|
Volume CXXXIII, Number 5 |
 |
Realigning Bowdoin's priorities
The NESCAC presidents deserve praise for making the brave
move of confronting the athletics vs. academics problem that they must
have known about for many years. The decision to commission a public report
is a good first step in turning NESCAC schools around and realigning Bowdoin's
priorities.
The steps that follow will be the difficult ones, but they
must be taken. It is not easy for schools to make decisions about cutting
down on the size and the budgets of athletic programs, but certainly something
must change.
This change cannot come in the form of "treating the wound,"
either. Extra academic assistance for those athletes who fall behind is
not the answer. The answer is to admit an athletic group that reflects
the diversity of the student body, specifically in relation to academics.
It is also true that the NESCAC schools must act together.
This cannot be turned into an arms race. Schools must be comfortable with
being able to cut back, without feeling as if they will lose their competitive
edge.
But this does not excuse Bowdoin from its own responsibilities. Bowdoin
needs to decide for itself where its own statistics fit in, and how best
it can rectify the situation.
While the NESCAC report delivers very specific results,
these results raise the larger need to question the role of athletics
at Bowdoin. Many NESCAC schools have more varsity athletes than some Division
I schools, and Bowdoin boasts that 80 percent of its students play some
form of sports.
But anytime numbers are this large, one must be wary of
the situation. If so many Bowdoin students are involved in sports, then
they should be supports. But disproportionate funding and support for
athletics has without question ended up neglecting the arts and student-run
organizations.
Such a disproportionate number has an even further effect
on the climate of a college campus, and this effect cannot be measured
by a report. If the College's desire in terminating fraternities was to
create a more diverse and open community, then sports teams tend to act
against that goal, not with it.
Athletics are at least as divisive to "community" as fraternities-they
are the largest cliques on campus-but, unlike fraternities, they cannot
host parties or dinners open to the entire campus.
There is no denying that athletics play a vital role on college campuses, both for the individual athlete and for the spectators the teams bring together. They certainly need, and deserve, the institutional support of the College. But it's time to reflect on exactly what that need is.
-BJL & NJL
Today's Sarah and James Bowdoin Day ceremony celebrates both academic achievement and the life of the mind. There seems to be something oddly contradictory about these goals. Quite simply, grades do not measure the life of the mind. It might be more correct to say that the day celebrates the life of the mind, in spite of academic achievement.
The planners of the SJB ceremony, realizing this, reminded students that the tenor of the day should transcend local issues. They urged the student speaker to remember this, too, and apply it to his or her speech. In other words, the speaker should talk about things more important, more global than the triviality of grades and awards.
There is further irony in the strange fact that the College pays a student $250 to give this speech. The speaker has not always been paid; the College started giving out the stipend just a few years ago to encourage (to bribe?) the scholars, who had otherwise shown little interest in speaking. In light of this fact, we must wonder: why do students offer to give this speech? Is it for the greater good of the life of the mind? For the cash? For the same reasons we get good grades?
-NJL