The Bowdoin Orient- Vol. 145, No. 12 -December 11, 2015

7/21/2019 The Bowdoin Orient- Vol. 145, No. 12 -December 11, 2015

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BY JOHN BRANCHORIENT STAFF

President Clayton Rose an-nounced plans last week to hire out-side researchers from the Univer-sity of Pennsylvania and VillanovaUniversity to conduct a study onthe experiences of students of colorat Bowdoin. In an interview withthe Orient this week, Rose spokein more detail about what the studywill encompass and how its resultswill be used.

Camille Charles, a professor ofsociology, Africana studies and ed-ucation at the University of Penn-sylvania, will lead the project andbe assisted by Rory Kramer, an as-sistant professor of sociology andcriminolog y at Villanova University.

The project is scheduled to becompleted by May, at which pointa written report of the researchers’findings will be made available tothe campus community. Rose saidthat while he plans for conversationssurrounding the report to take place

on campus following the report’spublication, he was not yet surewhen those would happen or whatform they would take.

After the report is released, Rosesaid, an internal process will beginfor determining which of the recom-mendations to act on and how to goabout doing so.

Rose said that Charles is beingpaid by the College for her workon the project, but did not give anamount. He said that he made thedecision to hire Charles and Kramerindependent of the Board of Trust-ees, but that the board is aware of

Rose hires

researchersto study raceat Bowdoin

About 500 students gathered in David Saul Smith Union Tuesday night for President Clayton Rose’s “town hall,”an open meeting that addressed the question, “Why do issues of race matter if Iwhite?”A number of students took the microphone and responded to each other’s comments about engaging in discussions about race as a white student. While Rose gave general remarks atthe beginning of the meeting and occasionally jumped in to reframe a question, most of the discussion was propelled by students’questions, comments and personal stories.

MATTHEW GUTSCHENRITTER, THE BOWDOIN ORIENT

Please seeSTUDY,page 5

TOWN HALL

A house on Bowker Street (above) is a new off -campus house. Six students lived inthe house this semester and more will live there next semester.

JENNY IBSEN, THE BOWDOIN ORIEN

Voting for BSG’s Multicultural Repre-sentative will continue through thisSaturday, December 12 at 9 p.m. Ifone-third of the student body votes,and two-thirds of voters vote in favor

of the position, the representativewill be elected next semester fromwithin the Multicultural Coalitionmembership. The representative willact as a liaison between the BSG andthe Multicultural Coalition.

To vote, use your individual linkincluded in BSG’s email this week.

For more coverage of the Multicul-tural Rep, see bowdoinorient.com.

BSG Multicultural Rep

Please seeTOWN,page 3

About 500 students, faculty and sta ff packed all three levels of David SaulSmith Union Tuesday night for Presi-dent Clayton Rose’s “town hall” focusedaround the question, “Why do issues ofrace matter if I’m white?”

“ e meeting and the question...came directly from meeting and a dis-cussion that I had with the leaders of themulticultural groups,” said Rose in aninterview with the Orient. “ I sat downwith them a few weeks ago to talk aboutwhere we are, where we want to go, is-sues, and so forth, and out of that camea discussion about the necessity...to en-gage the white majority on campus.”

e “town hall” was held soon af-ter Rose announced that he would be

bringing in outside researchers from theUniversity of Pennsylvania and Villano- va University to conduct a study on the

experiences of students of color at Bow-doin, and just before the BSG referen-dum for a Multicultural Representative.

e “town hall” meeting aimed to openup these conversations in a space for theentire student body, refocusing the dis-cussion on white student involvement.

Rose opened Tuesday’s meeting witha few general remarks. He acknowledgedthe importance of action, rather than justconversation, but stressed thoughtful re-ection as a necessary rst step.

“Before we can get at guring outhow to x things, we have to understandthem and we can’t understand them un-less we talk about them. is is an issuewe don’t talk about here or in America,”Rose said. “I have seen far too much

easy action around some of these issueswhich then lead to no solution becausethere’s no engagement or no true under-

standing about the communities tryingto be aff ected. We’re going to try...to dealwith that problem at its root cause.”

Prompted by Rose’s initial question,“Why should I care about issues of raceif I’m white?,” Briana Caldwell ’17 beganthe discussion by asking, “what is Bow-doin going to do to make Bowdoin stu-dents who are white think that that’s animportant question to answer?”

A er Rose turned the question backto the student body, the conversationsoon shi ed from Bowdoin’s responsi-bility to a sense of white students’ guilt,guided by Rose’s call for more whitestudents to speak. In the back-and-forth

Community packs Union to address whyrace should matter to white students

BY RACHAEL ALLENORIENT STAFF

THIS WEEK IN

OPINIONTHE COMPASSIONOF RADICAL POLITICSMaya ReyesPage 12

IN SUPPORT OFPROFESSOR BISBEE

Mark WethliPage 12

DOUBLE STANDARDSIN HOOK UP CULTURE

Haley FrieschPage 13

CRITIQUING THE TERM‘CULTURAL APPROPRIATION’

Stephen KellyPage 15

Off-campus housing steadily increasing

Although off -campus housing is nota new phenomenon at Bowdoin, thenumber of students renting homes o ff -campus has been steadily increasingover the past few years—a phenomenonthat presents new challenges for the Col-lege. Since the Offi ce of Safety and Secu-rity has no control over privately-ownedproperty, students in these homes mustdeal directly with the Brunswick PoliceDepartment (BPD) and with other com-munity members, a process that can leadto some tension.

According to Senior Vice President forCommunications and Public A ff airs Scott

Hood, there are currently 165 studentsliving off -campus this fall semester. isis the highest the number has been in thepast six years and an increase from the 144who lived off -campus in Fall 2014.

Neighbors

Some members of the Brunswickcommunity feel the College does not doenough to regulate Bowdoin studentsliving off campus. Professor of Cin-ema Studies Tricia Welsch, who lives onCleaveland Street, criticized the lack ofpolicies surrounding the issue.

“ ey need to seek to restrict more,guide more the students who live in thehouses. And that’s not to say that indi-

vidual people of good will like Randyhaven’t done what they can do, but oncestudents move o ff campus the Collegehas essentially no jurisdiction, and sothey really don’t get involved,” she said.

Since Bowdoin Security does not getinvolved at off -campus houses, Welschand other community members cannotcall upon them to regulate the studentsliving there. Instead, they must rely oncommunications with residents—or onBPD—when there is an issue.

“I really, really hate that that’s all wecan do. I don’t think of having an adver-sarial relationship with students. I don’tthink of calling the police on neighbors.

Please seeHOUSING,page 4

BY MARINA AFFO AND KATIE MIKLUSORIENT STAFF

Tensions rise as students and community members communicate through BPD

B OT

BRUNSWICK, MAINE BOWDOINORIENT.COM THE NATION’S OLDEST CONTINUOUSLY PUBLISHED COLLEGE WEEKLY VOLUME 145, NUMBER 12 DECEMBER 11, 2015

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“My neighbors from a fewstreets over always come over

and we have a re.”

Leah Howard ’18

STUDENT SPEAKWhat’s your favorite holiday tradition?

COMPILED BY JENNY IBSE

“Every year my sisters, mymom and I get together and

watch Christmas Vacationwith Chevy Chase.”

Harry Summers ’16

Sam Monkman ’18

SECURITY REPORT: 12/4 to 12/8Friday, December 4· A student who was driving a C ol-

lege-owned van drove off the roadand knocked down a College-ownedlight pole at the corner of Bath Roadand Sills Drive. The student reportedthat she could not see through thefrosted windshield.

· An offi cer checked on the wellbeingof a faculty member who failed to showup for class. e professor overslept.

· A student stole a holiday wreath froma wall at orne Dining. A report was

led with the dean of student a ff airs.· A student was cited for possessionof hard alcohol in Chamberlain Hall.

· ree students were cited for smok-ing marijuana and possession of drugparaphernalia in Chamberlain Hall.

· Brunswick Rescue transported astudent to Mid Coast Hospital a er thestudent experienced a series of seizures.

· An offi cer checked on the wellbeingof an intoxicated student at Reed House.

· A student who was denied access tothe Junior-Senior Ball at orne Hallbecame disorderly with a member ofthe Student Activities O ffi ce staff as-signed monitor the event.

· Brunswick Rescue transportedan intoxicated student from BurnettHouse to Mid Coast Hospital.

· Brunswick Rescue transported anintoxicated student from Coleman Hallto Mid Coast Hospital.

Saturday, December 5· A student walking on South Street

while drinking openly from a winebottle was cited for possession of alco-

hol by a minor.· Excessively loud music was re-

ported coming from the sixth oor ofStowe Hall.

· An offi cer checked on the wellbeingof an intoxicated student seen leavingReed House.

· An offi cer checked on the wellbe-ing of an intoxicated student in thewomen’s room at orne Hall duringthe Junior-Senior Ball.

· Students asked that an o ffi cer checktheir apartment a er they returned

home and found a door ajar.· Brunswick Rescue transported anintoxicated student from Moore Hallto Mid Coast Hospital.

· An offi cer checked on the wellbeingof an intoxicated student at Hyde Hall.

· An offi cer checked on the condi-tion of an intoxicated student walkingat the corner of Bath Road and SillsDrive, and drove the student to his o ff -campus apartment.

· A student took responsibility for van-dalizing a light xture at Reed House.

· A student was escorted to MidCoast Hospital for evaluation of aLyme Disease are-up.

· A smoke alarm in Coleman Hallwas activated by the unauthorized useof a vaporizer.

Sunday, December 6· Students and staff reported that

an intoxicated non-student malewas seen entering Coles Tower aftera student opened the door for him.The man had earlier tried to enterSuper Snack.

· An intoxicated student became illat orne Hall and was escorted to hisresidence hall.

· An intoxicated student vomited inthe men’s room at orne Hall. estudent will be billed for the house-keeper call-in and clean-up.

· Excessive noise was reported atBaxter House at 1:30 a.m. Several peo-ple were asked to leave the building.

· Wall damage and a broken windowwere discovered at Baxter House fol-lowing a registered event.

· An exterior door was kicked in a Harp-swell Apartments. Members of a men’sathletic team are taking responsibility.

· A bike that was reported stolen atHarpswell Apartments was later foundnear Searles Hall.

Monday, December 7· A student reported seeing an un-

identied man limp into WhittierField. e area was checked and theman was not located.

· An ill student at Stowe Hall askedfor be taken to Mid Coast Hospital.

· Two female students walking onFederal Street near the intersectionwith Bath Road reported being ver-bally harassed (not a bias incident) by amale teen in a dark SUV heading weston Bath Road.

Tuesday, December 8· An offi cer investigated a suspicious

vehicle that was parked in the WatsonArena parking lot.

· An offi cer assisted an ill student atHoward Hall.

“We have a thing wherewe nd a pickle in the tree.

That’s it.”

Dillon Sandhu ’16“Cutting down the

Christmas tree.”“Making stained glass windowcookies. You melt Jolly Ranch-

ers and they look like glass.”

Mike Pun ’17

MIRANDA HALL

Results of The Orient’sApproval Ratings Survey

Bowdoin College

President Rose

Offi ce of the Dean of Academic Aff airs

Offi ce of the Dean of Student Aff airs

The Faculty

Residential Life

Safety and Security

Dining Services

Registrar

Health Center

Information Technology

The Libraries

Department of AthleticsCareer Planning Center

Counseling Services

Offi ce of Off -Campus Study

College House System

Bowdoin Student Government (BSG)

BSG President

Student Activities Funding Committee

The Bowdoin Orient

Entertainment Board

Judicial Board

Brunswick, Maine

Brunswick Police Department

93%

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87%

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76%

93%

74%75%

86%

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All Results

99% 98% 94% 94%93% 93%

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f e t y a n

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See more atbowdoinorient.com

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TOWNCONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

On January 4, the College willlaunch Workday, a new payroll,human resources and timekeepingsystem. It will replace their currentprovider, Ceridian.

“The ease and look and feel of thesystem is just so much better thanwhat we currently have today,” saidVice President of Human ResourcesTama Spoerri.

Human Resources (HR) decided toswitch systems in February of 2014,when Ceridian announced it wouldundergo a full upgrade, requiring all

customers to transfer over their owndata. Prior to the announcement,the College had already begun toreview management systems that of-fered a module for higher education,which Ceridian did not. The up-grade announcement along with theneed for a system with an educationplatform ultimately triggered HR toleave Ceridian and sign with Work-day, which is among the few humanresources management systems thatdoes offer such a platform.

Ceridian, which the College hasused for over 10 years, manages twosubsystems: TimePro, for time-track-ing and payroll, and HR’s employee-benets system. e current version

of Ceridian requires some self-servicemanagement to be done on paper.Workday is an entirely web-based

and single-sign-on system. Employ-ees and employers alike will simplyenter their Bowdoin username andpassword to gain access to th eir entireexperience as Bowdoin employees:pay, benefits, time-tracking, personalinformation, requesting time-off andso on. Workday may also be accessed via the ir mobi le app.

Spoerri praised Workday for be-ing “incredibly user friendly.”

Workday has over 1,000 custom-ers, ranging from academic institu-tions, to tech companies, to nonprofitorganizations. Among those are larg-er, research-based universities suchas Brown, Colgate and Stanford. Inthe past year, Workday has workedto make their services more afford-able for small-scale institutions suchas Bowdoin. Bowdoin is the first ofthe NESCACs to transfer systems,though according to Spoerri, “severalof our peer colleges are in the processof reviewing it and actually may be ina position to move to Workday with-in the next year.”

