that needs
to be filled.
What were missing on this campus
is the willingness of the administration to deal with race, not more programing or discussions on race led
by students of color. Saying well have
a conversation, thinking about it or
sending an email, is just not enough.
As a bare minimum all the employees
at this college should have a training,
which can be used as a foundation for
more changes that need to be done.
This would at least allow students of
color and white allies to direct our
energy on being students at Bowdoin
and not doing a job that the administration is supposed to do.

friday, november 6, 2015

the bowdoin orient

opinion

13

Learning together: open discourse represents Bowdoin at its best

BY FRANK STRASBURGER
OPED CONTRIBUTOR

A week after an incident of social

appropriation brought emotions on
campus to a fever pitch, things appearat least to this outside observerto have calmed down. Yet,
there remains a sense of unease: the
disappointment among much of the
student body that such things can
happen at Bowdoin. It is the disillusionment of those who imagined
they were safe here from such disrespect, as well as the creeping cynicism of those whove grown hardened
to it. It is the chagrin of the sailing
team, who unexpectedly find themselves labeled by some as pariahs. It
is the general embarrassment that the
incident was witnessed by prospective minority students who may thus
be turned off from applying. And it
is the fervency of those for whom the
debate isnt over about whether or
not this was a big deal.

It will no doubt surprise readers

that this Bowdoin father three times
over has rarely been prouder of the
College. And if everybody will take
a deep breath and stand back a few
yards to look at all of this from a
slightly different perspective, perhaps some of you can join me in that
pride. So what am I talking about?
Certainly, like most of you, Im
upset and disappointed that this happened. Should the sailing team have
known better? Sure. Did they do it to
be nasty? I seriously doubt it. Were
people badly disrespected nevertheless? Absolutely. But heres what I saw
happen at Bowdoin in the last week
in the wake of the incident.
The tepid initial response by most
studentsthat the sailing team party was just really dumbwas followed by the gradual, semi-articulate
awareness that something more significant had happened. Then Adira
Polite transformed the moment.
Rather than bury her feelings as most

people do when theyve been marginalized, Adira used the platform of the
Orient not to rant but to educate. She
was magnanimous enough to understand that the people who had hurt
her had done so out of ignorance, not
spite. By seizing the opportunity, she
awakened the entire community.
Suddenly, the whole campus was
abuzz. People staked out positions.
People talked into the night. Some
changed their minds, and some
didnt, but there was no shortage of
passion. In other words, Bowdoin
was being precisely the educational
community it claims to be.
And then the BSG acted with a
level of leadership that is rare in student government. Representing all of
you, they reasserted Bowdoins social
norms, acknowledged that norms
had been broken, censured those who
had broken them and stood with the
injured parties. Thats government at
its best. While I know not everyone
supported their action, what they

were saying, in essence, was, Look,

were all friends here. This is no way
to treat friends.
Of course, not everyone got that.
While some used social media to carry on a serious conversation, others
used its anonymity to write snarky
remarks. Even putting the best face
on those, what their authors were
saying to those who had been hurt
was, You shouldnt feel that way.
And since I dont think you should
feel that way, Im not going to take
you seriously.
The BSG was dead right. Thats
no way to treat friends. And that, to
me, is the core of this issue and why
Im proud of Bowdoin. You used this
moment to educate yourselves anew
about just who your friends and
neighbors are, what they care about
and what makes them hurt. You reminded yourselves anew that what
you do and the way you do it has
consequences, and as a community,
you took responsibility for all of that.

And most of you grew from the experience.

So give yourselves and one another a break. Yes, some people really screwed up here. But each of us
is capable of the thoughtlessness and
insensitivity that brought this incident about. Each of us remains unconscious of the sensibilities of those
around us about which we ought to
be conscious. All of us occasionally
marginalize others, although, to be
sure, some experience marginalization a whole lot more than others.
Part of the reason youre here is to
learn all of that, which implies that
you dont already know it all.
Fortunately, as flawed as we all are,
were all also capable of empathy, remorse, forgiveness and the capacity
to change for the better. I saw all of
that come into play on campus this
week, and that, to me, is Bowdoin at
its best.
The Rev. Frank Strasburger P07/P08 is an
Adviser to the Bowdoin Mens Group

