Bowdoin Magazine, Vol. 92, No. 1, Fall 2020

FALL 2020 VOL. 92 NO. 1

Contents FALL 2020 VOL. 92 NO. 1

22 Willie Horton and Me, Again

Professor Anthony Walton revisits an essay he wrote in 1989 to reflect on being a Black man in America then, and now.

38 Connection

28 Inhabited

Against the quiet natural backdrop of Malaga Island and a startling dark period in Maine’s history, Surya Milner ’19 searched to understand her own place in Brunswick, Maine, and beyond.

Bowdoin faculty have responded simultaneously to two historic challenges.

44 Q&A with Chryl Laird

The government professor talks about her research on the unity of Black voters.

Forward 5

Hope the Hard Way:

DeRay Mckesson ’07 on the work ahead.

7

Dine: A sweet autumn recipe from

cookbook author Lei Shishak ’97.

8

Ingredients for Success:

Bowdoin dining maintains the magic.

12

By the Numbers: What campus stocked up on for the fall semester.

20 Powerful and Personal: A new podcast from Alvin Hall ’74.

Column 46 A Force of Change: Bill de la Rosa ’16 on the influence of John Lewis.

Connect 49 Danny Mejia ’17 sets a record on the Appalachian Trail.

54 Meghan Cox Gurdon ’86 on the power of reading aloud.

57

Janelle Charles ’06 practices

the common good.

In Every Issue 4

Respond

48 Whispering Pines 64 Here

The Full Picture This issue’s cover is a detail from Daniel Minter’s painting A Morning Pond, part of a series painted after Hurricane Katrina that “examines the hidden residue of the Middle Passage on all Americans,” he explained. “My figures are often in profile, especially those who are gesturing obeisance—to the water, to the ancestral energy beneath, to another presence. We see half of what there is. There is a side that is unavailable to us.” Minter lives in Portland, Maine. More of his work is online at danielminter.net.

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2  BOWDOIN MAGAZINE SPRING/SUMMER 2020 | CLASSNEWS@BOWDOIN.EDU

PHOTO:ARTIST_CREDIT

TESTING. TESTING. Over the summer, staff readied campus in new ways for an unprecedented semester, including the huge task of building and overseeing a COVID-19 testing center in Morrell Gym. It took Bowdoin carpenters a week and a half to build the modular cubes and three days to assemble it all in the gym. The electrical shop and information technology were also crucial in setting up the center and, by August 14, it was ready to go, said Head Athletic Trainer Dan Davies, who is coordinating the COVID-19 testing. “It’s a community effort,” Davies emphasized. More than forty staff, led by coaches and members of the athletic department and including staff from the events office and many other volunteers, run the center. “We’ve become pretty efficient. We can test forty people in fifteen minutes,” Davies said.

From registration to exiting, the whole process takes three minutes.

Photo by Fred Field

Respond

That Running Vibe CONGRATULATIONS FOR THE INSIGHTFUL PIECE “Why We Run.” Even at my age, I identified with it. As an underachiever at Bowdoin, my main athletic endeavor consisted mostly of running to a bar before closing time. It came as quite a surprise to my family and friends when in my mid-thirties I announced that I planned to run each morning before work. Now, well into my eightieth year, my running days have passed, but I still bicycle 3,000 miles a year and do a lot of walking. My times for any of my past feats were never impressive, but the peace of mind, focus, and happiness they brought to my life were, and still are.

Dick Benfield ’62

GOT IRON Thanks for the lore on the Searles building. I have a bit more to add. At the start of [one] renovation, there was a period where the building was closed, but not locked.

There were forty-yard dumpsters lined up on the Maine Street side. Certain faculty and staff were not completely thrilled at the renovation plans and were keen to keep some of the artifacts of Searles’s original design from filling the dumpsters.

Being employees of the College, none of them were interested in being directly

involved in the rescue mission, but some recent graduates were. Various interior features of Searles were rescued and preserved. Some of us quite literally keep memories of Searles close by. Eventually, the Class of 1987 Searles Lecterns will be presented to the College. There is enough Searles wrought iron left for at least one more project. I am open to suggestions.

Frank Perdicaro ’87 DISAPPOINTED When I opened the spring/summer issue of the alumni magazine shortly after the

facebook.com/bowdoin

July Fourth holiday, I was disappointed to see that there were no features related to the Bowdoin community’s response to state-sponsored violence against Black and brown bodies, protesting, anti-racism, or any other element of the movement that has arisen since the killing of George Floyd on May 25. With due respect to the months of planning that I know must go into each issue, it’s a shame that the topic of racism could not be incorporated into the spring/summer issue. In a moment when white people

@BowdoinCollege

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(myself included) must commit to taking action, I would hope that each facet of this predominantly white institution would strive to do better as well.

Sadie Nott ’12 Editor: We received two similar letters and responded individually to say we agree completely with the importance of this subject. Unfortunately, our spring/summer edition was already printing in the days immediately following the murder of George Floyd.

To read the full versions of these excerpted letters, plus additional mail, visit bowdoin.edu/magazine.

@bowdoincollege

MAGAZINE STAFF Editor Matt O’Donnell P’24 Consulting Editor Scott Schaiberger ’95 Executive Editor Alison Bennie Associate Editor Leanne Dech Designer and Art Director Melissa Wells Design Consultant 2COMMUNIQUÉ Contributors Jim Caton Doug Cook Rebecca Goldfine Scott Hood Micki Manheimer Janie Porche Tom Porter On the Cover: Detail of A Morning Pond (acrylic on canvas, 18 by 48 inches, 2014),

by Daniel Minter.

BOWDOIN MAGAZINE (ISSN: 0895-2604) is published three times a year by Bowdoin College, 4104 College Station, Brunswick, Maine, 04011. Printed by Penmor Lithographers, Lewiston, Maine. Sent free of charge to all Bowdoin alumni, parents of current and recent undergraduates, members of the senior class, faculty and staff, and members of the Association of Bowdoin Friends.

Opinions expressed in this magazine are those of the authors.

Please send address changes, ideas, or letters to the editor to the address above or by email to bowdoineditor@bowdoin.edu. Send class news to classnews@bowdoin.edu or to the address above.

ILLUSTRATION: MARK FRUDD

Forward FROM BOWDOIN AND BEYOND

HOPE THE HARD WAY I think the conversation about racial injustice is at a fundamentally different place than it was before. In 2014, we were trying to help people understand that there was a systemic problem.