“[Workday] want[s] to try, forsmall institutions, a fast, lower-cost

implementation to see how it wouldwork,” said Director of EnterpriseSystems and Project ManagementAbbie Brown. “In the end, they aregoing to extend [implementationtime] back out a little bit, by maybetwo months because it was a veryrapid implementation.”

The College submitted an RFP(Request For Proposal) to Workdayin the summer of 2014.

“We went through the evaluationprocess in the fall and then signedthe contract at the end of January of2015—this year,” said B rown.

She attributes the fast pace of theproject to the members of the team.

The executive sponsors—peoplewho endorse the project and aid thelabor-intensive process of switchingsystems—are Senior Vice Presidentfor Finance and Administration andTreasurer Katy Longley and SeniorVice President and Chief Informa-tion Officer of IT Mitch Davis.

e rest of the Project Team in-cludes another sub-group of spon-sors, a Core Team and a Focus Teamof members from various depart-ments throughout campus, who HRconsulted from the beginning of theprocess in order to gather inclusiveperspectives on the system change-over. Among those departments areFacilities, Dining, Library, Safety and

Security and Academic A ff airs.Students employed by the Collegewill all receive their own Workdayaccount. For students who alreadyrecord their hours online, theywill continue to do so in Workday.Otherwise, employers such as Din-ing Services will keep the Accutimeswiping system to record hours. Ev-ery clock used on campus to trackwork hours will be replaced witha Bowdoin-customized one fromWorkday, with a built in “B” buttonfor entering student IDs.

In preparing students, faculty andstaff for Workday, the Workday Im-plementation Team is hosting a se-ries of open lab demos to walk peo-ple through the website. The first ofthe series, the Workday Overviewsession, was yesterday. The nextoverview session will be Wednesday,December 16 in Moulton Union’sLancaster Lounge from 12:30 to 1:00p.m. The Implementation Team isalso offering more specialized openlab demos for the many differentfunctions of Workday. The schedulefor the demos is available at bow-doin.edu/workday. HR will also of-fer training for employees as theyreturn from Winter Break.

New provider Workplacemodernize old payroll, Hand timekeeping system

BY LUCY RYANORIENT STAFF

OPEN MIC ON RACE:Tim Long ’17(top) and Frankie Ahrens ’18 (bottom)

speak at Tuesday’s “town hall.” Longspoke to the inherent assumptionsthat too often “hinder the genuinenessand eff ectiveness of the conversations,”

while Ahrens broadened the scope ofthese conversations. “I think the conver-sation doesn’t always have to be about

race. It’s simply about engaging withnew people,”Ahrens said. “It doesn’t

have to be a program. It simply has tobe something that we reach out and do.”

VALERIE CHANG, THE BOWDOIN ORIENT

nature of the discussion, a number ofstudents expressed their hesitation toparticipate in discussions of race as awhite person.

“I think there’s a fear that people willsee you [as a white person] in someways as becoming too involved in issuesthat you shouldn’t become involved in,”Jacob Russell ’17 said. “It is guilt. No onelikes being in a setting where the raceyou’re associated with has to come upwith actions that did happen in the past,happen every day...You have to confrontmany spaces at Bowdoin when you goto talk about issues of race as a minor-ity as a white person, which is a greatexperience to have...but I think whitestudents...o en don’t want to put [them-selves] in that situation.”

“Concerns that some of my whitefriends have made is that they’re reallyafraid of saying something wrong, thatthey don’t have a space that they feel likethey can speak and they won’t be imme-diately shut down or screamed at or per-ceived at racist,” Emily Serwer ’16 said.

Olivia Stone ’16 responded directly toSerwer, agreeing with the fear yet urgingpeople to move past it.

“We’re brave students, we’re smart,and we can all just take a deep breathtogether and get over it,” Stone said. “Ialso don’t think that those attacks arereally going to happen. And I don’t re-ally know why we are afraid of them, butI don’t think that my peers of color aregoing to attack me even though there’sthis fear that they will. I don’t knowwhere that’s coming from and I thinkwe need to explore that a bit together.”

Adira Polite ’18 tried to reframe thisfear by contextualizing people’s responses.

“I think one reason for [people beingafraid of others exploding] is you onlyhear these voices when there’s an ex-plosion. People wait to engage in theseconversations until something has hap-pened that has angered people.” Politesaid. “If you go up to them when some-thing has happened they’re going to beemotional...But if you go up and askthem on a normal day, you know, talkto them about these issues, then maybeyou can learn something.”

is initiative, many students felt,rests with white students.

“[A student] was [saying] that stu-

dents of color need to change how theytalk in order to make [race] easier totalk about,” Violet Ranson ’16 said.“And the problem with that is...You can’t

edit what someone’s going to say whenthey’re talking about how you hurtthem. So it is up to white students to beable to handle that, because students ofcolor have been handling hatred for a very long time. So it’s your job now tobe able to handle hard things and han-dle having these hard conversations, ifyou’re really curious about what peoplehave to say.”

While programming attempts to fa-cilitate these hard conversations, the lackof white student attendance at these mul-ticultural events reshapes the discussion.

“[At the Anonymous Speech talkon Friday] there were probably four or ve white students,” Justin Weathers’18 said. “I would just like to encouragepeople that these spaces are open andthey’re open for students to engage in.We’re not going to attack you and wecan have mature conversations aboutthings we disagree about... ere’s spacefor disagreement and we can overcomethese things but we need people on bothsides to come to the conversation.”

Daisha Roberts ’16 echoed Weathers’call for more attendance.

“[As] a part of Af-Am we have al-ways discussed diff erent ways...[to]plan ways to get white people to cometo our dialogues, programming, eventsand parties. We literally spend hours onend trying to gure out how to get morethan the same 20 people that usually goto our events,” Roberts said.

Students urged each other to ex-tend the initiative past programmingas well.

“I think the conversation doesn’talways have to be about race. It’s sim-ply with engaging with new people,”Frankie Ahrens ’18 said. “I think that’sa really powerful way to do it. It doesn’thave to be a program. It simply has tobe something that we reach out and do.”

Reaching out becomes more compli-cated when students remain unsure ofthe boundaries of “group spaces.”

“I felt, as a cisgender, Latino-identi-fying person, that I do not belong evenwalking through Russworm House be-cause I used to think of that place as

exclusively a safe haven for black stu-dents,” Julian Tamayo ’16 said. “ enactually in those spaces I see all this artand these friends studying. e same

thing is happening in 24 College withwomen and the queer community. Ithink it was helpful for me to think ofthese spaces less as exclusive to who ison the title as safe haven and actually asplaces of celebration. I think that opensup the space for a lot of people who con-sider themselves as allies.”

At the same time, some studentsfelt these spaces occasionally need tobe exclusive.

“How you can know as a white per-son is you ask...Af-Am parties are socialspaces, so we want as many people whocan t in that space to come,” KamaJones El ’17 said. “Especially a er thesailing team incident, when those thingsoccur that’s probably not the best timefor people to be there, simply because itcan interfere with how people feel con -dent in expressing themselves.”

Like a number of other students, JonesEl spoke of the way Bowdoin exposedher to diff erent people, an exposure bestnavigated through engagement.

“One of the biggest things I’m grate-ful for being here at Bowdoin is that Iget to engage with people who I wouldnot engage with if I was back home,”Jones El said. “ e fact that people arereluctant to engage is what harms...usin terms of why we feel welcome in cer-tain spaces and don’t feel welcomed inothers. I feel like the more you interactwith people, the more you can learnfrom them.”

ough having bowed out for mostof the discussion, near the end of thehour, Rose responded to a student whocalled him out for suggesting that “stu-dents who identify as students of color...are one thing.

“You should absolutely feel free to[call me out]... I’m going to weigh intothis thing, deeply. I’m not going any-where. And I will denitely make mis-takes, and I will get called out for them,and I will feel horrible about them, butit’s not going to deter me,” Rose said.“ at’s the single most important lessonI’ve learned in the much longer jour-ney...Take a deep breath and keepinggoing through it and engage.”

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None of that seems any kind of normal tome,” said Welsch.

If residents don’t wish to invoke thepolice, Welsch said, the responsibilityis on them to “provide guidance to thestudents about what it means to live in aquiet neighborhood as quiet neighbors.”

“ ere’s all kinds of things you needto teach the people who live there everyyear,” she said.

Students ask neighbors to call theminstead of the police when there is aproblem, said Welsch, “but, you know,that’s also not really our job.”

Senior Lecturer in EnvironmentalStudies Jill Pearlman lives on LongfellowAvenue and is thankful that she does nothave to deal with students, as she is notimmediate neighbors with any of them.

Pearlman says that having her chil-dren grow up near the College was a re-warding experience and that there havebeen winters where students would helpshovel her driveway, but she would not

like to have them live next door.“Students can be incredibly nice,

but I just don’t want to live next tothem,” she said.

She added that it is unfortunate thatBowdoin is buying a lot of property onLongfellow Avenue, a street close to cam-pus. Currently there is one o ff -campusstudent home on Longfellow Avenue.

According to Perlman, professors are“very unhappy” that they are not able tolive on Longfellow because houses havebeen bought by the College.

Students

Traditionally, certain houses cyclethrough groups of Bowdoin studentrenters every year. Some are uno ffi ciallyaffi liated with sports teams, while othersare just passed between friends. Studentschoose to live off -campus for a variety ofreasons—to get some distance from theBowdoin scene, to have a space to throwparties and spend time with friends, tohave more autonomy. However, with thisautonomy also come certain challenges.

Jared Feldman ’16 lives in a housewith 10 other Bowdoin students onCleaveland Street. He described hisand his housemates’ interactions withthe Brunswick community as “fairlylimited,” but added that “we de nitelytry to maintain as positive as possibleneighbor relations.”

“We absolutely send emails tothe neighbors if there’s going to beany large gathering, any noise. Theyhave our numbers. The idea is tocontact us if th ere’s a problem beforethe police,” he said.

Peter Yanson ’16 lives with fiveother students on Bowker Street, ina house that was rented to students

for the first time this year. He ex-pressed similar sentiments aboutcommunity relationships.

“Most of our interactions with ourneighbors have been at the beginningof the year. When we rst moved in, wewent around and introduced ourselvesand gave them our phone numbers incase we threw any parties that got toorowdy or anything,” he said. “ ey wereall a little apprehensive at rst becausethere had been a family that lived therebefore and this was the rst time that sixcollege boys were going to live in a housetogether, so they were a little nervousabout that, but on the whole it’s been su-

per positive.”Yanson said that he lived o ff cam-

pus on McClellan Street last springsemester and found that interactionswith neighbors were more tense there,with neighbors that o en called BPDwith complaints of excessive noise.However, Yanson did not see theserun-ins as too di ff erent from dealingwith Bowdoin Security.

“What would Security do—theywould come, they would tell us to calmdown. And then the police just did thesame thing last year. ey would tellus to turn down the music, whoeverwas outside was 21 and showed theirID, it never amounted to anything else.So I never thought of it as a larger dealto deal with the police, just a di ff erentdeal,” he said.

Feldman expressed more reservationsabout interactions with the police.

“It hasn’t been a large challenge for usyet, but I think it’s something that we’reall aware of,” he said. “ rowing [parties]off campus is certainly a larger responsi-bility and I think everyone in the househas felt that when there are people over.

We don’t have Security as a bu ff er.”Matt Rubino ff ’16 lives on Garrison

Street with six other Bowdoin studentsin a house that has historically been trad-ed between members of the hockey andfootball teams. Since the house has tradi-tionally been a residence that hosts manyparties, Rubino ff said he and his house-mates met with both Randy Nichols andBPD before the year started.

“When something’s going on with stu-dents, [BPD] will contact Bowdoin Se-curity, and they keep a good connectionbetween those two. But rst response inan emergency would be from the police,”he said.

Juliet Eyraud ’16 lives at 11 PotterStreet with four roommates. It is Eyraud’ssecond year living off -campus. She livedon McClellan Street last year, and lovesthe experience.

“I liked the idea of having cheaperhousing and having neighbors, having akitchen and being more connected to thecommunity than I have been,” she said.

11 Potter is next to the home of Sena-tor Angus King.

“He actually hit my roommate’s carand le a really nice note that was like,‘I think I might have damaged yourbumper please get in touch with my in-surance agency. Signed Angus King,’”said Eyraud.

Eyraud has not had any interac-tions with the police, but since oneof the assaults that occurred earlierthis semester was on Potter Street,Eyraud says Security has been veryresponsive and has communicatedwell since the incident.

“Randy came to our house and gaveus updates without us even asking,”said Eyraud.

Eyraud lived in the house for a week

in the summer before her roommatesand says there was a prowler in her yard,but when she contacted Security theytold her it wasn’t in their domain. ischanged as the semester went on.

“I think because it kept happeningthey were like, ‘We should make thisour domain,’ which is nice,” she said. “Ihaven’t felt incredibly unsafe.”

Amina Ben Ismail ’17 lives at 84Spring Street and the recent security con-cerns have not changed her outlook onoff -campus housing either.

“I’m scared now but it hasn’t changedmy experience. I already knew that thesethings happened. It was scary that it was

this close but I do feel safe driving—Inever walked—and taking the shuttle,”she said.

One critique Ben Ismail has of liv-ing off -campus is her house’s relation-ship with Security. Security has not visited Spring St reet since she movedin, and Ben Ismail wishes that theywould be more involved with the o ff -campus houses.

“I wish Bowdoin Security would visit off -campus houses and see howmuch lighting there is and if it’s safe.

ey have students living o ff campus,they should make sure that everythingis good,” she said.

Security

If they are not called by students, resi-dents or BPD, Security o en does not visit or communicate with students liv-ing in off -campus houses.