Calls against a strict condemnation of racism miss the point

BY PAUL CHENG
OPED CONTRIBUTOR

Last week, in the continuing wake

of the gangster party and the resultant cascade of events surrounding
discussions of race and privilege on
campus, James Jelin 16 wrote a piece
on the definition of progress and
the path of campus discourse in the
weeks and months to come. He begins by appealing to those that were
hurt by the party, asking whether
they want an open exchange of
ideas, or a strict condemnation of
racist speech and actions.
Here is the first issue with this description of Bowdoins future. These
are not our only options, nor are
they even mutually exclusive. Furthermore, Jelin fails to recognize the
intricacies inherent in even these
two options he highlights. Consider
the idea of an open exchange of
ideasthis is not a matter of two
parties parlaying on equal footing.
What he describes is the white majority wielding its privilege and asking the students of color on campus
to argue merely for recognition of
their basic rights. (And yes, freedom from microaggressions and
racial stereotyping is a basic right.)
Any discussion of race is inevitably
lopsided; it must be recognized that
only white people can afford to be
ignorant of their privilege. For people of color, acts of racism are such
an ingrained part of daily life that,
for many of us, we cannot help but
observe the ways that a society built
upon racism demands that we bear
the burden of our own race.

Which leads me to my next point:

a strict condemnation of racist beliefs is exactly necessary. The school
cannot afford to beat around the
bush with its language and handling
of racism on campus. And it must be
clear that cultural appropriation and
stereotyping are absolutely forms
of racism; I have heard countless
people deride discussions following
the party as inane conversations of
political correctness and issues
of freedom of speech. These derisions fail to understand two basic
ideas: one, freedom of speech does
not mean freedom from reproach.
People may say what they please, but
racist speech must be called exactly
that. Two, any act of racism, be it
physically or ideologically violent,
must be dealt with seriously.
Again, only white people can afford to be ignorant. If the school
does not take a strict stance on racism, it leaves students of color to
fend for themselves against a white
majority which, in the interest of
preservation of privilege, has no
obligation to understand the viewpoints of the minority. Jelin claims
that, in the exchange of ideas scenario, well force the oppressed to
patiently educate their oppressors,
a situation which, though he may not
recognize it, has been happening on
campus for ages. Orient articles such
as the one written last week by Adira
Polite 18, various teach-in events
which touched on race, Wednesdays
silent protestweve been patiently
educating our entire lives, but it is
not within our power to force white
people to listen or understand.

Miranda Hall

Which is why the administration

must make clear that racism in any
form is intolerable. Whether certain
people agree with the realities of institutionalized oppression or not is
irrelevant; countless resources, be
they academic or peer-written, exist

that elucidate the workings of oppression, from cultural appropriation

to physical violence. When people
fail to understand the concept of racism, what more can students of color
do? How can we ever endorse anything but condemnation of racism?

Bowdoin Orient
The

Matthew Gutschenritter
Editor in Chief

ESTABLISHED 1871

The Bowdoin Orient is a student-run weekly publication dedicated to providing

news and information relevant to the Bowdoin community. Editorially independent
of the College and its administrators, the Orient pursues such content freely and
thoroughly, following professional journalistic standards in writing and reporting.
The Orient is committed to serving as an open forum for thoughtful and diverse
discussion and debate on issues of interest to the College community.

bowdoinorient.com
orient@bowdoin.edu

6200 College Station

Brunswick, ME 04011

And still, even when it is not our job

or duty, we continue to educate in
any way we know how. Despite what
Jelin says, condemnation and education are not exclusive. Both are necessary for students of colors safety
and well-being.

John Branch
Managing Editor
Associate Editor
Associate Editor
Associate Editor
Senior Photo Editor
Photo Editor
Business Manager
Business Manager

Elana Vlodaver
Katie Miklus
Olivia Atwood
Hy Khong
Jenny Ibsen
Evan Bulman
Maggie Coster

Layout Editor
Layout Assistant
News Editor
Sports Editor
Features Editor
A&E Editor
Opinion Editor

Alex Mayer
Phoebe Bumsted
Rachael Allen
Eli Lustbader
Sarah Drumm
Sarah Bonanno
Nicholas Mitch

Sam Chase
Managing Editor

Nicole Wetsman
Editor in Chief
Emma Peters
Managing Editor

Harry DiPrinzio
Web Editor
Julia ORourke
Calendar Editor
Calder McHugh
Page Two Editor
Gaby Papper
Social Media Editor
Allison Wei
Copy Editor
Louisa Moore
Copy Editor
Diana Furukawa
Illustrator

The material contained herein is the property of The Bowdoin Orient and appears at the sole discretion of the editors. The editors reserve the right to edit all material. Other than in regard to the above editorial, the opinions expressed in the Orient do not necessarily reflect the views of the editors.

