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The Nation’s Oldest Continuously Published College Weekly Friday, May 1, 2020 Volume 149, Number 24 bowdoinorient.com

SOOC challenges Rose’s account of mutual aid fund shutdown,

accuses administration of taking unilateral steps against BLA
by Ian Ward
Orient Staff
Members of the Student Or-
ganization Oversight Committee
(SOOC) are charging that Col-
lege administrators took unilat-
eral action against the Bowdoin
Labor Alliance (BLA) for hosting
a mutual aid fund on its website,
pushing back against administra-
tors’ account of the committee’s
role in persuading organizers to
shut down the fund.
The fund, which had raised
over $15,000 to support Bow-
doin students and community
members affected by coronavirus
(COVID-19) related expenses,
went offline on April 21 after or-
ganizers learned that it violated
both College and SOOC policies
prohibiting independent fund-
raising by student groups.
In a virtual town hall on
Wednesday evening President
Clayton Rose said it was “simply
not true” that the College had
shut down the fund and suggest-
ed that Bowdoin Student Gov-
ernment (BSG), of which SOOC
is a part, had played a more sig-
nificant role in forcing organizers
to take the fund offline.
“[Rose’s] remark that ‘the BSG
took its own decisions based on
its own set of rules’ is untrue and
completely overplayed the role of
the SOOC in this matter,” wrote
SOOC Chair Sonia Shah ’22 in
an email to the Orient. “This was
not a matter of students enforc-
ing student policy. The adminis-
tration played a role as well, [a]
much larger role than the one
[Rose] made it out to be in the
town hall.”
In his comments during the
town hall, Rose said that the Col-
lege had not requested that the
BLA shut down the mutual aid
fund, only that organizers disso-
Please see MUTUAL AID, page 3

As College decides
what to do with CARES
funds, Rose tells
students, ‘Don’t wait’
BSG donates remaining budget to emergency
funding available through dean’s office
by Kate Lusignan
Orient Staff
The College has yet to ac-
cept the $1.2 million allocated
to it through the Coronavirus
Aid, Relief and Economic Se-
curity (CARES) Act.
According to President
Clayton Rose, who com-
mented on the matter during
Wednesday’s Town Hall, the
College has not accepted the
funds because “there are some
possible conditions or terms
around taking the money,
which could be problematic.”
According to Rose, this
provision could potentially
lead to the names of students
who accept CARES Act aid
to be disclosed to any federal
agency under the Freedom of
Information Act.
The Recipient Agreement
Form, which the College needs
to sign to receive the funds,
states in section 4(f) that the
College “shall cooperate with
any examination of records
with respect to the advanced
funds by making records and
authorized individuals avail-
able when requested, whether
100%
ARE YOU HAPPY?
Yes, I’m happy
I believe the world
80.2 will be a better
80%
place in 25 years
by (i) the U.S. Department of
Education and/or its Inspec-
tor General; or (ii) any other
federal agency, commission, 64.1
60.1
or department in the lawful
exercise of its jurisdiction and
60%
55
authority.”
“I hope it turns out not to
be an issue because, if it is, my
suspicion is we may not take
the money,” Rose said during
the town hall.
None of the 11 NESCAC
colleges has announced that 40%
it will decline the funds, and
Middlebury and Trinity have
officially confirmed that they
will accept CARES Act funds.
The U.S. Department of Ed-
ucation set aside approximate-
ly $6 billion of aid for higher
education in March. The
20%
amount each institution will
receive was calculated based
on how many students are
enrolled and, of that number,
how many receive national Pell
Grants. If Bowdoin accepted
the funds, guidelines stipulate 0%
that nearly $600,000—half of Last Semester This Semester
the $1.2 million—will be di-
rectly distributed at the Col- HAPPINESS DOWN, OPTIMISM UP: Students were asked “Are you happy?” and “Do you believe the world will be a better or worse place in 25
years?” This semester, happiness dropped nearly 20% from last semester. Yet, the percentage of respondents who said they believe the world will be
Please see CARES, page 6 a better place in 25 years rose by almost 10 percent. FOR MORE, SEE PAGE 10.

Responding to College’s financial woes, Roses cuts his pay by over 20 percent
by Alyce McFadden
Orient Staff
President Clayton Rose has
voluntarily reduced his salary
“well in excess of 20 percent,”
as of April 1. The move, an-
nounced in the April 29 virtual
town hall with students and
subsequent email to the College
community on April 30, comes
in the face of financial losses
the College has incurred as a
consequence of the coronavirus
(COVID-19) pandemic and
switch to remote learning.
“It was my decision, and I
felt that it was important and
appropriate given the crisis that
we are in and the likely finan-
cial stress that we are going to
be under for some time,” Rose
said in a phone interview with
the Orient.
According to the Chronicle
of Higher Education, Rose’s sal-
ary in 2017 was $517,513.
Rose declined to specify
precisely how much his pay has
been reduced, but he clarified
that the reduction will remain
in effect through the 2020-2021
academic year. Rose also con-
firmed that he is the only ad-
ministrator at the College who
has taken a pay cut at this point.
The Orient previously re-
ported the College has spent
more than $6 million on
COVID-19 related expenses
since March 11, and it antici-
pates spending in excess of $8
million by the end of the fiscal
year on June 30.
Rose’s decision follows an-
nouncements by many colleges
and universities that senior ad-
ministrators—including pres-
idents, provosts and deans—
took pay cuts that range from
10 to 20 percent.
Rose first announced the
decision during the town hall,
which he hosted with Senior
Vice President and Dean of
Student Affairs Janet Lohmann,
in response to a question about
pay reductions for senior ad-
ministrators and the possibility
of layoffs.
During the town hall, Rose
did not deny the possibility of
further salary reductions or
layoffs, noting that subsequent
decisions will be made by July 1,
the formal start of the 2020-21
academic year. However, Rose
noted that the reduction in his
salary should not be interpreted
as a harbinger of mass pay re-
ductions or layoffs to come.
“This isn’t signaling any-
thing. I don’t want other people
to get anxious,” Rose said. “And
we really, truly, haven’t decided
anything about anything yet.”
All current employees of the
College will be retained and
paid in full for the duration of
the current academic year, and
Rose reiterated that job pres-
ervation is among the College’s
top priorities in designing its
budget for the coming year.

This print edition of the Orient was produced on Friday, May 1, 2020, but due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it will be physically printed at a later date.

N TO GO OR NOT TO GO? F BACK IN BRUNSWICK A AN EMOTIONAL FAREWELL S VIRTUAL VISITS O AN UNCERTAIN FUTURE
90 students have already changed fall International students discuss the pandemic Theater costume manager and designer Coaches find alternative methods for Andrew Hamilton has some parting words
semester abroad plans. Page 3. from Brunswick Apartments. Page 7. Julie McMurry is retiring. Page 13. engaging with prospective athletes. Page 15. for the Class of 2020. Page 17.
 2 PAGE TWO
2 Friday, May 1, 2020
by Lily Randall
Orient Staff
I was a yearbook writer in high
school. Yes, no need to comment,
I know that is literally the most
useless job in history. My mem-
ory of it is punishment enough,
thank you. It kinda pains me to
think about all of the hours I spent
fixing comma splices in copies
about homecoming dances and
sophomore cheer seasons, but I
guess the Orient has some sense
of humor and considered that
the same thing as writing jokes
because I was literally hired as the
comedy writer this year due to my
experience in yearbook. Touché,
assholes.
When I applied for Page 2 I
didn’t really know what it was. I
was just informed that it was the
~whimsical page~ and I’d have to
be there on Thursday nights. I de-
cided to #yolo it and applied, and
not even a week later I was posted
In recognition of the COVID-19 pandemic, The Orient is offering free advertising for Brunswick businesses. The Orient is an effective way to reach Bowdoin students, faculty and staff as well as
parents, alumni and community members. We believe that this initiative can help you and your customers during this difficult time. Please contact orientads@gmail.com for details.
MAJORS
press F to pay respects
up at my desk learning how to
properly format a Security Report
(yes, Randy and I email … don’t
be jealous <3).
Anyways, I was trying to think
about what my final Page 2 of the
year should be about, and I just
kept drawing blanks. I consulted
my friends, asked the gnome that
lives under my patio and even
took it upon myself to see what
my predecessor had done last year
(btw cannot believe you ended
with a crossword Diego … SO
dirty to leave people without the
answers). I was pretty stuck and
figured I was just gonna cop out
with a listicle or something, when
I realized I just have a shitload of
random Page 2 ideas/excerpts in
my notes app from throughout
the year. These range from straight
up nonsensical (one just reads:
“ORIENT IDEA: Tupac???”) to
ideas I honestly should have pur-
sued. So, in true Page 2 fashion,
I have made a fun little listicle
HOUSING
COLLEGE HOUSES
of every Page 2 idea I have ever no clue what a lax player’s pickup WILD concoctions that scare the about for this one though. Always
written down with a cute and fun line would be. What’s even better sh*t out of me. I may not know readjusting their damn camera.
commentary of my thoughts on about this is that I had no poten- much, but I do know that ma- Choppy ass videos. Walking
each one now. This is a little too tial pickup lines listed, just literally ple yogurt should be ILLEGAL. around while on camera and car-
meta and probably a bad idea, but these seven words. I was likely Sound off in the comments if you rying their phone/laptop. Just in-
buckle up because I’m committing headed for a balls joke, though, if want. I’m ready to fight about this sufferable. 8/10 idea, maybe Buzz-
to this! Yeehaw! I had to guess. 4/10 idea, clearly I one. 8/10 idea, should have done feed will co-opt this one from me.
didn’t know what I was doing. this one.
1. “Hot take: Epicuria sucks. All it 7. “Four comments and I cut my
is are those trying to f***.” 3. “Most haunted buildings on 5. “Bowdoin boys you will meet on bangs.”
This cute little number is from campus.” spring break.” This one was just a title idea but
November 14th, and I’m almost Okay, I actually went through The ideas for this one includ- honestly, I stand by what I said. If
positive it is a discarded idea from a mildly obsessive phase about the ed dragging BOC kids going to this article gets four comments,
the week Page 2 was just a bunch prospect of there being ghosts in Canada, everyone who went back I’ll look into it. Leaving unranked
of limericks about Bowdoin. The Hubbard, and when I wrote this to their hometown and regressed depending on how this goes.
heart is there, but the execution is idea down I’d also recently learned (me) and … people whose lavish
weak. 7/10 idea, with a pity point about the cadaver rooms in the trips got cancelled because of the 8. “Bowdoin alignment charts.”
for effort. basement of Adams, so I was coronavirus. :) Wrote this one in In a similar vein as my yogurt
having a moment. I’m very much my notes before the hellstorm that idea but with less flare. These I ac-
2. “Pick up lines used by lax play- over this phase, I promise, but also is our life descended :) hahaha this tually took it upon myself to cre-
ers.” if anyone wants to talk I have a hurts :) 0/10, terrible idea. ate, so I’ve included them below.
I have actually no clue where I lot of theories about the Shannon
was going with this one consider- Room. 6/10 idea. 6. “People on zoom who suck.” P.S. if you don’t know what an
ing 1. I have never talked to a lax This one I actually could have alignment chart is, your parents
player in my life and 2. I have nev- 4. “Alignment chart of yogurts done for an article this week if I probably loved you enough to
er had anyone use a pickup line here.” didn’t suck, but alas, such is life. restrict access to the internet while
on me, so I DEFINITELY have Thorne brunch has some You guys know who I’m talking you grew up. God bless.
PLACES TO EAT COURTESY OF LILY RANDALL
Friday, May 1, 2020 NEWS
NEWS IN BRIEF Tenure decisions extended, BCQs
cancelled in wake of of remote learning
COMPILED BY DIEGO VELASQUEZ
by Alyce McFadden
Orient Staff
The College will extend ten-
ure decisions by one year and
has created an adapted, informal
questionnaire to temporarily
replace the formal Bowdoin
Course Questionnaires (BCQs)
to account for the novel coro-
navirus (COVID-19) pandem-
ic’s disruption of professors’
ROHINI KURUP, THE BOWDOIN ORIENT
teaching and scholarship. These
changes were recommended
by the Committee for Appoint-
ments, Promotions and Tenure
(CAPT) to ensure that profes-
sors are evaluated according to
an equitable and fair standard
despite unusual and varied cir-
cumstances.
“Lives are upside down. Some
[professors] are teaching syn-
chronously; some are teaching
asynchronously. Some have kids
at home; some are single par-
ents,” said Professor of Chemis-
try and Environmental Studies
EMILY COHEN, THE BOWDOIN ORIENT
MUTUAL AID
ABROAD CHANGED ME: In the face of coronavirus (COVID-19)
uncertainty, students are facing a difficult decision on studying away in the fall.
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1
Ninety students have already changed their plans. ciate the fund from the College to recognize the BLA as a student
NINETY SOPHOMORES WITHDRAW and the BLA by removing the
College’s name from the fund and
FROM FALL STUDY ABROAD any associated promotion mate-
rial, in accordance with the Col-
Anticipating complications with the fall 2020 semester due
to the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, the Office of
lege’s policy that prohibits inde-
pendent fundraising by chartered
Off-Campus Study (OCS) has recommended that current sopho- student groups. Rose suggested
mores reconsider their study away plans and has given them until that administrators’ involvement
mid-to-late-June to do so. This gives students who were planning ended once the group clarified
on studying off campus in the fall of 2020 time to reconsider their the fund’s independence from the
decision. College.
“90 students have withdrawn from [studying away during] the On April 7, after Senior Vice
fall 2020 semester, with more than half deferring to the spring 2021 President and Dean for Student
semester,” wrote Christine Wintersteen, director of OCS and Inter- Affairs Janet Lohmann initial-
national Programs, in an email to the Orient. ly contacted BLA, organizers
On March 31, the U.S. State Department issued a global Level 4 changed the name of the fund
Do Not Travel advisory, writing that U.S. citizens should “avoid all to exclude Bowdoin’s name and
international travel due to the global impact of COVID-19.” Under posted a statement on the fund’s
the study-away guidelines written by OCS, student travel is prohib- webpage clarifying the fund’s
ited to countries with Level 4 State Department travel advisories. independence both from the
Wintersteen emphasized that there are still many uncertainties College and the BLA. According
surrounding study-away in the fall. to organizers, they continued to
“It is possible that study-away broadly will not be possible due host the fund on the BLA’s web-
to U.S. State Department travel advisories, currently at level 4, or site for technical reasons.
if instruction on study away programs and overseas universities “They complied with [our
remains online,” Wintersteen wrote. “It is also entirely possible that request], which was great,” Rose
other countries will have strict measures against having students said.
from the U.S. (and other countries) entering their own countries.” Later in his comments, Rose
suggested that the SOOC subse-
quently enforced its own fund-
raising policies after it learned
HAVE AN
that organizers had failed to
remove the fund from the BLA
website, and that this is what led
to the fund’s eventual shutdown.
OPINION?
“The BSG took its own deci-
sions based on its own set of rules,
and I think there’s been some
confusion and some conflation
between … what the BLA did
We’re going on summer with respect to that longstanding
[College] rule about fundraising
break, but you can still and whatever it is that the BSG
did with relation to the BLA,”
submit an Op-Ed or a Letter
said Rose.
Rose declined to comment
further on his statement made
to the Editor to during the town hall.
Members of the SOOC have
orientopinion@bowdoin. contested Rose’s comments,
however, claiming that adminis-
edu for online publication. trators took independent actions
to sanction the BLA even before
Include your full name and the SOOC had asked the organiz-
ers to remove the fund from the
phone number. BLA’s website.
According to a number of stu-
dents who participated in a video
call with Director of Student Ac-
Dharni Vasudevan, the chair of
CAPT, in a video interview with
the Orient. “So it’s not very fair
to use a survey that was designed
when resources and circum-
stances were more equitable.”
Outside of the classroom, re-
strictions on travel and the clo-
sure of non-essential businesses
might prevent professors from
achieving the same quality and
quantity of scholarship they are
otherwise expected to produce.
“Conferences are canceled.
Publishers are putting things on
hold,” Vasudevan said. “People
can’t travel abroad to archives
for field trips, labs are closed and
science people can’t be doing
that research.”
Dean of Academic Affairs
Elizabeth McCormack also not-
ed that professors might now be
spending time previously allo-
cated for research learning how
to use new video conferencing
software or preparing asynchro-
nous course materials. The de-
tivities Nate Hintze on April 16,
Hintze informed SOOC mem-
bers that the College had ceased
organization “in good standing”
at the direction of Lohmann,
because the organizers had failed
to remove the fund from the
BLA website. The students said
that Hintze explained that this
decision allowed the College to
revoke a number of the privileges
that the BLA was granted by vir-
tue of its SOOC charter.
“My committee and I were told
[by Hintze] that anything that re-
quired the Student Activities of-
fice would not be processed. For
example, the club would be able
to request SAFC fundings but
the SAFC allocations would not
be processed by Student Activi-
ties nor would clubs receive any
reimbursements,” Shah wrote.
“They also would not have access
to resources like reserving rooms
or a Blink Page.”
Hintze did not respond to
multiple requests for comment.
Shah emailed the organizers of
the BLA on April 17 to ask them
to remove the fund from the
BLA website, in compliance with
SOOC policy. But by this time,
the group existed as a chartered
organization “only in name,”
Shah said.
In a phone call with the Ori-
ent, Shah said she was not aware
of any past instances in which
the College had exercised its
authority to take away the priv-
ileges clubs retained by virtue of
their SOOC charter or to limit a
chartered club’s access to College
resources.
“To my knowledge, I’ve never
seen a decision made like this
by the College to ‘un-recognize’
a student group. It was hard for
everyone to understand what the
meaning behind it was and what
the consequences of it were,” she
said.
Neither the SOOC guidelines
nor the Student Activities Club
Leader Manual outline the Col-
lege’s authority to recognize or
un-recognize a student group.
Shah added that the timing
of Student Activities’ commu-
nication with SOOC—after the
College had already revoked the
cision protects professors from
being penalized for making this
trade-off.
If tenure-track faculty mem-
bers decide their research has
not been seriously disrupted by
the pandemic, they may opt out
of the one-year extension.
To make its recommendation,
CAPT consulted with 30 faculty
members—15 tenured and 15
on the tenure track—in the days
after the College announced the
transition to remote learning.
Even though the committee
made its recommendation be-
fore professors began teaching
remotely and before the College
announced the switch to a uni-
versal pass/fail grading system,
its findings were next to unani-
mous in support of suspending
BCQs for the semester.
“[Responses were] very con-
sistent about how the instrument
was not contextualized for the
current time,” Vasudevan said.
“And this was even before we
“To my knowledge, I’ve never
seen a decision made like this
by the College to ‘un-recognize’
a student group. It was hard for
everyone to understand what
the meaning behind it was and
what the consequences were.”
–Sonia Shah ’22, SOOC Chair
BLA’s privileges—made it seem as
though “they [were] pushing the
consequences of their decision
onto a student-led committee.”
“My committee has tried its
best to work out the best possible
solution in these circumstances,
especially when they felt pres-
sure from the administration
to take a certain stance,” wrote
Shah. “I think the SOOC is also
disappointed in the way the ad-
ministration has responded and
misrepresented our work during
these times. The administrators
were clearly involved and it’s sad
to see them hiding their involve-
ment and decisions in the matter.”
After student organizers shut
down the mutual aid fund on
April 21, the SOOC voted to re-
tain BLA’s charter, prompting the
College to re-recognize the club
in good standing and restore its
privileges.
Meanwhile, the fund’s orga-
nizers had not been informed
about the temporary loss of the
BLA’s privileges. The only com-
munication BLA had received
was on April 15, when Lohmann
informed the fund’s organizers
that she did not support the
group’s standing as a recognized
student group, but she did not
specify the implications of that
statement.
But Ben Ray ’20, an organizer
of the fund and member of the
BLA, was not surprised to learn
that the College had taken drastic
steps to limit the BLA’s activity
and access to resources.
“It’s no coincidence that they
are invoking authority over stu-
dent organizations to suppress
activities of a group that has
historically pressed them to do
better,” he said.
Ray added that while the
group did not want to lose its
3
knew how bad it was.”
The official decision by the
Office of Academic Affairs en-
courages, but does not require,
professors to utilize the new
questionnaire. The new survey
was designed by Director of the
Baldwin Center for Teaching
and Learning Kathrine Byrnes
and Associate Dean of Academic
Affairs Rachel Beane and will
be administered through Black-
board’s survey software.
Results from these question-
naires may be used by professors
in writing “dossiers”—self-eval-
uative documents the Office of
Academic Affairs uses in the
process of making tenure and
promotion decisions—but pro-
fessors pursuing tenure or pro-
motion will neither be required
nor expected to incorporate
responses from this semester’s
questionnaire in self-evalua-
tions.
SOOC charter, pressure from ad-
ministrators played a significant
role in the group’s decision to
close down the fund.
“Our choice to shut down
the fund was a result of pressure
from multiple fronts, one of those
being our limitations as a student
group [as specified by the SOOC]
… the other being pressure from
the administration,” said Ray.
“There were no concrete threats
of disciplinary action, but from
continued correspondence [with
administrators] it was clear that
they didn’t support what we were
doing. It sent a message.”
“It was very clear that right off
the bat the administration want-
ed this shut down,” said Diego
Grossmann ’20, another of the
fund’s organizers and member of
BLA.
In an email to the Orient,
Lohmann said she did not threat-
en the fund’s leaders with dis-
ciplinary action, but otherwise
declined to comment on her in-
volvement. She did not respond
to subsequent requests for com-
ment.
On April 24, the day the Ori-
ent published a story about the
closing of the fund, the College
updated its COVID-19 FAQ page
to include information about the
College’s pre-existing emergency
relief fund, administered by the
Office of the Dean of Students.
On Thursday evening, the BSG
executive council announced in a
school-wide email that it had of-
fered $20,000 of the BSG’s surplus
budget to supplement the Col-
lege’s existing emergency funds.
“After communicating with
the Dean’s office we have decid-
ed to trust that they are the best
individuals to be making these
decisions,” the executive council
wrote.
4 NEWS Friday, May 1, 2020