“If the police ask us to respondand assist them, we will often dothat,” said Director of Safety and Se-curity Randy Nichols.

is semester, Nichols has had to speak

to students living in o ff -campus houses onGarrison Street and Harpswell Road be-cause neighbors were upset that studentswere cutting through their lawns.

Nichols advises students to get toknow their neighbors and communicatewith them if there are any problems.

“When I meet with o ff -campus stu-dents I encourage them to get to knowtheir neighbors and even exchangephone numbers, so if things get a littleloud some night or there is some sort ofa disturbance the neighbor can call. Andthat keeps things on an even keel and laysthe groundwork for a relationship withthe neighborhood,” he said.

HOUSINGCONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

, , 4



the project.According to Rose’s announce-

ment, the study aims to answer threebroad questions: how students ofcolor experience life at Bowdoin dif-ferently from white students, whatpolicies and practices contribute tothese differences and what strategiesthe College could pursue to improvethe experiences of students of color.

“Those of color in our communityexperience Bowdoin differently thanthose who are white; the differencecan be profound and occurs in everyaspect of our lives here,” Rose wrote.

Rose’s announcement comes af-ter a semester of events that havesparked discussions surrounding in-cidents of racism and structural ra-cial inequality at Bowdoin and othercampuses across the country. AtBowdoin, the “gangster” party heldby the sailing team in October anda series of controversial anonymous

posts on Yik Yak led to protests andwider discussions of the role thatrace plays on campus.

“Without getting after institu-tional structures and really under-standing the barriers that exist orthe mechanisms that you can useto facilitate it, you will only makelimited progress,” Rose said in aninterview with the Orient. “There isalso a deep temptation to react very

quickly and throw lots of things atthe problem without understandingthe root cause of the problem.”

In response, Rose said, this proj-ect seeks to understand the racial is-sues facing Bowdoin in a systematicway. Charles and Kramer will be giv-en quantitative data about the Col-lege to analyze, and will also makequalitative observations during in-person visits to speak with students,faculty and staff.

Bowdoin faculty will likely beinterviewed by the researchers fortheir perspectives, but will not act asresearchers in the study.

“I do want to give ProfessorCharles the opportunity to be some-one who comes from the outsideand gains an understanding of thisplace,” Rose said.

Charles, who declined a requestfor an interview from the Orient,will continue to teach a full slate ofclasses at Penn. However, Rose said,she plans to make visits to Bowdoinfor “a bunch of days at a time.”

Charles knew Rose when he was

a student in her department at Pennand she served as a reader for hisPh.D. dissertation.

“She is uniquely suited amongall scholars that I know or know ofin the United States to help us. Herwork on racism is among the best inthe country, and she works at the in-tersection of race and higher educa-tion, and in particular has looked atliberal arts colleges,” Rose said.

STUDYCONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

, , 5



‘Together’ shares stories of survivors of sexual

Finding a boyfriend at Bowdoin is not the be all an

Hello, precious readers! Despite my explicitly expressed

aversion to answering questionsabout love, I have received many.Thanks, jerks. Three of these in-quired about how to find a sweet-heart. See them combined below:

Dear Katherine,“Where should I go to meet a lov-

er? Teach me your ways, oh wise one.”“My inability to get a sig other is

hurting my school work. Help!”“I've never dated someone at Bow-

doin and I really want to. What's thebest way to meet someone?”

Sincerely,Singles in Studz Now, look. I’ve already stated in

an earlier column that love is a mav-erick and giving love advice is use-less. But once again, at your request,here I go.

Our culture is full of metanar-

ratives about what makes a personlovable, and those metanarrativesare often false, misogynistic, het-eronormative and like, super inef-fective. Take, for instance, the movie“Grease.” When Sandy wears hotpants and smokes cigarettes to pro-cure Danny’s love, we learn that bychanging ourselves completely, weconvince people to love us and alsodrive off in a flying car.

I’ve tried this, actually. Not thesmoking and hot pants. The chang-ing myself completely. It workedOK at first. I manipulated my highschool lover into courting methrough a flurry of crop tops and afeigned interest in “Entourage.” Hethen dumped me for another girlwho had much higher self-esteem.Calmly accepting my heartbreak, Isecretly threw that girl’s Uggs awayduring gym class*. There were noflying cars. I would call it a net loss.

Another love metanarrative weinternalize is the myth that we willbe happier in a relationship than wewould be single no matter what. In-stead of waiting to find a person wewant to be with, we look for anyoneto fill that self-made void, even if

that person doesn’t fit it quite right.I’ve done that too. In that rela-

tionship, we didn’t really like eachother very much, which is kind of aprereq for a relationship. Besides, wewere doomed from the beginning.The night after we started officiallydating, my new boyfriend drunkenlypeed on my slippers.

I remember laying in bed that nightthinking “Is this how the rest of therelationship is going to go?” And itwas. Picture three long months of himmetaphorically pissing on my shoes.

You might be thinking by nowthat I wreak footwear-related havocwherever I go. This is not untrue.But what I’m trying to identify isthat you should fall in love with peo-ple that you love just the way theyare, and who love you just the wayyou are right back.

So Singles in Studz, try to remem-ber that having a significant other islike, super not the most importantthing.** In fact, love for love’s sakealmost always ends with a brokenheart and too few good memories toredeem it. Don’t steep in your ownloneliness.

Instead, I would revel in your sin-

gledom. I know this isn’t satisfying.But alas, there is no build-a-bearworkshop for boyfriends or girl-friends or partners. Go out and besocial and do the stuff you like, theway happy single people do. Chanc-es are if you spend your time withBowdoin students with similar in-terests/values/levels of athleticism,someone will catch your eye.

That’s what happened to me twoyears ago. We’re still very happy. Noshoes have been destroyed. At leastnot yet.

Out,Katherine P.S.I also received this question about

love, which I feel morally obligatedto answer:

“After exchanging numbers, in ahetero pairing, isn't it in the guy'scourt to ask to hang out first?”

For the love of god, sweetheart.NO.

*Chloe, if you’re reading this, I’mso sorry.

** The most important thing is, ofcourse, Spicy Lentil Tacos at Thorne.

BEHIND THE FACE: (Clockwise from top left): Esther Nunoo ’17, Cordelia Orbach ’17, Clare DeSantis ’16 and Katie Foley ’17 tell the stories of four students w

KATHERINE GIVES ADVICEKATHERINE CHURCHILL

BY NICOLE WETSMANORIENT STAFF

DIANA FURUKAWA

During her sophomore year, AliRagan ’16 said that her eyes wereopened to the issue of sexual violenceon Bowdoin’s campus in a new way.

“I realized that sexual violence af-fects so many people on campus, butthe way we’re addressing it isn’t reallyeff ective, and we aren’t really doing a very good job of suppor ting survivorseither,” she said. “So I started thinkingof things we hadn’t done yet.”

Her answer was to start work on"Together," a film that premieredThursday night, that would share thestories of survivors on campus. Thefilm uses actors to portray the stories

of anonymous students who contrib-uted stories of being a survivor ofsexual violence at the College.

“It’s almost like the ‘Vagina Mono-logues’ and ‘Speak About It’ had ababy,” she said. “It is like these mono-logues and stories about experiencesat Bowdoin, but to see it on film iscompletely different.”

Ragan began to think about thisproject during her sophomore year,and began working with TallmanScholar in Gender and Women’sStudies Susan Faludi and Visiting As-sistant Professor of Cinema StudiesSarah Childress on an independentstudy last spring.

“It was very diffi cult getting started,”

she said. “As a school project the schoolhad to sign o ff on it, so it was diffi cultto nd a project that the school felt likeI was best protecting survivors whilestill...exposing how sexual violence af-fects Bowdoin students."

Ragan ended up sending out emailsto various groups on campus to collectanonymous stories from survivors.

“I sent out the email and I didn'tget any responses for two months.That was a little disheartening, be-cause I knew the stories were outthere but I think it’s really hard towrite down your story,” she said. “Ikept trying and eventually I got five

stories. They represent a very widerange of experiences at Bowdoin,whether their experiences happenedoff campus and they’ve just carried

the story with them onto campus ortheir stories happened at Bowdoinand how that’s affected their abilityto be a student.”

Ragan found ve actors to portraythe ve stories in the lm. Clare De-Santis ’16 was one of the actors.

"I think it’s an opportune time totalk about this to remind everyonethat it’s not always a stranger, andmore often than not it does happenwithin our community and that wealso need to be cognizant of that ithappens here," she said. "At the endof the day there was no way I wasn’tgoing to help spread that message.”

DeSantis said that presenting one ofthe stories was diffi cult.

“It was harder than I thought itwas going to be,” she said. “To actu-

ally put yourself in the headspaceof what this must be like was reallydifficult, and I’m sure I’m only justskimming the surface.”

Ragan said that she hopes the lmshows people the ways in which survivors on campus are a ff ected, every day,by their experience with sexual violence.

“Even if a case goes perfectly andeverything is taken care of exactly howthe survivor wants it to be taken careof, you’re still living with this story ev-ery single day of your life and it still af-fects you,” she said. “I think it takes thecampus to support survivors and that'swhat the lm is aimed to do.”

Students packed into Smith audito-rium for the screening on ursday,sitting in the aisles and standing at theback of the room.

“The most powerful part to mewere the clips of people walkingthrough the campus, because therewas a sense of emptiness and loneli-ness, and also just something that’sso routine,” said Brooke Goddard’17. “It was like an expression ofsomething that is so routine and socommon for every Bowdoin student, just walk ing around the campus ,but you don’t know what people arethinking about when they’re walk-ing around, and what it feels like tobe on this campus for certain mem-bers of t he student bo dy.”

Members of Safe Space and Peer

Health held facilitated conversa-tions following the screening. Mar-cella Jimenez ’16 is a member of SafeSpace, and helped with the facilita-

tions. Ragan showed facilitators thefilm prior to the premiere.“She had us watch the film and

then we had a chance to debrief, andshe held spac e for us to talk about it,”said Jimenez. “It was really powerfulto see the film the first time, and Idon’t think I could have just seen itonce and then facilitated, just be-cause there were so many differentemotions and things to process…Seeing it a second time I was a littlemore attuned to other people’s po-tential respons es.”

Ragan plans to show the filmagain next semester.

COURTESY OF ALI RAG

, , 6

FEATURES



Finding the spiritof Seattle amidstgentrification

The semi-permeable bubble: Bowdoin’s impact on

Since receiving his honorary degreein 2013, many Bowdoin students haveogled over Patrick Dempsey. But perhapsnow is the time to re ect on the peoplefrom McDreamy’s non-Bowdoin home.

Claire McCarthy ’18 and PhilipKiefer ’18 both grew up in Seattle anddescribed their childhoods in the rainy,green city as very typical.

“When I was a young child, I hadthe quintessential childhood: awesome,huge backyard, dog and cats. And wewould play in the streets. It was theclassic childhood,” McCarthy said. “Butonce I was a teenager, I had access to themore urban lifestyle and experiences.All my friends lived in the city. So I kindof moved away from the suburban life-style. It was like the things I had the op-tion to do expanded and I got to chooseand in a way I got to live both a subur-ban and an urban lifestyle.”

The influence of the urban life-style on Seattle as a whole seems to

be transforming the city, especiallywith the influx of tech companies.

“The tech industry has brought a very diff erent group of people intoSeattle, a lot of millennials, a lot ofpeople starting their careers in tech.

It’s brought a lot of diversity into Se-attle, and also, a lot of wealth,” saidMcCarthy. “The tech startups havebeen huge especially for people whohave grown up in Seattle and livedthere their whole life so they want tocome back and live there as adults.”

Kiefer also felt the ways in whichthe tech boom on the West Coast waspainting his home in a cer tain way.

“I went to school with a ton ofkids of Microsoft execs and Amazonpeople. I think it’s really interestingto read about the role of technologyin the world and then see who it actu-ally is creating that stuff and Seattleis experiencing incredible growthbecause of the growth of Amazon,”he said. “It’s kind of like seeing thathuman side to the Silicon Valley, see-ing that the internet isn’t this abstractthing. It’s this thing built by the peo-ple largely in Seattle and Silicon Val-ley and Boston, to a certain extent.”

Kiefer, too, began to see the grow-ing effects of the tech industry on hislife and not all of them were positive.

“But, honestly, that isn’t doing

great things for the city. The waythe city has gentrified in the last fiveto 10 years because of the explo-sive growth of the tech industry hasdriven out a lot of that diversity thatI think sets the West apart,” he said.

The gentrification can also be seenby the ways the tech industry has af-fected the socio-economic diversityof the city as well.

“A lot of people are saying that thisbooming tech industry that we havein Seattle is kind of pushing out themiddle class a little bit. And a lot ofthe neighborhoods in Seattle thathistorically may not have been thegreatest neighborhoods are now lo-cated in central locations in relationto the tech companies,” said Mc-Carthy. “So we’re seeing a lot morewealth move through those areas andlike for the community as a whole, it’sbeen a great boost to the local econ-omy and small businesses. But at thesame time some of these communi-ties are losing a lot of their culture.”

Yet, McCarthy sees the city actively

working to change and to maintain asemblance of the same city.

“I think it’s important to have Seat-tle maybe look at Silicon Valley, may-be see what they did wrong. Yes, theyhave amazing economic opportuni-ties there and an amazing tech boomthere but it’s almost entirely reservedfor white males between the ages of 25and 35. I think that the leaders in Se-attle are looking at that really closelyand making sure Seattle doesn’t turninto that,” said McCarthy.