14

opinion

the bowdoin orient

friday, november 6, 2015

Considering gentrification as a compassionate community member

MAYA REYES

VULNERABLE DISCOURSE
After graduating I want to move
back to my hometown. I know thats
a little boring, but I feel that we are
unfinished. I was born in Queens,
my dad grew up there and so did his
mom. You can hear it when we say
ahh-range instead of orange. Walking
around the city with my dad would
unfailingly consist of a story of how
this block, or that neighborhood,
wasnt the way it was when he was
growing up. And unfailingly, this was
the result of either the hipsters or the
yuppies or the trust fund babies, some
kids like us.
Can I gentrify my own city? Part of the
reason Im reluctant to move to another
city is because I dont want to mirror the
post-grads hanging out in Bushwick bars
or riding the L train with their nose in a
David Foster Wallace novel. I dont want
to be the San Francisco or Seattle version
of that. So if I go back home, can I escape
that trope? Ive decided it doesnt matter. It
doesnt matter what I look like in my city,
or in a new city. What matters is what I do
in that city.
I like to think Im the same kid who
took the subway to my 4,000 student,
mediocre, public high school. In many
ways I am, but now I am that, plus a girl
with a liberal arts education from an elite
institution. That entails opportunities and
sets of knowledge that arent available to
most peopleparticularly the ones who
are most often negatively impacted by
gentrification. And though I dont have a
trust fund for gentrification rent money,
or parents willing to fund my anticipated
gentrification, I will probably find myself
in this web of real estate domination. At
least I hope to have a job that will provide
that possibility.

The place we choose

to move is going to affect someone else. That
is unavoidable. But this
process of displacement
is somewhat out of our
control, unless you find
yourself dabbling in real
estate. The major issue
I have with people who
gentrify isnt the simple
fact that they move into
a certain neighborhoodits how they refuse to interact with it.
Over the summer, I
spent a lot of time talking to muralists in the
South
Williamsburg
community of Brooklyn.
Williamsburg provides a
fascinatingly unfortunate
example of gentrificationthe worst-case scenario. Over a very short
period of time, the entire
character and landscape
of the neighborhood has
changedracially, spatially and economically.
A particular anecdote of
one of the artists encapsulates the wrong way to
move into a community:
South Williamsburg has
historically had a large
and culturally lively Puerto Rican community. Over the years, that community,
like many others in New York, has grown
accustomed to hanging out on brownstone stoops and playing live music. One
new, culturally unaware resident decided
to call the police with a noise complaint.
That is not how you interact with a community or try to become part of it.
To be a compassionate community member is to interact with the
community, and try to learn from

HY KHONG

it. It doesnt mean instinctively calling the police when you hear music.
It means talking things out and having a willingness to learn. It doesnt
mean forging a separate community
from the one that has historically
been there. I believe that the damage
that gentrification inevitably causes
to low-income communities can
be effectively lessened if those who
move in engage with the community.
This engagement can take the form

of participating in existing community organizations, supporting local

businesses or using your educational
privilege to help local residents. If
someone is being pushed out of his or
her apartment, see if there is something you can do to help. In many
cases, people are pushed out illegally,
and when they are pushed out, they
dont have the resources or means to
find a new apartment.
As future graduates who will have a

particular know-how, which includes

dealing with bureaucracy, we should feel
empowered to help those in our future
communities. Dont just move somewhere and engage with the coffee shop intelligentsia or the rooftop bar hoppers. Try
to have a positive impact on your community, while acknowledging your role
in a complex and unfortunate historical
process. Use your education to strengthen whats left of the community that you
choose to make your home.