Brunswick braces for students’ return this summer

byJohnny Liesman
and Cole van Miltenburg
Orient Staff
Though the College has yet
to announce an official decision
about housing on campus over
the summer as of Thursday,
many students who planned to
live and work on or near cam-
pus are expecting strict limits
on the number of students Bow-
doin will house. In anticipation,
students have been claiming
off-campus residences in hopes
of having a “Bowdoin summer,”
even if their work must be con-
ducted remotely.
But returning to Bruns-
wick during the coronavirus
(COVID-19) pandemic means
students will have to adjust to
and navigate new social distanc-
ing regulations.
“While we are in this state of
“It’s possible that my intern-
ship will change from virtual
to in-person in the middle of
the summer because it’s a cam-
paign, so it’s kind of flexible,”
said Rose in a phone interview
with the Orient. “So my plan is
just to be there.”
The arrival of students will
coincide with the start of Gov-
ernor Janet Mills’ multi-staged
proposal to reopen the state,
which was released on Tuesday.
The tentative plan includes an
updated limit of 50 people per
gathering (up from a current
limit of 10 people per gathering)
and the opening of restaurants
and some retail establishments
effective June 1.
Despite these somewhat
relaxed restrictions, social dis-
tancing and health requirements
are still set to remain in place in-
“No one is immune to the
tensions inherent in the corona-
virus pandemic,” Gardner-Pus-
chak said. “Students returning
to Brunswick are going to need
to contribute some of their daily
energy to thinking about their
social space and distancing in
a way that they haven’t before.
There will be an added element
to all social interactions.”
Brunswick Town Coun-
cilwoman Kathy Wilson also
explained the necessity of
adhering to health and safety
precautions throughout the
summer, particularly focusing
on the importance of wearing
face masks in public spaces.
Given the relatively high con-
centration of elderly residents in
Maine, she placed responsibility
on younger community mem-
bers to play their part.
“While we are in this state
of pandemic, we need to be

pandemic, we need to be willing

willing to wear masks,” Wilson
said in a phone interview with
to wear masks. I have noticed the Orient. “I have noticed that
when it is someone not wearing when it is someone not wearing
a mask, it’s usually a younger
a mask, it’s usually a younger person because they might feel
person because they might feel invincible.”

invincible.”
–Kathy Wilson, Brunswick Town
Councilwoman
According to state guidelines,
people traveling into Maine
from out of state are required to
self-quarantine for 14 days upon
arrival. The state’s Center for
Disease Control and Prevention
Communications Director Rob-
ert Long explained the implica-
tions of mandated self-isolation
for Bowdoin students arriving
from all over the country.
“[A self-quarantine] would
require that [students] bring
enough food, medications, and
other necessary items to get
through 14 days in their sum-
mer residence without leaving
in a way that could expose oth-
ers to the virus,” Long wrote in
an email to the Orient.
Jacob Rose ’21, who will be
working for the Maine State
House Speaker Sara Gideon’s
senatorial campaign, said that
he plans to live in Brunswick for
the summer regardless of what
happens with his internship.
definitely. And, on Wednesday
morning, Mills signed an execu-
tive order mandating that masks
be worn in public spaces where
social distancing is limited.
“Just wear a mask … and if
you’re going to spend any length
of time closer to somebody,
wash your hands, use hand san-
itizer … those things don’t end
even when you expand the size
of groups to 50,” said Bowdoin
Director of Health Services Jef-
frey Maher. “We’re still going to
be enrolled in physical distanc-
ing for a while.”
When returning to Bruns-
wick for the summer, Maher
emphasized that students will
need to abide by Mills’ require-
ments. Theo Gardner-Puschak
’20, who is living in off-cam-
pus housing to finish the se-
mester of remote learning,
understands the challenges of
social distancing while living
amongst peers.
Wilson said that if visitors
abide by the health guidelines
in place, she does not think
students returning to campus
will pose a problem. Senior Vice
President for Communications
and Public Affairs Scott Hood
echoed this sentiment.
“As long as [students] contin-
ue to observe best practices for
staying healthy and safe during
the pandemic—including doing
what they can to avoid putting
others at risk—I don’t think
Bowdoin students pose any
greater risk to the local com-
munity than anyone else,” Hood
said. ANN BASU, THE BOWDOIN ORIENT
While there is no firm esti- NOBODY’S HOME: Although Brunswick might feel empty today, students are still clamoring to secure leases for
mate for how many students housing this summer.
will return to the Brunswick “Every landlord I talked to year. COVID-19 pandemic.
area, some have already ex- was like, ‘I’m talking to other “The landlord had men- “I think there’s a temptation
perienced trouble in finding people … I’ve had numerous tioned that all of his tenants for with so many Bowdoin students
available leases. Emilia Majer- people reach out to me,’ so it the summer usually come from in one place to not follow the
sik ’22 had summer living ar- definitely felt like a competitive the Bowdoin Music Festival and social distancing measures,”
rangements which fell through search,” Majersik said in a phone had all canceled their leases be- Majersik said. “I feel like it’s
after student tenants decided to interview with the Orient. cause, obviously, the festival is important for Bowdoin students
extend their current lease. She Some students experienced canceled,” said John in a phone to have a realization that it’s not
was eventually able to secure greater success in this regard. call with the Orient. going to be a normal Bowdoin
another off-campus apartment Kate John ’22 found a house In any case, Majersik ac- summer.”
with friends, but she encoun- after reaching out to the land- knowledged the uncertain so- Roither Gonzales, Rebecca
tered several roadblocks along lord of a friend who had lived cial impact of students return- Norden-Bright and Lily Randall
the way. off campus during the academic ing to Brunswick during the contributed to this report.

From the town hall: College will adjust leave of absence policy, and other takeaways
by Danielle Quezada
Orient Staff
President Clayton Rose
and Dean for Student Affairs
Janet Lohmann answered
questions posed by over
200 students during a town
hall meeting over Zoom on
Wednesday night. Question
topics ranged from potential
limits on the number of stu-
dents taking leave in the fall
to when students can retrieve
take a leave of absence and
that the College will not dis-
courage students from doing
so. She added that given the
current circumstances, the
criteria for taking leave will
probably be changed from
their current iteration in the
Student Handbook, but did
not specify how.
These changes will be an-
nounced at the end of this
semester, before the College
makes a decision about invit-
a final decision on the College’s
summer plans would be an-
nounced on May 1.
In regards to summer re-
search fellowships, Rose an-
nounced that permission to
be on campus will be consid-
ered on a “faculty by faculty,
project by project decision.”
He added that any research
that can be done remotely
will be.
According to Lohmann,
students who are currently
to self-quarantine for 14
days, making the logistics of
pick up challenging for out-
of-state students. Lohmann
did not specify a timeline for
when students will be able to
collect their belongings but
added that more information
Rose also noted that, contrary
to what some believe, remote
learning models are significantly
more expensive for the College
on the College’s budget. Stu-
dents asked about how dam-
age to the endowment could
impact financial aid.
“If we were to be in a long
and prolonged downturn in
the markets … we would have
to think differently about
sibility for the fall semester,
but it has yet to be addressed
in depth.
“We’re working and look-
ing at the budgets on a lot of
different models and trying
to understand how we think
about where tuition comes
into that and the value of the
Bowdoin education and so
forth” said Rose.
Rose also noted that, con-
trary to what some believe,
remote learning models are

than in-person teaching.

