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Volume CXXXII, Number 22 |
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Leave your Ivies spirit at the door
To the Bowdoin Community:
There are many wonderful and traditional year-end events that the Dining Service staff are planning and looking forward to, such as the All Sports Banquet, College House events, and numerous Commencement meals and receptions. I'm sorry to say that one event we are not looking forward to is Ivies Weekend!
Staff memories from last year linger and fill those who are scheduled to work with a sense of dread. The boisterous and disrespectful behavior of inebriated revelers made the dining halls extremely uncomfortable for other students and the staff who were forced to deal with it. Although we want you to have a good time enjoying the short and late-arriving spring, we hope that your fun is not going to be at the expense of other diners and staff who work so hard all year to serve you.
We wish you a fun and safe Ivies Weekend, and thank you in advance for respecting others and maintaining appropriate behavior in the dining halls.
Sincerely,
Mary Lou Kennedy
Director and the Dining Services Management Team
Emily Duffus and Dan Hall
Dining Service Student Managers
Intramural athletes losing out
To the Editors:
I write to you as a concerned Bowdoin student. I am a senior, and in my four years at Bowdoin, I have had the great of honor of partaking in Bowdoin's Intramural Athletics Program. Unfortunately this letter is written in a somber tone that is meant to reflect the sadness that I have experienced this year.
During this academic year, I have witnessed the IM empire erected and maintained by Dave Mountcastle, Kris Hopkins, and Bobby Surdell fall apart. The new IM director has had some issues finding a comfort zone and growing into the position. During the Soccer season teams' records were improperly tabulated, unfairly forcing certain teams from playoff spots that they had rightfully earned. During the basketball seasons, playing basketball was the exception and waiting for your team's next game was the rule. Teams only played four or five games (in previous years teams were guaranteed upwards of six games in the regular season), some teams never received schedules, the 3-on-3 playoff bracket was organized in a non-sensical fashion (the number one seed played the number two seed in the first round!), and games were awkwardly scheduled (some teams would play two games in one week and then be forced to sit idle for three weeks). As you can imagine, this discombobulating situation disoriented players and harmed their precious rhythm and intuitive sense of timing. During the softball season, things have been equally frustrating. Surely, inclement weather is partially at fault for the mix-ups, but canceling softball games that were scheduled for 4:15 p.m. at 4:08 p.m. is unprofessional. Forgetting to send monitors to the fields is inexcusable. Teams have been left stranded at the fields without bats, balls, or bases. Why is this happening?
All of these mistakes could have been easily avoided had the new IM director paid closer attention to detail, showed an active interest in the games, and adhered to the tried-and-true methods employed by the previous IM Tsar. As I leave Bowdoin, I hope that these slip-ups can be remedied for future generations of Bowdoin students. If action is not taken to correct these egregious errors, I would encourage the students to organize a grassroots movement in order to agitate for substantive change and the return of the illustrious Dave Mountcastle, or at least Pat Hultgren.
Sincerely,
Eric Goldwyn '03
To the Editors:
I am writing in response to the slew of pedantic articles and letters that have popped up in the last few weeks. From complaints about bestial conversational skills to the overall "rowdiness" of the Bowdoin College community, pretentious and introverted, complainers seem to have come out of the very woodwork lately.
Introverts are great, don't get me wrong-I consider myself a chronic introvert-but, in this case, I cannot take their side. Here's why. Otherness-whether it involves the possession of conversational skills or the ability to enjoy Plato, or Milton, or Nietzsche-is a beautiful thing. However, you can't have otherness without a lot of common clay of the earth, i.e. morons. That's right, folks, I am talking about stupid people, i.e. passive individuals. I guess Genevieve Creedon didn't realize it, but most places she goes she'll find them.
This segment of the population is analogous to the wall space that surrounds a piece of great artwork or the line of dancers that backs up Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in that big number at the end of Shall We Dance*. You don't focus on them and they are not meant to be the focus of attention, but without them, the main attraction is nothing. Since the phrase "stupid people" may be somewhat misleading and derogatory, I'll give these people another designation: scaena (Latin for stage, natural background, or the public eye), scas for short.
Scas are an ancient, time-honored segment of any population and have been around since the creation of man. In addition, Scas are not a static part of the population-their designation floats, wanders. Everyone is a sca at one point or another. Everyone has to be-even, and perhaps most importantly, the ones who are destined or determined to be the painting on the wall. Without some time in the gutter-either observing/sympathizing with or actually participating in raw, unadulterated life-a person becomes a purely historical being. Quite frankly, this way of life leads to unproductive misery and, even worse, creative stagnation.
So, why hate scas or try to make them change? They never will, or, at least, I hope they never will. If they do, where would the "other" go? Who would be different? Who would be unique? I'll tell you who: no one. Scas are an integral part of the cycle of otherness that occurs along the historical continuum of human existence. Scas are the beginning and the end of human productivity, the alpha and the omega. Anyone who thinks otherwise is a fool. More importantly, anyone who thinks otherwise is surrendering a vital part of his/her humanity.
Sincerely,
Hannah Dean '05
Kushner's uncompromising stance
To the Editors:
I was one of the people who was less than thrilled with Tony Kushner's speech last week, and my opposition was based on more than duck-like "buck buck buck" as Sarah Ramey would have it, according to her article in last week's Orient ("A circus of inane discussion").
My main problem with Kushner, in fact, was exactly what Ramey liked about him. She said that he was "impassioned and uncompromising." I fully agree that he was both of those. The problem is, when one is uncompromising, one is also polarizing and offensive. To wit: he said he could see no reasoning for invading Iraq. Whether you agree or disagree with his position is irrelevant. The issue is whether one could have an intelligent debate with him, in the hopes of coming to a better understanding, and, eventually, a resolution. When Kushner says they can see no rationale for a given position, then one either agrees or disagrees with him, and there is no room for discourse, no room for compromise, and the level of debate becomes little more than shouting, as was evidenced by the some of the crowd's reaction at Kushner's night.
Kushner further proved how polarizing, and, to some extent, ignorant he was when he said that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is "an easy issue to solve." Never mind that his proposed solution, a bi-state system with easy Arab access to Jerusalem was already proposed by Israel and rejected by Yasir Arafat. What is more offensive is that fact that Kushner had the audacity to claim that one of the most difficult issues facing the Middle East, an issue that has consumed scholars, from Morris to Teveth to Khalidi, with far more information than Kushner and still has not been solved, was "easy" to deal with. This kind of polarizing statement accomplishes nothing but anger and a low level of discourse, which, I believe, was Ramey's primary complaint about the Bowdoin campus.
Sincerely,
Neal Urwitz '06
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