The dance floor make out is a symptom of the patriarchy

JULIA MEAD

LEFT OF LIPSTICK
Have you ever thought about
what exactly a dance floor make out
(DFMO) is? Well, I hadnt until a
few weeks ago, because every time I
thought about it sober in the light of
day, it made me feel yucky. But now I
have thought about it, beautiful readers, and I hope youll stick with me.
I think the DFMO is a microcosm of
a traditional marriage narrative, and
thus, embedded in patriarchy.

as it is dark, loud, she is drunk and

she has her back to him. If this happens, she will consult her friends,
whom she is facing and who can see
the face of her partner. She communicates with them either by raising
an inquisitive eyebrow or signaling thumbs up/thumbs down. If the
friends disapprove of the partner,
they will give her a thumbs down
or simply pull her away. If they approve, theyll give a thumbs up or a
permissive shrug.
5. The crucial moment comes after
several minutes of peer-sanctioned
grinding. The male, still holding his
partners hips, will twist
her toward him (requiring her to literally turn
her back to her friends),
and they will proceed to
make out.
6. At the end of the
song, the couple will likely part, or they may leave the party
together for the privacy of one their
bedrooms.
Two things about this ritual stand
out: its deep heteronormativity and
the fact that its so overtly public.
With the possible exception of parties hosted by and for the queer community, DFMOs are dominated by
straight couples, with each member
performing a clearly prescribed gender role. Men are in the apparently
active role, controlling the progression at every stageselecting a partner, issuing the invitation to dance,
deciding when to transition from
dancing to making out and suggest-

Two things about this ritual stand out:

its deep heteronormativity and the
fact that its so overtly public.
Lets be anthropological about this.
The DFMO develops in six discrete
steps:
1. A circle of women dance.
2. A man (guy) approaches one
of the women from behind.
3. Depending on his civility and
level of intoxication, he will either get her attention and ask her
to dance or grab her hips without
verbal communication. They will
grind (dancing which involves
rubbing the womans butt against
the mans crotch to the rhythm of
the music).
4. In the latter case, the woman
is often unsure who her partner is,

ing to leave the party together.

This does not mean women are
mere pawns. They exert agency, albeit within the confines of a patriarchal system. Women can signify
interest in a dance floor partner by
making repeated eye contact with
him
or
accidently-on-purpose
brushing against him. These actions
are small enough to go unnoticed
by a casual observer but significant
enough that they could precipitate a
DFMO where one might not otherwise happen.
DFMOs follow an intuitive social
script even for the uninitiated because they resemble a stale though
undeniably appealing narrative: the
heterosexual romance.
It is the marriage arc. Man sees
woman, initiates contact, contact is
reciprocated, acquaintance is made
and both participants renounce
their other non-romantic relationships and elevate the romantic one.
You can see this when the woman
turns her back on her friends, with
whom she came to the party, to make
out with a man whose name she may
not even know. However, the friends
do not see this as a betrayal. They
helped her get to this capitulation
by signaling thumbs up or slightly
shifting their arrangement so that
the woman could be near enough to
her future partner to accidentallyon-purpose brush against him. It is
not unlike the many pre-wedding
bridal celebrationsthe bachelorette party, the wedding shower
they are all about women celebrating

one of their number moving from

their ranks to romantic bliss.
The heterosexual romantic narrative is distilled, perhaps, in its
purest form in childrens stories.
Recall the scene at the end of
Disneys The Little Mermaid,
in which Ariel weds Prince
Eric on the ship and sails away
from every other meaningful
relationship in her lifeher
father, her sisters, Sebastian
the crab guardian, Flounder her fish friend. It is not
that different from leaving
a party full of close friends
and admired acquaintances to fumble with the
buttons on a barely known
lovers shirt.
The obvious difference between the
DFMO and the traditional
heterosexual
marriage arc is that
the DFMO is quick
and nonbinding while
marriage is long-term
and tightly binding.
The DFMO heterosexual
romance happens on a microscale because of the liberating forces of darkness, alcohol,
contraception and alleged sexual
emancipation (though the extreme
heteronormativity seems less than
emancipated).
So lets just remember, patriarchy is
bad for everyone. Dance floor make
outs are embedded in patriarchy.
Might as well just go to Super Snack.
DIANA FURUKAWA

friday, november 6, 2015

the bowdoin orient

opinion

15

Kasich brings moderation to the presidential race, so why is he losing?