I think in 2020, people get it. They’re like, “There is a problem.” The flipside is that when we look at the numbers, police are actually killing more people today than they did last year. There wasn’t a dip during the COVID-19 quarantine lockdown. And with the [recent] protests, there’s actually no decrease at all, either. There’s a difference between awareness and a change in outcomes. There are many people who believe that the biggest work is to talk about the problem, that the biggest work is to expose the problem.

That is the beginning of the work. The biggest work is to undo the problem.

My hope is rooted in seeing and being in a community with organizers across the country and activists—citizens, people who don’t identify as “organizers” or “activists”—who believe in a better world and are willing to fight for it. I just testified before the Baltimore County Council—I went to middle school and high school in Baltimore County—and the organizer that I’m working with most closely there is a seventeen-year-old. People like her are where my hope is rooted.

I don’t necessarily feel overwhelmed because my work is so focused on solutions—that keeps me going. Every day I wake up: “How do we fix it? What’s the next thing? Can we help cities do this thing better than they could do before?”

I think we can win in this lifetime. I believe that. That’s a core belief. And some of it is rooted in Bowdoin. Bowdoin was the place where I learned how to imagine without constraints.

That is probably the single biggest thing I’m able to bring to this work, is that I can say, “I think we can do that.”

For more of our interview with DeRay, visit bowdoin.edu/magazine.

PHOTO: BUNNI ELIAN

DeRay Mckesson ’07 rose to national prominence in the Black Lives Matter movement beginning with the 2014 protests in Ferguson, Missouri, after Michael Brown was killed by police.

The former math teacher and school administrator—known for his trademark blue Patagonia vest—is the author of last year’s On the Other Side of Freedom: The Case for Hope, and he continues his activism with his podcast, “Pod Save the People,” with Campaign Zero, an organization focused on policy solutions to end police brutality in America, and speaking engagements across the country.

Forward Academics

Campus Life

Meeting the Moment CXD grants connect alumni employers with recent graduates.

Dominique Johnson ’11

WITH EVERYTHING shutting down

in a hurry in the spring, Bowdoin seniors missed many of the best parts of a normal college experience—the thrill of handing in a thesis, the sweet feeling of the last exam, the fun of senior week, and the pride and pomp of Commencement. But it’s an aspect of the pandemic that they might not have thought of at the time that had the potential to make the biggest difference for them for years to come: an empty campus meant no job recruiters.

Bowdoin’s Career Exploration and Development (CXD) did think of that, however, and quickly put together the funding, with help from donors, to create a

new grant program called the Employment Accelerator Awards, which offered funding, ranging from $250 to $2,000, in support of short-term projects or internships geared toward tangible skills or professional experiences.

When Dominique Johnson ’11 read about the program, she called CXD. Johnson is senior director of community engagement at the Center for Policing Equity (CPE), a nonprofit research and advocacy organization whose staff of research scientists, scholars, former police officers, and community and policy advocates produces analyses to identify and measure racial bias in policing, shed light on police behavior, and answer questions for police and communities on how to improve public safety.

As pressure had grown across the country to end police violence and bias, demand for CPE’s assistance in rooting out racism in communities across America had skyrocketed, and Johnson realized she could use a team of motivated young people to help her. Using a combination of funding from CPE and Bowdoin’s Employment Accelerator Awards, Johnson was able to offer nine paid internships to Bowdoin students and recent graduates, and at least two have since been hired full time.

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A NEW NAME FOR AN INTELLECTUAL HOME Latin American studies expanded its title at the end of the spring semester to more accurately reflect its content and curriculum. It’s now called the Latin American, Caribbean, and Latinx Studies Program (LACLaS).

“The new name better represents what our program already does, both concerning our curricular scope and our faculty’s scholarship,” said Professor Nadia Celis, who directs the program. The term LACLaS, she added, “emphasizes our interdisciplinarity and the intellectual traditions engaged by each of the sub-fields represented in the new title,” with courses that include Borderlands in the Americas: Power and Identity between Empire and Nation and French Caribbean Intellectual Thought.

A key motivation for the change was to be more inclusive of identities and interests of Bowdoin’s students of color, including Latinx students, international students, and students of Caribbean descent. “We think of ourselves as an ‘intellectual home’ to those students, whose presence in our classrooms—which is 61 percent according to last year’s demographic data about our courses—is key to defining our curricular priorities.”

PHOTO: CENTER FOR POLICING EQUITY; ILLUSTRATION: VICTORIABAR

Dine

Upside-Down Pear Cake Recipe by Lei Shishak ’97

DID YOU KNOW? In Spain, they say es la pera— “this is the pear”—or es la pera limonera, which has a rhyme kind of like “the bee’s knees,” when they want to say something is great. Both are equivalent to “This is awesome!”

This cake presents pears in two delicious ways: a caramelized pear layer on top and fresh chunks of pear inside. If you can’t find cardamom pods, you can omit or use a cinnamon stick and whole nutmeg in place of the pods to infuse the milk.

Makes one nine-inch round cake ⅓ cup whole milk 6 cardamom pods, crushed 2 cloves, crushed ⅓ cup brown sugar ¼ cup salted butter 2 teaspoons vanilla extract, divided 2 large Bosc pears 1 large egg ⅓ cup sugar ¼ cup olive oil 1 teaspoon orange zest ¾ cup all-purpose flour 1 ½ teaspoons baking powder ¾ teaspoon baking soda ¼ teaspoon salt

Preheat oven to 350°F. Grease a nine-inch round cake pan and set aside.

Combine the milk, cardamom, and cloves in a small pot over high heat. Bring just to a boil, remove from heat, and let steep until you need it.

In another small pot, combine the brown sugar, butter, and 1 teaspoon of the vanilla over high heat.

Boil for 30 seconds, stirring constantly, and then carefully pour the mixture into the prepared cake pan. Tilt the pan to ensure the mixture evenly coats the bottom.

Peel the pears and cut them in half. Remove the cores and cut into ⅛-inch-thick slices. Arrange enough of the slices in a concentric pattern to cover the bottom of the caramel-coated pan. Roughly chop the remaining pear slices, approximately 1 cup, and set aside.