In fact, with the influx of newwealth being poured into the Se-attle economy and the growing jobopportunities in the city, McCarthysees the new industry as a positiveinfluence on Seattle.

“I think a lot of people look atwhat’s happening in Seattle right

now and say it’s the tech companies,but the tech companies are actuallyproviding a lot of opportunity acrossthe bo ard,” said McCar thy.

Both Kiefer and McCarthy,throughout the changes still see thecity they love for all its central char-acteristics that so innately shape it.

“Seattle is a fairly green city. Pret-ty much anywhere you turn there’slike a giant lake or the ocean. Justgeographically nature is definitelya contributing factor to life there,”Kiefer said. “You can get up in thewinter and everything will smellsalty and it’s kind of misty and youcan look out onto the ocean and it’s just l ight ly covered in fog. And that’skind of a physical feeling that I miss.But it’s more just the experience ofbeing in that place.”

OUT WEST: Claire McCarthy ’18 (left) and Philip Kiefer ’18 (right) were both raised in Seattle and have witnessed its ch“The tech industry has brought a very diff erent group into Seattle, a lot of millennials, a lot of people starting their careers in tec

“The way the city has gentried in the last ve to 10 years becauseof the explosive growth of the tech industry has driven out a lot ofthat diversity that I think sets the West apart.”

PHILIP KIEFER ’18

While many of my friends firstlearned about Bowdoin from collegefairs or guidance counselors, I haveknown about Bowdoin for as long

as I havebeen ableto read.I live inHarpswell,

Maine, onthe same road

as the CoastalStudies Center. I havehad white cars and

vans emblazoned withthe black Bowdoin logo

passing in front of my

house for as long as I canremember. As such, I have

known Bowdoin from theoutside—the image pre-

sented by the College andthe messages that it sends to

the world.What many students do not

know is just how much influ-ence the College has on the sur-

rounding community. I have fondmemories of attending plays at

Pickard Theater in my childhood,of learning to swim in the Bowdoinpool, of college students coming towork and volunteer in my schools.

Many who came to Bowdoindecided to settle down in the sur-rounding community, and so manyof my neighbors, teachers and evenmy dentist have been graduates ofBowdoin. When I received my ac-ceptance letter, my school and mycommunity celebrated with me, be-cause I had gotten into the Bowdoin,the College next door, and the bestschool in the state of Maine.

While the Bowdoin Bubble doesa good job of separating the collegefrom the community and the worldat large, our particular bubble hap-pens to be semi-permeable. The major happenings of the College oftenbecome front-page news for local pa-pers—from protests to controversies

to demonstrations to initiatives.Many of the more embarrassing mo-ments in Bowdoin’s recent history,which older students recount to firstyears with a combination of amuse-ment and embarrassment—I’m look-ing at you Crack House—have beendinner table conversations for me, allpart of the community’s happenings.

Being a local, I have also grownup with stereotypes about my newhome. Of college students as arro-

gant, as inconsiderate, as fast driv-ing and hard drinking. Of studentspassed out in gardens and grave-yards, of vandalized property andchildren being awakened at oddhours by the revelry of a collegehouse party.

Now, being a part of the commu-nity that I have grown up next tofor so long, I find myself a visitor inmy own home. When I hear some-

one refer to the locals as “townies,”I am taken aback by this patronizingname being given to the hardwork-ing individuals I have grown up withmy entire life.

I don’t think that many of my fel-low students realize just how muchtheir words and actions reflect onthemselves and on our community.While the Bowdoin Bubbl e may keepthe outside world at bay, it does notprevent that world from looking in.

“Now, being a part of thecommunity that I havegrown up next to for so long,I nd myself a visitor in myown home.”

BY CHAMBLEE SHUFFLEBARGERCOLUMNIST

KATIE FOLEY, THE BOWDOIN

COLUMNISTBEN YORK

DIANA FURUKAWA

, , 7



, ,

TAKE ABOW

DANCING SHOES: At the Student Dance Group Performance, Bowdoin’s breakdancing group Broken (upper) debuted some choreographed pieces, a

departure from its normally improvised dances. Bowdoin’s ballet club Arabesque (lower) performed its annual production of Tchaikovsky’s “Nutcracker,”whichwas choreographed by the group’s leaders seniors Emma Peters and Megan Maher.

Bowdoin’s various student-run dance, a cappella, muscomedy and theater groups shared their semester’s woperformances throughout the week in celebration ofsuccessful artistic endeavors and the holiday season.

HOLIDAY CHEER: Bowdoin Sketch Comedy’s Maggie Seymour ’16 and Claire DeSantis ’16 (above) performeCAC Snapchat Story on Wednesday night. Yesterday in Pickard Theater, Bowdoin’s ve a cappella groups performfrom the semester. One of Bowdoin’s all-male groups, The Longfellows (left), also sang “Christmas (Baby Please C

SAVANNAH SIMMONS-GROVER, THE BOWD

SAVANNAH SIMMONS-GROVER, THE BOWDOIN ORIENT

JENNY IBSEN, THE BOWDOIN ORIENT

DAVID ANDERSON, THE BOWDOIN

ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT 8



, ,

Chase Barn intensies horror of Curtain Caller’s ‘SweeBowdoin’s student-led theater

troupe, the Curtain Callers, wasless than enthused when told theywould be performing their renditionof “Sweeney Todd” in Chase Barn.With a small stage, only two doorsand no backstage or wings, the mid-nineteenth century barn is not thetraditional venue for a musical asgrand as “Sweeney Todd.” But MaxMiddleton ’16, co-director of themusical and an actor in the show,predicts that the space will lend toan intimacy between the actors andthe audience.

“It ended up being a blessing indisguise, because it feels like a hor-ror movie could take place in thatspace,” Middleton said. “It’s going tobe a really close experience. By na-ture of performing in Chase Barn,

it’s going to be a cast of 15, a pit or-chestra of four and an audience of50, and that is as small as Sweeneycould get.”

Co-directed by Middleton andCordelia Zars ’16, “Sweeney Todd”is the first full-fledged musical thatthe Curtain Callers have performedsince their rendition of “The RockyHorror Show” in the spring of 2014.

The two directors were drawn tothe idea of putting on a show that,although sinister in theme, wouldexcite and engage their audience.

“It’s a pretty dark show,” lead ac-

tor Lucas Shaw ’16 said. “Bowdoinhasn’t really done a very dark, in-tense piece before… I’m really ex-cited to interact with the audienceand make them feel afraid.”

“There has been an increasedinterest in musical theater on cam-pus over the past couple of years,”Middleton said. “I thought a reallygood show to get the community ex-cited as a whole would be ‘SweeneyTodd,’ because e veryone loves ‘Swe e-ney Todd.’ It’s hard and it’s difficultand it’s weird and gritty and it’s justa wonder ful s how.”

With its complex music scoresand disturbing content, the plot fol-lows a barber named Sweeney Todd,wrongfully exiled from 19th centuryLondon by a judge who was afterTodd’s wife. The story resumes 15years later, when Sweeney returnsto exact revenge on the judge byconniving with a local baker who isshort of fresh meat for her pies.

“It’s gonna be a little creepy andhopefully it’s a little scary. And thenit’s also a funny, sick show. It’s a re-ally weird piece,” Middleton said.“You can expect people to be put-

ting in some really phenomenalperformances. There’s some singinggoing on in the show that’s some ofthe best I’ve heard during my time atBowdoin theater in general.”

The directorial team, composedof Middleton and Zars, met withProfessor of Music and Director ofthe Bowdoin Chamber Choir Rob-ert Greenlee during an independentstudy to learn how to give vocal di-rection with Sweeney Todd’s diffi-cult musical score.

“It’s very difficult music, so itdoesn’t go where you would expect

it to and often times it’s pretty dis-sonant,” Shaw said. “The acting,for me, is actually the easier part.I thought it would be much harderbecause it’s such an intense, deepcharacter.”

Amber Barksdale ’18, who playsMrs. Lovett, the local baker, hasstruggled with stepping into theshoes of a character who is so unlikeherself.

“I’ve never played a person whois totally okay with killing people…it was weird to actually think likesomeone who is completely and to-tally fine putting humans into foodthat they’re also feeding to otherhumans,” Barksdale said. “It’s supercreepy to think about, when you re-ally stop and think about it. Thereare a lot of complex pieces that gointo those emotions.”

But it’s the intensity of the char-acters and the intimacy that Chase

Barn provides that promise to makeit an exciting show, Middleton says.

“I am really excited to see howactors interplay with the audience,”Middleton said. “Because whenyou’re directing, you become so fa-miliar with the lines and materialthat we forget what lines are funny.We forget what lines are scary. Andthen when we perform it to an audi-ence, actors remember why they’redoing it. I’m really excited to seehow the show that we’ve created andthe audience interplay with eachother.”

Art Dept. displays studentwork in culminating exhibit

Tonight, students from all of thissemester’s visual art classes will exhib-it their best work from the semester atan open house at the Edwards Centerfor Art and Dance.

e exhibit will include works of artfrom drawing to sculpture to digital me-dia. e open house provides a space forstudents to discuss and share their workwith the Bowdoin community.

Chair of the Arts Department Mi-chael Kolster hopes the open housewill be an opportunity for studentsfrom all areas of campus as well asthe community to come in and seewhat the classes have been workingon all semester.

“Those students have been work-ing on their final projects for thepast couple weeks, so it’s really achance for them to put up what theythink represents the culmination ofworks they did al l semester,” he said.

For Tess Hamilton ’16, a studentin Painting II, the open house is anopportunity to exhibit the person-alities of herself and her peers.

“There’s a lot of academic spaceson this campus, and it’s of particu larnote to me that when you walk into aspace in Edwards, you very much arenot asked to leave your personalityat the door and that comes throughin a lot of artistic representations,”said Hamilton.

In Sculpture I, Assistant Professorof Art Jackie Brown decided to letstudents show a mixture of differentprojects they’ve been working onthroughout the semester that theywanted to highlight.

“The students worked really hardand made really compelling work,”said Brown. “It’s really exciting to

be able to show it and share it andhave people from the community geta glimpse and know what we’ve beendoing and hopefully a sense of whywe’ve been doing it.”

Emily Jaques ’17, a student inBrown’s class, chose her piece be-cause it incorporated the entire se-mester’s studies.

“I chose one that I felt like was involved in al l of what we had done inthe class, not just conceptually buttechnically,” she said.

Students will be displaying every-thing from their entire portfolio tofinal projects—any piece they feelis representative of what they’velearned from their course.

“It’s very open-ended. They’re allself-designed projects,” said Hamil-ton. “It’s cool to see how all of ourwork, our own personal work andalso the work of our peers, haveevolved.”

“It was a chance for them to takethings they learned in class and ap-ply it to something they were inter-ested in,” said Visiting Professor ofArt Mary Hart, who teaches bothDrawing I and Painting I.

“This open house offers studentsthe chance to display the work thatthey’ve been passionate about thissemester,” said Nevan Swanson ’18.“It’s also a chance to see stuff that’sgoing on in class es outside my own.”

BY SARAH LIMORIENT STAFF

BY SURYA MILNERORIENT STAFF

EXHIBIT A: Tonight, Edwards Center for Artand Dance will host the Visual Art Fall Open House,which shows a collection of student artwork fromfall courses. Kenny Shapiro ’17 (left) and HaleighCollins ’17 (above) prepare their work to be placedin the exhibit. Students will display pieces they feelbest represents their work from the semester.

CITY ON FIRE: (left to right) Anna Bearman ’16, Railey Graham ’19, Hannah Berman ‘18, Monique Lillis ‘17 and Bella Tumaneng ’17 rehearse for Curtain Caller’s rendi-tion of “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barbor of Fleet Street,”which will run tonight and tomorrow night in Chase Barn at 8 p.m.

TESSA EPSTEIN, THE BOWDOIN ORIENT

Enjoy studentartwork from thissemester in EdwardsArts Center from 5p.m. to 7 p.m.

HY KHONG, THE BOWDOIN ORI

HY KHONG, THE BOWDOIN OR

HY KHONG, THE BOWDOIN ORIENT

9



For senior fall athletes, the tran-sition into the winter season bringsabout the end of their athletic careershere at Bowdoin. The conclusionof such an ingrained aspect of theirlives prompts many to look for waysto continue their sports outside ofthe College. For field hockey captainsRachel Kennedy '16 and Kim Kahn-weiler '16, they found this in the 2015Pan American Maccabi Games.

"When I was growing up, theMaccabi Games were something thatmy mom always wanted me to do,

and for whatever reason, I never didthem," said Kahnweiler. "Then, as Igot to senior year and didn't wantmy athletic career to be over, thatwas kind of in the back of my mind."

The 2015 Pan American MaccabiGames are the 13th installment ofthe international, multi-sport com-petition that will be held in Santia-go, Chile from December 26 to Janu-ary 5. The Games are held every fouryears and bring together Jewish ath-letes from North, South and CentralAmerica, as well as Israel and othercountries around the world.

"Maccabi USA endeavors, throughsports, to perpetuate and preservethe American Jewish community by

encouraging Jewish pride, strength-ening Jewish bonds and by creatinga heightened awareness of Israeland Jewish identity," Maccabi USAsays on their website. "We strive toprovide Jewish athletes the worldover the opportunity to share theirheritage and customs in competitiveathletic settings."

In addition to the Pan Am Games,the Maccabi World Union hosts theMaccabiah Games, the world's larg-est Jewish athletic competition, inIsrael every four years. The 19thMaccabiah Games brought together7,500 athletes from 77 countries in2013, making it one of the largest in-ternational sporting events after theOlympics.