personal belongings left be-
hind in Brunswick.
When asked about the
College’s plans in case of an
increase in the number of
students wanting to take a
semester or year off if remote
learning continues, Lohmann
said there is currently no plan
to limit the number of stu-
dents who might choose to
ing students back to campus
in the fall. Lohmann said
that students will have time
to consider all options before
making a decision about next
semester’s enrollment.
After some students ex-
pressed concern regarding the
lack of a final decision on sum-
mer housing and employment
on campus, Lohmann said that
living on campus will have
the opportunity to stay after
May 17.
Although students who left
belongings in temporary col-
lege storage were originally
told they would be able to pick
up their items at the end of
the academic term, Lohmann
said these plans have changed.
Visitors to Maine are required
will be available as Maine
makes updated decisions on
social distancing guidelines
in the coming weeks and
months.
Rose and Lohmann also
addressed concerns about the
financial fallout of the crisis
our financial aid policy,” said
Rose.
However, Rose affirmed
the College’s commitment to
maintaining its need-blind
financial aid policy.
Additionally, Rose said a
reduction in tuition is a pos-
significantly more expensive
for the College than in-per-
son teaching.
Despite the uncertainty
surrounding many of the
topics raised during the town
hall, Rose said that the Col-
lege’s goal is to bring everyone
back to campus in the fall.
“If there is a way to do it,
we will do it.” said Rose.
Friday, May 1, 2020
Fulbright pushes start date to January, seniors reconsider plans
by Nina McKay
Orient Staff
The spring typically brings a
flurry of excitement for Bowdoin
applicants to the Fulbright Stu-
dent Program. Bowdoin students
have fared well in the past—the
College had 19 successful ap-
plicants in 2018-2019, second
only to Williams College among
American liberal arts colleges.
This year, however, the
COVID-19 pandemic has creat-
ed an unprecedented disruption
for both current and prospec-
tive grantees. In mid-March, all
current grantees were advised
to quickly depart from their
host countries, and on April 21,
the program informed incom-
ing study/research and English
Teaching Assistant (ETA) grant-
ees that they will not be permit-
ted to begin their work before
January 1, 2020.
“[Fulbright] is large, well-es-
tablished, and it’s been continual-
ly running since 1948,” said Kate
Myall, assistant director of the
Center for Cocurricular Oppor-
tunities, in a video interview with
the Orient. “While there have
been moments since 1948 …
when things have been disrupted,
this worldwide effect is complete-
ly unprecedented.”
Owen Tuck ’20 learned last
week that he had been awarded
a study/research grant to work
at a lab in a Max Planck Institute
in Potsdam, Germany. Usually,
the scientists at the lab work on
developing solutions to antibiotic
resistance.
“My project would be de-
signing a vaccine for one type of
really deathly resistant bacteria
Student aid office to waive Health Center continues supporting students, opens
summer work expectation virtual consultations
Financial aid grants remain on schedule
by Diego Lasarte
Orient Staff
The Bowdoin Office of Stu-
dent Aid has announced that
it will waive the summer work
expectation component of
student financial aid packages
as a result of the coronavirus
(COVID-19) pandemic. In an
email sent to all students who
receive financial aid, Micheal
Bartini, director of financial
aid, cited an effort to relieve
financial pressure in what he
called a time with a “unique
combination of stresses relat-
ed to COVID-19.”
Bartini clarified that the
work expectation would be
replaced with an additional
grant, and that this change was
only applicable to the 2020-
2021 academic year.
The Office of Student Aid
also confirmed that the details
of the financial aid grants for
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that plagues a lot of hospitals, es-
pecially in the developing world,”
Tuck said in a video interview
with the Orient. “The research
now looks like it would probably
be more like vaccines for corona-
virus, because a lot of groups have
pivoted.”
Tuck, who would have started
his research in mid-September,
learned about the new January
start date from a friend before
he was notified of his acceptance,
and after he received his accep-
tance email, he then received an
official email about the delay.
Like Tuck, Ely Spencer ’20
found out last week that he had
been awarded an ETA grant
to work in Spain and that the
program would not begin until
January. The Spanish Fulbright
commission has yet to tell him
where in the country he will be
placed or what school he will be
working in.
The delayed Fulbright start
date creates a logistical puzzle for
Spencer.
“I’m applying to other stuff
too and looking at other oppor-
tunities—I don’t really know how
it all might fit together,” Spencer
said in a video interview with the
Orient. “I think this is true for
more seniors this year.”
Neither Spencer nor Tuck
have officially accepted their
grants, and both are making al-
ternative plans as they await more
information from their respective
commissions. Tuck, who was
accepted to a doctorate program
in chemistry at the University of
California, Berkeley, had planned
to defer matriculation if he re-
ceived the Fulbright grant, but
he is now considering starting
returning students would be
announced on schedule.
Dean of Admissions and
Student Aid Whitney Soule
wrote in an email to the Ori-
ent that financial aid grants
will likely be sent out before
the College reaches a final
decision regarding the fall
semester, and that grants will
be revised if there is any sub-
sequent change to the cost of
attendance.
Soule said that she under-
stands it may be difficult or
impossible for students to
work this summer. She added
that the College is taking into
account the wide range of fi-
nancial impacts that the coro-
navirus pandemic has had on
students.
“We hope that waiving the
summer work expectation
for this year will relieve some
stress for our students,” said
Soule.
NEWS
graduate school this fall. Alterna-
tively, if his supervisor at the lab is
able to pay him a salary, he would
consider starting work in Germa-
ny in September as planned and
then making use of the Fulbright
funding once it is made available
after the updated start date in
January.
Neither Spencer nor Tuck
have received specific informa-
tion about the impact of the delay
on their funding, their program’s
updated end dates or the date by
which they would have to accept
their grants. Myall explained that
the rapidly-evolving health crisis
forced countries participating in
Fulbright to make multiple deci-
sions before they had formulated
concrete contingency plans.
“They’re making decisions
before they have plans,” she said.
Myall and Janice Jaffe, interim
director of Student Fellowships
and Research, explained that the
Fulbright, which is bilaterally
run and funded by the U.S. State
Department and the countries
where grantees work, typically
allows countries to make their
own decisions about evacuations
and safety concerns. They expect
countries will make decisions
about altering end dates to allow
grantees to stay for the full ten-
month period. They added that
the countries’ decisions would
likely depend on what sources of
funding they had available and,
for ETA grants, whether the start
of the school year had also been
delayed.
In the meantime, Myall and
Jaffe said they continue to receive
frequent email updates from the
Institute for International Edu-
cation, the entity within the U.S.
by Roither Gonzales
Orient Staff
Since the College transi-
tioned to remote learning
due to the novel coronavirus
(COVID-19), Bowdoin Health
Services has continued to pro-
vide free medical services to
students both on and off-cam-
pus. While the limited number
of students on campus can still
schedule in-person visits, those
who are living off-campus can
Although the Health Center is
usually not open in the summer,
Lohmann mentioned during the
Town Hall on Wednesday night
that health services may have
some availability this summer.
now reach out to the Health
Center to request prescription
refills and schedule remote
consultations through Micro-
soft Teams.
The bulk of the services of-
fered by the Health Center are
treatments for acute medical
problems, which are medical
concerns that have suddenly
developed, including physical
injuries or illnesses. According
to Director of Health Services
Jeffrey Maher, the shift to on-
line consultations doesn’t mean
a drop in quality of care com-
State Department that runs the
Fulbright Student Program.
Current grantees also expe-
rienced this long-term planning
process when they were told to
depart from their countries in
March. Myall and Jaffe explained
that grantees were given a $1000
relocation stipend and will con-
tinue to receive funding and
health insurance at least through
June. Students were not given this
information in initial emails from
the U.S. State Department which
urged them to return to the Unit-
ed States.
Some Fulbright recipients
were sent home on a coun-
try-by-country basis, but all
remaining grantees were urged
to return by the U.S. State De-
partment once it had declared a
global Level 4 Travel Advisory on
March 31.
Myall and Jaffe explained that
there have been disruptions to the
program in the past, including
several years ago when students
who were awarded Fulbright
grants to do work in Venezuela
were reassigned to neighboring
countries for safety reasons, and
one instance where a student who
was awarded a study/research
grant in Egypt in 2013 was reas-
signed to Jordan due to the Arab
Spring.
However, Fulbright’s capacity
to reassign grantees is limited.
In 2016, in the wake of the coup
in Turkey, the entire cohort of
80 incoming ETAs had their
grants suspended, not reassigned,
during the summer before their
planned departure.
“Super large cohorts … [are]
not so easily reassigned,” Myall
said, relating that instance to the
pared to in-person appoint-
ments.
“In my experience, about 90
percent of the time, the medi-
cal problem can be discerned
by accurate history, [and] by
talking to a person, I can come
up with a general idea or maybe
a really good idea of what’s go-
ing on,” Maher said in a video
interview with the Orient. “A
physical exam may corroborate
what I’m already thinking, but
it’s not the most important part
of a medical encounter. That’s
the interview and discussion.”
With the majority of hos-
pitals overwhelmed by the
COVID-19 pandemic, it is
harder for students to access
their primary healthcare pro-
viders and receive basic med-
ical services such as refilling
prescriptions. The health cen-
ter’s shift to telemedicine has
allowed for a continuity of care
for many students, especially
for those who have ongoing
relationships with the health
center.
current situation. “I don’t think
Fulbright wants to suspend [all
of its programs] for the first time
since 1948, but when it’s a global
pandemic, where are people be-
ing reassigned to?”
Jaffe and Myall also explained
that their phone and email
conversations with prospective
Fulbright recipients involve dis-
cussing the possibility of being on
lockdown in their host country
after arrival, which would not
be conducive to the kinds of in-
tercultural interaction that many
applicants desire.
“It certainly seems rushed, especially
because you’re essentially asking
someone to forgo a source of income
or any sort of financial support that
they had counted on. But that’s
also the case for a lot of people all
over the world right now; it’s not
Fulbright-exclusive by any stretch.”
–Owen Tuck ’20
While acknowledging that
these circumstances put recipi-
ents in a complicated and stress-
ful situation, Myall and Jaffe also
emphasize the importance of
keeping American grantees in the
United States until the situation
becomes more stable to avoid
placing a strain on other coun-
tries’ healthcare systems, and
they praise current and prospec-
tive grantees for their flexibility in
navigating this process.
Indeed, while Tuck and Spen-
cer both expressed some anxiet-
ies about putting a plan in place
for the upcoming year, they also
Itza Bonilla-Hernandez ’20
praised the Health Center’s
speed and accessibility while
refilling her prescriptions.
“I used [health services] to
get some prescriptions I need-
ed, and it was super easy and
they got back to me very quickly
and everything went smoothly,”
wrote Bonilla-Hernandez in an
email to the Orient.
Despite their availability,
Maher has noted a significant
drop in the number of students
using their services.
“As people are sheltering in
place or spread out through-
out the country, they are not
getting sick. And if they are
getting sick, they’re able to
manage from home because
people’s first resource is the
people they live with,” Maher
said. “So they may have more
home resources that they don’t
have to call health services for.”
Students do not need to be
on Bowdoin’s health insurance
to access the Health Center’s
resources.
For students covered by
Bowdoin’s Health Insurance
Plan who may be concerned
about their ability to access
medical care when the academ-
ic year ends, Maher empha-
sized that the coverage ends in
August.
However, during the Town
Hall on Wednesday, Dean of
Student Affairs Janet Lohmann
5
demonstrated attitudes of accep-
tance when discussing their cur-
rent decision-making processes.
Tuck had been told that he will be
contacted by a Fulbright regional
representative at an unknown
time, and he will then have two
weeks to decide whether he will
accept the offer.
“It certainly seems rushed, es-
pecially because you’re essentially
asking someone to forgo a source
of income or any sort of financial
support that they had counted
on,” he said. “But that’s also the
case for a lot of people all over
the world right now; it’s not Ful-
bright-exclusive by any stretch.”
Spencer echoed this senti-
ment, emphasizing the gratitude
he felt for having received his
acceptance.
“I think there’s a ton of uncer-
tainty involved,” he said. “More
than anything, I think this is a
really cool opportunity that I’m
really excited about, and we’ll see
what happens.”
The application for the 2021-
2022 Fulbright cycle is now open,
as originally scheduled, and the
process is proceeding normally
as of now.
stated that even if the fall se-
mester is remote, students will
still be able to apply for Bow-
doin’s health insurance with a
similar application process as
previous years.
Although the Health Cen-
ter is usually not open in the
summer, Lohmann mentioned
during the Town Hall on
Wednesday night that health
services may have some avail-
ability this summer.
“But, I’m not sure it will be
available strictly [for the] lim-
ited number of students who
are on campus for the summer
or whether we’d be opening up
to students who are living in
Brunswick, but traditionally we
encourage students to use the
walk-in clinic and other local
services,” she said.
Looking ahead, the Health
Center has begun preparing
for next semester, whether it be
online or on-campus.
“We’ll be tasked with plans
on how to manage students on
campus, students remotely and
students who have to fluctuate
quickly between being on cam-
pus to remotely, because that
could happen too,” said Maher.
“We’re ready to do whatever
the situation allows, with guid-
ance from the College but also
with guidance from our peers
in the state of Maine, peers [at]
the CDC and peers at other
colleges.”
6 NEWS Friday, May 1, 2020

Virtual panel discusses Asian identity and bias during pandemic

by Sophie Burchell
Orient Staff
The Asian Students Alliance
(ASA) hosted a virtual pan-
el on Tuesday to discuss the
increased racial bias faced by
the Asian and Asian American
community due to the corona-
virus (COVID-19) pandem-
ic. Students, faculty and staff
shared personal experiences,
discussed the historical context
and posed questions of identi-
ty.
The event, “Asian Identities
in Times of Crisis,” was held
on Zoom and was attended by
almost 40 participants. Pri-
or to the College’s transition
to remote learning, ASA had
planned numerous on-cam-
pus events in April for Asian
Heritage Month. While most
of the events have since been
cancelled, the importance and
timeliness of the topic prompt-
ed ASA co-presidents Yvonne
Fang ’20 and Alexander Lee ’20
to plan the panel.
“Connecting virtually and
discussing important issues
on one hand validates people,
shows they’re not alone and
provides support,” said Fang
in a phone interview with the
Orient. “It’s also an in-depth
and hopefully thought-pro-
voking discussion and, in that
way, it’s a good way to build COURTESY OF YVONNE FANG
solidarity.” ZOOMING IN: Students attend the “Asian Identities in Times of Crisis” event over Zoom. The panel focused on increasing racial biases leveled against the Asian and Asian American community.
Panelists emphasized the di-
versity of the Asian and Asian changed my mind for sure … I of the coronavirus, Brunswick Panelists also shared expe- American community to “show cans have had to grapple with
American community both was not targeted and I’m really appeared untouched by the riences of feeling their “Amer- American-ness.” both historically and in this
within the United States and at lucky,” said attendee Cheng Xing distant suffering. ican” identities challenged. However, Chiang explained current moment.”
Bowdoin. The difficult realities ’23 in a phone interview with the “On the one side is Wuhan Professor of History and that Asian American belong- The discussion highlighted
Asian Americans are facing at Orient. “It’s quite interesting and that is sinking … on the verge Environmental Studies Con- ing was not and should not be poignant aspects of Asian and
this moment were also made dramatic how even though we’re of collapse. People who cannot nie Chiang drew parallels to conditaional on people proving Asian American existence in
clear as participants shared both Asian, these [experiences] breathe … Health care profes- the internment of Japanese their Americanness. times of crisis, and members
personal stories, such as being can be so different.” sionals dealing with exhaustion Americans in concentration “Why should Asian Ameri- of ASA hope to continue the
targeted with racist comments Associate Professor of Histo- and shortage of medical equip- camps during World War II. At cans, at this moment, do what- discourse as the pandemic un-
while out grocery shopping. ry and Asian Studies Leah Zuo ment,” Zuo said. “And the other the time, the Japanese Ameri- ever they can show that they folds.
Asian and Asian American spoke on the differences she side of the world is Brunswick can Citizens League advised are American? Why is that an “I really hope that the dis-
students who attended the on- observed between her home- … February [is] a character- compliance with the intern- appropriate response or ap- cussion will continue on be-
line panel said the discussion town of Wuhan, China and istically tranquil time period. ment as a display of American propriate advice to give, when yond this panel, and in the
broadened their perspective on her residence in Brunswick, You know, students came back loyalty—a sentiment panel- Asian Americans … are Amer- larger Bowdoin community,”
the effect the pandemic is hav- especially in late January and to campus and were happy with ists said was problematically icans?” said Chiang in a video Fang said. “This is an ongoing
ing on others. February. While Wuhan was on anticipation and with the smil- echoed in politician Andrew interview with the Orient. “It’s crisis and a lot of people are
“Hearing their stories lockdown as the first hotspot ing faces.” Yang’s recent call for the Asian a question that Asian Ameri- impacted in different ways.”

CARES for students. These funds are

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1
lege’s discretion to assist with
students’ emergency expens-
es. The additional half can
be used to offset coronavirus
(COVID-19)-related costs, to
upgrade technology or as ad-
ditional student aid.
Stanford, Princeton, Har-
vard and Yale are among a
few universities which have
declined the federal aid en-
tirely. However, the universi-
ties did not raise the concern
about students’ identities be-
ing disclosed in any of their
statements on why they did
not accept the funds. Instead,
the universities said that their
allotted funds should be re-
distributed to smaller, less
financially secure colleges and
universities.
Although Stanford, Prince-
ton, Harvard and Yale declined
federal funds, each university
has allocated some of its own
funds for direct emergency aid
open to all students, regardless
of citizenship status, which is
not the case under the CARES
Act funding stipulations.
The U.S. Department of Ed-
ucation clarified that DACA
students—undocumented
students who arrived in the
United States as children—
and international students do
not qualify for CARES Act
funding.
During the virtual town
hall, Rose encouraged stu-
dents who were seeking emer-
gency assistance to contact
their dean, even if the College
decides not to accept the fed-
eral funding.
“I want to encourage you
to come to the dean’s office—
don’t wait for this CARES Act
money,” he said. “If it’s there,
terrific. If you think you can
use it, apply for it, but also, if
you have a need now, come
and talk to the dean’s office.”
The Office of the Dean of
Students has emergency fund-
ing available for students, an
application which can be ac-
cessed through an online form.
This fund has been available to
students all year and was not
created for COVID-19 related
emergencies. According to the
Office of the Dean of Students,
the funding operates off of do-
nations from alumni, parents
and friends of the College.
Numerous students re-
ported to the Orient that they
were not aware of the College’s
emergency funds until Rose’s
comments during Wednes-
day’s town hall.
“I don’t think anyone I
know, at the time, knew that
existed nor did they reach
out for it,” said Aoguzi Muh-
ameiti ’23 in a video interview
with the Orient. “The funds
we were reaching out to were
third party systems.”
Muhameiti said he received
funding from student orga-
nized funds.
Dean of Students Kristina
Bethea Odejimi sent an email
to all students on September
10 informing them of the avail-
quests are awaiting additional
information.
informed assessments regard-
ing a student’s circumstances,”
ability of emergency funding. In an email to all students BSG wrote in its email to stu-
The fund has not been refer- last night, Bowdoin Student dents.
enced in student-wide emails Government (BSG) Execu- According to the email, BSG
on any occasion since. tive Team announced BSG and the Office of the Dean of
Students are still working out
the terms on how the money
“I want to encourage you to come can be used, but BSG felt it was
to the dean’s office—don’t wait for necessary to inform students
this CARES Act money. If it’s there, of the decision.
“I hope that students are
terrific. If you think you can use it, comfortable trying to access
apply for it, but also, if you have the fund. I know there’s been a
lot of confusion as to whether
a need now, come and talk to the or not there were funds avail-
dean’s office.” able through the College to
help them if they’re in difficult
–President Clayton Rose financial circumstances or
something unexpected arose,”
The Office of the Dean of has offered almost the entire Ural Mishra ’20, BSG pres-
Students wrote in an email to remaining portion of the ident, said in a video inter-
the Orient that it has received BSG budget—approximately view with the Orient. “There
15 requests for emergency $20,000—to supplement the have been students who I’ve
funding since Rose announced Office of Dean of Students’ been in communication with
the College’s shift to remote emergency funding. who really wanted BSG to put
learning due to COVID-19 “The Deans already have this information out and you
on March 11. Of those 15 re- access to information regard- know, it is our job to make
quests, 11 have been complet- ing students, and therefore are sure that students know that
ed, and the remaining four re- in a better place to make more this is available.”

In recognition of the COVID-19 pandemic, The Orient is offering free advertising for Brunswick businesses. The Orient is an effective way to reach Bowdoin students, faculty and staff as well as
parents, alumni and community members. We believe that this initiative can help you and your customers during this difficult time. Please contact orientads@gmail.com for details.
 F FEATURES
Friday, May 1, 2020 7

Uncertainty, yearnings and hope:

international students amid COVID-19
TIANYI XU, THE BOWDOIN ORIENT
STAYING INSIDE: Many international students remain in Brunswick Apartments at the College, where it snowed last week. The students expressed concern about how the virus might affect job prospects and returning home this summer.

