Volume CXXXIII, Number 6 October 19, 2001 f

A Dialogue on Recruitment

To the Editors:

I welcome the comments expressed in last week's editorial, "Realigning Bowdoin's Priorities," as an important first step in opening up the once taboo subject of athletic recruitment to debate.

The report issued by the presidents' commission creates a clear mandate for President Mills, the new Dean of Admissions Jim Miller, and the athletics department to reexamine the recruitment policy so that it better reflects Bowdoin's academic standards.

This reappraisal will only help to improve the academic quality of the student body, which, in turn, will hopefully create a more thoughtful student culture that places a greater importance on critical discourse both inside and outside the classroom.

This is not to imply that recruited athletes are solely responsible for a student culture that downplays such discourse. Rather, recruited athletes, as a generalized whole, are only the most visible and influential group who perpetuate this culture.

I am not advocating a realignment of priorities that would effectively emasculate athletics a la Swarthmore, or even the abolition of recruitment. Instead, I am suggesting that somewhere, between the grunt-and-scratch antics of Bowdoin's more infamous athletes and the morbid ruminations of Swarthmore's more tortured poets-to-be, is a middle ground where Bowdoin can meld its academic focus with the fact that we are still far too young to be entirely serious.

Eben Gilfenbaum '02