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Volume CXXXII, Number 23 |
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Ivies ignorance has gone too far
To the Editors:
This Ivies Weekend marked the nadir of the Bowdoin social life. Instead of being a fun-filled weekend of relaxation for everyone, it turned into a drunken debauchery that left me ashamed to be part of the Bowdoin community. On Friday night, Thorne dining hall was overrun with an asynchronous rendition of "we will rock you" by drunken students who prided themselves in remembering how to clap. Food fights raged, chairs flew, and drunken fools spent the evening sliding across the floor on dining hall trays. I felt like I was a visitor to a zoo and somehow happened to get trapped inside the cage of drunken chimpanzees filming the new Jackass movie. Those shenanigans forced the dining hall staff to close Thorne a half hour early on Friday evening, turning away hungry students. As I left the dining hall, I heard a prospective student say with distain, "This is exactly how they portrayed college in that movie Van Wilder." Is this the impression we want to give visitors to our College? I wanted to stick up for Bowdoin, I wanted to apologize, but I didn't; I couldn't make excuses for the behavior I observed.
I returned Saturday for dinner in Thorne to find patrolling security officers and a video camera documenting the tomfoolery. The Thorne dining hall manager told me how difficult it had been trying to prevent students from hurting themselves. He said nothing of the overtime that he and his staff needed to work in order to clean the mess of strewn food, trash, and broken furniture. If I worked in the dining hall I would have been furious, but instead, they simply worried about our safety.
The staff at Bowdoin have been our friends and supporters since we entered as first years. Janice knows us all by name. Is this the legacy we want to leave behind, the memory of drunken idiocy? The $36,000 we pay per year to become educated at Bowdoin does not entitle us to insult and harass those who make that experience possible. The dining hall staff, the grounds crew, and the custodians, to name a few, are all crucial to the functioning of this institution, and yet, during Ivies Weekend many students treated them as servants who should just shut up and do their job.
Yesterday, May 1, was International Workers Day. Let's make up for our foolish display by apologizing to those who put up with us. And let's do everything we can to keep such mindless behavior out of future Ivies.
Sincerely,
Evan Matzen '03
Keep up the spirit of recognition
To the Editors:
Over the past semester, social and political activism at Bowdoin has involved more people and become more visible than it has been in my four years here. Undoubtedly, this is due in large part to admirable, increasingly persistent, and charismatic student effort. Organizations such as Global Help, Evergreens, the Democratic Socialists, and the Bowdoin Women's Association have done much to raise awareness about typically unrecognized issues-and, even more important, have heightened our sense of how we are implicated in the day-to-day, seemingly mundane and inconsequential decisions we make about the coffee we drink, the clothes we wear, or the language we use.
Activism here has also become more visible and involved because of public recognition and debate. The editorial proliferation begun with responses to the Bowdoin Coalition Against the War healthily continued through Tony Kushner's rousing visit and still goes on. Recognition is on the rise and will hopefully remain so. We (must) constantly examine the unseen.
It's fantastic for us to look outwards and internationally; our insularity as a college and a country is perpetually lamented. We would do well to look more locally - very locally - too. Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed began the year with an exhortation to first-year students, not unlike Anthony Walton's to us seniors four years ago: pay attention. A lot goes on very close to us. At Bowdoin, for instance, there are a significant number of people who do a lot of unseen things for students. They are recognized sometimes, but not very often. And we could do more of that, if only by saying hello, saying thank you, or stopping to talk.
I'd like to extend a thank you to the support staff here for all of the great work you do, but more for your kindness and concern. Thank you to Ann for all of the bag lunches and for asking about my day. Thank you to Pat for remembering my name and the names of what seems like everyone else on campus. Thank you to Charles for your smile and the conversations about the Red Sox. Especially, thank you to the dining service staff who we rarely get to see, to facilities who keep things running smoothly, to grounds who make the campus beautiful. Thank you to Steve in Morrell for asking about the volleyball team. Thank you to Diane for talking with me about books. Thank you to Tammy and Kay for your amazing thoughtfulness. And thank you to Amy for helping me think hard about the world. Thank you to Mona and Rick and John and Sherry. It's hard to name everyone personally. I'm sorry I can't; I would if I could.