by Tianyi Xu
Orient Staff
When President Clayton
Rose first announced that the
College would transition to
remote learning on March 11,
the news set off a firestorm of
messages in “ISA Bowdoin,”
a WhatsApp group chat for
members of the International
Students Association (ISA). In
the frantic 12 hours that fol-
lowed, international students
were left with the impression
that they were being displaced
from campus housing with no
reprieve.
As chaos unraveled, Lem-
ona Niu ’23 was in Aroostook
County, Maine, on one of the
not-yet-cancelled Alternative
Spring Break trips, consumed
by the fear and trepidation that
had become common among
virtually every international
student, asking herself, “Where
do I go now?” As a deluge of
possibilities flooded her imag-
ination, she felt abandoned by
the administration.
“At the very beginning, I feel
like international students were
a little bit left out by the admin-
istration,” Niu said.
It was unclear at first whom,
among College administrators,
international students could
reach out to.
“We wrote emails and asked
the school what to do, only to
be met with responses like ‘Do
you have friends in the coun-
try?’ or ‘Think creatively,’” Niu
said.
While Associate Dean of
Upperclass Students Khoa
Khuong serves as Bowdoin’s
liaison with international stu-
dents, the College has no office
dedicated solely to internation-
al student affairs.
“[Dean Khuong] is a dean
of students; he has a lot to take
care of on top of international
students, and I feel like we need
to have a point person that we
could talk to just about interna-
tional student matters,” said Jay
Yoon ’21. “Most of [Bowdoin’s
peer institutions] have at least
one person delegated just for
international student affairs.”
“I think if we had a de-
voted staffer to international
students, who make up 10
percent of the student body,
things would have just gone a
lot smoother, with everything
in terms of questions, housing
and logistics of moving,” added
Nirhan Nurjadin ’21, president
of ISA. “That is something I
know a lot of students are pas-
sionate about, even before the
whole pandemic.”
On the same night as Presi-
dent Rose’s initial email, how-
ever, the College clarified its
position and offered Brunswick
Apartments as housing for in-
ternational students through
May 17. Take-out meals were
made available at select hours
each day at the Moulton
Union dining hall for students,
though most campus facilities
remained closed. Despite ini-
tial hiccups, students say the
College has successfully imple-
mented social distancing while
providing housing.
“I think it’s been nice still be-
ing on campus and being able
to do classes here as opposed to
being at home,” Nurjadin said.
“Still living with other students
who I’m really good friends
with has just been really nice.”
On Thursday, Dean for Stu-
dent Affairs Janet Lohmann
announced in an email to in-
ternational students on cam-
pus that current residents will
be permitted to remain on
campus after the semester. Al-
though dining will be closed,
meal assistance remains avail-
able upon petition.
Other next steps, however,
remain uncertain for interna-
tional students. Unemploy-
ment rates across the globe are
skyrocketing and the job mar-
ket looks bleak. Students who
previously wanted to secure
jobs in the United States after
graduation are now realizing
they may need to return to
their homes abroad.
“Entering the College as a
freshman before all of this cra-
ziness happened, I had the ex-
pectation and the goal of want-
ing to spend a couple of years
in the U.S.,” said Nurjadin, who
is from Jakarta, Indonesia. “But
I think I’ve sort of tempered
my expectations a little bit with
how competitive the job mar-
ket is going to be with a reces-
sion and the limited amount of
jobs available for international
students. I’m sort of coming to
grips with potentially having to
go home and just work there.”
Looking ahead to the sum-
mer, many students grapple
with the choice of whether to
return home—via risky, poten-
tially virus-ridden internation-
al flights—or stay. Plane tickets
are also becoming increasingly
scarce as governments restrict
international travel, and some
students worry they won’t be
able to come back to the Unit-
ed States in the fall should they
return home now.
For some, returning home
could mean upending the lives
of their family members. This
is the case for Yoon, whose
family is in South Korea, which
mandates rigorous self-quaran-
tine measures upon arrival.
“If I were to go back to
South Korea right now, I would
have to be quarantined in my
house for two weeks with an
app downloaded on my phone.
It would track the days of my
quarantine, and if I leave home
I could be fined significantly or
prosecuted criminally,” Yoon
said. “Because my dad is still
going to work, and my sister’s
going to academies, I wouldn’t
be able to stay with them for
the two weeks of quarantine.
So my dad and my sister would
have to stay somewhere else.”
Other students cite concerns
that traveling internationally,
in the current climate, could
have an unpredictable impact
on their ability to return. Niu,
a native of Beijing, China, wor-
ries that returning home may
jeopardize her immigration
status and invite even more un-
certainties.
“I think my biggest concern
is visa status, because with the
worsening U.S.-China rela-
tions and the current federal
government, I don’t know, if I
ever were to go back home, [if]
I would be able to come back
again,” Niu said.
Nurjadin is hopeful the ad-
ministration’s decision about
whether students can return
to campus for the fall semester
takes into account the partic-
ular challenges international
students face.
“In terms of international
students, [administrators] just
have to be cognizant of the dif-
ferent situations that everyone
has to go through and then go
sort of on a case-by-case basis
to judge it,” Nurjadin said. “I
would hope that if we go online
and some students have no-
where to go, that they would let
them all back on campus like
this current situation or help
set them up somewhere.”

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8 FEATURES
A vociferous applause for the class of 2020
The Search for
Spirituousness
by Lauren Hickey
Last fall, I took a nonfiction
writing course with Professor
Marzano-Lesnevich (ML). I’m
not an English major or minor
and have never considered
writing as a career. I took this
class because I enjoy writing,
and I think it is a very appli-
cable skill. Yet, I was shocked
by the unexpected lessons I
took away from this class. Pro-
fessor ML not only helped me
improve my technical writing
skills but instilled in me the
value of growth, both in my
writing and in my life.
Professor ML set aside the
last few weeks of class for work-
shopping. From my under-
standing, this meant we would
peer review each others’ final
essays. I had done this many
times before in various classes,
and it had gone well enough. I
volunteered to go first.
I had no idea what I was
getting myself into.
I submitted the first draft of
my 5,000 word essay to my 11
peers who had a week to read
it, make comments in the mar-
gins and write a one-page letter
with three points of praise and
three points of constructive
feedback. Luckily, the content
of my essay was not particular-
ly personal—it was a longform
Dear America
by Tianyi Xu
The summer of 2012 was
an extraordinary one for me.
The birch trees of Northern
California stood out against
the fiery sunsets. The kids in
my host family and I shared
“High School Musical” refer-
ences while “Call Me Maybe”
by Carly Rae Jepsen played in
the background. As a rath-
er visible foreigner to this
country, my first innocent at-
tempt at communication was
muddled by an exchange with
my host family when I asked
where the “the rubbish bin”
was—as opposed to the “trash
can,” as they later corrected
me. Or perhaps it was when I
said “open the TV” and “close
the lights” instead of “turn
on” and “turn off.”
I’m not alone in my at-
tempt to self-regulate speech
to fit a certain mold. Interna-
tional students code-switch
to accommodate American
English. But code-switching
is not exclusively for interna-
tional students—indeed, it is
practiced by everyone. There
shouldn’t be a pretense that
everyone speaks the same
way across all social scenarios
and functions—we change the
way we talk to accommodate
each and every audience in
our life.
A unitary vision of the
English language certain-
ly brings a wide variety of
benefits. The College would
nonfiction essay about barter-
ing at the local farmers’ mar-
ket. But sharing one’s writing is
vulnerable and scary.
Needless to say, when I sat
down at a round table among
my peers, who each clutched
a copy of my essay, wrinkled,
marked with coffee stains and
filled with streaks of blue and
red ink, I immediately started
sweating.
On the blackboard, Profes-
sor ML had outlined the item-
ized itinerary for the work-
shop. First, my peers would go
in a circle explaining the “sit-
uation” of the essay—where
and when it took place and
what was going on. Ok, simple
enough. Next, was the “Round
of Praise.” A circle of compli-
ments; I could handle that.
Then, the class would move
into interpreting the essay’s
“story.” Getting the story right,
Professor ML explained, was
usually impossible on the first
try and therefore would inevi-
tably lead us into the “Round
of Constructive Critique.”
Surely my ego wasn’t so fragile
that I couldn’t withstand a lit-
tle criticism. Oh, and one im-
portant rule: I had to remain
silent until the very end.
That workshop was one of
the most intense and over-
whelming experiences of my
Bowdoin career. To be fair, my
peers were extremely generous
with their praise and gracious
The case for saying it as it is
be able to maintain superb
curricula, where scholarly
works share standardization
to make them accessible to
readers and creative minds.
In its historical significance
to Western civilization and
modern value in fields like
technology, mass media, sci-
ence and literature, English
occupies a specific role in
the mission of the College: to
serve as an irreplaceable me-
dium of communication in a
community made up of schol-
ars. Indeed, without English,
the Bowdoin bubble would
shatter into smithereens and
with it any semblance of com-
munity cohesion.
But as the College heralds
efforts to become more
inclusive and diverse
in its pedagogy
and student
life,
with their criticism. But, after
earnestly thanking all of them
as they handed me marked-up
copies of my essay and their
one-page letters, I walked
out of Adams Hall feeling the
staggering weight of the thick
stack of papers. My head was
spinning as I thought about all
of the possible directions that
I could take the next draft in
and all of the holes that my
peers had exposed that I could
not readily patch. When I got
home, I wanted to shove that
stack of papers in my closet
and close the door.
As seniors, we can all collec-
tively chuckle thinking about
our professors’ mantras about
starting our essays early and
writing multiple drafts before
the deadline. Laughable in-
deed. Instead, we type late into
the night, frenetically checking
the clock and chugging coffee.
I had gotten used to submit-
ting what writer Anne Lamott
calls the “Shitty First Draft”
(which Professor ML abbrevi-
ates as “SFDs”). I would scrap
together a SFD, replace words
like “weird” and “great” with
“preposterous” and “raptur-
ous,” slap on a two-part title
cleverly separated by a colon
and hit print (just to find a
glaring sentence fragment
in the second sentence). A
few weeks later, the professor
would hand the paper back, I
would flip through and find the
the importance of respecting
linguistic diversity within the
Bowdoin community and giv-
ing voice to speakers who do
not conform to the American
vernacular is more important
than ever. Language is a vessel
for identity; it creates spaces
and opportunities for com-
munities to integrate or create
distinct boundaries.
Currently, Bowdoin’s lan-
guage use tends to coalesce
to one prominent, recognized
form of speech whose trans-
gression affords you an instant
reputation as someone with “an
accent,” someone straying from
the norm or someone who just
needs to work on speaking. And
grade, shrug, and toss the essay
into the recycling bin.
Maybe that’s why I felt so
overwhelmed after walking
out of the workshop; some-
one was actually forcing me to
write a better draft.
I’m not advocating for man-
datory revisions at Bowdoin,
because, well, that’s ridiculous.
Rather, I’m proposing some-
thing far more onerous and ab-
surd: using the revision process
as a metaphor for our lives.
In many ways, Bowdoin
was a workshop. We gave and
received praise and criticism
to and from professors, friends
and even strangers. Maybe we
took too much criticism to
heart, or not enough. Maybe
we praised too little while crit-
icizing too much. Or, maybe
we were too busy looking at the
good that we overlooked the
flaws. But, we all grew.
For me, graduating feels like
walking out of an intense writ-
ing workshop. It is overwhelm-
ing. I feel
proud
the playing field of “normality”
is not an equal one. While many
take interest in scrutinizing
accents and speech within the
United States, be it midwestern
or Californian, international
variants of English command
either an exoticized image of
other parts of the West, or a
knee-jerk reaction of “bad En-
glish” upon hearing them from
persons of color.
For people whose native
language is English, their lin-
guistic identity is a matter of
culture or self-expression. For
people whose native language
is not English, however, their
assimilation into the Bowdoin
community depends on their
NIK
DALIA TABACH
with the version of myself I
drafted at Bowdoin and daunt-
ed by the prospect that there
is so much more to learn and
do. It takes courage to ad-
mit that maybe this is just
my Shitty First Draft. But, a
simple conversation with my
grandmother—who has been
“writing” many different chap-
ters of her life for over seven
decades—never fails to remind
me how much more I have to
aspire to. And that is exciting.
The last item on Professor
ML’s workshop agenda was
designed to recognize the ac-
ALEX BURNS
mastery of English, which is
viewed as a matter of ability to
speak like a “native speaker.”
For international students,
expanding English to accom-
modate their home culture
can be seen as “bad English,”
even when it gets the point
across more naturally to in-
tended audiences.
But barring any communi-
cation barriers, the dichoto-
my between “good” and “bad”
English is a false one. If “bad”
English corresponds to any-
thing outside the standard
English grammar and syntax,
it fails to account for native
speakers who mix their moth-
er tongue with other languag-
es like Chinese (in Singapore)
or Hindi (in India). It ulti-
mately comes down to the so-
cial privilege of whether you
can speak and code-switch
freely without the risk of be-
ing labeled as linguistically
inept. Such labels may even
be carried into the academ-
ic scene, where speakers of
other varieties of English risk
having their ideas discounted
by how they verbalize them.
But Bowdoin is no stranger
to language diversity. There
is an incredible richness of
language at the College. Be it
vernaculars associated with
different ethnic groups or geo-
graphic regions domestic and
abroad, each Bowdoin student
brings with them an incredible
array of cultural heritage im-
plicit in their use of language.
Bowdoin should be a space
where all these experiences are
shared. There is a kaleidoscopic
Friday, May 1, 2020
complishments and bravery
of the writer and enthusias-
tically propel them into the
next phase of revision. It is
a “vociferous applause.” So,
friends of the class of 2020,
we will have to wait until next
year to gather together and
enjoy giving and receiving this
applause. But, for now, let us
all close our laptops after our
final Zoom sessions and vo-
ciferously applaud ourselves
and each other to celebrate the
versions of ourselves we have
already written and plunge
into writing our next drafts.
array of vernaculars, sociolects,
idioms and expressions to cor-
respond to one’s self-presen-
tation to others, whether by
gender, age or nationality. It is
further complicated by little
things, like favorite cultural
icons, membership in the queer
community, language used
at Thanksgiving tables with
extended families, passion in
sports references or even par-
ticular subreddits they spend a
lot of time on. Placing different
ways of saying the same thing
into hierarchies of “better” or
“worse”—however tempting—
is pointless.
There should be a time
when people can talk with
“auntie” instead of “Mrs.
Robinson,” or ask someone to
“close the lights” or use “rub-
bish bins” and not subscribe to
trash cans without the fear of
sounding lesser than because
of the caricatures painted by
a mass media defining the
boundaries of acceptability.
Celebrating language diver-
sity is the negation of a certain
vision of reality: a static, affixed
paradigm of assigning author-
itative meanings to words and
strict confines on how, what
and when to say things as they
are neatly collected in dictio-
naries and thesauruses. When
uniformity is called for, using
a universal form of speech fa-
cilitates information to reach
beyond geography and person-
al identities. But when rigidity
becomes entrenched, it is our
responsibility to recognize its
cause, and ask, with fervor, that
orthodoxy stops here.
Friday, May 1, 2020 9

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10
Bowdoin Orient Student Survey
DISAPPROVAL
The Faculty
Dining Services
Brunswick, Maine
The Libraries
Safety and Security
Bowdoin College
Information Technology
The Bowdoin Orient
Residential Life
Registrar
Health Center
President Rose
Your Class Council
Office of Off-Campus Study
Career Planning (CXD)
Office of the Dean of Academic Affairss
BSG President Ural Mishra
College House System
Office of the Dean of Student Affairs
Student Activities Funding Committee (SAFC)
Counseling Services
Bowdoin Student Government (BSG)
Entertainment Board
Judicial Board
Dept. of Athletics
Brunswick Police Dept.
100% 80%
Large majority of students say they will not enroll
in a remote fall semester, Orient survey shows
Over 70 percent of non-senior
students said they will not enroll
in a remote fall semester, ac-
cording to the Orient’s biannual
approval rating survey. However,
students still overwhelmingly
support Bowdoin’s handling of
the coronavirus (COVID-19)
pandemic.
Last week, the Orient sent out
the survey—the Bowdoin Orient
Student Survey, which asks for
student opinions about various
campus institutions. The survey
was sent to all 1,970 students
and yielded 615 responses (31.2
percent).
In addition to the survey’s
regular questions about demo-
graphics, academics, beliefs and
approval of campus institutions,
this semester’s survey included
several questions about student
life during the COVID-19 pan-
demic and Bowdoin’s transition
to virtual learning. Members of
the first-year, sophomore and
junior classes were also asked to
give their opinions on potential
plans for the College’s operation
next semester, official versions of
which have yet to be announced.
Amidst an abnormal time in
students’ lives, survey responses
yielded markedly different re-
sults compared to prior years.
60% 40%
Of the 26 campus institutions
surveyed, all but three—the Of-
fice of the Dean for Academic
Affairs, the Office of the Dean
for Student Affairs and the
Health Center—received higher
approval and lower disapproval
ratings than last semester. Far
more students reported being
unhappy in this semester’s sur-
vey; 60.2 percent of respondents
said they were happy, down over
20 points from 82.1 percent last
semester. Yet, 64.1 percent of
respondents think the world will
be a better place in 25 years, up
from 55 percent last semester.
The Current COVID-19 Crisis
Survey results show that
many students are connected to
someone, such as a family mem-
ber or friend, who has been con-
firmed positive for COVID-19.
Four students reported that they
had been confirmed positive for
the virus.
A large majority of students,
85 percent, think the College is
handling the COVID-19 crisis
well or very well. Still, many
expressed discontent with their
virtual classes. A majority of
students, 56.2 percent, said they
were dissatisfied with their re-
20% 0%
mote classes, of which around 16
percent reported being extreme-
ly dissatisfied. A vast majority of
students, 86.1 percent, approve
of the College’s switch to a uni-
versal Credit/No Credit grading
system.
Responses showed that stu-
dents are having differing ex-
periences with virtual learning.
Answers varied on how many of
a students’ classes met synchro-
nously. A plurality of students
(39.5 percent) reported having
two classes meet synchronous-
ly; 8.5 percent of respondents
answered that they had no
classes meeting synchronously,
while 9.6 percent reported four
or more synchronous classes.
Around 58 percent of respon-
dents said they preferred syn-
chronous classes.
The majority of students, 55.6
percent, feel they could not be
productive in their current living
situation. Around 3 percent feel
unsafe.
Looking to the Future
The College has yet to decide
what next semester will look like
and has not yet announced if
students will be back on campus
and if so, when the semester will
Friday, May 1, 2020
SPRING 2020 RESULTS
Compiled by Rohini Kurup, Gwen Davidson
and Drew Macdonald
APPROVAL
Strongly disapprove
Disapprove
Approve
Strongly approve
20% 40% 60% 80% 100%
begin. The Orient’s survey asked
non-senior students (members
President Rose Approval Rating
of the Classes of 2021, 2022 and 80% 74.1
2023) about their opinions on
the College’s options.
Less than one third of stu-
dents, 29.3 percent, said they 59.8 60.5
would enroll in the fall semester 60%
if it were to be held entirely re-
Approval Rating
motely. Around half of respon-
dents said they would take the
semester off, while others would 40% 42.4
plan to take a year off or find
another alternative. Should the
fall semester be held online, over
97 percent of respondents think
tuition should be reduced. A low 20%
enrollment in the fall semes-
ter and reduced tuition would
exacerbate the College’s finan-
cial challenges incurred from
0%
the cost of the crisis and lower Fall Spring Fall Spring
spendable returns from the en-
dowment. 2018 2019 2019 2020
More than three-quarters of
respondents prefer having the President Clayton Rose re- highest approval ratings—95.7
next semester delayed until Jan- ceived the largest increase in percent and 95.6 percent re-
uary with a second semester in approval, from 42.5 percent last spectively—with the faculty
the summer over a remote fall semester to 60.5 percent this edging Dining Services after
semester. semester, and his disapproval several semesters of trailing
score decreased. Approval of In- closely behind.
Approval of Campus Institutions formation Technology and Class Brunswick Police Depart-
Councils each increased by over ment again received the lowest
Approval ratings of campus in- 10 percent. approval rating of 16.3 percent
stitutions increased virtually across The faculty and Dining Ser- with 50.3 percent of respondents
the board from last semester. vices continue to receive the disapproving.
Friday, May 1, 2020 11

This semester, survey respondents were asked Have any of the following been confirmed positive with COVID-19?
COVID-19 SECTION several questions focusing on the COVID-19 crisis.
300
263
How well do you think Bowdoin is 250
handling the COVID-19 crisis?
1.8% Very Well 200
167

Count
14% 13.1% Well 150
Poorly 100
70
Very Poorly 48
50 29
17
71%
4
0 Myself Immediate Extended Friend Neighbor Other No relation to
Family Family someone with
Member Member COVID-19

Do you prefer synchronous or How would you describe the Wi-Fi Do you approve of the universal credit/no
asynchronous class formats? in your current living situation? credit system?
2%
Yes
Very good
Asynchronous
9.8% 13.9% No
24.1% Good
42.2% Synchronous Ok
57.8% 27.2%
Bad
36.9% Very bad 86.1%
2.1%

How satisfied are you with Do you feel like you can be productive in
your remote classes? your current living situation?
16.1%
25.5% Extremely satisfied
Yes
No
Somewhat satisfied

55.6% 44.4%
Neither satisfied nor dissatisfied
16.3% 40.1% Somewhat dissatisfied
Extremely dissatisfied

GOING REMOTE: Survey respondents were asked several questions about how their remote classes were going. Results showed a slight preference for synchronous classes over asynchronous classes and most people indicated that they
have good Wi-Fi connection. Respondents overwhelmingly approved of the universal credit/no credit system instituted by the college. A majority of respondents said they were dissatisfied with remote classes and over half of respondents
indicated that they feel like they are unable to be productive in their current living situation.