DAVID JIMENEZ
MINDLESS PONTIFICATING
At best, Ohio Governor John Kasich hovers around 10 percent in New
Hampshire primary polls. His war
chest pales in comparison to both establishment and insurgent candidates
fundraising. At the recent CNBC debate, Donald Trumps ever-thoughtful
insults shut Kasich down, saying hes
on the end of the stage because of his
paltry national poll numbers. But could
this folksy Midwestern governor be the
GOPs last best hope for reviving the
optimism and governing competence of
the partys earlier age?
Kasichs opening is now clear and immediate. Jeb promises that he can fix
it (Washington? His campaign strategy? His low-energy personality?),
but its certain that other establishment
candidates now have a chance. Kasichs
congressional and executive experience
far outweighs Rubio. He is less polarizing and obnoxious than Christie. And
he simply has much more to be proud
of. Thanks to budgetary and economic
turnarounds, Kasich holds a 62 percent

approval rating in Ohio, the pivotal

battleground state. In his re-election, he
won 86 out of 88 counties, and 26 percent of the African-American vote.
In an angry, bitter age of Trumpism,
Kasichs stump speeches are a breath of
fresh air. His reflections on a blue-collar
upbringing in the Pittsburgh area reveal a man who takes virtues of faith,
humility and community seriously. He
speaks with nostalgia about his congressional experience in the 1980s and
1990s, when both parties knew about
collaboration and compromise. Kasich
hardly rants about Benghazi, sanctuary
cities or other red meat for the base. His
stump speeches sound like sermons,
exhorting both the GOP and American
civic life to recover compassion, optimism and empathy.
Cynics might dismiss this as window dressing for a same-old, reactionary agenda. But Kasich is showing
otherwise in Ohio. He expanded the
Earned-Income Tax Credit for working
families and increased public education spending. Prison reform, stronger
mental health services and better drug
treatment and prevention programs
have also been priorities of his administration. In a politically courageous act,

Kasich accepted federal funding for the

expansion of Medicaid in Ohio as part
of Obamacare, a decision that provoked
the wrath of party purists in Ohio and
nationwide. This decision may never escape him. During a heated exchange at
a Koch Brothers donor conference, Kasich invoked the biblical Last Judgment
to defend his decision.
But Kasich is no Rockefeller Republican, or even Jon Huntsman, either. He
is a social conservative, though without
the bombastic, polarizing style of Cruz,
Huckabee et al. As governor, he clashed
with public-sector unions on pensions
and dramatically increased the number
of charter schools. He is a military hawk
calling for a major naval build-up. Kasich does not need to prove his conservative bona fides.
Plenty of work lies ahead for Kasich
to hold a fighting chance. For one, he
will need to improve his debating skills;
on stage, he really sounds like a flustered, impatient guy from Pittsburgh
who waited in line too long for Pirates
tickets. The positive media coverage Kasich receives is a double-edged sword,
winning both attention and potential
infamy as the moderate, reasonable
bien-pensant of the hated mainstream

media. Kasich deserve credit for directly criticizing Carson and Trump,
but he will need to choose battles cautiously. But its not necessarily true that
the GOP is just too extreme for Kasich
to win. Instead, commentator Henry
Olsen point outs that the Republicans
underestimated somewhat conservative and moderate primary vote blocs
are large and formidable, particularly in
delegate-rich blue states. The right campaign strategy could reach those two
groups, propelling to Kasich to victory,
or, more modestly, a vice presidential
spot under Rubio.
A Kasich victory or impressive
showing would point to a deeper intellectual renaissance taking place in
the Republican Party beyond the spotlights of the latest antics of Cruz, Trump
and company. Since 2012, a group of
thoughtful Reform Conservatives like
Yuval Levin, Ross Douthat and Reinhan
Salam have been thinking and writing
deeply about declining social mobility,
poverty and income inequality. Their
policies recognize that a comprehensive
economic agenda cannot just repeat
supply-side economic orthodoxies, and
they are quietly impacting the policy
thinking of Paul Ryan, Mike Lee and