In a large bowl, whisk together the egg, sugar, oil, orange zest, and remaining 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract. Strain the infused milk, discarding the solids, and stir the milk into the egg mixture until blended. Add the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and chopped pears and stir until all the ingredients are incorporated. Pour the batter into the prepared pan and smooth out the top, using a knife or spatula. Bake for 25 minutes, or until the center is set. Let the cake cool for a few minutes, and use a knife to carefully loosen the sides before inverting it onto a serving plate.

Lei Shishak ’97 majored in biochemistry at Bowdoin and had intended to continue her science studies in graduate school at NYU, but life led her instead to the chemistry of cooking. After attending the Culinary Institute of America and working as a pastry chef, she founded Sugar Blossom Bake Shop in San Clemente, California, and has written multiple cookbooks.

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Forward

Did You Know?

Ingredients for Success Bowdoin dining maintains the magic.

Illustration by Dan Bransfield BOWDOIN DINING was faced with a colossal challenge because of COVID-19: how to cautiously and safely prepare and deliver nutritious and delicious meals—twenty-one times a week—to the students on campus, while also conveying the warm, communal experience they’re so famous for. “Weeks were spent figuring out how to redesign the facilities,” says Ken Cardone, interim director of Dining Services. “The phrase we heard most often when planning during the pandemic: ‘be ready to pivot.’ It was good advice.”

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Forward

On Stage

DANCE YOUR FACE OFF In an otherwise deserted studio within the Edwards Center for Art and Dance, Assistant Professor of Dance Aretha Aoki leads students through a series of movements during her class Making Dances in the Digital Age. She developed the course, along with Advanced Dancing for Challenging Times, in response to the hardships posed by the COVID-19 pandemic.

In Making Dances in the Digital Age, Aoki and her students regard dance-on-screen as art, as activism—specifically as an expression and document of the Black Lives Matter movement—and as popular culture. They explore and analyze on a variety of digital platforms, including TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube.

It is primarily a movement-based class, said Aoki, drawing on yoga, postmodern dance techniques, and improvisation. Teaching remotely from an empty studio is “radically different” from the norm, she added. “In dance, we’re used to occupying large areas like theaters and studios, but here we’ve got sixteen to twenty students Zooming in from their own limited spaces. Some occupy a kitchen floor, others are in dorms, some have siblings in the same room—so we work with the space we have.”

With this in mind, said Aoki, the students’ next assignment will be to perform a face dance and record it on their iPads.

Dance professor Aretha Aoki leads students through a virtual dance class from a studio in the Edwards Center.

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Alumni Life

On the Shelf Our Voices, Our Streets: American Protests 2001–2011 KEVIN BUBRISKI ’75

(powerHouse Books, 2020) The American street has always been the ultimate public venue for political and cultural expression.

This collection of images by the acclaimed photographer covers a decade of American street protest that began on January 20, 2001, with the inauguration of George W. Bush and ended with Occupy Wall Street in October 2011.

More Than a Meme “Legal scholars, feminist peers, friends, and family are way more equipped to talk about #RBG and her legacy. I was just a fan,” posted Frank Chi ’07 on Instagram after Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died in September. Yet there’s a fuller story to Chi’s fandom. In July 2013, after a flurry of important SCOTUS decisions, Chi and his friend Aminatou Sow created a poster, “Can’t Spell Truth Without Ruth,” celebrating Justice Ginsburg. They shared it online, where Shana Knizhnik—who created the blog “The Notorious RBG” (and who would go on to coauthor a book of the same title)—saw the poster and wrote about it. The three artists, who became friends, gifted a print of the poster to Justice Ginsburg in December 2014, when she invited them to the Supreme Court. “The internet brought it together into something that became a phenomenon,” said Chi. “And Justice Ginsburg embraced it. If she hadn’t, ‘Notorious RBG’ would’ve just been something that was cool on the internet for a few months.

That’s what I think is amazing—she had such a long, celebrated career, and she finally got to be the presence she was obviously comfortable being, and the internet allowed that to happen.”

POSTER: FRANK CHI ’07 AND AMINATOU SOW

Maine at 200: An Anecdotal History Celebrating Two Centuries of Statehood

Murder in the Piazza: A Maggie White Mystery JEN COLLINS MOORE ’96

(Level Best Books, 2020)

TOM HUNTINGTON ’82

(Down East Books, 2020)

Cartographer of Crumpled Maps A Dog-Friendly Town

Poems by JONATHAN

JOSEPHINE CAMERON ’98

ANDREW PÉREZ ’04

(Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020)

(Finishing Line Press, 2020)

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Forward

35,000

108

Colleges and universities enrolled in the testing program at the Broad Institute, including all eleven NESCAC schools

SARS-CoV-2 tests to be collected from Bowdoin and evaluated by the Broad Institute during the fall semester

1,100 702 Vials of flu vaccine ordered for students living on campus

Single-use take-at-home COVID-19 test kits ordered

415,350 Face coverings ordered, including surgical masks, N95 masks, and reusable cloth face masks

60 Extra gallons of hand soap delivered in preparation for the fall

47

Bowdoin employees working in the COVID testing center

3,935 Bottles of hand sanitizer dispensed on campus this fall

37,700 Pairs of exam gloves at the ready

By the Numbers

Taking Stock Keeping our campus community safe this fall required a lot of testing—but the College also needed an extensive supply of personal protective equipment (PPE) and tools for cleaning and disinfecting. The team responsible for purchasing and procurement used the same hustle and creativity found across all campus departments to make sure that everyone had what they needed to feel prepared—and protected—for the unusual semester ahead.

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ILLUSTRATION: JUD GUITTEAU

Sound Bite

Academics

“By paying closer attention to the smells that filled the air, historians can literally sniff out complex social [and] political conditions or conflicts.”

—CONNIE CHIANG, PROFESSOR OF HISTORY AND ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES, ON HER WORK REGARDING OLFACTORY PERCEPTIONS ALONG CALIFORNIA’S COASTLINE IN THE VICE ARTICLE “WHAT SMELLS CAN TEACH US ABOUT HISTORY”

Campus Life

A first-year student works on her College-issued iPad in the Roux Center.

AN iPAD FOR EVERY STUDENT With nearly all classes taught online and the vast majority of students working remotely, the College knew it had to think creatively to ensure that all students could have an equitable and successful digital experience. In response, Bowdoin sent or provided equipped Apple iPad tablets to every student. “This really levels the playing field for the students for whom internet access has been unreliable or nonexistent,” said Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer Michael Cato.

