Volume CXXXII, Number 4 October 4, 2002 f

FMLA is calling all feminists

To the Community:

The stigmatism around the word "feminism" is very disconcerting to me as a woman who considers herself to be a feminist. So many assumptions and misconceptions prevent people from being open to the idea of feminism. So I ask you, what is "feminism?" In formal terms, it is the policy, practice or advocacy of political, economic and social equality for women. Therefore, a feminist is anyone who believes in equality for all women and men. This means that a feminist can be ANYONE-man, woman, straight, gay, bisexual, or transgender. A feminist is NOT strictly a man-hating militant running around burning her bra, as is commonly believed; and yet people are still hesitant to embrace the concept. But if you believe in equality, then I am afraid you cannot call yourself anything but a feminist.

For those of you, women and men alike, who would like to activate your newly found, or seasoned, feminist side, there is now a group looking for you! It's known as the Feminist Majority Leadership Alliance (FMLA). The FMLA is a student-run organization committed to bringing equality and awareness to Bowdoin's campus and getting things done. It focuses on informing young feminists of the very real threats to abortion access, women's rights, and affirmative action. The FMLA seeks to empower students to effect change at the grassroots, national, and global levels in order to expand feminist choices, career options, women in leadership, and to fight the backlash on campus, in the community, and across the country using different types of major events as its vehicle. Some ideas already in motion are: Get Out HER Vote, a campaign to register and mobilize voters for the 2002 elections, as well as educating voters about the political power of the gender gap; Take Back the Night, which is done to raise awareness and stand up for those who have been sexually assaulted; Never Go Back, which is a campaign focused on educating people about the impending threat to legal abortion and the role of the Supreme Court in affirming or overturning Roe v. Wade; and expanding health center hours to include the weekends, and make emergency contraception (EC) more available to students-especially on the weekends. Meetings are Monday nights at 9 p.m. at the Women's Resource Center. Hope to see you there! For more information contact nfava@bowdoin.edu or eyamada@bowdoin.edu.

Bring back pre-season practices

Dear Presidents,

I write to you today in the sincere hope that you will consider my request for a brief suspension of the new policy, adopted just last week, prohibiting student-athletes from practicing their respective sports outside of the dates specifically mandated by the Conference. It is not my intention, as I write this letter, to suggest that there is anything valid or worthwhile about athletic practice in preparation for an upcoming season. For many of us, pre-season practice and off-season training are precisely what enable us to improve our skills and develop our potential. Still, I'm sure I would be dismissed as ridiculous were I to assert any correlation between the level of play in our athletic events and the level of satisfaction we derive from them, the value of the lessons we learn from them, etc. May we play, in all our athletic competitions, at the lowest possible level, and may our teams be disorganized and perpetually winded: that's always been my mantra. And of course, besides studying for a test in one of our classes, what good does preparation do us in any of our endeavors here at Bowdoin? Surely we would never encourage our musicians to practice their instruments together in days leading up to a recital, and we strongly caution our artists against any sketching prior to a finished work, lest they develop tendentious. No, our singers just show up and sing, our painters mindlessly hurl paint onto canvas; our dancers instinctively know all their places, and our actors practice their lines in utter solitude, if at all. And so too should be our athletes, restricted to a minimal and solitary training, confined to a schedule of someone else's making, and they should lower their aspirations, if they ever had any for something so meaningless as an athletic season.

I accept this decision on other grounds, too! The decision to suspend pre-season practices originated at Colby, did it not? Well then, what example are we, as the Bowdoin community, supposed to follow if not that which is presented to us by the Colby community? I, for one, shudder to think of following in any other footsteps.

So it is having already conceded…no, proclaimed!…complete agreement with the ban on all pre-season athletic practices that I humbly ask you this: would it be allowable for my two roommates and I to go out on to the baseball field and commence defensive drills? We are all student-athletes here at Bowdoin, and we were all actively preparing for upcoming winter seasons. We are also all mediocre baseball players; none of us have ever played a baseball game here at Bowdoin. But, in a moment of weakness several weeks ago, we inexplicably sought to improve, and, impulsively (to say the least), made purchase of a videotape endorsed by Fred Mcgriff and entitled "Tom Emansky's Defensive Drills Video." We ask your permission to use the video and see where it leads. Though the makers of this film claim credit as having produced back-to-back-to-back national champions at the AAU level, we harbor little hope that our practice will ever lead to any real achievements: rest assured, it's already far too late for us to reach a high level in the sport. Which is not to say that we don't have any talent…

I guess we just didn't start practicing soon enough.

Albert Pilavin Mayer '03