Marco Rubio, among others. To the disappointment of progressives, the goal is

not to implement a Great Society 2.0 or
to make the country into a Scandinavian social democracy. But it may show,
in spite of Paul Krugmans pompous
statements, that the party of stupid has
plenty of solid policy ideas up its sleeves
worthy of debate and consideration.
One hopes for a conservatism that
acknowledges rather than denies the
concerns of millennials, the increasing diversity of a changing nation or
the economic anxieties of middle- and
low-income Americans. One must not
put final trust in earthly princes; it
will be activists, voters and thinkers,
not politicians, who construct this
movement. Nevertheless, Kasich, more
than any other candidate, embodies
this promise and can take the mantle of
Lincoln, Eisenhower and Reagan into
a new century. Perhaps it will be this
son of a Western Pennsylvanian mailman who can restore the old and all too
often forgotten promise of the party of
Lincoln, to lift artificial weights from
all shoulders, to clear the paths of laudable pursuit for all, to afford all an unfettered start and a fair chance, in the
race of life.

Bowdoins womens groups

cannot remain apolitical
vocate healthy sex under the guise of
being apolitical. It is not useful to unOPED CONTRIBUTORS
derstand how to use birth control if you
There currently exist no political cannot access it.
feminist groups on campus. To be sure,
In the quest to make sure that comthere are womens groups that engage fort is the ultimate goal, the current
with feminismnamely, the Womens forums to discuss womens issues quiet
Resource Center and all of the groups their political implications. As a result,
that fall under its umbrella. But what feminism at Bowdoin often fails to
none of these groups do is actually move beyond intimate conversations
get in the political ring. Second-wave and sipping tea. Even when it does, it
feminism demonstrated not just the takes the form of empowerment events
power of calling attention to sexism, like The Vagina Monologues and Take
but alsoand more importantlythe Back the Night. Theres a limit to the
need for collective action. While many effect of these events. Fundamentally,
groups on campus fall into the sphere of they encourage us to find an oasis withconsciousness-raising, recognizing that in a hostile climate instead of fighting
the problem exists is only half the battle. against the climate itself.
Wheres the fight?
After graduation, we, as Bowdoin
Were told to discuss our body im- women, will get paid less than our male
ages and our sex lives. Were told to classmates for the same job. We will be
love our vaginas. Were told to be un- edged out of our careers because we
ashamed in all of our sexual choices. choose to have children. We will watch
But how can we do this if we dont have our right to terminate a pregnancy
the power to make
fade away. This
our own reprois ridiculous.
ductive decisions? You cant advocate healthy sex
Its 2015. Why
Its impossible for
are we losing
women to have under the guise of being apolitical.
ground on adgood or healthy sex It is not useful to understand how
vances made in
if we are constantly
the 70s? Disafraid of becom- to use birth control if you cannot
cussion without
ing pregnant. For access it.
action will not
many women on
make change.
campus in Maine,
Calling legislaand across the country, this fear is dan- tors, knocking on doors and protesting:
gerously, palpably real. As Bowdoin stu- these are actions that make change. We
dents, we have access to resources like need to take serious and swift political
a health center that pays for our Plan B action. The boat needs rocking.
and condoms, and a Planned ParentWe are starting a chapter of NARAL
hood across the Topsham bridge. We Pro-Choice America on Bowdoins
cannot take these resources for granted; campus. NARAL is a national orgathey are essential, and they are system- nization that fights for the full range
atically being taken away from Ameri- of reproductive rights. We encourage
can women.
Bowdoin students of all genders to
When we were trying to find a cam- join and support our group. But repus group to help sponsor a lecture by gardless of your stance on this issue,
pro-choice activist and author Katha we advocate that political action is not
Pollitt, we spoke with a group that being annoying, it is fundamental to
works to promote healthy and informed the Colleges mission of the common
sex lives. They were wary of sponsoring good. We can keep talking about these
the talk for fear of appearing political. issues, but its time to put our money
The irony here is that healthy sex re- where our mouth is.
quires bodily autonomy and access to
reproductive resources that politicians Rachel Baron and Uma Blanchard are
are threatening every day. You cant ad- leaders of NARAL at Bowdoin.
BY RACHEL BARON AND UMA BLANCHARD