All students and some faculty received an Apple iPad Pro with available Wi-Fi and cellular data connectivity (activated and covered by the College for those students who need that assistance), an Apple Pencil 2, and an Apple Magic Keyboard—giving everyone the opportunity to connect and build community in their classes, while running the same apps and software, at the same performance level, with the same support, regardless of their economic situation.

PHOTO: (iPAD) FRED FIELD

Free-Cycle The Office of Sustainability coordinated a new program in which typical dorm room items and school supplies left behind during move-out last spring were redistributed to students for free this fall. Popular items included mirrors, lamps, drying racks, laundry baskets, storage shelves/drawers, extension cords, surge protectors, brooms, and more. After completing a reservation form, 82 percent of participating students indicated that they were either on financial aid or had traveled a significant distance to campus. Those with the greatest need were prioritized and everyone was asked to limit themselves to five items. Based on typical big-box store prices, it is estimated that students were able to save approximately $10,000.

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Forward Campus Life

Alumni Life

When Life Gives You Lemons It’s well known that singing closely together is one of the worst things to do during the COVID-19 pandemic— there are few more efficient ways to spread the virus if a participant happens to be infectious, it turns out, than that joyful activity.

Which means that Anthony Antolini ’63—director of the Bowdoin Chorus, Downeast Singers, and Mozart Mentors Orchestra—has had to get creative in order to lead any of his usual groups in song over these past many months, including organizing a collection of singers, dubbed the Lemonade Chorus (as in, “if you get lemons…”), to sing in a field, outside and distanced far enough apart to be safe.

It has also meant that the tradition of first-year students being taught to sing Bowdoin’s alma mater in their first days of college had to fall by the wayside this year, and that’s a problem Antolini would like to help fix. He is arranging to record and share a special version of “Raise Songs to Bowdoin” virtually, and he invited alumni who were members of Bowdoin’s singing groups to participate. More than 125 have responded, so watch for news of their virtual debut soon.

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A still from Harlem Rising, showing girls playing double Dutch in a neighborhood.

Block by Block A new documentary tells the story of how Geoffrey Canada ’74, H’07 turned a vision for Harlem into a reality.

MORE THAN TWENTY YEARS AGO, Geoffrey Canada

dared to imagine a different, better future for the impoverished, vulnerable community of Central Harlem. His story—along with those of a group of dedicated Bowdoin people who’ve turned his vision into reality at the pioneering Harlem Children’s Zone (HCZ)—is the focus of Harlem Rising, a documentary film directed

by Rayner Ramirez that premiered at the 28th Annual Pan African Film Festival in February and which will be included in this year’s DOC NYC Film Festival November 11–14.

The film intertwines archival and new footage, including first-person stories of students, parents, and community members that showcase the history and promise of

HCZ and tell stories of when Canada brought children and young people to Bowdoin for summer programs in the early 1990s. Footage filmed by youth from the community over many decades captures the revitalization of Central Harlem through the unique lens of three generations of students who grew up relying on HCZ for needs great and small.

Canada’s Bowdoin classmate HCZ Chairman Stanley Druckenmiller ’75, H’07 and HCZ board member Ken Langone—both philanthropists, investors, and entrepreneurs— speak to the rewards of partnering with an organization that has been making such a quantifiable and observable impact on a community and its people for twenty years and of working with Canada.

The documentary tells the story of one of the most ambitious and impactful social experiments launched to end the cycle of poverty in America—a model that today is being replicated in cities across the country.

See the trailer at harlemrisingfilm.com and watch for more details about where the whole film can be seen.

PHOTO: HARLEM CHILDREN’S ZONE

Alumni Life

Jubilee Nightshift Brewing cofounders Michael Oxton ’07 and Rob Burns ’07 and artist Lyne Lucien ’13 collaborate, by coincidence, on a beer celebrating racial justice.

Artist Lyne Lucien ’13 worked with Michael Oxton ’07 and Rob Burns ’07 on the label design of Nightshift Brewing’s Jubilee New England IPA, a collaboration to raise awareness about racial injustice by Nightshift, cofounded by Oxton and Burns, and 67 Degrees, owned by Lucien’s cousin.

PHOTO: NIGHTSHIFT BREWING

“My cousin, Olivier Edouard, owns 67 Degrees, a Black-owned brewery in Franklin, Massachusetts,” explained artist Lyne Lucien ’13. In response to news and events highlighting racial injustice, Lucien said, “Rob (Burns ’07) reached out to Olivier to collaborate.” Together, they made Jubilee, a “super juicy” New England IPA released on August 18, with a label designed

by Lucien. The twist, said Burns, was that “We weren’t even aware of the Bowdoin connection until after the beer’s release. It was the icing on the cake when we found out.” With the collaboration, the two breweries chose to give 100 percent of the proceeds to Kode Konnect, a nonprofit that teaches lower-income students how to code and program robotics. “It was incredibly important to both breweries to give students of color a fighting chance to compete in innovative career paths where they could impact real change in the world and their communities,” Lucien said. In addition to the 67 Degrees collaboration, Nightshift released a New England IPA called “Stop Hate, Spread Love,” with profits going to the Loveland Foundation, an organization committed to providing mental health care and education to Black communities, and collaborated on an American strong ale, Night Crue, with Black-owned Crue Brewery in Raynham, Massachusetts. “These collaborations have given us a chance to dive really deep into conversations about race with other local breweries and learn perspectives we absolutely didn’t have,” said Michael Oxton ’07.

For more on the Jubiliee collaboration, check out Nightshift’s “Night Owls” podcast on your favorite platform, and see more of Lyne’s art at lynelucien.com.

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Forward

Campus Life

Making One Thing Easier Amherst, Bowdoin, Carleton, Pomona, Swarthmore, and Williams put their usual rivalries aside to host virtual admissions events together.

WITH ADMISSIONS OFFICERS restricted from the activity that they spend months of every year doing— traveling to share information about their colleges with prospective students all over the world— and with those same students living almost their entire days on screens, six college deans had a brainstorm.

They decided that, with so many messages in common, they could band together to make part of college decision-making more efficient for students and welcome a bit of collegiality back into their own lives at the same time.