Kennedy, Kahnweiler and 11 otherathletes from across the country willmake up the field hockey squad, join-ing the US team of about 650 athletestraveling to Chile in a few weeks.

"The program puts a huge empha-sis on getting to know other Jewish

athletes from around the world,"said Kahnweiler. "I'm most excitedfor that part. I think it'll be reallyinteresting to hear about other peo-ple's experiences of being Jewish inother countries."

Kennedy and Kahnweiler's fieldhockey careers will come to a closewith many other high notes, includ-ing being selected as First TeamAll-Americans by the National FieldHockey Coaches Association (NFH-CA) along with fellow Polar BearKimmy Ganong '17.

"I truly think that if I hadn'tbeen fortunate enough to play onthe Bowdoin field hockey team, Idefinitely would not have been rec-

ognized as an All-American," saidKahnweiler. "It just goes out to allmy teammates who made me betterevery single year, every single prac-tice. The recognition is nice, butI want to share it with the team. Itgoes to the team."

In addition, this fall, Kennedy wasnamed NFHCA Division III Player

of the Year, after becoming Bow-doin's all-time leader in goals andpoints and earning her second NES-CAC and New England West RegionPlayer of the Year honors. Kennedyis the first Polar Bear to ear n the title

since it was created in 2009."It's really exciting being honoredand having personal accolades, butit's hard at the same time knowingthat that’s the end and that I won'tbe playing on the field hockey teamanymore," said Kennedy. "But it justadds to the great experience thatwe had and the great run that we

had this season. Being able to playin a national championship gameis something that I'm definitely go-ing to be proud of even though wemight not have had the outcome wewanted. In the long run, it's been

such a successful season and careeras a team and also personally."After a season filled with accom-

plishments, Kennedy looks forwardto ending her field hockey careerwith a new experience.

"I think it'll be really interestingto not only be surrounded by otherJewish-American athletes but also

Jewish athletes from all over theworld and be able to interact withthem, talk to them and hear abouttheir experiences," said Kennedy. "I just fini shed my athle tic caree r atBowdoin. I won't get a chance really

to play ever again, so I think it's acool way to go out, just being ableto have my one last time playing andalso being able to play with Kim,who I played with for four yearshere. I think balancing the Jewishaspect and also the athletic aspect isgoing to be a really rewarding expe-rience."

, ,

e women’s bas-ketball team extend-ed its win streak to

four games with a Wednesday nightblowout win against UMaine-Farm-ington. A er a 1-2 start, the team nowsits at 5-2 on the season.

e Bowdoin women never trailedagainst UMF on Wednesday, ridingsenior Shannon Brady’s 17 points andseven rebounds to a 79-38 win. Lau-ren Petit ’18 chipped in with 14 pointsand six steals.

is comes as part of a larger post-anksgiving rebound for a team that

sat below .500 before its November 28win against Salve Regina.

“Our game against Salve Regina…[was] the transition game for us,” saidHead Coach Adrienne Shibles.

Having lost three key players fromlast year, including leading scorerSara Binkhorst ’15, Brady describedthe early-season diffi culties as “earlygrowing pains.”

However, Shibles was happy to saythat newer players are starting to llthe graduated players’ shoes.

“Lydia Caputi ’18 is one who’s re-ally stepped up to provide a presencewhere Megan [Phelps ’15] and Siena

[Mitman ’15] were really tough for usin the post. And I think several of theguards have really stepped up to llthat scoring void that Sara Binkhorstle ,” she noted.

And early losses to teams like theUniversity of New England showedthe team areas in which it could im-prove.

“[We] just didn't shoot the ball well,didn't bring the kinds of intensity thatwe had to bring,” said Shibles.I” thinkthe players were putting too muchpressure on themselves so we workedon that….and I think they respondedreally well.”

Defense, in particular, has been afocus this season.

“[Coach] has de nitely emphasizedthe defensive factor—that if we wantto be a good team we have to buy intoour defense,” said Brady.

“[It] creates a really aggressivemindset for our players—when we’vereally getting after it on the defensiveend and I think it leads to offensefor us,” said Shibles. “If we’re gettingsteals and getting turnovers fromthe other squad it just picks up ourtempo too. We’re pushing the ballmore, we’re being more aggressive ingetting to the rim. So that’s where itstarts for us.”

And since the Salve Regina win, the

women have even trounced that sameteam who they had lost to in last year’sNESCAC title game: the Tu s Jumbos.

“I just can’t tell you how impressedI was with the women in that game,”said Shibles. “To me, [it] shows howfar we’ve come.”

Despite being down 8-0 in the rstminute of the game, Brady noted that“no one on [the] team felt rattled orfearful.” And by the end of game, theBears had come back to trounce thethen-No. 3 Jumbos by a score of 61-43.

Coach Shibles was particularly im-pressed by Brady, who was dominantwith 27 points and 15 rebounds.

"Shannon Brady’s performancewas just amazing—she did it all,” saidShibles. “Everyone knows that she's atalented player—she's our PreseasonAll-American—but people just un-derestimate her. She’s incredibly fastand incredibly strong…. ere weremany standout moments but her per-formance overall in that game wassomething special."

Looking forward, Shibles stressedthe need for the team to stay engagedand present in the moment.

“I really think we have one of thetoughest schedules in the nation so wereally have to stay focused,” she said.

e team plays host to Colby to-morrow at 7 p.m.

BY ANJULEE BHALLAORIENT STAFF

BY JAMES CALLAHANORIENT STAFF

Kahnweiler and Kennedy to compete in Macca

Brady and women’s hoops off tstart, including win over No. 3 T

POLAR BEARS 79

ME.-FARM. 38

DAVID ANDERSON, THE BOWDOIN ORIENT

JUMBO-SIZED WIN: Captain Shannon Brady ’16 dribbles away from Tufts’ Katy Hicks in ahome game last Saturday. The Polar Bears defeated then-No. 3 Tufts, 61-43. Brady nished the gamewith 27 points and 15 rebounds.

GRACE MALLETT, THE BOWDOIN

CAPTAIN(S) AMERICA: Field hockey captains Rachel Kennedy ’16 (left) and Kim Kahnweiler ’16 celebrate winning the Nmonth. Both Kennedy and Kahnweiler will represent Team USA at the Pan American Maccabi Games in Chile later this mont

10

SPORTS



, ,

e women’s ice hockey team has hada busy schedule over the past two weeks.

e Polar Bears have already competedin six games and have a current recordof 2-4.

e women started o ff their seasonwith a resounding 6-3 victory over Col-by in Brunswick. e next day, at Colby,the Polar Bears were defeated in over-time 4-3.

e team took losses to Holy Cross,Norwich and Saint Anselm before de-feating UMASS-Boston 3-2 on Tuesday.

“We have a short bench, a smallteam, and we were coming off fourlosses so it was a huge win for us.Hopefully we can take that mo-mentum over the break. It was a bigturnaround that lifted everyone’sspirits and brought the energy back

up,” said Julie Dachille ’18 of theirrecent win.Marne Gallant ’17, Julie Dachille

’18, Maegan Sheehan ’19 and Mary-anne Iodice ’18 have all missed timedue to injury. Kimmy Ganong ’17 re-cently came to the team a er nishingup the eld hockey season.

“We have a small team to begin with,so every person matters,” said Dachille.

“We did have a losing streak, butsome of the games were really goodgames. e score doesn’t always do it justice,” said Miranda Bell ’18.

“So far, if you look at how we’veplayed, we’re a really strong third pe-riod team. Even if we’re losing a game

by a lot, we’re never giving up.”Given the circumstances, the team is

still optimistic about the remainder ofthe season.

“If anything, what we’ve taken sofar is just making us better in thelong run. We’re going to be a bet-ter team for this, so we’re definitely

really excited,” saidDachille.

e team has changedtheir alignment on theice, which has requiredsome adjusting for thewomen. ey now areputting three defendersback.

“We’re still gettingused to the system. I’venever played it before,”said Bell.

“It’s still very new.

We’re working out thekinks in it right now,and I think we saw

that this weekend when we had afew breakdowns in the system,” saidDachille.

e change in strategy is a result ofthe makeup of the team this year.

“We have a lot of returners on Dand we moved two forwards back.Coach said we could only use this sys-tem this year because of personnel,”said Dachille.

e challenge with this new system isthat the women have to adjust to wherethey are supposed to be.

“If one person’s out of place it’s reallyeasy for the other team to take advan-

tage,” said Bell.While the team does not have quan-tity, they have strong players competing.

“Lan Cro on ’17 has been re-ally great for us, and we have a reallygood freshman in Sophia Lattanzio,so we have really solid goaltending allaround,” said Dachille of the team’sgoalies.

The team will have a shorter Win-ter Break in order to jump into theirbusy January schedule. The PolarBears are excited to have this timededicated to practicing.

“Everyone really likes being there. Ev-eryone is having fun always. at’s themost important thing,” said Dachille.

e action will continue on January3 at the University of New Englandfollowed by a number of NESCACmatch-ups throughout the monthagainst Williams, Amherst, Middle-bury and Wesleyan.

“We’ll be back at full strength whenwe come back in January. We’re de -

nitely optimistic. We have a lot to lookforward to,” said Dachille.In February, the Polar Bears will

take on Hamilton, Connecticut Col-lege and Trinity.

Along the way, the team will alsocompete against Southern Maineand Endicott.

“We have incredible character.Everyone wants to be here, everyonewants to win and is so committedto making us better,” said Dachille,“We see ourselves close to the top, ifnot the number one spot. The goodthing about this team is, while wehad this bad stretch, I think we’reonly getting better.”

BY JULIA O’ROURKEORIENT STAFF

Women’s hockey condent heading into Wint

FRI. JAN 29 @ 7:00 p.m.

V. WESLEYANWATSON ARENA

WATCH IT LIVE

DAVID ANDERSON, THE BOWDOIN

REACHING IN: Forward Madeline Hall ’17 plays keep away with a UMass-Boston defender in the Polar Bears’3-2 home viTuesday. Maureen Greason ’18 notched a pair of goals on the night and Miranda Bell ’18 scored the game-winner with 2:32 le

SCOREBOARD

WED

09

WOMEN’S BASKETBALL

ME.-FARMINGTONVS. BOWDOIN

3879

TUE

08

MEN’S BASKETBALL

BOWDOIN

AT MAINE MARITIME

84

54

TUE

08

WOMEN’S ICE HOCKEY

UMASS-BOSTON

VS. BOWDOIN

2

3

TUE

08

MEN’S ICE HOCKEY

BOWDOIN

AT SOUTHERN MAINE

3

2

SAT

05

MEN’S ICE HOCKEY

COLBY

VS. BOWDOIN

2

4

SAT

05

MEN’S SQUASH

TRINITY

VS. BOWDOIN

9

0

SAT

05

WOMEN’S SQUASH

TRINITY

VS. BOWDOIN

9

0

LOUIS MENDEZ, THE BOWDOIN ORIENT

The men’s hockey team defeated Colby 4-2 in Watson Arena on Saturday.Bowdoin’s all-time record against Colby improved to 109-89-8.

‘MULES ARE STERILE’

11



, ,

is editorial represents the majority view of the Bowdoin Orient’s editorialboard, which is comprised of John Branch, Sam Chase, Matthew Gutschenritter,Emma Peters and Nicole Wetsman.

On Tuesday night, President Clayton Rose facilitated a town hall-stylemeeting in Smith Union that sought to answer the question “Whydo issues of race matter if I’m white?” e aim was to foster an open

discussion amongst the entire student body—a di ffi cult task considering thesensitive nature of the issue at hand. e event was packed and it was the most visibly engaged the campus has been in r ecent memor y; hundreds of s tudents,faculty and staff lled the Union to listen and participate, with many standingfor the entire 75-minute event.

e discussion was honest and lively. President Rose was a rm moderator,guiding the discussion as necessary, unafraid to rephrase certain commentsinto more pointed questions. People talked not past each other but to eachother, which is especially meaningful on a campus where much of the pro- vocative dialogue takes place behind closed doors or on Yik Yak. In his closingremarks, Rose said that this was just a rst step, and “in some ways, we haven’tdone anything.” e town hall was successful as a starting point, but it will bemeaningless if the conversation and action around race at Bowdoin ends there.

In November, the Bowdoin Student Government (BSG) executive committeeintroduced a proposal to elect a multicultural representative to serve as a vot-ing member of the general assembly. is student would represent the Multi-cultural Coalition, an organization of 17 student groups dedicated to diversity

and multicultural life. ere is precedent for this position: the EntertainmentBoard, the McKeen Center, Inter-House Council and Athletics all have desig-nated representative positions on the BSG.

Voting on the referendum began on Wednesday of this week and remainsopen until 9 p.m. this Saturday. In order for the position to be approved, onethird of the student body must vote and within that group, two-thirds must vote in favor. is position would guarantee that there is a voice on BSG torepresent minority students on campus regardless of BSG’s elected members.In theory, the representative would place multicultural issues at the forefront oftheir agenda, ensuring that issues of diversity and race will never fall throughthe cracks. BSG has taken a proactive role on issues of race this year, issuingresolutions of solidarity with students of color at Bowdoin and at the Universityof Missouri. However, BSG is a large, complex body with dramatic turnovereach year, and it has not always shown the racial consciousness proving soimportant this year. A multicultural representative would help to hold it ac-countable to the interests and concerns of minority students no matter who itselected representatives are.

As Rose said at the end of Tuesday’s town hall, “ is is the beginning of this

conversation, not the end.” is semester has seen a dramatic uptick in theBowdoin community’s willingness to talk frankly about race—but it cannotstop now, even as the shock and anger from certain speci c incidents fades. A vote for the creation of the multicultural representative is a vote for a concretestep toward lasting awareness of racial issues at Bowdoin.