DIANA FURUKAWA

Boys on the sidelines: the girls caught up fast

BY PETER SLOVENSKI
OPED CONTRIBUTOR

Id like to accept Bowdoin Colleges

invitation to engage, in a respectful way,
with uncomfortably diverse opinions. In
October, the college announced it was
discontinuing the Jefferson Davis Award.
That was a slam dunk. The time had
come. There was little disagreement with
discontinuing the award.
But lets see if Bowdoin can grapple
with what appears to be another slam
dunk, which would ask Bowdoin to do
something applauded by the conservative
side of the cultural spectrum.
If Bowdoin is going to host a Girls and
Women in Sports Day, we should also
host a Boys and Men in Sports Day. No
other college in the country has dared to
do this yet.
Somewhere around 1989, Bowdoin
and many other colleges began hosting
Girls and Women in Sports Day to help
girls catch up after nine decades of unequal sports opportunities. This was a
great idea. It was a smart event to help girls
catch up in sport skills and interest.
And all over the country the girls
caught up fast. By 1993 Bowdoin womens
athletics teams were among the best in
our department. Once the NESCAC allowed sports teams to qualify for NCAA
post-season competition, the first Bowdoin team to qualify was the 1994 womens cross-country team. More Bowdoin
womens teams qualified for NCAA
competition than mens teams. By 1999 it
was pretty clear that our womens athletic
teams succeeded as well or better than our
mens teams.
I often get to see Girls and Women in
Sports Day outside my office in the field
house. It is great to see over a hundred

girls running around in games and drills

inside while the ground is covered with
two feet of snow outside. But it is not so
great to see a dozen brothers sitting on the
sidelines, bored and not welcome to join
in the activities. Ive been coaching co-ed
teams and running co-ed camps at Bowdoin since 1987, and I dont do anything
where only boys or only girls are welcome
to participate. It is offensive to think of
hosting events at Bowdoin where either
boys or girls are not welcome.
I thought we should add a February
event for Boys in Sports so in the middle
of winter, the boys could run around
Farley Field House just as the girls have
been doing for the past 25 years. I made
a proposal in 2014 to the Student Athlete
Advisory Committee to encourage them
to host a Boys in Sports Day. I thought a
group of student-athletes would be persuaded that the time had come to host
equal events for boys and girls. Some
members supported it, but more opposed
it. It didnt pass. It could be that the idea
does not have enough merit, but it could
also be that once a preference is given to a
group, the group tenaciously fights to defend the preference even after the inequality has passed into another era.
The Economist published an article in
2001 about the global clamor for special
preferences to make up for past injustices.
The article reviewed the ups and downs
of those preferences in countries on every continent, and concluded that States
should not discriminate, positively or
otherwise. Unintended consequences
had bad effects. Preferences embed longlasting divisions and promote the blaming of others. A short dose of positive
discrimination may be the least bad way
forward. But such measures should be a
last resort, and come with an expiry date.

Is there an expiry date on only hosting a

Girls in Sports Day? I think the expiration
date should be the year in which American women win their third World Cup.
When it comes to sports, I hope we
can agree that sports are good for girls and
boys. Sports are known to help girls become confident and independent. Sports
are known to help boys do better in school
and meet the positive influences that help
them stay out of trouble. Bowdoin should
and does have an athletic program that
gives equal opportunities to men and
women. In our educational enrichment
activities, I hope we can host a Girls in
Sports Day one weekend, and a Boys in
Sports Day the next.
If you disagree with me, I invite you
to seek me out in person at the field
house any weekday evening from 7:00
to 8:00 p.m. Spare me the personal attacks in the Orient, which are the surest way to eliminate diverse opinions
on this campus. I miss the days earlier in my career when Bowdoin students enjoyed speaking respectfully
and even humorously about different
opinions. Political correctness choked
off respectful disagreements at Bowdoin 15 years ago to the point where
the campus intellectual culture feels
like a parliamentary debate without
an opposition party. All the debaters
are on the same side. If you want to
brush up against the benefits of diverse views, which include learning to
appreciate the other side of an argument and reflecting critically on the
wisdom of your own positions, come
down to the Field House and speak
respectfully with the opposition party.
Peter Slovenski is the coach of the cross
country and track teams.