“Some of us had often traveled together, collaborated on other

projects, and presented together at conferences,” said Dean of Admissions and Student Aid Whitney Soule. “We were always aware that we had more in common than not—like providing robust financial aid and missiondriven admission—but our good ideas never had much time to evolve. The pandemic gave us the imperative to make them real.”

Last spring, six US liberal arts colleges joined to create sixcolleges.org to communicate collectively to prospective students and their counselors, and to offer a series of informative webinars, both live and recorded, about such topics as the value of the liberal arts in preparing to tackle the world’s biggest problems (like pandemics), applying in the time of COVID, and matters of financial aid. The webinars start with the six colleges presenting different aspects of the material over about twenty-five minutes, and the remaining time of the hour-long session is given over to questions from the attendees. “A lot of the questions indicate the extent to which students feel right now that they have no sense of control,” said Soule. “It’s very gratifying to feel that we are able to give them information and reassurance for them to build a path forward.”

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BRIGHT AND AIRY The impressive new Harpswell Apartments— just east of Watson Arena and completed in August—consist of three forty-four-bed residence halls. The new complex replaces the Harpswell Street Apartments built in 1973 and delivers on the kind of independent living experiences older students desire. Each of the twenty-one apartments features a full kitchen, bathrooms, living areas, and either four, six, or eight single-bedroom configurations.

Designed to meet Passive House standards, the buildings are expected to result in a 50 percent energy reduction in comparison to traditional construction methods.

ILLUSTRATION: ANDREI ZARIPOV VIA CREATIVE MARKET; PHOTO: FRED FIELD

Campus Life

Alumni Life

Khoa Khuong, associate dean of upperclass students, was one of many staff volunteers happily greeting first-years on Move-In Day.

White-crowned Sparrow, from John James Audubon’s Birds of America.

BEYOND THE GATES Alumni Relations is partnering with offices across campus to bring a wide variety of regular virtual offerings to alumni and families. On September 16, for instance, O. Henry Prizewinning author Jennine Capó Crucet gave a reading as part of the Alpha Delta Phi Society Visiting Writers Series. Other recent offerings have included an evening with Jonah Goldberg and Mara Liasson, a conversation with President Rose and trustee and long-time Apple executive Phil Schiller P’17, and a virtual French wine tasting with Tom Wilcox ’09, founder and owner of Ansonia Wines. Not to be missed: joining the Special Collections & Archives staff for John James Audubon’s Birds of America monthly page-turning at 12:30 p.m. on the first Friday of every month.

NAVIGATING IN A PANDEMIC requires a lot of supplies and plenty of creativity. And it also requires a lot of communication.

Over fifty hours of town halls were livestreamed for our community members. Hundreds of questions were answered on Bowdoin’s COVID-19 site, which quickly grew from a collection of emergency alerts to a hub of resources, including the College’s testing dashboard. And, with all the new signs describing where to stand and which door to use, there was one additional important thing to convey to our new arrivals: everyone at the College is happy they’re here.

For upcoming events, visit bowdoin.edu/alumni-families.

For examples of more signs across campus, visit bowdoin.edu/magazine.

ILLUSTRATION: NATIONAL AUDUBON SOCIETY

Signs of the Times

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Forward On View

Athletics

Caroline Shipley ’20 races down the straightaway in a January 2019 indoor track and field meet at Farley Field House.

A Look into the Middle Ages Although the museum is closed to visitors for now, the medieval world is open for discovery.

THE WYVERN COLLECTION is one of the largest and most comprehensive

collections of medieval art in private hands, and its one hundred objects that are now on long-term loan to the Bowdoin College Museum of Art can be seen online until August 2021. New Views of the Middle Ages: Highlights from the Wyvern Collection, which is divided into three themes— the substance and craft of medieval Europe, the global networks of the Middle Ages, and the ways medieval people used the visual arts to define themselves—includes works from Africa and Europe together with select objects from the museum’s own collection. Artifacts from the sixth to the sixteenth century, including devotional paintings from Ethiopia and Belgium, lusterware ceramics from Persia and Spain, and images of kings, dragons, and martyred saints, demonstrate the powerful and prolific visual culture of the medieval world to the twenty-first-century viewer.

View the exhibition online at bowdoin.edu/art-museum.

Above: Venetian Enameled Plate, ca. 1500, present-day Italy (Venice), painted enamel on copper, partially gilt. Wyvern Collection, 0959.

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Academic All-Americans Two recent Bowdoin graduates were awarded Academic All-American honors over the summer. Caroline Shipley ’20 was named a First Team Academic All-American for track and field and cross-country by the College Sports Information Directors of America (CoSIDA), and field hockey and women’s lacrosse player Kara Finnerty ’20 was named a Second Team CoSIDA Academic All-American. Shipley is Bowdoin’s first Academic All-American in track and field since Erin Silva ’15 and the first in any sport since Lucas Hausman ’16 in men’s basketball. A three-time All-American in cross-country and track and a 2018 national champion in the distance medley relay, Shipley was a double-major in environmental studies and government and legal studies. She was also a Sarah and James Bowdoin Scholar, and she received the athletic department’s Academic Achievement Award for Women last spring. Finnerty was a two-sport All-American for field hockey and women’s lacrosse with a double-major in government and legal studies and Francophone studies. She received the Sidney J. Watson Award for Outstanding Multi-Sport Athlete in May, and is Bowdoin’s most recent Second Team Academic All-American since Kim Kahnweiler ’16.

PHOTOS: (PLATE) LUC DEMERS; (SHIPLEY) BRIAN BEARD

Courses

Campaign

Required Writing Every first-year student is introduced to serious intellectual work at the college level through a first-year writing seminar, designed to hone skills necessary for reading, thinking, and writing critically. This fall, thirty first-year seminars are the only classes meeting in person, outside under tents. Two seminars are virtual to accommodate members of the Class of 2024 who have opted to attend remotely in the fall.

THE POLITICS OF CLIMATE CHANGE Laura Henry, Professor of Government This seminar explores cases where active policy making or public mobilization around climate is occurring, asking why we see initiative and innovation in climate policy in these venues and less action in others. It considers how climate policy is developed differently in democracies and authoritarian regimes; how policy may affect economic development; the role of non-state actors such as citizens, social movements, and industry in climate politics; and the ethical implications of different climate policy options.