Out of the following two options to continue classes, If the fall semester were to be held entirely online,
which do you prefer? would you...

2.3%
Online classes in the fall Enroll
No classes in the fall, 11%
Take a semester off
23.9% and a January start with
a second semester in the
5.3%
29.3% Take a year off
summer Transfer
76.1% 52.3% Other

ZOOMING AHEAD: Survey respondents from the classes of 2021, 2022, and 2023 were asked about their feelings regarding next semester. Out of 402 students, 306 indicated that they would prefer no classes in the fall and a January start
with a second semester in the summer over online classes. Taking a semester off was the most popular response if the fall semester were to be held entirely online, selected by 209 out of 400 students. Many respondents that indicated other
wrote that they were undecided, some saying that their decision would depend on things such as tuition and other students’ plans.
 A ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT
12
Student performance groups navigate newfound separation
by Keyna Mecias
Orient Staff
As remote learning has be-
come the new global norm,
college communities have been
searching for ways to stay unit-
ed while physically apart. At
Bowdoin, student performance
groups are channelling their
creativity to bring the College’s
community together with virtu-
al performances.
“I think it’s really important
that student groups try to do
something,” said Brendan Pul-
sifer ’20, the leader of Improv-
abilities, in a video interview
with the Orient. “It’s much
better to attempt to make the
connection and have it fail than
to not do anything at all.”
Improvabilities, the College’s
oldest improvisational comedy
group, has been preparing in
recent weeks to host a virtual
performance. However, Pul-
sifer has some hesitations about
maintaining the quality of im-
provisational comedy on this
platform.
“A big part of the experience
of watching and doing improv
is the live physicality,” he said.
“You’re in a space and it’s a dark
auditorium. You’re watching
people interact with each oth-
er, doing scenes not only with
emotional comedy but with
physical comedy—so much of it
is being in that space.”
by Maia Coleman
Orient Staff
Eavan Boland H’04, schol-
ar, professor and trailblazing
poet, died following a stroke
in her home in Dublin on
April 27. She was 75.
Boland was born in 1944 to
Frederick Boland, a diplomat
and Irish ambassador to the
United Kingdom, and Frances
Kelly, a well-known painter.
Boland’s quick wit and rhe-
torical flare—inherited from
her father—and her sensibil-
ity for imagery and light—de-
veloped while watching her
mother paint—figure promi-
nently in her poetic work. She
passed parts of her childhood
in London and in New York
respectively before attending
Trinity College in Dublin for
her undergraduate degree.
Married to novelist Kevin
Casey and mother of two, Bo-
land published 10 volumes of
poetry as well as two volumes
of prose over the course of
her 40 year career, the most
recent of which—a collection
set to be released in October
called “The Historians”—ex-
plores the ways in which the
stories of women, previously
obscured, force us to reexam-
ine our notions of the past.
Throughout her career,
Boland taught at numerous
universities in Ireland and the
United States, including a se-
mester-long appointment as a
visiting professor at Bowdoin
Despite the challenges, Pul-
sifer is optimistic about the
performance. By returning to
the basics of improvisation, he
believes that the limits of using
a digital platform will not stop
the performers from spreading
positivity and humor.
UP CLOSE AND PERSONAL: Bowdoin Music Collective hosts ayearly “Battle of the Bands.” The event won’t take place this year due to the coronavirus pandemic.
In memory of Eavan Boland H’04
in 1988 and a 20-year tenure
as a professor of English and
the Director of the Creative
Writing Program at Stanford.
Boland also held residencies
in numerous institutions,
serving as the poet-in-resi-
dence at Trinity College and
the University College Dub-
lin as well as at the National
Maternity Hospital during its
1994 Centenary.
Boland has garnered many
awards in her lifetime, in-
cluding the Lannan Award
for Poetry, the American Ire-
land Fund Literary Award, as
well as the Lifetime Achieve-
ment Award at the Irish Book
Awards in 2017. She is the
recipient of six honorary de-
grees, including a Doctor of
Letters from Bowdoin in 2004.
A renowned poet, Boland’s
work meditates on the themes
of womanhood, maternity,
lineage, mythology, nation-
hood and identity, among
others. Her voice, which has
been lauded as the preeminent
voice in the Irish poetic can-
on, and her poems, which in-
novated and complicated the
country’s poetic traditions in
both subject and form, tell the
stories often excluded from
the Irish literary canon: those
of Irish womanhood. Distin-
guishing between the “shad-
owy” past and the official
records of history, Boland’s
poetry represents the voices
of those who have lived the
past but have been scrubbed
“At one basic level, all you
really need is two people having
a conversation to do humor,”
Pulsifer said. “We have the op-
portunity to connect with not
just two people but with multi-
ple people at the same time. We
have video, so you can see the
from historical records. As
she put it herself at a read-
ing for the American Acade-
my’s Celebration of Arts and
Humanities in reference to
her poem “Quarantine,” “the
poem is partly a reproach to
the genres of literature which
don’t always include the past
and the steadfastness of the
people who live there.”
Boland herself said in
an interview with the Irish
Times in 1998, “When I was
young, there was a hidden
struggle over subject matter
going on in Irish poetry … I
was aware that it was easier to
have a political murder as the
subject of an Irish poem than
a baby or a washing machine.”
“[There’s] this idea of lin-
eage for someone who’s been
excluded from literary histo-
ry, the [question of ] who you
are, who your ancestors are,”
said Harrison King McCann
Professor of English Marilyn
Reizbaum in a video interview
with the Orient. “[Boland], in
her poetry, writes about that
again and again and again.”
“You’ll find [it] in the way
she merges beautifully Irish
history and women’s history
because that, too, was a place
where women were exclud-
ed, where the protagonists of
Irish history were typically
not female,” Reizbaum added.
Through her representation
of female voices, Boland great-
ly complicated the standards
and preoccupations of the
person and have some kind of
physicality.”
Just as hopeful is Danny
Little ’22, co-leader of the Bow-
doin Music Collective (BMC).
In collaboration with the En-
tertainment Board, the BMC is
attempting to host a virtual end-
male-dominated Irish national
literature.
“[Boland] was obvious-
ly a woman and obviously
Irish and obviously a poet.
From our conversations and
my reading of her work, I
feel confident in saying that
the third category—being a
poet—subsumed the other
two,” wrote Harrison King
McCann Research Profes-
sor of the English Language
Emeritus Franklin Burroughs
in an email to the Orient. “She
once remarked that feminism
in poetry was analogous to
the Romantic movement at
the beginning of the 19th cen-
tury—it would change poetry
by enlarging it, expanding its
idea of the idiom, form, sub-
ject matter and voice of poet-
ry and of the whole relation
between poet and reader, or
poet and audience.”
“She radicalized the Irish
literary establishment,” added
Reizbaum. “She fought fero-
ciously for the inclusion of
women into the canon and for
a kind of poetry that includes,
that changed the sense of
what was appropriate … It not
only affected the subjects, but
the various forms that poetry
took. The kinds of ideals that
were laid out for Irish poetry
historically themselves began
to change as a result of break-
ing the canon and it broke in
all kinds of ways after that.”
Throughout her career,
however, Boland adamantly
of-year showcase. Little is excit-
ed about the new possibilities
brought by this virtual medium.
“You can do things that you
wouldn’t really be able to do in a
live setting,” Little said in a video
interview with the Orient. “Live
performance limits you more
ANN BASU, THE BOWDOIN ORIENT
resisted being labeled solely a
female poet.
“She did not seem to me to
be interested in the construc-
tion of a sort of counter-can-
on, one that was of, by and for
women, as opposed to men; or
of Irish poets as opposed to
British or American ones; or of
non-white poets as opposed to
white ones,” wrote Burroughs.
“It seemed to me that in the
last analysis, she saw poetry,
the desire that people have ‘to
find a voice where they found
a vision,’ as a universal im-
pulse. In that respect, she was
extraordinarily democratic in
her view of the art.”
As an educator, Boland was
as exacting as she was lively.
A proponent of the writing
workshop, Boland brought
unparalleled wit and energy
to the classroom, pushing her
students to engage with one
another’s work and advocat-
ing fiercely for young writers.
Inclusion was at the heart of
her pedagogical philosophy.
“In practice, as a poet and
as a teacher of poetry, she was
unaccommodating in what she
demanded of herself and her
students,” wrote Burroughs.
“Her way of teaching is hard
to describe and would be im-
possible to imitate. She had a
mixture of generosity, skepti-
cism, wit, candor, impatience
with nonsense or pretension
and simple brilliance that were
as much a part of her as the
features on her face.”
Friday, May 1, 2020
than recording by not being able
to mix and copy and paste.”
A cappella groups are like-
wise not shying away from
technology and plan on using it
to their benefit. Pulsifer, who is
also the musical director of the
Meddiebempsters and co-presi-
dent of the A Capella Council,
feels hopeful that a cappella can
be adapted to an online format.
To accomplish this, members
of the Meddibempsters will
each attempt to individually re-
cord their part of a song. Some-
one will then edit the audio and
video together in order to create
a cohesive recording.
As excited as students are
about the possibility of continu-
ing to perform for their peers,
some experiences cannot be rec-
reated virtually. This is particular-
ly true for the senior class.
“In a cappella we always have
a senior solo concert,” said Pul-
sifer. “It’s very emotional and
you look back on your time. You
get to do your last swan song,
and obviously we can’t do that.”
Despite a new slew of chal-
lenges, Pulsifer and others try
to maintain high spirits.
“There’s no opportunity for
the same kind of closure,” he
said. “It’s very disappointing,
but I think that’s why I’m trying
to focus on creative solutions
to this situation as opposed to
packing our bags and doing
nothing.”
In her time as a visiting
professor at Bowdoin, Bo-
land contributed greatly to
what was then a small and
undeveloped creative writing
program. Her classes, and the
transformative effect they had
on students, helped attract
more students to the English
department and to the cre-
ative writing discipline.
Outside of the classroom,
Boland’s time at Bowdoin and
the connections she made in
Maine found their way into
some of her early work. Her
exploration of the Maine
landscape and her excursions
into the state’s nature served
as points of departure for a
handful of poems in her col-
lection “Outside History,”
including “The River” and
“Mountain Time.”
Through her work, she
forcefully carved out space in
a long and unquestioned his-
tory for the voices of the un-
heard and the unrecognized.
The bard of the silenced, Bo-
land wrote for those who have
quietly underpinned Irish
society.
As she writes in “Domestic
Interior” of a woman off to
bed on an ordinary evening:
“But there’s a way of life/
That is its own witness:/ Put
the kettle on, shut the blind./
Home is a sleeping child,/ An
open mind/ … / And our ef-
fects,/ Shrugged and settled/
In the sort of light/ Jugs and
kettles/ Grow important by.”
Friday, May 1, 2020 ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT 13

Longtime costume designer Julie McMurry retires

by Julia Jennings
Orient Staff
Sewing face masks from
muslin cloth and leftover fab-
ric scraps is not how Costume
Shop Manager Julie McMurry
anticipated spending her final
semester at Bowdoin.
“You know, there’s a limit
to how many one person can
make, but every little bit helps,”
McMurry said in a video in-
terview with the Orient. “The
College has been very generous,
keeping everyone employed.
And so as a result of that, I’m
trying to use the time in a good
way so that it feels responsible
and helpful.”
During any other semester,
McMurry would have been
busy coordinating costume fit-
tings and making alterations for
the 81 dancers set to perform
in the Spring Dance Concert.
Instead, she now spends af-
ternoons in the quiet costume
shop at Bowdoin, sewing masks
and organizing shoes and fabric
as she prepares for her planned
retirement this spring.
After 15 years of mending
and altering costumes in time
for theater tech deadlines, and
afternoons spent sewing to the
WCLZ Acoustic Coffee Break,
McMurry will officially say
goodbye to Bowdoin’s costume
shop on May 29.
“I’ve had a number of differ-
ent careers, but this one is my
favorite,” said McMurry. “Every
semester is different and new.
It’s all creative and there’s some
CRAFTING COMMUNITY: Julie McMurry has worked as a costume shop manager and designer at Bowdoin,
forming close bonds with students and faculty in the theater and dance department over the last 15 years.
crazy stress, but then it goes
away … Bowdoin is an amazing
place. The theater department
especially is a great place to be.”
A lifelong Mainer, McMur-
ry has worked as a profession-
al costumer for 22 years. She
previously worked as a regis-
tered nurse and served as the
marketing and sales executive
at an educational toy company
for 16 years, before settling
into costume design at the
Portland Stage.
It was there that she was dis-
covered by the Bowdoin theater
tech team, who, according to
Technical Director Deborah
Puhl, quickly schemed to hire
McMurry for their own staff.
“It was like one of those ser-
endipitous things that we need-
ed a new costumer and Julie
was there and open to the idea
of working for us. I mean, that
hardly ever happens,” Puhl said
in a video interview with the
Orient. “And I’m not gonna say
that Portland Stage didn’t hate
us a little, but oh well … I mean,
we were just a much better fit.
Can we help it?”
McMurry has served as both
costume shop manager and
costume designer at Bowdo-
in, crafting costumes for two
productions each semester—a
dance concert and the main-
COURTESY JULIE MCMURRY
stage theater production. She
meets with theater and dance
faculty at the start of each se-
mester as they establish a vision
for the show and designs a slate
of costumes to help bring the
vision to life.
“I always feel she’s trying to
become clear about what it is you
want to do as a visionary, as a
creator, and supporting that the
best way she knows how using
the resources that she has,” said
Assistant Professor of Dance
Adanna Kai Jones in a video in-
terview with the Orient. “There’s
something about the costumes
that bring life to the dance itself,
I really appreciate it.”
McMurry’s work also ex-
tends far beyond simply the
costumes. A warm and friendly
presence in the theater, she has
also helped dancers to work
through their stage fright, giv-
en advice to student directors
and designers and, perhaps
most importantly, served as an
example of how to find joy and
meaning in one’s work.
“She’s an amazing role mod-
el … I want to grow up to be
just like Julie McMurry,” Puhl
said. “Julie is one of those peo-
ple that reminds you that you
can have a job that you really,
really like. And I think that is
important especially at a liberal
arts college.”
McMurry herself cites stu-
dents as her favorite part of
working at the costume shop,
something that is not found at
other professional theaters.
“I just love the creativity and
the openness that students have,”
McMurry said. “And to watch
[them] go from freshmen to
graduating, and then come back
and visit—it’s been really fun.”
Student employees at the
costume shop also expressed
their admiration for McMurry
and the invaluable advice she
has given many, not just about
costumes, but also about life.
“She’s the only person at
Bowdoin that I’ve almost called
‘mom’ several times,” said Isa-
bella Angel ’22 in a video in-
terview with the Orient. “She’s
just such a supportive and open
person. She is constantly there
for you and totally unafraid to
let you know that she is there
for you … I wish I could be
more like Julie.”
“There’s so many practical
skills I’ve learned from her—I
can mend my own clothes, I
can make a pair of pants; that’s
one of the most concrete things
I can look back at my college
experience and say, I didn’t
know how to do this before, I
know how to do it now,” said Joe
Hilleary ’20 in a video interview
with the Orient. “And I just re-
ally enjoyed getting to know her
as a friend and [as] someone
I look up to and love to learn
from and learn about.”
As for her plans after Bow-
doin, McMurry looks forward
to moving to Florida and
spending her retirement with
her husband, children and
grandchildren. However, she
also hopes to stay connected
with Bowdoin.
“I’m sure I’ll be back,” Mc-
Murry said. “Whenever there’s
something fun happening, I’ll
try to make an appearance.”
While McMurry’s presence
will be dearly missed, students
and colleagues praise the con-
tributions she has made during
her tenure, leaving her mark on
the department as an inspira-
tion and a guiding force.
“A lot of times, especially
as people go on [later] in their
careers, they tend to get a lit-
tle slack, they tend to say well,
good enough,” Puhl said. “Ju-
lie McMurry has never said
good enough. She has kept
the bar high.”