To move forward, vote yes

For the simple reasons that I believedwhite people were more beautiful and in-telligent, I wanted to be white until I wasaround 16 years old. I wanted white ap-proval. I learned English and Spanish atthe same time, but at certain points in mychildhood I was embarrassed to speak thelatter. Even as someone born and raisedin Queens, one of the most diverse coun-ties in the country, white supremacy had

poisoned the synapses of my mind. Wecontort our bodies to t nicely against the jagged geometry of society’s dominant values. ose values were loud and cleareven when surrounded by other peopleof color. ere is something deeply wrongabout a society that makes a child feel thatway, that their entire self is undesirableand lesser because of diff erence.

Most people do not consider them-selves racists. at is an ugly word.

at is a slur. Only southerners withconfederate ags, KKK cardholdersand Donald Trump are racists. But welive in a country where black studentshave their lives threatened on Yik Yakand Latinas get paid 55 cents to thewhite man’s dollar. We live in a coun-try where a Supreme Court judge saysstudents of color are being pushed intoschools too advanced for them.

In the case of Antonin Scalia, he is aman who has been appointed to one of themost honorable and powerful positionsthis nation o ff ers. He is a 79-year-old rac-ist man who has been shaped by Ameri-can racism. Not in the South, but in El-mhurst, Queens, the very neighborhoodI was born in. Racism in uences eachand every one of us because we live in acountry shaped by a violent and traumatichistory of racism. Racism is not rooted insomeone’s person. No one is born a rac-ist. It is developed through socialization.But it is only through realizing our rac-ism that we can eradicate it. Our collectiveracism, which is insidiously written intotextbooks and law, and which is violentlymade visible through images of black vic-tims of police violence, must be pulled outof our earth from it’s roots.

Only by getting to the root of an issuecan we eradicate it. is can be seen inthe Four Noble Truths of Buddhism: lifeis suff ering, suff ering is caused by desire,suff ering will cease with the cessation ofdesire and putting an end to desire can beachieved by following the Buddha’s teach-ings. Suff ering will only end through rec-ognition of its cause. Not with bandagesand certainly not with ignorance.

is is why I am an unabashed radi-cal. Activist and writer Angela Davis said,

“Radical simply means grasping thingsfrom the root.” at is what the word de -nitely means. Yet, we associate radicalismwith extremism, fanaticism and “crazy”—these are all synonyms from Merriam-Webster. At some point, the word waspoisoned and now everyone is too scaredto take a bite. Most people don’t want to beassociated with radicalism. And it makessense because our society is reluctant tounderstand things from the root.

The roots of our society are not just problemat ic; they are violent,selfish and sad. Almost every day inor out of class, I learn about some as-

pect of our history and present thatmakes me nauseous. Governmentsupport for genocidal dictators, massdeportations of refugees, internmentand segregation, slavery, sweatshops,all of the shootings in the past fewyears—these indisputable facts of ourcollective identity are so heartbreak-ing because there is no way to escapethem. Of course we are so much morethan that, but it is part of u s too.

e shooting in San Bernardino wassuch an impossibly sad event to processbecause it seemed to be the latest in astring of similar acts of violence—mostnotably the shooting in Charleston andthe attacks in Paris. Hearing about thesedeaths make the world seem so absolutelyabsurd. When this mass violence happensso o en, we cannot assume that the peo-ple who commit these heartless crimesare just plain “crazy” anomalies. Psycho-logical issues are certainly factors in theseinstances, but there has to be more to con-sidering the frequency. I was not surprisedto hearabout theshootingin SanBernardi-no. I wasshockeda n dd e e p l ytroubled,but notsurprised.

at isnot OK. We should all be surprised whensomething so horribly inhuman happens.What this string of violence tells us is thatthere is something about our current stateof aff airs that is horribly alienating anduncompassionate.

We have to deal with that. We have tofocus on increasing our compassion forothers, and we have to stop glorifying anyform of violence, either through ctionalmedia or government propaganda. Lovefor each other is the only reason we shouldneed to stop perpetuating violence andbigotry. Sadly, we do not live in that world.We live in a world where we need to ra-

tionalize compassion. We live in a worldwhere we tell students they can’t be racistbecause it will not y in corporate Ameri-ca. Well I am here to say that compassionis the rationale. It’s the bottom line; it’s theroot of our humanity.

Donald Trump is from Queens too.When I was little I had this strange fearthat my mother would be deported. Shewas a legal resident, and is now a proudcitizen, but I was still scared because Ididn’t really know how immigrant policyworked and I had heard stories. To hearhim talking about deportation is scaryand hurtful, but I know the problem is

so much more than Trump. Strangelyenough, he represents the most disgust-ing version of our culture in every pos-sible way: gaudy materialism, greedy realestate development, bigotry, xenophobia,that unreal hair and so much more. ButTrump is leading the Republican polls. Heis not an anomaly. If he does not win thecandidacy, or the presidency, that doesn’tmean a damn thing. is country pro-duced him, and it produced his support-ers; his ideology is not separate from thedominant one, but a big part of it.

I appreciate bandages. I’ve had oneon my hand for the past couple of weeksbecause my skin has been cracking, and Ilike to be protected. But I know that I needto moisturize, and put on gloves when thebandage comes off . We can’t stop at thebandage. Stricter gun laws are not goingto eradicate mass violence because peoplein a violent culture will nd a way to be violent, regardless of the law. Appointinga multicultural representative for our stu-dent government isn’t going to eradicate

racist attitudes and feel-ings of exclusion at Bow-doin, because those kindsof people still get admit-ted. Kicking out a sexoff ender support groupfrom a local church willnot rid women on thiscampus of the fear of sex-ual violence, and it willnot lessen the chancesof it happening, becausethese sex off enders still

exist (and now probably have negativefeelings towards the College, which is justgreat for us).

ese actions, which I know comefrom a place of well-meaning andcompassion, are bandages. at doesnot necessarily mean they are unnec-essary or undesired. But society has atendency to stop at bandages, to patthemselves on the back for a job welldone when things look better for thetime being. But we need to destroywhat cuts us in the rst place.

Dig deeper, dig to the roots and pullout the toxic ones.

Radical politics and compassion interVULNERABLE DISCOURSEMAYA REYES

I’m writing in regard to the article about the student petition in support of Pro-fessor John Bisbee in last week’s issue of e Orient. I was instrumental in recruit-ing Professor Bisbee 19 years ago, and I have never wavered in my conviction thathe is an exceptional and unusually gi ed teacher, a generous and insightful mentorand a remarkably innovative artist whose creative and professional achievementshave continued to ourish with each passing year.

A generation of Bowdoin graduates from many elds, as well as the arts, proudlytrace their life’s work to his example of personal and creative integrity, and his in-spiring presence will be greatly missed.

Sincerely,Mark Wethli, A. LeRoy Greason Professor of Art

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

To the editors and President Clayton S. Rose:

As alumni of Bowdoin College and the visual arts program, we are deeply sad-dened and disappointed to hear that the college is terminating its relationship withJohn Bisbee. We believe this is an error. Over the last two decades, Professor Bisbee’steaching has become a legendary staple of the Bowdoin experience not only for theexcellent results he gets from his students but also due to the pedagogical diversityhe brings to campus and because his impact and in uence extend well beyond hisclassroom.

Bisbee loves inspiring his students. He moves them to search vigorously andcritically for a creative trajectory that is both meaningful and tenable. He does ev-erything within his power to accommodate even the outermost proclivities—provided the student demonstrates resolve, passion and su ffi cient pragmatism—bysupplying additional spaces, materials, hours and supervised access to his shop. Heinvigorates artists through the example of his own creative process and career, andcontinues to push them a er they graduate. Every year, alumni return to thankBisbee for causing them to look at the world in a di ff erent way.

If the visual arts department is to maintain its vibrancy and merit, retaining JohnBisbee is just as essential as the creation of a digital media position. We urge theschool to reconsider its decision. Sincerely,Loretta Park ’11, Sam Gilbert ’10. McKay Belk ’11. and Tom Ryan ’12

Go to bowdoinorient.com to see a collection of notes Park collected from alumni about Prof. Bisbee.

DIANA FURUKAWA

Our collective racism, which is insidi-ously written into textbooks and law,and which is violently made visiblethrough images of black victims ofpolice violence, must be pulled out ofour earth from it’s roots.

OPINION 12



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Before you label me as an overlysensitive, politically correct Grinch,let me make a few things clear: I playTchaikovsky’s Nutcracker on repeat,I own several ugly sweaters and I al-most liked Bowdoin’s Instagram ofan asymmetrically affixed wreath onthe front of Hubbard. I enjoy return-ing to Reed House at 2 a.m. to seethe tree that we decorated and themenorah in our front window. I, likemost others, thoroughly enjoy theholiday season.

However, I wasn’t thrilled whenI came back home one afternoonto a wreath hanging on my frontdoor, affixed that morning by oneof Santa’s elves, most likely in theform of a wonderful member of Fa-cilities. Though many will argue thatwreaths are of Greco-Roman paganorigins or have simply become de-Christianized, I believe that wreaths,especially when adorned with redribbons, are indubitably a Christiansymbol.

Growing up in a Jewish household,my family abstained from festooningour house with wreaths and lights, in-stead placing our electric menorah inour front window. For my family, thisabstinence was a reminder that, unlikethe majority of our town, we were notChristian. is religious separatism,if you will, instilled in me a sense ofpride, not only for my Jewish heritage,but also for the fact that my family wasdiff erent.

When I approach my front door orwhen I sit down at my table in Moultonand count four wreaths on the interiorwindows, I am reminded that we livein an overwhelmingly, though simulta-neously subtly, Christian society. Our“non-denominational” chapel chimes

every een minutes, its beau-tiful stained glass windows de-picting New Testament scenes.(For this reason, we didn’tbring my grandmother insidewhen she came to visit.)

e omnipresent wreathsrepresent the normalizationof practices re ective of anunchallenged Christian he-gemony; we live in a worldwhere our calendar, vacationsand seasonal decorations (notto mention vaginal autonomyand rights to marriage) aredominated by Christocentricpractices. Intended to be aninnocuous way to spread holi-day cheer, these wreaths aresubtle but constant remind-ers to those of us who do notidentify with Christianity thatwe exist within this Chris-tian society. When I enter myhouse, which is more than 25percent Jewish, this brandingof my space is a reminder thatI am part of such a society,even on our diverse, non-de-nominational campus.

I will still throw out a fewproposals for making ourcampus more inclusive inthis sense. One alternativeis to replace the red bowswith more neutral ones—black and white, for example. Whilethis would be a step in the right di-rection, it would reduce neither thewreaths’ overwhelming presencenor their symbolic value. I proposeswapping out these wreaths for lightsacross campus, akin to the stringlights hanging in the Union and fromthe sprinklers in all of our rooms.Though these lights are still associ-ated with Christmas, they possessa more universal appeal. Multiple

winter solstice observances fall intothe category of “festivals of light,” inwhich lights are used to illuminatethe darkest part of the year. Hanginglights from the building would h onorthese multiple holidays, while simul-taneously increasing aesthetic appealand providing additional safety.

I hesitate to end this with propos-als, for I believe that that detractsfrom my intended message. isseemingly trivial issue may not mat-

ter in the “real world,” where Salva-tion Army Santas wish me a MerryChristmas outside of the supermarketor where my friends trivialize my re-ligion by asking what I got for Chanu-kah last night. I do believe, however,that it matters as we continue to striveto create inclusive spaces on campus.I acknowledge that these thoughtscome from a place of extreme privi-lege when compared to more obvious,oppressive marginalization on cam-

pus. However, I hope that my senti-ments resonate with others question-ing and challenging larger uncheckedsubtleties and norms on our campus.I hope that we can work togetherto deconstruct and reconstruct ourspaces here to re ect the multiple lev-els of diversity that Bowdoin is sup-posed to represent.

Jonah Watt is a member of the Class of2018.

Last weekend, I had the pleasure ofhaving a conversation that inspiredme to think about something that alot of people seem to have opinionsabout—something about which ev-eryone says, “This is something weneed to address, something thatneeds a facilitated discussion.” Yet, inmy lifetime, I haven’t seen one cometo fruition. That would be the issueof a double standard between menand women. My own opinion, whichwill be quite honestly and personallyexpressed throughout the remainderof this piece, has remained unwav-ering as I constantly find myself insituations that strengthen what I al-ready believe.

The conversation took place dur-ing a small gathering (I won’t sayparty because it wasn’t, but not some-thing unlike a party) with a boy in my

year who I know vaguely and who Ihave talked to so little that I couldprobably count the number of our in-teractions on one hand. In the midstof the polite conversation that youhave with somebody you don’t know very well, he says to me, “You’re anice girl.”

Slightly taken aback, I thank him,though unsure as to why he said it.He then proceeds to tell me that hisgood friend and teammate—who I’veknown, shall we say, intimately—hastold him and some of their otherfriends things about me that weren’tso good. Upon further prompting hetells me, “He said you don’t respect

yourself.” This he follows up with adeclaration that he believes in my vir-tue, and now that he’s had the chanceto get to know me better, he realizeshis friend is an idiot. He’s right.

I once heard the term “slut” de-fined as “a woman with the morals ofa man.” I see a problem with this defi-nition, however, because that impliesthat a man is a man no matter how hebehaves, yet a woman is free to be la-beled as any type of epithet depend-ing on h er behavior. Secondly, peoplereact on complete opposite ends ofthe spectrum when listening to menand women’s debaucheries. I can al-most guarantee that nobody has beengoing around saying that the guy Islept with doesn’t respect himself.