WHY ARE YOU HERE? INTERPRETING HUMANITY FROM AFRICAN PERSPECTIVES Deji Ogunnaike, Assistant Professor of Africana Studies This central question is posed to the students with respect to their education at Bowdoin and their broader lives in general. In a moment of moral, ecological, and political uncertainty, it can be difficult to know what it means to be a good person, how to live a good life, and what “the common good” actually entails.

TIES THAT BIND: THE ANTHROPOLOGY OF RELATEDNESS Krista Van Vleet, Professor of Anthropology This seminar challenges assumptions about “natural” relationships and biological givens. It introduces concepts, methods, and ethics in anthropology and encourages students to critically reflect on emergent global issues. Topics include fosterage and adoption; reproductive governance, rights, and technologies; migration and transnational care networks; intimate violence; aging and personhood; and human/ non-human relations. The class demonstrates how relatedness is vital to understanding the structure of the global political economy.

PHOTO: (CHAPEL) BOB HANDELMAN

THREE PROMISES From Here: The Campaign for Bowdoin is built on three fundamental promises to students: one as they enter, another during their four years as students, and a third as they launch from Bowdoin into the world. The first promise is access to a full Bowdoin experience through financial and comprehensive aid. The second is a transformative education that is innovative, evolving, global, interdisciplinary, and grounded in the traditional liberal arts.

The third promise is preparation for a first great job and a life of meaningful work. As of October 1, generous alumni, parents, and friends have given or pledged $121.6 million toward the goal of $235 million to support the first promise; $46.4 million toward the goal of $83 million for the second promise; and $8.4 million toward the third promise’s $37 million goal.

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Forward Academics

History Faculty Examine “The 1619 Project” In 2019, on the 400th anniversary of the date that the first slave ship arrived on the shores of America, The New York Times Magazine launched an initiative called “The 1619 Project.” Inspired by the Times’ endeavor, and galvanized to address the legacy of deadly racism that continues today, Bowdoin’s history department offered a four-part online series examining the project. Primarily intended to engage first-year students in “substantive and timely discussions” on race, the Zoom webinar series was open to the entire campus and the public, and more than six hundred people combined tuned in to the first two sessions, “One Nation? America’s Origins and Slavery’s Unfinished Past” and “Bodies on the Line: Prisons and Health Care.” In the first session, professors Brian Purnell and Patrick Rael discussed the merits and downfalls of the New York Times series in a conversation moderated by associate professor Meghan Roberts. “Because of contemporary events and the public’s interest in contemporary events around Black Lives Matter and questions of equality and inequality, the history has taken on a new salience,” said Rael during the first segment. In the same session, Purnell spoke directly to students, telling them to “stay at the table.” “Not everyone is going to get it right all the time. If you’re going to try to push a political agenda, it has to involve more than people who think just like you and more than people who are pure or perfect.”

Each segment of the series has assigned articles and a corresponding research guide, which can be found—along with event recordings—at bowdoin.libguides.com/1619project.

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Alumni Life

Listed in the Green Book, the Lorraine Motel served Black celebrities like Jackie Robinson and Aretha Franklin for decades before becoming the site of the King assassination in 1968. It’s now home to the National Civil Rights Museum.

POWERFUL AND PERSONAL Driving the Green Book, a new podcast from award-winning broadcaster, educator, and Bowdoin trustee emeritus Alvin Hall ’74, paints an intimate and important picture of travelers who used the historic guide Negro Motorist Green Book. Hall says, “To understand the way forward, Driving the Green Book looks back.” During a 2,000-mile drive from Detroit to New Orleans in the summer of 2019, Hall and activist and social justice trainer Janée Woods Weber interviewed people who lived through the era of the Green Book, and the resulting series preserves a powerful legacy. As Hall begins the series in the first episode, “The roadways of the USA have long been a symbol of openness and freedom—one of the expressions of the American Dream. For African Americans who wanted to participate in this dream, their travels required caution, preparedness, and planning.” Weekly episodes, published by Macmillan and available on Apple Podcasts, began September 14.

PHOTO: TIAGO FERNANDEZ

Sophia Rutman ’24 attempted to clear the circle as Cydnie Martin ’21 (a first-year proctor) pursued the ball in front of goaltender Delaney Bashaw ’24 during a field hockey practice at Ryan Field on October 7.

Game On

Good Medicine A MASKED Scott Wiercinski clapped his hands as a group of first-year men’s soccer players gathered in a wide circle around their head coach. There are no whistles at sports practices this fall and, as exhibited when Wiercinski distributed hand sanitizer, no team huddles either. Bowdoin Athletics has a different look this autumn and, with only first-year students on campus for practices and no promise of games on the horizon, coaches have risen to the challenge, taking on new and creative ways to engage their student-athletes on and off campus.

“We’ve centered our atmosphere around maintaining our team culture,” said head women’s volleyball coach Erin Cady. “We’ve developed themes to guide us each week that prioritize self-care and create an opportunity to have meaningful conversations with teammates.”

For students who are remote, strength and conditioning coach Neil Willey provides at-home conditioning packets, and coaches have frequent Zoom team meetings and individual check-ins with athletes.

Regardless of the circumstances, those athletes able to be on campus and practicing this fall are grateful for the opportunity. “These kids are so eager to be playing soccer that their time on the field is medicine,” said Wiercinski. “Other aspects of their lives feel bizarre and abnormal. But running around on the field and competing? They forget they’re wearing masks a few minutes into practice.”

PHOTO: BRIAN BEARD

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In the wake of the 2020 killing of George Floyd and a renewed global spotlight on racial inequity, we asked Bowdoin professor and senior writer-in-residence Anthony Walton to revisit an essay he wrote for The New York Times thirty-one years ago. A political action committee had used ads featuring Willie Horton, a murderer, during the 1988 presidential election in order to frighten white voters, but it turned out to be much more than just a strategy to make one side seem soft on crime.

WILLIE HORTON AND ME, AGAIN

BY ANTHONY WALTON ILLUSTRATIONS BY DANIEL MINTER

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What I think about as I reread “Willie Horton and Me” now, thirty-one years after it was first published, is the way it represents the end of my innocence as an American.