16

the bowdoin orient

friday, november 6, 2015

NOVEMBER

WEDNESDAY 11
LECTURE

Islam and Hip Hop

This lecture will focus on the overlap between Hip Hop

and Islam through discussion about the history of Islam in
Black America. Artists such as Brother Ali and Lupe Fiasco
are examples of Muslim hip hop artists.
Daggett Lounge, Thorne Hall. 4:30 p.m.
EVENT

Screening with Filmmaker Shawn Batey:

'The Changing Face of Harlem'
The Changing Face of Harlem is a film about Harlems
revitalization shot over a 10-year period with stories from
community members. Shawn Batey is an award-winning
producer, filmmaker and documentary writer.
Cleaveland 151, Druckenmiller Hall. 7:30 p.m.

THURSDAY 12

JENNY IBSEN

ALL OF THE LIGHTS: Students participated in Take Back the Night, an annual movement held by V-Day chapters worldwide to end
violence and sexual assault in their community. Students gave speeches and lit candles before walking around campus in a symbolic
attempt to reclaim unsafe spaces.

FRIDAY 6

SUNDAY 8

LECTURE

LECTURE

Professor Padron will give a talk titled Naming,

Historicizing, and Challenging Anti-Black and Anti-Mexican
Racism(s) in the U.S." It will be followed by a Q&A session.
Beam Classroom, Visual Arts Center. 12:30 p.m.

Debra Diamond, curator of the 2013-2014 exhibition

Yoga: The Art of Transformation, will discuss the history
of yoga across visual media.
Beam Classroom, Visual Arts Center. 2 p.m.

The Visual Culture of Yoga

Uncommon Hour

LECTURE

Trans+Jewish=?

Rabbi Joy Ladin will give a talk about her experience as the
first openly transgender professor at an Orthodox Jewish
institution. Ladin is the David and Ruth Guttesman Chair in
English at Stern College for Women of Yeshiva University.
Lancaster Lounge, Moulton Union. 12:30 p.m.

MONDAY 9

EVENT

Open Mic Night

The Bowdoin Music Collective and the Slam Poetry Society

will host an open mic night. No sign-up is required to
perform.
ORIENT
PICK OF THE WEEK
Chase Barn. 7 p.m.

13

14

15

Jason Sokol: "Race and Politics in the

Northeast From Jackie Robinson to
Deval Patrick"

Historian Jason Sokol will discuss the deep-seated racism

and segregation of the Northeastern United States, often
overlooked due to its reputation as a refuge for blacks
fleeing from the Jim Crow South. Sokols book All Eyes
Are Upon Us: Race and Politics from Boston to Brooklyn
discusses this same topic.
Room 315, Searles Science Building. 6 p.m.
PERFORMANCE

Music at the Museum

Beckwith Artist-in-Residence George Lopez will present

an evening of music relating to the art exhibition Earth
Matters: Land as Material and Metaphor in the Arts of
Africa." Seating is at capacity and limited standing room
will be available on a first-come, first-served basis.
Pavilion, Museum of Art. 6:30 p.m.

LECTURE

PERFORMANCE

Author Lois Lowry will be giving a lecture for the Bowdoin

community. Lowry has written over 30 childrens books
including Newbery Medal Winners Number the Stars and
The Giver. Her lecture will be followed by a Q&A session
in Reed at 7 p.m. Food and refreshments will be served.
Lowry's books will be on sale in the Bookstore during the
week prior to the event and at the event. Lowry will be signing copies. This event is sponsored
ORIENT
by The Quill.
PICK OF THE WEEK
Kresge Auditorium, Visual Arts
Center. 4:30 p.m.

Art Benjamin, professor at Harvey Mudd College, is a

mathemagician who will perform for the Bowdoin
community. In his performance, he will demonstrate
and explain how to mentally add and multiply numbers
faster than a calculator, how to figure out the day of the
week of any date in history, and other amazing feats of
mind. Benjamin will also have a lunch with students in
the Hutchinson Room at noon and will give a talk to math
majors at 4 p.m. in Searles 217.
Kresge Auditorium, Visual Arts
ORIENT
PICK OF THE WEEK
Center. 8 p.m.

Mathemagician

Lois Lowry

SATURDAY 7

LECTURE

EVENT

Netflix and
Chill

16

EVENT

The Dating
Game

17

18

19

LECTURE

Masculinity
Across Race
and Class