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Volume CXXXIII, Number 15 |
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No sweaters needed after all
ALEXANDER REED
CONTRIBUTOR
After having lived in the nation of Texas all my life, and now after having spent almost six months at Bowdoin in the heart of New England, the culture shock is reaching higher and higher voltages as I am discovering many things about this strange land that have challenged and changed many of my previously-held beliefs and assumptions. The record must be set straight once and for all. To all those both within and outside the pines who might not know: contrary to our reputation, Bowdoin is not a preppy WASP nest anymore, but is rather becoming each year a more diverse, international institution while still retaining its uniquely New England character and tradition.
I arrived on campus in August firmly believing (and fearing) that I would not fit in. Bowdoin would be filled with children of the Northeast establishment, I thought, complete with monogrammed cashmere sweaters and neatly parked late-model Audis. I thought I would be shunned by the many students who spend their summers at cottages in Martha's Vineyard, and their spring breaks sailing off the coast of Massachusetts. I had already prepared myself for the adaptation I was sure I would have to undergo. I learned the proper way to tie a sweater around my shoulders, how to eat a lobster, familiarized myself with a map of the Boston metro area and its many suburbs such as Newton and Brookline, and worried if Brunswick would have a place where I could get my initials embroidered on my yet-to-be-purchased merino wool sweaters.
Yet, after my first semester at Bowdoin, I turned out to be right about only one thing. I would need the sweaters. Lots of them. But everything else which permeated my mind concerning the culture of Bowdoin and its New England setting, turned out to be completely misguided and, in short, wrong. Bowdoin does indeed have an old money, trust-fund subculture, but even those who are charter members of it would not dare drive their BMW M3s to campus, or let anyone know where their family is traveling for spring break.
Instead, such Bowdoin students dress modestly and functionally in cold weather gear and speak in colloquial American English like the average New England college student. Still, Bowdoin would very much like to diversify its classes by recruiting and admitting more qualified minority and foreign students from different parts of the US and the world each year.
I believe, as somewhat of a foreigner myself, that this is a sound strategy which, if continued, will allow the Bowdoin campus to more accurately reflect the field of international academia, of which its students maintain a central position. I have always believed that we, as students, learn the most not from our teachers and professors, but from our peers. The more interesting and diverse the Bowdoin residential community is, the less opaque and culturally suffocating the Bowdoin Bubble will become.
Crafting a new class is surely not an easy undertaking. The Admissions Committee, which is now in the heat of evaluating applications for the Class of 2008, will continue to admit based on its particular needs. Just as promising high school athletes are recruited to fill Bowdoin's lacrosse and field hockey teams, the committee should, in the same way, continue to recruit and fill the dorms with students of unique cultural and national identities. With the ongoing debates concerning affirmative action and its place in American academia, I believe Bowdoin is pursuing the best and most efficient route in crafting a class which prioritizes cultural diversity, but which never excludes and actually strengthens Bowdoin as a highly respected, popular liberal arts college.
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