At that time, in the summer of 1989, I was beginning to realize that much of what I had been taught by my parents and aunts and uncles, by my teachers and mentors, was a half-truth, a myth intended to encourage me to continue the journey of my people—by which I mean African Americans from the Deep South—on their quest to greater participation in the fullness of American life and society. I don’t think they intended to deceive, and I don’t know that I blame them; they were in a tough spot. How do you tell a young person the truth when you know the truth to be so brutal?

As I stared then at Horton’s mugshot on television, in the commercials, and on the news, in newspapers and magazines, even in the recesses of my own imagination, I could unconsciously and intuitively feel that that photo, with its menace of “the other” was going to, in a trick of neuroscience, come to represent me and every other young Black man I knew, and that the photo would come to be an avatar of all the other young Black men and women who have since died unjustly at the hands of the police and race-addled private white citizens. That photo boiled everything down to its essence: We were, and are, a threat.

We are the threat. Horton’s aggrandizement in political advertising, as an icon, as a specter of the lawless African American, was, plainly put, blunt dehumanization, and it was most chilling to me because this image, this stereotype, was being put forward by men, including then Vice President George H. W. Bush and his staff, who purported to be stewards of the nation.

Think of it this way: When the heinous Charles Manson, or the despicable Richard Speck, or the recent double murderer Roy Den Hollander, or any other white criminal is portrayed in the media, they are not then projected as representative of all other white

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males and as a putative dire existential threat to our well-being as a community and nation. It is not implied that they, in particular, by their mere existence, represent a threat that onehalf of the political structure (the Democrats, in this case) cannot be trusted to control and contain. It is not even implied that white males need to be controlled and contained, though, given the recent activities that some of them are accused of—such as the murder of Ahmaud Arbery and the plots to kidnap Governors Gretchen Whitmer and Ralph Northam—one might ascertain and argue that they need to be. No, the crimes that white men commit are presented as tragedy, oddity, quirks in human nature, sociological problems to solve and remediate. Willie Horton, on the other hand, was presented as a threat to the very fabric of our nation’s existence; by implication, he was representative of all Black men and, ergo, how Black men and women also represent, embody, that fatal threat.

And I do not think this is an exaggeration.

But I am getting ahead of myself.

When I wrote “Willie Horton and Me,” a year after the 1988 campaign, I was becoming aware of my true place in American society and the fact that, no matter what I did or how I acted or whatever I accomplished, a significant percentage of Americans would link me to him. It would be years before I would learn various salient facts around how that benighted man, Willie Horton (even the name rings like a Southern cliché, as it conjures a demented outlaw “darky”), gained his place in our mythology and folklore. But I was starting to feel it.

When I wrote the essay, I didn’t know that it was a deliberate and intentional maneuver by 1988 Republican presidential campaign strategists to “sow the wind,” to borrow a scriptural

“How do you tell a young person the truth when you know the truth to be so brutal?” metaphor, and gain political advantage by inciting the fears and paranoia of just enough white voters to tip the election in their favor.

I had my suspicions, which I adumbrated in the original essay, but those suspicions would be confirmed by one of the architects of the strategy, Lee Atwater.

Shortly before his death in 1991, Atwater (rather clinically) explained to political scientist Alexander Lamis what he and his fellow strategists were thinking as they developed the ad: “You start out in 1954 by saying, ‘N——r, n——r, n——r.’ By 1968 you can’t say ‘n——r’—that hurts you. Backfires. So, you say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff. You’re getting so abstract now [that] you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things, and a by-product of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I’m not saying that. But I’m saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial

problem one way or the other. You follow me— because obviously sitting around saying ‘We want to cut this’ is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than ‘N——r, n——r.’”

I think that stands as evidence; one of the two major American political parties has deliberately, for more than fifty years, fanned the fires and divisions of racial hatred and misunderstanding.

As their plan.

Consider a statement made by Trump supporter Crystal Minton, who said to New York Times reporter Patricia Mazzei in reference to Donald Trump, “He’s not hurting the people he’s supposed to be hurting.” She was complaining that the 2018–2019 government shutdown, implemented by Trump, was harming her and the people of her small town, who were largely dependent on government jobs at the federal prison in Marianna, Florida.

In Minton’s statement, we hear the revenant of Atwater’s remark: “Blacks get hurt worse than whites.”

But by 2019, the subtext had become the text.

Atwater had played a very large role in this GOP battle plan, often referred to as “The Southern Strategy,” architected in 1968 by the Nixon campaign to use race as a wedge issue. But I didn’t know that, not for sure, in 1989. In 1989, it was painful and bewildering. And, looking at it from the vantage point of 2020, I didn’t know that not only would it continue over the next thirty years, but it would get ever more sophisticated and savage, turned to cringing effect against Barack Obama and finding (one must hope) its apotheosis in the mind-numbingly regular statements and taunts of Donald Trump.

I have to say, as an intellectual proud of what I think of as my sophisticated irony, it would almost be funny, like a Saturday Night Live or Dave Chappelle skit mocking outdated ignorance, if I were not the parent of a child who has had her childhood blighted by all this.

I also didn’t know as I wrote, and neither did many others, that the officer who apprehended Horton and brought him to justice,

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Yusuf A. Muhammad, was African American.

Muhammad, a corporal in the Prince George’s County Police at the time, shot and wounded Horton, bringing him in. That wasn’t in the ad. It also wasn’t in the ad that Corporal Muhammad was the recipient of two degrees from Johns Hopkins, that he would go on to be a police chief, or that he would finish his illustrious career with the Metropolitan Police of Washington, DC. The everyday occurrence that the best and worst of our society, a valiant and studious and learned police officer and a vile criminal, were of the same race had been conveniently overlooked by the Republicans in their rush to stereotype Black males. And perhaps it points to what I have come to think of as the general incompetence on these matters of the Democratic Party and their strategists that they did not make an advertisement pointing this out.

But what we were left with was a masterpiece of cruel political magic stirring up fear and division that went virtually unanswered and that has been allowed to morph and metastasize over the succeeding decades.

Everything I have said up until this point in this essay is context: I think it is extremely important that we, all of us, remember just how big and deliberate all the circumstance involving and surrounding “Willie Horton” was. You can call me naïve, or you can call me the son of parents who believed in American possibility or who had no choice but to believe, because they had nowhere to go but up. We were, as a family, from the fields of Mississippi, caught up in the Great Migration, so we embraced opportunity wherever we could find it, and kept pushing, trying to make a place in America for ourselves and for our descendants.

And we, basically, did.