DO THE FIVE
and help stop the spread of coronavirus

1. HANDS wash them often

2. ELBOW cough into it
3. FACE don’t touch it
4. SPACE keep safe distance
5. HOME stay if you can

Credit: World Health Organization

14 ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT Friday, May 1, 2020

Bowdoin International Music Festival makes a digital transition

by Jane Godiner
Orient Staff
On April 13, the Bowdoin
International Music Festival,
which brings together students
and musicians from over 30
countries and 40 states, an-
nounced that it will cancel this
year’s in-person masterclasses
and performances due to the
novel coronavirus (COVID-19)
pandemic. In its 56 years of op-
eration, this is the first summer
that the festival will not run on
Bowdoin’s campus.
As college campuses across
the nation cancelled classes and
summer activities, it became
apparent to festival organizers
that similar conversations were
needed to address the festival’s
summer programming. Daniel
Nitsch, executive director of
the festival, consulted recom-
mendations from the state and
federal governments, the Cen-
ters for Disease Control and
Prevention and the College
itself before coming to a final
conclusion.
“There are as many factors
as you can imagine in our de-
cision,” said Nitsch in a phone
interview with the Orient. “It
had come after months of plan-
ning and analysis.”
“We are committed to mak- COURTESY AMEZZA FONTI
ing sure that the health and
REMOTELY REMINISCING: Performers and students associated with the Bowdoin International Music Festival will be unable convene on campus this summer, opting for a virtual format instead.
safety of our communities,
wherever they may be, remain ed,” said David Ying, artistic promise the quality of future ed pieces as a group. The festival The Festival hopes to make together in the summertime,
our first priorities,” added Phil- director of the festival, in a festivals. will also revise its curriculum to many of these classes open for the energy is almost electric,”
lip Ying, artistic director of the phone interview with the Ori- “We are in a fortunate posi- include innovative lessons per- the public to join, not as partic- said David Ying. “We want to
festival, in a phone interview ent. “And yet, there’s also been tion to have a very strong and tinent to social distancing, such ipants, but as auditors. have a little bit of that by con-
with the Orient. a universal sense of support for healthy financial infrastructure as how to build a YouTube pres- In addition to adapting cre- vening online, too.”
As hard as the decision to what we’re trying to do … and overall,’ said Nitsch. “We defi- ence as a classical musician and atively to the remote model, “There’s nothing like the real
cancel in-person programming eagerness for us to meet again nitely consider ourselves fortu- the best recording equipment to the festival also plans to share thing and being in Studzins-
was, members of the adminis- in 2021.” nate to be able to weather this buy on different budgets. archived videos of previous per- ki [Recital] Hall, live with the
trative team have felt the sup- The festival refunded tuition thanks to our loyal donor base.” “The current state of tech- formances online. Depending excitement of everyone else
port of the festival’s community for all students, but it still paid In lieu of on-campus pro- nology is not at a level that can on the recommendations for so- listening,” David Ying added.
as they prepare to redesign pro- some operating costs and will grams, the festival will hold be a close substitute for what cial distancing in June and July, “But we hope to still capture a
gramming for a virtual format. compensate for faculty mem- masterclasses better suited to we do, so we’re just looking for musicians from similar areas little bit of the flavor of us all
“Everyone from the most bers. Nitsch does not anticipate an online format. Instead of ways to use current technolo- might meet in smaller groups being together, at Bowdoin in
senior faculty member to the that the financial impact of this playing instruments, classes will gy to keep us connected,” said for livestream performances. the summertime, through our
youngest student is disappoint- year’s cancellation will com- focus on analyzing pre-record- Phillip Ying. “When [the musicians] are online activities.”

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 S
Friday, May 1, 2020 15

SPORTS
Coaches adapt to alternative recruiting methods
by Dylan Sloan
Orient Staff
The effects of the
COVID-19 pandemic will
almost certainly extend years
into the future as colleges and
the NCAA restructure their
budgets. More immediately,
the cancellation of spring
athletic activities is dramati-
cally changing the recruiting
process for nearly all Bow-
doin teams, forcing coaches
to adapt and find new meth-
affecting certain sports, but
nearly every team’s cycle has
been affected, coaches say,
and continuing the recruiting
process will require more and
more flexibility the longer
these circumstances continue.
For many fall sports, the
spring and summer is prime
recruiting season. Coaches
would normally be travelling
across the country to size up
prospects at recruiting camps,
and teams would be hosting
dozens of recruits to campus
allowing recruits to get a
sense of the school and team
culture through a campus vis-
it or overnight stay is an es-
sential part of the recruiting
process. Without that possi-
bility, it will prove challeng-
ing to cultivate the same level
of engagement.
“We would have generally
hosted maybe 45 or 50 candi-
dates to campus in the spring,”
said Wiercinski. “Now in the
“In a typical year, anywhere
… the candidates looking at
Bowdoin really can’t really
explore us any further.”
Wiercinski is conscious of
the possibility that, should
circumstances necessitate
an extension of restricted
recruiting activities or even
a suspension of the fall sea-
son, the recruiting process
for the next few years could
veer sharply from what has
become the accepted model.
recruiting activities have thus
far been relatively unaffect-
ed. For some winter sports
such as men’s ice hockey, the
spring is generally a quieter
time during the recruiting
cycle, and coaches have been
able to proceed with their
normal activities without
too much adjustment. Be-
cause hockey often recruits a
few years ahead from a pool
of Junior-level players who
have already graduated high
school, limited contact for the
he foresees that it could be-
come more challenging to lure
potential athletes to Bowdoin
without a campus visit.
“The big challenge I’m go-
ing to have is that when when
ski recruits look at colleges,
their first thought is not like,
hey, let’s go to the small col-
lege on the east coast,” said
Alsobrook in a phone inter-
view with the Orient. “There
are a lot of more well estab-
lished programs in more tra-
ditional ski [areas] than here.

between February and late

ods to attract potential stu-
dent-athletes.
In an unsurprising de-
cision, NESCAC Athletic
Directors and Presidents
announced on April 9 that
they had agreed to prohibit
all forms of in-person re-
cruiting through June 15 to
comply with social distancing
regulations. The conference
outlined that the only au-
thorized recruiting activities
during this time frame would
be communicating via email,
phone, written letters or so-
cial media.
Each sport’s recruiting cy-
cle is dictated by a number
of factors, including when in
the year the season is and how
many years out the coaches
start communicating with re-
cruits. The in-person recruit-
ing ban is disproportionately
to meet the players and get a
feel for the program.
“In a typical year, any-
where between February
and late August is where we
spend most of our time real-
ly hammering down into our
depth charts and evaluating
players pretty much on [an]
every-weekend basis, with
summer camps with club
tournaments and clinics,”
said men’s soccer Head Coach
Scott Wiercinski in a phone
interview with the Orient.
“This hiatus that we’re going
through right now is essen-
tially throwing a huge mon-
key wrench into those works.”
Wiercinski also considers
one one of the most signifi-
cant losses to be on the play-
er’s side. For programs like
the men’s soccer team and
many other Bowdoin sports,
August is where we spend most
of our time really hammering
down into our depth charts and
evaluating players.”
–Scott Wiercinski, men’s soccer Head Coach
semester is a great time for
them to visit because they get
to really absorb the academic
energy of campus … [Spring
visits] are the best way for us
to dive into a candidate’s ped-
igree, just because we get to
work with them and see him
on the field, and then they get
to explore Bowdoin by living
in the dorms, eating the din-
ing hall food and all that kind
of stuff. So that’s a big vacan-
cy in our recruiting process
“It’s possible that we get to
a point where we’re going to
need to make a decision based
on kids with less information
than we’re accustomed to, and
less information than we’re
really comfortable with,” said
Wiercinski. “But we’re really
going to exhaust every op-
portunity … before we just
roll the dice, and say, ‘man,
we’re going to gamble with
this guy.’”
However, some coaches’
next few months will not have
a huge impact on recruiting
in the near future, and if it
does have any effects they will
likely be felt years ahead.
“From a timing perspec-
tive, if you look at it, [this
crisis] probably did fall at the
right time for ice hockey,” said
men’s ice hockey Head Coach
Jamie Dumont. “Most hock-
ey seasons are over in May,
Junior[-level-]wise, and prep
schools are done in March. So
from that perspective, from
a recruiting perspective, I
would say it probably would
be the best time. But there is
really no good time.”
Likewise, the Nordic ski
recruiting cycle is such that, at
least so far, curtailed recruit-
ing activities have not had a
severe impact for Head Coach
Nathan Alsobrook. However,
And so for us, the way we are
able to get the attention of
recruits is when they come to
visit us, and they engage with
the students and they see the
beautiful campus and they
have a chance to talk in per-
son with me and try to see if
our philosophy is compatible
with theirs.”
Just like everyone else, ath-
letic coaches are being forced
to adapt to this new reality and
find creative means to pursue
recruits and engage with po-
tential athletes virtually. It’s
hard to predict exactly what
the implications this crisis
will have on Bowdoin recruit-
ing classes going forward, but
coaches are doing their best
to give current prospects as
close as they can to the same
recruiting experience they
would normally go through.

Tradition in transition: new connections

in the midst of a pandemic
by Paula Petit-Molina
Orient Staff
“I play field hockey be-
cause my dad plays. At first
I hated playing. But I was
really scared of my dad,” said
field hockey player Manveer
Sandhu ’22 with a laugh, “So
I kept playing, even though I
didn’t want to.”
Everything changed when
her father began a club team
during Sandhu’s first year in
high school.
“I started to like it when
I started playing in school.
That was when I really un-
derstood why he loved it so
much. Being out on the field
with your best friends is what
I love about the game, and it’s
why I kept play-
ing,” she
said. “I met some of my best
friends playing field hockey.”
Bowdoin field hockey, like
many other teams, has made
the effort to stay in touch over
the course of the pandemic.
Not only does the team have
weekly meetings, but they
also have workout groups,
rotating individual meetings
and team hangouts.
“As a pre-med student
and a humanities minor, my
workload really hasn’t gone
down that much at all. Some
days it feels like a lot to pack
into a day,” admits Sandhu.
Sandhu is fortunate enough
to live not only next to
her grandparents, but
with other extend-
ed family next
door too.
During the
KYRA TAN
field hockey season, all these
family members do every-
thing possible to come to as
many games as they can. Now
that she’s home full time, they
provide a different kind of
support.
“My parents’ cousins are
my aunts and uncles—my
cousins are like my brothers
and sisters. As a result, there’s
always noise in this house.
I never really talk about this
aspect of my family just be-
cause it’s my normal. And I
understand that it’s difficult
to accommodate for every-
one—my family just runs dif-
ferent hours than a lot of my
teammates’,” she explained.
Future seasons in the NES-
CAC and the NCAA remain
uncertain. Looking ahead
to the fall semester, Sandhu
knows what the risks could
be: potentially losing a sea-
son of the sport that con-
nects her to her nuclear and
her Bowdoin family. Most
Bowdoin students gradu-
ate in four years, taking the
minimum thirty-two credits
to graduate. Bowdoin ath-
letes have other aspects to
consider. Should an athlete’s
season be cancelled because
of the virus, in order to play
for Bowdoin for four years
and still take just the mini-
mum thirty-two credits (the
most cost-effective option),
an athlete would have to take
one to two semesters off to
still be eligible, according to
NCAA regulations. As a re-
sult, many athletes, DI and
DIII alike, are considering
this option in order to play
for the institutions to which
they were recruited.
“I know coming back to
play and not [being with my
current] grade wouldn’t be
the same,” said Sandhu. “Not
being able to be with my
friends who don’t play field
hockey wouldn’t make Bow-
doin the same. I would be
devastated if we lost our sea-
son next year. I feel like this
coming season would be a re-
demption not just for me, but
for all of us. But even though
we’re in this transition phase,
even in the possibility that I
would lose a season, the first
years have a great foundation
that they can build from. I
think it’s best for me to stay
on track.”
Because field hockey is
such a big part of her life at
school as well as at home,
Sandhu explains that she
doesn’t feel like she would be
losing the sport she loves so
much by enrolling in another
semester of remote learning.
“I’ve seen my dad start
coaching, and I’ve seen him
continue to play at his club
in the city. I know there’s
more opportunities for me
with regards to field hockey,”
she said. “Playing one com-
petitive season in college has
given me the chance to find
other things that I’m passion-
ate about.”
Sandhu’s connection to
field hockey highlights the
loss that so many Bowdoin
athletes feel in the midst of
an uncertain future. Still,
the family that she has built
through sports reveals the
power athletics has in keep-
ing people together—across
busy lives, time zones and
state lines. Since the begin-
ning of the pandemic, human
connection has changed and
will continue to do so. But
this pandemic has also given
us the chance to build new
traditions that connect in un-
expected ways. Sandhu takes
one more page out of her fa-
ther’s book in this respect.
“He’s started to reconnect
with some of his past team-
mates. They’re in a group
chat, talking about old times
on their teams. That’s going
to be me in 20 years, maybe
when I’ve lost touch with my
old teammates during a pan-
demic,” she laughed.
As her father’s connections
remind her, though Sandhu’s
life as an athlete is in a phase
of transition, her field hockey
family is forever.
 O OPINION
16 Friday, May 1, 2020

Seniors’ farewell Lessons from working through

a pandemic
To begin writing this editorial, we, senior members of Orient staff, all
wrote down our honest reasons for joining the Orient.
Some of us joined because we thought college journalism sounded import-
ant and glamorous. Some of us joined because we thought the upperclassmen
on the Orient were important and glamorous. Many of us joined because we
were seeking a network of friends, a pre-established group to welcome us to
college. Others had journalistic career aspirations. And though no one here
would admit it, there were probably a few of us who joined because we saw
Workin’ on It
by Archer Thomas
someone at the interest meeting we thought was cute.
We were all attracted to the Orient on some level because we cared—about
students, about professors, about the College’s traditions and events, its About a decade ago, in February
innerworkings, its quirks. We think that the choice to write for a student 2020, I wrote the first installment of
newspaper stems, in large part, from a desire to understand things better. this column. Titled “How I Learned to
We didn’t come in with preconceived notions about what a college should or Stop Worrying and Love Technology,”
shouldn’t do; there are still many things we don’t understand. I argued that society should ready itself
We stayed because people let us in, telling us about their proudest mo- for an inevitable replacement of work
ments and their loudest frustrations. We heard from different campus groups in its traditional sense with automation
and offices, and we wrote about the best events and opportunities. We were sometime in the indefinite future. Lit- KAYLA SNYDER
exposed to all of the wonderful things that Bowdoin has to offer, as well as tle did I know that my thesis would be
some of its shortcomings. put to the test on a global scale a mere Federal Reserve has decided to make
Staying hasn’t always been easy. We have received emails from adminis- month later. While there are notable the money printers go “brrr” without
trators questioning our reporting and refusing our requests for comment. differences between the lockdown and concern for inflation or the deficit.
We have attended meetings with administrators who asked us questions like: a post-work society–i.e. the omni- All of these developments sug-
why does the Orient always have an agenda? Who taught you how to report? present anxiety that has accompanied gest we are reaching a new stage
Why would you publish something that would hurt someone’s feelings? Why the plague–the mobilization of social in our relationship with money,
don’t you print something positive for a change? resources to “flatten the curve” has one which finally severs the
We have, at times, felt pressure from the arbiters of our grades and those fundamentally disrupted society in fictional connection between
who will give us our diplomas to tell only the stories they want to hear. a way that has accelerated the trans- labor and individual income.
But we are not Bowdoin News or the College’s glossy brochures. The formation of work and consumption. On the other hand, I should note
Orient is about reporting students’ experiences as they live them. We try The most palpable irony that that working from home has lessened
to capture as many experiences as we can, and though we admittedly miss has arisen from the crisis has been my expectations for a post-work so-
many voices, we try to write about the diversity of opinions in the Bowdoin the sudden distinction between ciety brought about by technological
community. We want to start conversations and empower all students to have “essential” and “non-essential” la- obsolescence. Specifically, it has proved
their voices heard. bor. A few months ago, the question of incentives of work, constructed under physically and mentally taxing at best
Now, in our final days as Bowdoin students, we’re still here because we give which vocations are necessary for the the theory that individuals must be ca- to shrink the workplace to fit a screen,
a damn about this place and the people who made it home to us. The Orient survival of an affluent society and which joled, threatened or forced to contribute despite remote connection being easier
has given us a space to realize our love for and curiosity about this institu- are the symptoms of affluence seemed to the maintenance of society, have now than ever. Zoom meetings, as it turns
tion, its quirks and inconsistencies. We don’t write critically about the school ambiguous. Most activities seemed to been revealed to be unwarranted. I know out, are woefully inadequate substi-
because we don’t like it, but rather because we love it. We want the school, so have a kernel of necessity embedded many people rendered jobless by this tutes for in-person interaction. It has
badly, to be the best version of what it can be. within a layer of excess. However, as pandemic, and not a single one relishes been proved that human interaction
And that’s our agenda. the pandemic crescendoed, we began to the opportunity to do nothing at all. is irreplaceable, indivisible and deeply
realize the fragility of this excess. Whole When I was writing my first arti- difficult to commodify. Instead of capit-
This editorial represents the majority view of the Orient’s Editorial Board, which is industries ground to a halt simply be- cle, the 2020 presidential election still ulating to technology, the experience of
comprised of Emily Cohen, Maia Coleman, Anna Fauver, Roither Gonzales, Rohini cause people started to consume only seemed like it would be the most import- living through a pandemic could cause
Kurup, Alyce McFadden, Eliana Miller and Ian Ward. what they really needed and wanted. As ant event of the year, and Andrew Yang us to reconsider our priorities in life.
the long process of “reopening” begins, was hovering in the single digits of most The restlessness of American life could
we may find ourselves wondering why early state primary polls. While I had ex- come to an end, ushered by the death
in the first place we ever allowed the pected that Yang would be the beginning of business travel, mass events and
logic of capital to prioritize meaningless of a gradually escalating movement for conspicuous consumption. The local
toil over meaningful leisure. universal basic income, I didn’t realize and personal could replace the global
In that vein, we also discovered how much of a Cassandra he really was. and anonymous. While I still believe
ESTABLISHED 1871 through the emotional toll of quarantine More Americans than ever are acquaint- that work will be phased out in the near
that people with nothing to do are not ing themselves with the welfare system future, it’s possible that social change—
bowdoinorient.com orient@bowdoin.edu 6200 College Station Brunswick, ME 04011 necessarily more idle than industrious. In and a free $1200 has already appeared not technology—will be the harbinger
fact, the opposite is most likely true. The in most individuals’ bank accounts. The of its demise.
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
LETTER TO THE EDITOR

Working together on COVID-19

interest to the College community.