Let's keep up this spirit of recognition we've so wonderfully kindled. Let's keep learning how to help, keep helping, and keep talking-as so many people have encouraged and compelled us to do this spring in particular. What so much of the recent activism has importantly and insightfully stressed is people. And we never have to look far to find them.
Sincerely,
Nick Hiebert '03
Kudos to dining staff on Ivies
To the Editors:
I would like to take a minute and thank all of the dining staff for their unbelievable efforts this past weekend. Amidst the boisterous crowds of Ivies, the dining service worked double time not only to continue to serve up to the highest standard, but also to clean up after the lively crowd.
On behalf of the students, I express my sincere thanks for remaining patient with the students and keeping the dining halls open to all.
Thank you.
Sincerely,
Kara Podkaminer '03
To the Editors:
My experience at Bowdoin has been so rewarding in so many ways. Academically, athletically, and personally, I couldn't have asked for a more positive experience. I have many people to thank in the coming weeks.
And that is why I hesitate to write this letter. Why, in so joyful a time, would I dwell on the lone negative feeling I have about this place? Because right now, if a prospective student, someone in my family, or someone from my hometown asked me about Bowdoin, my recommendation would come with a disclaimer. Because Brunswick isn't fun.
There is nothing we can do to change the orientation of the Brunswick police. Several of the last few nights, I have seen police cars setting up a trap or whatever in the parking lot outside Harpswell apartments; be careful around there. Last weekend, a friend of mine was cited and fined $200 by police for holding a beer right outside his apartment. Another friend was, if you can believe this, stopped by police cars as he was walking alone through a neighborhood and fined over $200 not for noise, not for drunkenness, but for littering. On Ivies Weekend! Last night I was at an off-campus party with about15 people. At most schools, you can't even call that a party. It would be a joke to call 15 people hanging out and listening to music a party. It was broken up by police.
What these developments tell me is that on-campus is going to be the only place anyone is allowed to do anything pretty soon. There are no more fraternities: soon, I think, there will be few off-campus parties at all. That is why it is so important, more important than ever, for security to become more of a friend to students than ever. Students and security are going to have to work together to keep Bowdoin fun. I suggest that keeping Bowdoin fun ought to become a new security goal.
Right now, Bowdoin is sending me mixed messages. This is one of the finest liberal arts schools in the country. Bowdoin is proud of its students, believes in them, and it trusts them, I know it does. Why, then, must we be policed?
I have met several Campus Security officers: on an individual level, they have treated me with nothing but respect, and I respect each of them. The only interactions I have had with them, though, in four years, have involved either the towing of my car or the ruining, for me, of a perfectly good party. This does not constitute keeping Bowdoin fun.
Let's solve this problem. Campus Security should redirect its efforts so that students' interactions with them are all about helping, and not about policing. We are not a dangerous student body: we might be the most docile student body I have ever seen, and I have visited a lot of schools! I submit to you that Brunswick, Maine is not a dangerous place, and I have been to a lot of places! Trust us, we don't need to be protected from ourselves or anyone else. Security should devote itself almost entirely to helping students by giving them rides (which I know happens and is such a good thing), helping them carry things (which I have also seen happen and is an equally good thing), helping them find their way…
Parking restrictions must be enforced and should continue to be enforced, but not at the risk of alienating students. I propose that security should lower the number of parking tickets assigned by 75 percent. In addition to this, I propose that they stop towing cars altogether. All towing does is foster animosity, not to mention make us poor. I'll accept that parking regulations matter and that they should be observed and that some degree of regulation by security is necessary, but not at the cost of alienating students. Make this change: the community will be closer and better for it.
The whole point of parties is relaxation. I can't relax when I feel like security officers are watching me. I choose not to attend many on-campus parties. I know that the security officers have nothing but good intentions (when they come to check kegs, etc.), consequently. I know that there are others who feel this way too. When you are at a party and you feel like some authority figure is watching you, it feels uncomfortable. I actually feel kind of demeaned by it, like Bowdoin is renouncing its trust in me. Trust us to take care of ourselves. Campus security should not be allowed to enter parties unless they are called. Essentially, when they do enter, they do so in order to police us, so they should be subject to the same restrictions as police. This way, we won't feel like our privacy is being invaded.