This is where I see the doublestandard kick in. In this day and age,with the media culture we live in, sexisn’t taboo anymore. Forgive me forsounding like my parents when I saythat today’s standards have changed

the meaning of sex (an argument foranother piece), but in some respects,I don’t think that’s a bad thing. Weshould love and celebrate our bodies,not be ashamed of them, and I thinkour culture is making that a more ac-ceptable perspective now.

Yet if a woman decides to sleep witha man she’s not committed to or if shedecides to sleep with more than oneman, she’s deemed a slut. I honestlydon’t think I can say the same abouta man. When a man sleeps around,he’s a h ero amongst his f riends and a jerk amongst the girls he won’t com-mit to. But everyone accepts this be-havior. No gossip spreads and passive

aggressive comments aren’t aimed inhis direction.

So what’s so special about the sce-nario I just described, when that ar-gument has been around for years?Well, probably nothing. I just havea couple reasons why I think it’s pa-thetic that we’re still treating peoplein this way. That being said, I canonly speak for myself and what Ihave experienced and learned alongthe way.

First, it’s college. Look around. Ihave no statistical evidence to sup-port my claims, and I’m also horribleat math, but I’m pretty sure morepeople than not are involved in thehookup culture here to one extentor another. Is every girl that’s havingsex with someone she’s not datingconsidered a slut? Does she not re-spect herself? If the answers to thosequestions are no, then what makesone girl different from another? Andwho gets to decide? College is an

experimental time in so many ways.We’re all trying to figure out whatwe want after we graduate, what wewant in life. That doesn’t apply solelyto academics.

Secondly, is the lovely young gen-tleman that so politely pointed outmy lack of self-respect not equally asresponsible for what transpired be-tween us? Who is he to tell me that Idon’t respect myself? I am fully awareof every decision I make and how Imake them. I contemplate what Iwant to do, and I make sure that I’mcompletely comfortable in any situa-tion. I make decisions for myself, andI do what makes me happy. That’s

not to say I don’t make mistakes, butthat’s how I’ve been able to grow tounderstand myself more fully. By ac-knowledging those things about me,I know what I need to do in order torespect myself. And I do, so forgiveme if standing around waiting for

him to acknowledge me again afterhe’s been “respecting himself ” withany other girl is not how I choose toshow it. Haley Friesch is a member of the Classof 2018.

The double standards of hook up cultureHALEY FRIESCH

OP ED CONTRIBUTOR

Feeling othered: wreaths don’t encircle all religious upbBY JONAH WATT

OP ED CONTRIBUTOR

DIANA FURUKAWA

MIRANDA HALL

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It is common in discussions at Bow-doin and in progressive circles to de-nounce the Republican response to therefugee crisis. And the outrage is nodoubt warranted a er Donald Trumpdescribed a mere 10,000 Syrian refu-gees as a potential ISIS “Trojan Horse,”Ben Carson compared them to rabiddogs and 30 GOP governors refusedtheir entry under highly questionableclaims of “security.”

But ultimately (and thankfully),people like Trump, Carson and MaineGovernor Paul LePage have not beenconducting our foreign policy since2008. Far fewer progressives, with thenotable exception of Hillary Clinton,are willing to ask the harder ques-tion: what do we make of Obama’sdecision-making so far through the

Syrian civil war, which cost Syria more

than 250,000 lives and displaced half itscitizens? Bear with me as I admittedlyembark on some armchair foreignpolicymaking and Monday Morningdiplomacy.

From the outbreak of the Syrian civilwar in 2011, Bashar al-Assad showedhis true colors as the “Butcher of Da-mascus,” in a government reign of ter-ror through sieges by starvation, barrelbombings, torture and chemical weap-ons. e Syrian Network for HumanRights reported that Assad’s govern-ment forces were responsible for seventimes more civilian deaths in Syriathan ISIS so far in 2015.

roughout this time, Obama ig-nored calls for more decisive actionagainst Assad, not from the world’sCheneys and Rumsfelds, but from hisown foreign policy team. He turnedown calls from his then-Secretaryof State Hillary Clinton, CIA DirectorGeneral David Petraeus and DefenseSecretary Leon Panetta for a more

interventionist approach through

empowering moderate Sunni rebelgroups and creating no- y zones. iswas all the more tragic, since, in 2011and 2012, groups like the Free SyrianArmy were driving opposition to theregime in comparison to al-Qaeda andISIS. Obama’s insulation to critical ad-ministration voices continues to thisday. A Politico September investiga-tion found a “demoralized Obama na-tional security team” in the a ermathof Putin’s escalation in Syria. Obama’sinaction even drove the U.S. Ambassa-dor to Syria Robert S. Ford to resign inFebruary 2014.

I admittedly take Obama’s cautiousrealism over much of George W. Bush’srst-term neoconservatism most days.A third major American war in themold of Afghanistan or Iraq would bewrong and receive no backing from anexhausted public. Nevertheless, Obamawas mistaken in neglecting a hardermove against Assad beyond meaning-less “red lines” and bland statements

that “Assad must go” or, even more

banal, that he is “on the wrong side ofhistory.” A more con dent, strongerSyrian opposition would have held agreater voice at the negotiating tablefor a postwar settlement that mighthave removed Assad without totallyexcluding Alawite, Shiite and Iranianinterests in Syria. It could have createdpockets of safety and order as the foun-dations of a new state. Most of all, Sun-nis might not have found extremistgroups like al-Nursa Front and theIslamic State, given their resourcesand military skill, to be their last re-sort of defense.

e later danger actually came tofruition in Syria as David Ignatius de-scribed in a perceptive Atlantic critiqueof both Bush and Obama’s MiddleEastern policy. As Sunni communitiesfound themselves at the mercy of Assadwith little Western assistance, it is nosurprise that extremist jihadist groupsbecame more attractive. And the pros-pect of a dual con ict of ISIS and Assad

is playing into the dictator’s hands, al-

lowing him to partially rehabilitate hisimage in the West as the last hope ofstability against ISIS.

Today, the world faces the greatestrefugee crisis since World War II. eEuropean Union confronts a humani-tarian challenge that could test its verysurvival; one need only see an explo-sion of far-right populism stretchingfrom Sweden to France. Syria’s historicreligious pluralism and ancient Chris-tian communities unravel. Hope for alasting peace, or perhaps just a decentone along the lines of Lebanon or Bos-nia, looks ever bleaker.

It would be absurd to cast blame onObama for this extremely complex cri-sis, but Obama’s foreign policy requiressome serious reconsideration in the lightof these horrors. Peter Beinart wrote thathistorians will record Obama’s work onthe Syrian refugee crisis “among his nesthours.” On that question, Beinart is right.On the deeper issue of the Syrian civil war,short of Providence’s unexpected surpris-

es, Obama’s legacy is hardly so clear.

Overly cautious: Red State paranoia can’t hide Obama’s failurMINDLESS PONTIFICATINGDAVID JIMENEZ

My cousin brought a gun to anks-giving dinner.

OK—he’s a cousin by marriage, buthere’s what happened: he has a smallpistol that he keeps in his pocket at alltimes. is is legal; he has a concealedcarry license. We were all sitting

around chatting a er dinner, enjoyingthe post-meal lull, when he pulled itout and showed it to my brother. eidea here, I guess, is self-defense. A erall, suburbia is a dangerous place forwhite, straight, tall men.

His wife, my cousin by blood, wantsto get a gun too. Again, the idea is self-defense, but now it makes a little moresense. She’s a woman and sells realestate in the South, so she o en goesto unfamiliar places with unfamiliarpeople by herself. is is a quasi-fem-inist rationale for gun ownership, andI almost get it. Almost.

My dad has a gun. It’s a 22-cali-ber pistol that he inherited from hisfather. It slumbers, useless in thebasement, and the bullets are lockedaway upstairs. He has used it before,though, and so have I.

Last winter I went to a gun show inKentucky, where I grew up, with mydad and a family friend.

e gun show sprawled through theconvention center, and I wanderedfrom booth to booth, picking up theguns and weighing them in my hand.

ey had a satisfying he . More o enthan not, the proprietor of the boothwould address me, “Hey there, I’ve gotsomething I think you’ll like. Lookover here.” He (the sellers, like thebuyers, skewed heavily male) wouldgesture to the far end of his stand attwo or three “girl guns.” Functionally,

they were the same as the black andsilver ones I was trying, but they werepainted pink or leopard print. A fewwere bedazzled. You know, the waythat women are.

“ e only thing that can make awoman as strong as a man,” read a t-shirt on display, “is a gun.”

Can gun ownership be feminist?Guns grant women the same power tokill as they do men. ey equalize ourcapacity for destruction.

Since the sexual assault on Novem-ber 10 and the incident on Potter Streeton November 17, women on campushave felt less safe. Consequently, weare taking measures to make ourselvesmore powerful. We are taking self-defense classes and avoiding walkingalone at night. I thought about buyingpepper spray. I’ve begun to make mynightly trek from the library to myhouse clutching my keys between myngers, brass knuckle style.

What is the endpoint of this logic?Armed self-defense. Guns. If it is myresponsibility to keep myself safe, Iwill do it as well as I can. There isan organization built around theidea that women should have gunsfor self-defense called The Women’sGun Zone.

But that logic is rotten to the core,and we have proof of it almost everyday. e more people who own guns,women or not, the more people die by

guns. Two weeks ago, a gunman killedthree people in a Planned Parenthoodin Colorado Springs, and shooterskilled 14 people and injured 21 in SanBernardino, California. I saw a Wash-ington Post article on mass shootingsa dozen times. Everywhere I read,news was abuzz with condemnationsand despair, again.

We are heartbroken and weary, butwe’re not shocked. Tragic murder bygun is not anomalous in the UnitedStates. How could anybody arguethat now? It is built into the gun-loving system.

I have seen guns. I have touchedthem. I have red them. Many peopleI love own guns. Many women I knowown guns. is is my dream for theguns in the United States:

I want to take them all away. I wantto knock on the door of every gun-owning home in America, includingthose of my family and friends, and

conscate their rearms. will tossthem all in a big pile. We will set it onre.

I want us all to hold hands aroundthis massive aming pit and chant:“No more guns. No more guns. Nomore guns.”

“ is is unconstitutional, Julia,” yousay. “ is is too simple. You can’t dothis.”

You’re right. I’m telling you my fan-tasy, not my policy proposal.

If my choice is between unfetteredgovernment tyranny and rampant,toxic murder, give me tyranny. But

that’s not a real option. Here are somereal options: end gun shows, requiregun licensing akin to driver’s licens-ing, undertake more thorough back-ground checks, ban the sale of assaultweapons and extend the 24-hour wait-ing period and make it universal.

Although the world is doubtlessan unsafe place for women, I do notbuy the “feminist” spin on gun own-ership—that it is the strongest, bestform of self-defense. The culturethat tells women to defend ourselveswith guns is the same culture thatgives rise to mass shootings.

No girl guns: we must recognize that rearms are anti-feminist toLEFT OF LIPSTICK JULIA MEAD

As a person who has one foot in Ec-uador and another one in the UnitedStates, I have o en felt guilty. Guiltythat I have U.S. citizenship and cantravel around the world while manyof my friends in Ecuador can’t. Guiltythat I go to Bowdoin College and re-ceive many resources and nancialbenets. Guilty that I live with ex-treme comfort while I have the knowl-edge that many in the Ecuador andthe U.S. are constantly struggling. Butguilt is a paralyzing feeling that didn’tshow me how to use my privileged po-sition in society.

When I moved to the U.S. and cameto Bowdoin I started learning abouta privilege I had never heard of be-fore: white privilege. As a biracial La-

tina student I initially understood thisconcept abstractly, but didn’t connectit to my life until I took a class called“Race and Ethnicity.” I knew that raceexisted from a young age by observ-ing the contrasting way in which mywhite “American” mother and Ecua-dorian mestizo father were treated,but I didn’t understand that I hadwhite privilege. Its implications over-whelmed me.

e house where my white motherand grandmother live is an example ofthe white privilege present in my life.When I go to St. Louis, MO—wheremost of my family lives—I am wel-comed in a safe, well-kept neighbor-hood, in the same house that my whitegreat-grandparents helped my grand-mother buy. is house, where myfamily and I came when we were goingthrough hardship in Ecuador, repre-sents t he racial inequality and injus-tice present in the U.S. e neighbor-

hood is still all-white, just like it waswhen my great-grandparents boughtit, and it’s located on the “good” side oftown. My great-grandparents—whowere white—were allowed to buy thishouse in this neighborhood; that is nocoincidence. e practice of redliningcontinues to have very negative e ff ectson African Americans in St. Louis,but it bene ted my white family andallowed them to buy a house at a goodprice, while blacks were barred fromthe same options. Even a er threegenerations, I am reaping the bene tsof living in a racist society that priori-tized my family’s whiteness at the ex-pense of blacks in St. Louis.

e fact that my mother is whiteand lived in a place where practicallyeveryone was college educated, whereblacks were legally not allowed to livein for a part of St. Louis’ history, hada huge eff ect on her chances of goingto college. On top of this, as a white

student she was perceived as beingsmarter than her black peers in herschool. is type of unfair advantagethat my mother was paid at the priceof others, blacks, who had to provetheir worthiness to teachers who gaveit for free to white students. When Ibegan to go to her same high school Irealized this continued to be the case.I was immediately put into the mostadvanced classes when I walked intothe counselor’s offi ce with my whitemother and only later learned, a ertalking to my black peers, that blackstudents had very di ff erent experienc-es when they walked into that sameoffi ce with their parents.