Editor in Chief Editor in Chief

working groups
Emily Cohen Alyce McFadden

Digital Director Managing Editor News Editor

Steven Xu Maia Coleman Andrew Bastone To the Editor: and questions with us so that we may represent you as
Anna Fauver Aura Carlson
Roither Gonzales best we can.
Photo Editor Today marks the 51st day since the College announced Please reach out to us personally, by email or on social
Rohini Kurup Features Editor
Ann Basu Ian Ward the decision to move online. It goes without saying that media, or to our specific groups through these feedback
Emma Sorkin
the moment in which we now find ourselves is unprec- forms: Budget Review, Return to Campus, Teaching and
Layout Editor Sports Editor edented. Learning.
Emma Bezilla Executive Editor Dylan Sloan Last month, President Rose announced the creation Bowdoin College prides itself on its vast networks of
Jaret Skonieczny Eliana Miller
of three working groups: the Budget Review Group to community engagement. As we plan for whatever may lie
Ian Stewart Reuben Schafir A&E Editor tackle budgetary changes for the 2020-2021 academic ahead, such engagement is needed now more than ever.
Cole van Miltenburg year, the Return to Campus Group to consider the phys-
Data Desk Editor ical logistics of reopening campus and the Continuity Sincerely,
Opinion Editor in Teaching and Learning Group to develop remote Tori Clarke ’20, member of the Return to Campus
Gwen Davidson Associate Editor Diego Lasarte
Drew Macdonald learning models should the College decide to contin- Group
Ellery Harkness ue with online instruction in the fall. Each group has Will Hausmann ’22, member of the Budget Review
George Grimbilas (asst.) Conrad Li Page 2 Editor
Nimra Siddiqui (asst.) an important role in planning for our uncertain future Group
Sabrina Lin Lily Randall and will have until mid-to-late June to meet, conduct Jacob Kassama ’22, member of the Return to Campus
research and coordinate with members of the commu- Group
Head Illustrator Calendar Editor
Sara Caplan nity to come up with suggestions for how best to operate Joshua Lin ’22, member of the Continuity in Teaching
Copy Editor Jane Godiner next semester. and Learning Group
Sebastian de Lasa One essential element of our planning process is active Uriel López-Serrano ’20, member of the Continuity in
Social Media Manager Danielle Quezada Senior News Reporter
engagement with Bowdoin students, faculty and commu- Teaching and Learning Group
Ayub Tahlil Emily Staten Horace Wang nity members. It is crucial that the voices of our commu- Caitlin Loi ’20, member of the Budget Review Group
nity are heard. As the student members of these working Caroline Poole ’22, member of the Continuity in Teach-
The material contained herein is the property of The Bowdoin Orient and appears at the sole discretion of the groups, please consider us resources throughout this ing and Learning Group
editors. The editors reserve the right to edit all material. Other than in regard to the above editorial, the opinions process. We ask that you share your concerns, thoughts Sean Xie ’21, member of the Return to Campus Group
expressed in the Orient do not necessarily reflect the views of the editors.
Friday, May 1, 2020
To the Class of 2020…
by Andrew Hamilton
Op-Ed Contributor
To the graduating class of
2020, I offer, in this order,
congratulations, condolences,
consolation and a few words of
welcome. Congratulations first
of all on your imminent Bow-
doin degrees and on the years
of diligence and hard work they
represent. From childhood, you
have made sacrifices to become
the kind of person who arrives
at an elite institution, and that
you have succeeded there, is a
testament to your diligence and
perspicacity.
Yet, by graduating in the
midst of a global pandemic, with
skyrocketing unemployment
and a collapsing labor market,
you are facing the very real
prospect that all your work may
have been in vain. Some version
of the following promise has ac-
companied you through life: do
what it takes to meet a series of
arbitrary thresholds, and, in do-
ing so, demonstrate your work
ethic, talent and acceptance of
social norms. In exchange, plac-
es like Bowdoin will offer you a
comfortable life in the middle
class. It can be hard to escape
the conclusion, especially as
government aid is channeled to
the wealthiest, while corporate
interests rule the day, and fi-
nancial institutions take care of
their own at the expense of the
rest of us, that this was all a lie
COVID-19 is no excuse to abandon Bowdoin’s workers
by Rene Cisneros,
Diego Grossman,
and Benjamin Ray
Op-Ed Contributors
On April 30, President Rose
sent out an email to the Bow-
doin community addressing
the financial implications of the
COVID-19 pandemic for the
College. He assured the Bow-
doin community that “a top
priority is job preservation”—
but which jobs, at what pay and
for how long? Moreover, Rose’s
characterization of “academic
initiatives and building proj-
ects we had been planning” as
relevant concerns—during this
time of crisis—indicates that, in
the months to come, the College
may consider programming
and construction alongside the
human costs of this pandemic
and economic recession.
This framing of priorities
is skewed; it equates unnec-
essary luxuries with workers’
lives. With many colleges and
universities across the country
planning to implement auster-
ity lay-offs under the guise of
“compensating for lost revenue,”
the disturbing implications of
Rose’s language leave us, the
Bowdoin Labor Alliance (BLA),
no choice but to demand greater
clarification and concrete com-
mitments to Bowdoin’s staff that
ensure financial security—for
the remainder of this crisis.
For the College, this disas-
ter presents an opportunity to
reduce costs and place its bur-
den on workers, rather than
cutting unnecessary luxuries
and administrative expenses.
Indeed, “President, Finance and
meant to extract tuition dollars
from you.
My condolences, then, that
this lesson comes to you so
painfully.
I recall once being seated
next to an economics professor
at a luncheon and listening to
her explain how wonderful it
was that so few college students
fell in love anymore, so that they
wouldn’t be hindered when it
came time to move to a new city
for a great job offer. The youth
was finally understanding the
value of rational decision mak-
ing, she explained to me. I felt a
bit queasy at the thought of this
lesson’s effect on impressionable
young minds, but as long as
the market is booming, asking
young people to become jedis
for the sake of their job pros-
pects at least has a certain Faus-
tian logic to it. When the jobs
dry up, though, the market’s
demands become nothing more
than an act of intergenerational
cruelty.
This episode called to mind
the words of a writer who is as
close to my heart as any other,
who lived in turbulent times
and had seen the dreams of suc-
cessive generations wiped from
the pages of history. “No worse
fate can befall a young man or
woman,” said Knut Hamsun
as he accepted the 1920 Nobel
Prize for literature, “than to be-
come prematurely entrenched
in prudence and negation.”
Administration” had control
of over a nearly $2.66 million
operations budget this year—
nearly enough to keep the 163
workers in Housekeeping,
Grounds and the many depart-
ments that make up Facilities
Management and Security on
full pay for three months. Af-
ter June 30, our billion-dollar
institution may well choose to
layoff or furlough workers who
are already struggling to get by
on fast-food wages. This would
reveal the extent to which the
lives of workers are worth less
than lavish new buildings and
experimental virtual program-
ming.
For the duration of the pan-
demic, Bowdoin must do the
right thing and:
1) Allow workers to stay at
home with regular pay.
2) Continue the time-and-
a-half hazard pay option for
workers who volunteer to
come into work.
3) Commit to no layoffs or
furloughs.
Right now, most Bowdoin
staff members are staying at
home and receiving regular
paychecks, with an option to
volunteer to come into work for
time-and-a-half hazard pay. Ac-
cording to conversations with
campus staff, this is the safest
option for our community, and
it still allows the College to keep
its grounds and facilities in
working order.
A decision to furlough cam-
pus staff would put workers at
the mercy of a cumbersome and
overburdened unemployment
system. Due to the high number
of people applying for unem-
OPINION
Those of us who succeed in
something as bourgeois as go-
ing to school have done so, in
part, by making just these com-
promises to sound judgment
that the great writer saw as fatal
to the creative soul.
My heart goes out to those
of you whose offers of employ-
ment have been withdrawn,
whose would-be employers will
not survive this crisis or who are
simply gazing out at a wasteland
where post-graduation pros-
pects were supposed to be. And
my deepest sympathy to all of
you, whose lives will carry a scar
from this uncertainty, whatever
comes next, for years to come. I
know about this scar, because I
bear just such a one myself.
Among the hollow assur-
ances about the arc of history
and the long term trajectory
of the markets, which I am
sure you are hearing from the
well-meaning on all sides, some
words from the class of 2008,
from someone who received an
expensive and prestigious de-
gree that meant nothing in the
world I graduated into, might
offer some consolation.
You and I did some pretty
dumb things for the sake of our
degrees: some of us gave up the
weekends of our childhood to
master a sport we never cared
for; others saw their families’ fi-
nances strained to pay for tutors
and coaches, only so they could
be strained again by ever-rising
ployment, new applicants may
have to wait weeks for their un-
employment applications to be
accepted and payments deposit-
ed. The application system itself
is bureaucratic and inflexible to
the unique realities, life experi-
ences and circumstances of in-
dividual workers. Moreover, it is
unclear if federal unemployment
funding will persist, or if state
unemployment funds will last
for the remainder of this crisis.
Furthermore, staff members
want to keep their jobs. As
one housekeeper, who asked
to remain anonymous, stated,
“I would leave unemployment
for the last resort. I think they
should pay us. It’s Bowdoin Col-
lege, and they have the money.”
Another told us, “I wouldn’t
even know how to file for un-
employment. It would help if I
had a computer and internet.”
When asked what they thought
about staying at home for regu-
lar pay with optional work for
hazard pay, a worker from Facil-
ities Management and Security
said, “I and everyone else would
absolutely prefer that. I would
hate to have us all go back and
maybe get sick for no reason
whatsoever.”
Bowdoin College, a leading
Maine employer and a able, low-in-
valuable asset to the
Brunswick commu-
nity, should be more
than able to provide
its employees with
much-needed se-
curity––beyond its
self-imposed June
30 deadline. The ap-
proximate $8 million
that Treasurer Matt
tuition costs; others still moved
far from home and gave up on
happiness for a few years, guid-
ed by the dream of a better life.
We all murdered generations of
fruit flies and filled our heads
with irregular verb conjuga-
tions. Was all of this a waste,
then, of our precious youth?
No! Let me welcome you
with an emphatic “no” to the
ranks of the enlightened. More
valuable than anything else we
could have learned is this les-
Orlando expects the College
to redirect to their COVID-19
response pales in comparison
with other budget items that
remain, which are irrelevant in
the middle of a pandemic. The
athletics department alone has
an operations budget of nearly
$2 million—game-day expenses
for football games that Bowdo-
in won’t get to use, recruitment
expenses for players who likely
won’t get to play and practice
equipment that won’t wear out
in storage. The recently com-
pleted Roux Center cost $16.5
million; likely, pausing the
construction of Mills Hall and
other projects could free up the
millions in anticipated costs to
increase financial flexibility for
the College.
Therefore, notwithstanding
the over $1 billion endowment,
the College appears to maintain
significant financial flexibility.
In Rose’s own words, the Col-
lege has “the liquidity right now
to help us weather this crisis.”
The $6.8 million lost—91 per-
cent of which was due to the
warranted room and board re-
funds—does not of-
fer sufficient finan-
cial justification to
abandon vulner-
DAL
IAT
ABA
CHN
IK
son: we have nothing to lose
by pursuing an authentic life.
The threats and promises our
parents and teachers and bosses
made in the voice of prudence
and reason and sound econom-
ics were lies, and we never have
to worry about them again. We
have paid a high price for this
clarity.
My favorite graduation-ready
quotation comes from Antoine
de Saint-Exupéry, who said: “If
you want to build a ship, do not
come members of our com-
munity through unnecessary
layoffs and furloughs. Bowdoin
can—and should—protect its
workers through the remainder
of this pandemic and economic
recession.
Yet, the true implications
of abrupt workplace changes
would be lost on administrators
like Rose and Orlando, who
take home nearly $500,000 and
$300,000 annually from the
College. One College worker
explained this stark disparity
directly: “If I was making Matt
Orlando’s salary, I probably
wouldn’t worry about it. But I
don’t, not even close. Me and a
lot of my co-workers live pay-
check to paycheck.”
The College has asked stu-
dents to come up with ‘creative
solutions’ to their own finan-
cial and academic challenges.
17
SARA C
APLAN
gather people to collect wood
or assign them tasks and work,
but rather teach them to dream
of the endless immensity of the
sea.” We have seen the fantasies
of a generation of wood-collec-
tors dissolve into nothing, and
behind it, the vision of a better
world is taking shape. Our les-
sons in shipbuilding may prove
worthless, but our dreams of the
sea are worth more than ever.
Andrew Hamilton is a Visiting
Assistant Professor of German.
Similarly, the administration
must find creative and uncon-
ventional solutions to protect
workers who are foundational to
our community. As one house-
keeper told us, “this would show
the community where Bow-
doin College stands with their
employees. And they have the
money.”
HOW TO HELP
Members of the Bowdoin
Community, join the BLA in call-
ing for the continuation past June
30 of 1) No lay-offs or furloughs,
2) Regular pay for workers staying
home to protect their health and
3) The option of hazard pay for
those who volunteer to work for
the duration of this pandemic and
economic recession. These de-
mands are included in a petition,
linked below, which we encourage
you to sign and share. The petition
also includes more information on
how to contact Matt Orlando and
the Budget Review Group.
Please read, sign and share.
Diego Grossman and
Ben Ray are members of
the Class of 2020. Rene
Cisneros is a member of
the Class of 2023. They
are members of the
Bowdoin Labor
Alliance.
18 OPINION Friday, May 1, 2020

The BLA represents the best of Bowdoin

College; the administration, the worst
by David Shuck
Op-Ed Contributor
You’ve lost me, Bowdoin
College.
Of all the moneyed insti-
tutions that have been right-
fully lambasted for accepting
federal aid during this crisis,
I was shocked to read that
my alma mater was among
those who have yet to refuse
it. Harvard gave it back, Yale
gave it back, even a chain of
mediocre steakhouses gave it
back! And yet, Bowdoin Col-
lege—which boasts an endow-
ment equivalent to the GDP of
a small country—has given no
indication of its plans for the
$1.12 million offered to them
in federal aid.
So I was already mildly em-
barrassed to have a Bowdoin
diploma with my name on it
when I learned that the Col-
lege also torpedoed the mutual
aid fund set up by the Bowdoin
Labor Alliance (BLA), killing
one of the clearest examples
of “the Common Good” I have
ever seen.
As the Orient reported, the
BLA had raised $15,000 and
distributed it to 47 students
and staff members in desper-
ate need until the adminis-
tration threatened to revoke
the club’s charter and the BLA
shut it down.
I am extremely impressed
by these students and com-
mend them for acting swiftly
and independently to raise
that much money to help their
peers. They are far more so-
cially aware and capable than
I ever was as a student. But I
also want to emphasize what a
pittance that sum would have
been for the College. When I
was co-president of the Bow-
doin Film Society, we had a
discretionary budget of over
$20,000, most of which went
to purchasing the screening
rights to movies that maybe
a dozen people came to see. I
don’t think those funds were
superfluous or misused, but I
bring them up to show that the
money is there.
The administration’s explic-
it reason for discouraging the
fund was that college officials
could not know how the mon-
ey was being used and they
alone could be trusted with
fundraising off of Bowdoin’s
name. They say this as they
sit on an endowment of $1.74
billion (to which the federal
aid would add $1.12 million
of taxpayer money) and do
not appear to be using it now
to help the most vulnerable
members of the Bowdoin
community. I have much more
confidence in the BLA to do
good with that money than
whoever is in charge of it now.
A quick glance at the re-
quests the BLA fulfilled show
the aid recipients are clearly
in need. Would it have been
that hard for the College to
acknowledge this problem
and augment the BLA’s no-
ble effort with the College’s
funds? Instead, I can only
surmise that the administra-
tion is embarrassed by the
brutal reality that the need
for a mutual aid fund expos-
es: the College is forcing un-
derprivileged students to fend
for themselves during a pan-
demic and it isn’t even paying
all of its staff a living wage
despite its obscene mountain
of investment capital.
Again, you’ve lost me, Bow-
doin College.
You are no longer an engine
for “the Common Good,” but
rather an example of craven
institutionalism—a business
that cares far more about red
tape and image control than
helping the community. That
the College has stymied such
an obviously moral endeavor
during an unprecedented time
shows the extreme position of
privilege from which it oper-
ates.
And it’s going to take a mas-
sive about-face from the ad-
ministration to make me think
otherwise. At this
point, refusing the
federal grant and
reinstating the mutu-
al aid fund with at least
$1.12 million from
the College coffers
(which is literally
a rounding
error on
$1.74 bil-
lion) will
just barely
stop me from
advocating for na-
tionalizing the en-
dowment.
The adminis-
tration might say,
“well this guy’s just
some disaffected
weirdo with an axe to KAYL
A SN
grind, he doesn’t repre- YDER I want
sent most alums.” I will con- in to love this
cede, I am a disaffected weirdo, touch school, I want
but I am also an active mem- with sever- to be proud to
ber of the Bowdoin communi- al professors, be a Polar Bear, I
ty: I rowed for the crew team, I I went to reunion and I’ve want to know that all the op-
ran the (again, very well-fund- held up The Banner at my portunities it afforded me will
ed) Film Society and Bowdoin classmates’ weddings. I even be available for everyone asso-
Cable Network, I had a radio defended the College through ciated with the College.
show for three years and wrote Malcolm-Gladwell-Lobster- But you’ve lost me. I have
a column in this newspaper. I gate and I donated annually far more faith in the students
worked in the special collec- until I learned that Bowdo- who started this fund than I do
tions library and my first job in pays housekeeping and in the College that squashed it.
after graduation was from an groundskeeping staff starva- David Shuck is a member of
alumni connection. I still keep tion wages. the Class of 2012.