The college is doing a lot of things right. The changes to the college house system are a great idea. Though I think that we should be allowed to tap more than one keg at a time at big parties (after all, they are called keg parties, not standing-in-line while someone you don't know hands beers to someone else you don't know but that he knows, who was behind you in the line). The social house parties I attended this year were a lot of fun. Senior pub nights have been great. The situation is not yet dire. It will be, though. We need to be allowed to party. We need to be left alone and trusted. We need to not be policed.
I will never contribute any money to Bowdoin until this problem has been solved. None of us should. I will never recommend Bowdoin to anyone.
I truly believe that Campus Security and the college must totally re-orient themselves toward keeping Bowdoin fun and towards trusting the students. Keeping Bowdoin fun needs to be a new security goal.
Because if Bowdoin isn't fun, I can't recommend it. Not to someone I care about. I want to recommend Bowdoin, and without any disclaimer, for all the amazing opportunities it has to offer and for all it has given me.
Sincerely,
Albert Mayer '03
To the Editors,
I must disagree with some elements of Professor Potholm's letter ("The war's imaginary horribles") in the April 23 issue of The Orient.
The art of estimating casualties in war is very imprecise, but many commentators-no doubt calling upon the precedent of 1991-seem to have gotten it about right: there would be some hundreds of coalition casualties and some thousands of Iraqi deaths, combatants and non-combatants. The treatment of those different casualties could be predicted from that earlier conflict as well; the coalition dead individualized and mourned, the Iraqi dead anonymized to the greatest degree possible, lumped together as A Small Price To Pay. (As Margot Norris said of the last Gulf War,"...we Westerners count our dead because we cherish human life; you Orientals hold life cheap, therefore we may bury you uncounted in ditches." ) In fact, there were about twice as many coalition casualties in this last campaign as in Desert Storm, proportional to the forces deployed. Casualty counts will grow steadily-indeed, they continue to grow, day by day-as will the funds necessary to rebuild that country. The ultimate monetary cost will certainly be much greater than $20 billion.
Predictions of terrorist attacks on American targets and of use of chemical weapons against coalition troops came primarily from an American administration overestimating threats. Coalition soldiers went into battle with their MOPP suits at the ready, not because of pundits but because their commanders mistakenly thought that chemical weapons had been distributed to their Iraqi counterparts. It may be that some stocks of WMD will eventually be found in Iraq, but had they been widely available on the battlefield, they would have been detected by now. It was Tom Ridge who elevated the terrorism threat level to Orange in the expectation of domestic attacks, but eventually everyone put their duct tape away.
The specifics of this war were relatively straightforward: an attack by fast-moving forces with great organizational and technological superiority -- indeed, as Professor Potholm says, blitzkrieg. That is no doubt very impressive, but it does not really challenge centuries of military doctrine. What would be much more impressive would be a final victory in the decades-long war against terrorism that Professor Potholm predicts. I must say that I worry about that. "Terrorism" is an ill-defined and contentious designation (ask Nelson Mandela, or Yitzhak Shamir), all too adaptable to the exigencies of the moment. Such terms very easily become catch-all weapons that are useful only for endlessly battering perceived opponents at home and abroad.
Sincerely,
Scott MacEachern
To the Editors:
Prof. Potholm in his contribution of 25 April to the Orient "The war's imaginary horribles" lists 11 such "horribles" and suggests that they didn't materialize. Most of them have to do with aspects of the war itself. He chooses not to mention other highly significant "horribles," all of them of deep concern to those of us who opposed the war.
As Prof. Potholm well knows, our decision to go the war was highly unpopular in many countries, and especially in Western Europe. Our openly championed policy of preemptive war, as laid out in the "National Security Strategy" of September 2002, was seriously called into question by most governments as well as individuals. We were - and are - looked upon as arrogant and imperialistic. (Consider our current refusal to allow UN inspectors into Iraq to search for weapons of mass destruction).
Given these "horribles," which have come about as as a result of our going to war, what will be their effect on our working relationship with other nations, as well as with the UN, relationships of crucial importance (among other areas) in our war against terrorism, a "continuing war that has a long, long way to run," as Prof Potholm puts it himself?
A further concern, not mentioned by Prof. Potholm, are the huge complexities of building a new Iraq. Remember Algeria!
Prof. Potholm will probably call these fears and concerns groundless. I hope he is right!
Sincerely,
Fritz Kempner
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