Over the years, I have realized thatI have many privileges in my life, butwhat should I do with all this knowl-edge of my position in society and theunequal structures that privilege me?Privilege is a tool. It is power and canbe used in multiples ways. President

Rose’s talk last Tuesday about race is agreat, specic example of using whiteprivilege to change unequal relationsthat still exist in our society. Usingwhite privilege means coming to gripswith a reality that you didn’t necessar-ily create, but that you are bene tingfrom. is is hard to do, but can alsofeel incredibly eye opening.

We can all learn how to use privi-lege wisely to change the very struc-tures that created it. Even if you’re notwhite, but biracial or something else(like me), by being a student at Bow-doin College, you have a lot of privi-lege. It’s hard to get to Bowdoin andpeople struggle to get into this placebecause of all the bene ts that it givesus. It is up to us to use all these ben-ets to change unequal power struc-tures. It starts by learning about theways in which we have received unfairadvantages at the expense of others.

Learning to use white privilege as a tool in fighting oppSAY IT LIKE IT ISCAROLINE MARTINEZ

DIANA FURUKAWA

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B OT

Every day in 1927, my grandfatherthrew the burrito his mother madefor him for lunch over the bridgewhile on his way to school. He spokefondly of his family, and every yearfor the 4th of July, we’d return to hishometown and break piñatas withwooden bats.

On Christmas, we’d eat tamales.But I never learned Spanish—orperhaps I was never taught it. WhenI went to school and told the otherMexican children I was a quarterMexican, they’d take one look at mywhite, freckled face and say, “No,you’re not!” I’d retort, but their re-sponse was always, “Do you speakSpanish?” and that’s when I’d losethe argument.

My Italian father grew up inCompton, California at the peak ofthe civil rights movement. He re-

members the feeling of being hun-gry; he says it felt like a punishment.He remembers being one of the fewwhite kids at school and getting ha-rassed by black peers because of hisskin color.

My identity is complicated. MyMexican grandfather is rich, but hehad to deny his native language tosucceed. I do not have brown skinor speak Spanish, but I am Mexican,and I have always fought to be rec-ognized as such—to belong.

I grew up in a predominantlywhite neighborhood, but everywhite girl I made friends with wouldabruptly “break off” our friendshipto hang out with the “cool” kids.

Looking back, I wonder if it was be-cause I couldn’t afford to be “cool.”My brother regularly got jumped bywhite gang members called “bros.”In middle school, after continu-ing to be rejected by my Mexicanpeers, I was accepted into a groupof predominantly Asian (Vietnam-ese, Cambodian and Filipino) kids.They gave me the title of “honoraryAsian,” as I was the only white per-son in the group. I lie on the borderbetween two races, but I was claimedby a racial group that did not reflectany part of my i dentity.

At Bowdoin, I sometimes silencemyself to let students of color speak.I know that racism hurts me deeply,but because of my skin color, I neverface discrimination directly fromstrangers. I am therefore neitherwhite nor Mexican, yet I am both atthe same time—my identity changesbased on the situation. When racistcomments are spoken in my pres-

ence, I usually leave out the fact thatI am Mexican. I am a fly on the wall,one that catches violent, candid andignorant comments of offenders.Participating in conversations aboutrace is easier for me because I ap-pear as if I belong to the privilegedgroup and therefore the offender isless defensive toward my comments.Choosing to hide my identity is aprivilege, and I sacrifice revealingmy Mexican identity in order tocontinue the conversation.

Racist comments do not alwayscome from white people, racist sen-timents are embedded in minori-ties as well. A black friend of mineonce said, “If you need any advice on

talking about race, I havea lot of experience.” Heproceeded, using a ste-reotypical Asian accent,“I have many weapons upmy sleeves.” I responded,“You realize you just saidthat in a stereotypicalAsian accent right?” Heimmediately went on thedefense.

Racism can also movewithin and between mi-nority groups. A Mexicancan be racist against otherMexicans; like my grand-father who had English“pounded into him” bynuns and missionaries. Hewas taught by white peo-ple growing up that hisculture was less valuableto society; therefore, he abandonedhis language and his accent. My blackfriend used a stereotypical Asian ac-

cent created by the dominant group.This accent is used to mock Asiansfor not speaking “proper” Englishand for not assimilating to Americancultural norms of speaking. Normsare created by the white majority, butminority groups can also use thesenorms to oppress each other.

Racism is a complicated thing. Itis insidious and pervasive. It is not adichotomy between black and white,but a web of complexity. It movesbetween dominant and oppressedgroups, within minority groups andwithin ourselves (for me this is be-tween my white and Mexican sides).

Let me be clear, however, that mi-nority groups cannot be racist against

dominant racial groups.Black people, like the ones who

beat up my father, for example, canhave prejudices. But, prejudice is not

the same as racism because our sys-tem of racial hierarchy does not giveblack people the power to oppresswhite people. This hierarchical sys-tem always favors white people overblack people. Was it wrong to beathim up for being white? Yes. Did henecessarily deserve it? No. But, werehis black peers justified in their sys-temically embedded fear of a whiteman? Yes.

On the other hand, when whitepeople, who are privileged in oursociety, continue to commit violencetoward black people—in a word, op-pression—that is a systemic asser-tion of dominance and power. Thatis racism.

I encourage you all to admit toyourself that you are racist, that weall have embedded in us a racialhierarchy that values white people

over black people. No matter whatyour race is, we are ALL guilty ofbeing racist at some point in ourlives. I will be the first to admit it.But, it is important to come to termswith your self-perception and howthat fits within America’s racial sys-tem. This realization can humble usall and make it easier for us to talkabout race. For those of you who arenot familiar with phrases such asracism, white privilege, white guilt,or norms, I encourage you to lookthese terms up. Educate yourself—don’t just take my word for it.

Violet Ranson is a member of the classof 2016.

Confronting racism as someone who is in between iVIOLET RANSON

OP ED CONTRIBUTOR

On October 28, the BowdoinStudent Government (BSG) issueda resolution condemning “culturalappropriation,” which they definedas “a power dynamic in which [1]members of a dominant culture takeelements from a culture of peoplewho have been systematically op-pressed by that dominant group, [2]perpetuates racist stereotypes, and/or [3] misrepresents a peoples cul-ture.” I recognize the second partof this definition—racist stereotyp-ing—as a serious problem that Bow-doin should and must condemn.However, I reject the definition’sfirst section—which envisions aclear distinction between dominantand subordinate cultures—as well asits third section, which asserts that“cultural appropriation” involvesmisrepresenting another culture.These claims perpetuate uncriticalnotions of culture that have no placeat a sophisticated, intellectual insti-

tution. For this reason, we shouldcondemn and address racist stereo-typing while discarding the term“cultural appropriation” altogether.

The BSG’s definition assumes thateach “culture” has a fixed naturethat can be properly or improperlyrepresented. This assumption con-tradicts academic understandings ofhow culture operates. Anthropolo-gists and religion scholars avoid at-tributing an essence to any culturaltradition. Instead, they look at how various groups de fine thems elves . Inorder to remain impartial, academ-ics do not attribute objective realityto any of these self-definitions andinstead analyze all identities as hu-man constructions.

An example: over the past de-cade, certain people who identifyas Hindus have criticized Americanreligion scholarship for ostensiblymisinterpreting Hinduism. Bow-doin’s religion department employsthe methods that these Hindus con-demn. According to the BSG reso-lution, Bowdoin’s study of Hindu

traditions represents “cultural ap-propriation.” Yet before denouncingour own department, we must askwho is defining the “correct” Hindu-ism. Not all people who identify asHindu condemn the scholars—onlysome do. Which perspective deter-mines the correct representation ofHinduism? If we try to take the prac-titioners’ perspective, we find that—like every other religious or ethnicgroup—Hindus’ self-definitions varybetween times, places and persons.If we take an academic perspec-tive, we must deny the existence ofany objective Hindu identity at all.Therefore, identifying the correctrepresentation of Hindu culture—orof any other culture—is impossible.

Acknowledging the constructednature of all identities reveals thefallacy of believing that neat andobjective boundaries separate dif-ferent cultures. While Americanstend to understand identities—particularly those associated withrace— as objectively real, anthro-pological analysis reveals the fun-

damental artificiality of these cat-egories. Thus, we must discard theidea that “cultural appropriation”involves a dominant culture tak-ing from an oppressed culture forthe simple reason that boundariesbetween cultures have no objec-tive existence. Instead, differentindividuals draw these boundar-ies differently—leaving none of theagreed-upon distinctions betweenone culture and another that theBSG resolution presupposes.

Instead of using a vague and un-helpful term, we should describe in-cidents such as the “Gangster Party”as what they are: racist stereotyp-ing. Unlike “culture appropriation,”the notion of racist stereotypingdoes not conflict with an academicunderstanding of culture. As I seeit, such stereotyping—like all dis-courses that define an identity—describes a group by emphasizingcertain features. But, unlike othergroup-defining discourses, raciststereotyping causes harm by reduc-ing people into the fears and/or fan-

tasies that others entertain aboutthem—in this case, the fantasy ofthe “Black gangster.” In doing so,racist discourses demean the peoplewho identify with (or are identifiedwith) that group. An event such asthe “Gangster Party” harnesses theseinsulting discourses for the purposeof entertainment. Bowdoin mustcondemn such racist stereotypingif it wants to build a community inwhich students from historically andcurrently marginalized groups canfeel safe and welcome.

Frankly, Bowdoin students shouldknow better than to perpetuate un-critical concepts of what cultureis. The most concerning aspect ofBowdoin’s use of the phrase “cultur-al appropriation” involves the severe judg ment that accompani es a mis-leading term. Activists lose credibil-ity when they wed harsh condemna-tion to unexamined ideas. Bowdoincan do better.

Stephen Kelly is a member of the classof 2017.

Powerful language: critiquing the term cultural appropBY STEPHEN KELLY

OP ED CONTRIBUTOR

HY KHONG

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DECEMBER 16 , ,

PERFORMANCEBen Haile '15, voiceBen Haile '15 will be giving a vocal performance.Kanbar Auditorium, Studzinski Recital Hall. 7:30 p.m.

PERFORMANCEMid-Day MusicAll are welcome to come watch student musicians give jazzpiano, trombone and violin performances. Featured studentsinclude: Simon Moushabeck '16, Will Sheppard '18, Liem Tu'18, Sabine Berzins '16, Arindam Jurakhan '17 and Jacque-line Colao '17.Tillotson Room (101), Gibson Hall. Noon.

EVENT

Study Break at the Arctic MuseumStudents are welcome to take a study break at the Peary-MacMillan Arctic Museum. Attendees will enjoy a hotchocolate bar, vintage Arctic board games, Arctic-themedlms and a chance to try beading in the spirit of the currentexhibit on beading in Northern communities.Lobby, Hubbard Hall. 7 p.m.

PERFORMANCEMonday Night MusicThe penultimate music recital of the semester will feature amix of student musicians: Summer Xia '16, voice; Lucas Shaw'16, voice and trombone; Serena Taj ’16, voice; Chandler Tins-man '16, trombone; Hanzhao Li '18, voice; and Virginia Barr'16, voice. Admission is free and all are welcome to attend.Kanbar Auditorium, StudzinskiRecital Hall. 7:30 p.m.

PERFORMANCEWinter Music SamplerThe Winter Music Sampler will be thenal recital of thesemester. Carolina Deifelt Streese '16, Laura Block '17, EvaMontilla '17, Margaret Conley '18, Taylor Love '16, JuneGuo '16 and Anna Schwartzberg '17 will give instrumentalperformances.Kanbar Auditorium, Studzinski Recital Hall. 4 p.m.

EVENTFinal ExamsFall semester examinations will take place. Godspeed.See Polaris for details.

EVENTFinal ExamsFall semester examinations will take place. Godspeed.See Polaris for details.

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Exams Exams Exams Exams Winter BreakBegins

Winter Break Christmas Eve

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PERFORMANCESheng Ge '16, celloSheng Ge '16 will be giving a cello performance.Kanbar Auditorium, Studzinski Recital Hall. 4 p.m.

PERFORMANCEA Festival of Lessons and CarolsAll are welcome to attend A Festival of Lessons and Carols,which will include carols and Bible readings given byfaculty and staff . Flutist Scout Gregerson '18 and violinist

Sabine Berzins '16 will accompany the Bowdoin Carolers.Organist George Lopez will play hymns and pianistMatthew Maguire '19 will play theprelude and postlude.The Chapel. 6:30 p.m.

EVENTVisual Art Fall Open HouseStudent work from this semester’s visual arts courses will beon display. Refreshments will be provided and the event isfree.Edwards Art Center. 5 p.m.

PERFORMANCEImprovabilities ShowThe Improvabilities group will be performing.Kresge Auditorium, Visual ArtsCenter. 8 p.m.

PERFORMANCE"Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber ofFleet Street"Curtain Callers will sponsor a performance of “SweeneyTodd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street,” a tale of a Londonbarber seeking revenge. The show will also be performed onSaturday at the same time.Chase Barn, Boody-Johnson House. 8 p.m.

EVENTFirst Year & Sophomore DanceFirst-year and sophomore students are welcome to attendthis semi-formal dance.

Sargent Gym. 10 p.m.

CENTER STAGE:Miranda Princi '17, Sophie de Bruijn '18 and Osa Omoregie '18 performed in scenes from "Our Lady ofdirecting project by Maggie Seymour '16, last Monday.

JENNY IBSEN, THE BOWDOIN O

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The Bowdoin Orient- Vol. 145, No. 12 -December 11, 2015