Pod life is not normal, resist the new normal

The Foxbox
by Jared Foxhall
The dictionary de-
fines “pod” as a “detach-
able or self-contained
unit on an aircraft,
spacecraft, vehicle, or
vessel, having a particu-
lar function.” My pod is
my bedroom, its func-
tion: isolation. It is said
that isolation is the new
heroism these days. This
may be true, but it cannot
become the new normal.
In the pod, each mem-
ber is a producer of digi-
tal labor—either through
their data generation or in
their work (work excluding
blue-collar work and essen-
tial workers, which the pod
relies on)—or a consumer of
digital media. Digital inter-
faces (laptops, smartphones,
tablets, social media, news
media, entertainment media,
tems, the modern era trends
towards anti-sociality or me-
diated sociality as tech com-
panies come to service every
aspect of human existence.
This becomes especially
apparent during quaran-
tine. The pod is now your
unintended universe—a
universe once occupied
with people now filled
with new bodies that
supply bare life: Ama-
zon, Zoom, Slack, Twit-
ter, Linkedin …
Even more frighten-
ing is how easily we slip
into pod life and how
new technologies enable
productivity through that
isolation. Recent years have
alluded to the virtual work-
N place or university but never
A TA
KYR
quite materialized it until
workplace software) act as in- now. Forced isolation and the
termediaries through which pod have accelerated digital
people interact for various dependencies while failing to
purposes. fully replace the fulfillment
While the internet insists of human presence. The lack
that it improves social sys- of human presence is part of
what makes this hard on all of
us; people need other people,
to be around other people.
Sociality is our humanity.
Virtually mediated so-
ciality is not a society; it is
a kind of post-society. It is
human interaction constant-
ly framed, shaped and influ-
enced by its digital interme-
diaries which profit from its
every turn. Every click, every
pause, every data point gener-
ated is recalibrated and resur-
faced as a new product. Our
continual use of it changes
our psychology; it creates de-
pendency, then fails to fulfill
us. Technology fails to fulfill
us. The pod is insufficient.
There’s been a lot of talk
about “new normals” or “the
next normal” in the news
lately. Many are convinced
that quarantine will shape
the conditions and demands
for a new kind of social or-
ganizing. People have really
come to understand which
board meeting could have
been a conference call. A
friend of mine recently said
to me, jokingly, that the only
real institutions that will sur-
vive the pandemic are Only-
fans, the Central Bank and
Amazon. He’s wrong, but he
has a point: the pandemic is
accelerating the kind of dis-
ruption that entrenches pod
life.
Many restaurants will not
survive, the movie theater
business will finally col-
lapse, online education will
become more feasible as
more investors back better
technologies, 5G technolo-
gies will eliminate the video
chat buffer—this all points
to a new normal that looks
more and more like a pod. In
what physical spaces will our
bodies feel comfortable co-
habitating? Are we destined
to mingle in chat rooms? The
irony is that the kind of radi-
cal sociality and cohabitation
that is required to change
course is one that may kill
millions of people. What op-
tions do we have?
Lately, when I am experi-
encing digital eye strain (a
term I learned from a terri-
fying YouTube advertisement
I’ve been seeing lately: “Are
you experiencing digital eye
strain? Buy our blue light
protective glasses!”) I’ve been
going to the riverfront park. I
drive there and either sit in
my car and look out at the
sunset or walk out to sit by
the water. I’m still in quaran-
tine in these moments. Many
more people occupy the riv-
erfront than I remembered.
Everyone has their masks
on—holding hands, push-
ing strollers, slowly stalking
the lots in their pods-on-
wheels—each co-quarantin-
ing in their little pod-units.
From six feet away, some ex-
change greetings, others ex-
change skeptical nods; all are
resisting in their own way.
This to me feels like a kind of
bittersweet hope.

QUESTION OF THE WEEK Last issue’s response:

Q: HAVE YOU TAKEN OUT STUDENT LOANS
DO YOU THINK WE’LL BE BACK IN ORDER TO PAY FOR BOWDOIN?
IN BRUNSWICK IN THE FALL? 32% YES
68% NO
Answer at bowdoinorient.com/poll. Based on answers from 225 responses.
Friday, May 1, 2020
On ‘ESD’, Disability, and Bowdoin’s ‘From Here’ Campaign
by Patrick Bloniasz
Op-Ed Contributor
Author’s Note: While Blo-
niasz sits on the Curriculum
and Educational Policy Com-
mittee, this article does not
represent the opinion of the
committee.
Bowdoin’s institutional
priorities matter in that they
clearly state who is important
at this school, what constitutes
serious scholarship and how
funding will be spent. Most
recently, priorities have right-
ly focused on the response to
COVID-19—zeroing in on
counseling in the wake of this
pandemic, preparing assis-
tance programs for students
when they (hopefully) return
to campus in the fall and pro-
viding Career Exploration and
Development (CXD) work-
shops that aid seniors/alumni
looking at the future. While
Bowdoin and the rest of the
world are going through a par-
ticularly devastating time with
COVID-19, I want to speculate
on one long-term innovation
that could emerge post-coro-
navirus: the introduction of a
new academic program. Such
speculation comes from cur-
rent discussions on Exploring
Social Difference (ESD), Dis-
ability and Bowdoin’s “From
Here” campaign.
To start, if you have been
Why we must keep the movie theater experience alive
by Benjamin Allen
Op-Ed Contributor
Movie theaters are currently
experiencing a grueling face-lift,
and it seems the two reasons
would be COVID-19 and “Trolls
World Tour.” If a Justin Tim-
berlake animated film musical
is a catalyst for change within a
multi-billion dollar industry, we
are truly living in the end times.
For months, theaters have
been closed. Movie studios
have shifted their release dates
from the summer to later in
the year or even into 2021. (The
one exception to that would be
Christopher Nolan’s Warner
Bros. tentpole “Tenet,” which is
maintaining its July 17 release
date, as of April 29.) Studios
have turned to releasing films as
Premium Video-On-Demand
(PVOD) options for $19.99.
Some of these films include
“The Invisible Man,” “The
Hunt” and “Birds of Prey.” How-
ever, Universal Studios made
the decision to release “Trolls
World Tour” on PVOD only,
skipping releasing the film in
movie theaters entirely.
As studios have been alter-
ing their plans, movie theater
chains have a more uncertain
fate. The biggest theater chain
in the U.S.—AMC Theaters—is
on the verge of bankruptcy.
Other theaters are suffering
similar issues due to a lack of
HAVE AN
OPINION?
following the multi-year di-
alogue regarding Bowdoin’s
flawed ESD requirement, you
might have been excited by the
newly proposed “Difference,
Power, and Inequity” (DPI)
curriculum change considered
by the faculty in January. DPI,
if approved, looks to sharpen
the vague language of ESD
and to push the distribution
requirement beyond being
merely a “diversity course.”
Rather, it would allow stu-
dents to confront their expe-
riences of being in, and con-
tributing to, complex social
systems. In Assistant Professor
of Sociology Theo Greene’s
words, the requirement looks
to be “broad enough … that
students don’t necessarily feel
[that the DPI is] a burden, but
an opportunity to really gain
insight on how to build a bet-
ter world.”
DPI looks to solve many
logistical problems—not only
on the side of students but for
faculty and administration, as
well (e.g., course design and
committee approval). Beyond
what DPI immediately fixes, it
could propel the introduction
of a neglected academic field
that I claim Bowdoin desper-
ately needs: disability studies.
For many, disability studies
might be unfamiliar because
it is, pedagogically speaking,
relatively new. The Society
attendance. As weeks pass with
no patrons, theaters are digging
their financial hole deeper and
deeper. However, movie studios
themselves rely on theaters to
sell their products. The alter-
ations in releases could be a way
for studios to prepare for what
could be an eventual shutdown
of theater chains.
Yet, on April 28, three events
shook the foundation of the
movie industry as we know it.
The first is that the Academy of
Motion Picture Arts and Scienc-
This is our last print edition of the semester, but you can submit opinions
for online publication to orientopinion@bowdoin.edu all summer long.
OPINION
for Disability Studies defines
its enterprise as sitting at the
intersection of the humanities,
social sciences and natural
sciences. In short, they chal-
lenge the idea of disability as a
“deficit” or “defect” and, rath-
er, drive scholarship that “ex-
plore[s] models and theories
that examine social, political,
cultural, and economic fac-
tors that define disability and
help determine personal and
collective responses to differ-
ence.” Universities around the
United States offer programs
in this
area, often
anchored
across Gen-
der, Sex-
uality and
es announced they would allow
films that premiere via stream-
ing platforms to be considered
for the 2021 Oscars, rather than
only considering films that are
first premiered in theaters. The
second is that the Wall Street
Journal reported “Trolls World
Tour” made $100 million dol-
lars in its rental fees. NBCUni-
versal CEO Jeff Shell saw this as
a victory, saying that “as soon
as theaters reopen, we expect
to release movies on both for-
mats.” The third earth-shaking
Women’s Studies; Education;
Sociology; Psychology/Neu-
roscience; Biology; History;
Economics and beyond.
How could this be funded
long-term, post-COVID-19?
Bowdoin recently launched an
exciting fundraising campaign
called “From Here” that looks
to raise $500 million centered
around a handful of long-term
priorities. Of that amount, $30
million “will create faculty
chairs and endowed leadership
positions, including five for
S
RN
X BU
ALE
event is that AMC Theaters
announced they will no longer
show Universal movies in their
theaters around the globe. This
is bad news for the “F9” and
“Minions: The Rise of Gru” fans
out there.
With the idea that one of the
biggest studios is barred from
showing their films in theaters,
the biggest loser would be the
consumer. Movie theaters are
fighting for their lives, and with
studios stating that they will sim-
ply move their films to stream-
existing faculty and five for
new hires in areas of curricu-
lar priority.” In doing so, Bow-
doin looks to “hone our cur-
riculum for a changing world
… in areas that include inter-
disciplinary scholarship.”Dis-
ability studies strikes at the
core of both of those goals
(i.e., focusing on a changing
world/student population and
engaging in interdisciplinary
scholarship). Given the value
of disability studies and giv-
en the prospect of adopting
DPI sometime in the future,
I claim we ought to seriously
consider the
HOLLY HARRIS
ing, the only real strategy would
be to retaliate. But, even when
theaters reopen, there is a tre-
mendous possibility that people
will not immediately show up. In
a post-quarantine world, people
will be concerned about cleanli-
ness and health like never before.
When someone coughs in a dark
movie theater, we will definitely
react differently than we would
have in January.
I never expected my last
movie-going experience to be
“Emma” at Brunswick’s Eve-
19
development of this academic
program.
Needless to say, I think mak-
ing disability studies a priority
has implications beyond pro-
ducing scholarship and offer-
ing courses in this subject area.
Yes, I think that it will better
equip future engineers, teach-
ers, doctors, lawyers, business
leaders, researchers and more.
But there’s more. The programs
we offer send a cutting-edge
message about who we want
in Brunswick, about who we
want to graduate from Bowdo-
in and who we want to declare
that they are—indeed—“From
Here.” Looking back on history,
we see that the introduction of
Africana Studies, Asian Stud-
ies, Latin American Studies,
Middle Eastern and North
African Studies, etc., have val-
idated both scholarship and
people. It says these pursuits
matter to Bowdoin.
Given this, it’s clear that at
least one population is strik-
ingly invisible on campus: those
living with disabilities. I grant
you that creating a new pro-
gram is great work, but we need
to seriously consider the follow-
ing question: Who is allowed to
be “From Here”? To not address
this issue is to make our answer,
to ourselves and to the world,
painfully clear.
Patrick Bloniasz is a mem-
ber of the Class of 2022.
ningstar. My friend and I de-
cided to go to the Jane Austen
trivia at Moderation Brewing
with Visiting Assistant Profes-
sor of German Andrew Hamil-
ton beforehand. The movie was
fun and did what it was meant
to do: tell a great story. But
looking back, I yearn to sit in
that old theater again and be en-
grossed for two hours. At home,
movies are offered on all kinds
of platforms, like Netflix, Hulu,
Amazon Prime and the (un-
derrated) Criterion Channel.
The problem, however, comes
with the fact that these movies
are shown at home. People go
to the theater to watch a movie
specifically. At home, we watch
a movie to pass the time.
The movie-going experience
is dying. I would say go out and
see a movie when you can, but
who knows if you want to risk
that. Movies have been a pillar of
our entertainment system, along
with going to concerts, theater
performances, sports events and
even eating out. But there is no
telling what the future holds for
each of these things.
I long to see a movie the way
it was meant to be seen again,
but everything is changing. We
need to accept this reality and
make the best of what we have,
while appreciating what we
once had.
Benjamin Allen is a member
of the Class of 2023.
20 Friday, May 1, 2020

MAY
FRIDAY 1
Make a list of songs that you hope will comprise the
“We believe that we can change the things around us in accordance with our desires—we believe it because soundtrack of this summer.
otherwise we can see no favourable outcome. We do not think of the outcome which generally comes to pass
and is also favourable: we do not succeed in changing things in accordance with our desires, but gradually our
desires change. The situation that we hoped to change because it was intolerable becomes unimportant to us. Write a story about a protagonist that embodies all of
your pet peeves and least favorite character traits. Put
We have failed to surmount the obstacle, as we were absolutely determined to do, but life has taken us round
this protagonist in situations that make you learn to love
it, led us beyond it, and then if we turn round to gaze into the distance of the past, we can barely see it, so them.
imperceptible has it become.”

–Marcel Proust, “In Search of Lost Time” Bonus activity: Watch a recording of the Clayton Rose x
Janet Lohman Zoom Town Hall. Punch the nearest wall.

SATURDAY 2 SUNDAY 3 MONDAY 4

Write about self-quarantine the way your favorite author Tell a story backwards, scene by scene, like the music Make a T-chart comparing your Bowdoin roommate(s) to
would. video for “The Scientist” by Coldplay. your quarantine roommate(s).

Write your own personal “Goodbye to All That”—a Make a list of all of the people from which you plan Write a story about someone who collects something
farewell letter to your hometown as if you plan to never to keep socially distancancing long after a COVID-19 obscure. What kind of adventures and obstacles do they
return. vaccine is developed. experience in pursuit of these collector’s items?

Bonus activity: Write a formal apology letter to each of Bonus activity: Fantasize about a day where you won’t Bonus activity: Things are too boring right now. Get in a
your professors for being on Snapchat, iMessage, TikTok, have to inhale stale, recycled air from a face mask when long-distance fight with a friend or lover.
Instagram and/or Tinder during all remote lectures. You you walk outside.
will both benefit from the closure.

TUESDAY 5 WEDNESDAY 6 THURSDAY 7

Write about a character who cares deeply about Days in isolation start to blend together after a while. Write about a pair of friends who seemingly have
something that nobody else is concerned about. Does Make a list of ways that you can mix up your routine nothing in common. Have them prove the strength—and
their interest lead them to alienation or to forge unlikely while social distancing. functionality—of their friendship to the reader as the
connections? story progresses.

Write a story about a person with a very obvious flaw

Write about a terribly awkward and unproductive Zoom
class. Write the first half from the perspective of a
student; then, halfway through, switch to the perspective
of the professor.
Bonus activity: Watch other, less populated states begin
reopening. Sigh and think to yourself, “Why must I live
just outside of Boston? This is so unfair.”
that they are completely unaware of. Keep them in the
dark until the very end of the story.
Bonus activity: Read the last issue of the Orient for the
2019-2020 school year online. We appreciate you!
Make a list of the things you’ve learned while socially
distancing. Have your priorities shifted? Have your
perspectives changed?
Bonus activity: Start studying for finals. (Editor’s note:
LOL.)

8 9 10 11 12 13 14
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