But we also paid a price, as we had to become detached, even cynical, as we learned what too many of our fellow citizens thought of us, and as we continue to learn today. In our minds, we carry a skein of voices, the poignant pleas of African Americans for their lives and the brutal assertions of white supremacy: I can’t breathe.

There were fine people on both sides.

He’s not hurting the right people.

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IN 1989, I WAS NAÏVE—I did not understand that

there were substantial numbers of American whites who were basically unpersuadable on the issue of racial equality, who would view any progress or advancement by African Americans and other Americans of color as a setback for themselves, who would embrace stereotypes and unfair castigation. And by saying I was naïve, I don’t mean to imply that I have by now figured things out. I am regularly startled and often surprised by things that happen in the racial realm in our country, and I have come to realize over the intervening decades that what can only be described as white supremacy—the

belief that America is, ultimately, of, by, and for the benefit of people with skin that is described in our vernacular as white—is inscribed in the metaphoric DNA of our nation.

In my belief, that mode of thinking is so deeply inscribed in the genetic material of our nation that it will not—cannot—ever be fully excised. It is something that we, those who do not believe in or support the doctrine of white supremacy— Black, white, Latinx, Asian, Indigenous—have to regularly, constantly fight against.

Unfortunately, one of my ways of fighting has been to learn to avoid situations that can become humiliating, provocative, or stressful:

“ In that instant I began to understand what African Americans call, among ourselves, the ‘Black Tax,’ which is not only what we have to do extra, but also what we cannot do, what we must accept.” situations where I cannot, will not, be seen as an individual. Rather than push against an insurmountable wall, I have wagered that it is better to develop a detachment that preserves psyche, soul, and blood pressure. This particular lesson was hammered home to me by an incident that occurred in late 1998, almost ten years after “Willie Horton and Me” appeared.

I had scheduled a lunch with my close friend who was a celebrated psychiatrist and fellow at Rockefeller University in New York City. This is not “name dropping,” but again necessary context, because we were scheduled to have lunch at Rockefeller that day, where we would

sit down with, among others, the renowned physicist Murray Gell-Mann.

So maybe I was feeling a little full of myself, thinking that I was moving ahead in the world.

Maybe I was forgetting the lessons I had learned because I was in Lower Manhattan as lunchtime approached and needed to get to the Upper East Side location of New York Hospital, where I was to meet my friend and walk to lunch. But, as I relate in the original essay, I needed a cab.

Suffice it to say, I did not secure a cab ride even though I was expensively, in my mind exquisitely, attired in a suit, with the same trim military style haircut. The rest can be inferred by what I describe in 1989. What was different in the incidents is that when I finally made it to our rendezvous, running late for lunch, my psychiatrist pal stopped me and asked why I was so angry. I said, “You know why I’m angry.”

“Why are you so angry?” he asked again.

“You know why I’m so angry,” I said again.

“I think you’re angry because you are a masochist,” the good doctor said playfully. I told him I didn’t know what the hell he was talking about. But he did. He said, “Listen. You know what is going to happen if you try to get a cab.

Yet you tried to get a cab. Why didn’t you take the bus? Ride the subway? Walk?” He looked at me carefully, with both concern and love. “Why are you risking your health by fighting something you can’t change?”

In that instant I began to understand what African Americans call, among ourselves, the “Black Tax,” which is not only what we have to do extra, but also what we cannot do, what we must accept. And I can’t get a cab, or do any number of other things, because of what too many people think about Willie Horton, which is part of what they think about Black men, and Black women.

So, I leave early. I take the subway. I walk. I make sure I don’t “scare” anyone in the subway or supermarket parking lot after dark (or in daylight), even though what I am is a bookish middle-aged duffer mostly concerned with getting home so I can have some decaf and read novels. I don’t know, or perhaps more accurately, haven’t decided, whether or not this sort of racial prudence constitutes a loss of liberty, because it also counts in my book as a loss of

liberty to endure suspicion, emotional assault, and deliberate humiliations. So why not avoid them if you can? And perhaps, in this current national context of renewed racial hostility as reinforced by a president who smirkingly tells the white supremacists to “stand by,” this is not just weary prudence, but active self-preservation.

I HAVE REALIZED that we African Americans often

have to live inside the paranoid or delusional psychomachia of those whites who are preoccupied if not deranged by race. I think of the unarmed Black man in Minnesota, gunned down on May 1, 2020, by a white man after a minor car accident, just weeks before the murder of George Floyd. The gunman was twenty-four and claimed to be “in fear for his life,” a statement vehemently disputed by witnesses and Good Samaritans at the scene.

The unarmed man who was murdered was named Douglas Cornelius Lewis. His death wasn’t filmed, so it did not join the legion of martyrs that we as a nation know about and grieve. According to the St. Paul Pioneer Press, Lewis, a father of four and delivery driver for Amazon, had exited his vehicle after a fenderbender and was approaching the other vehicle when he was shot, by the other driver, from ten feet away.

It’s astonishing to discover as I did decades ago, and then to be reminded—yet again—that one’s mere conduct of daily life can provoke outrage, fear, contempt, and even murderous violence. And that has to do still, I think, with Willie Horton as the apotheosis of a vision of Black persons born out of the crime of slavery, propagated through the centuries, and deployed until this day. And I don’t have any solution. And I don’t have any plan, other than to train my child for what she will face, to teach her what we African Americans have always taught our children about love, strength, and resilience, because it has become clear to me that this circumstance, 400 years in the making, is not going to go away.

Anthony Walton is author of Mississippi: An American Journey. His poems and essays appear widely, and he has received, among other awards, a Whiting Fellowship.

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BY SURYA MILNER ’19 PHOTOGRAPHS BY SÉAN ALONZO HARRIS

Less than ten miles from Bowdoin as the crow flies, just a short distance from the Phippsburg shore, Malaga Island was once home to a small fishing community established by descendants of a freed slave, all of them forced from their homes by greed and state-sanctioned intolerance. Nature is Malaga’s only resident now, but the presence of those who lived on the island lingers. Against a backdrop where Maine’s beauty meets a startlingly ugly period in our state’s history, Surya Milner ’19 sought to understand her own place, in Maine and beyond.

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WHEN LARGE GUSTS sweep in off the Atlantic, the time-worn crags that guard the shore of Maine’s southern coast stand firm against both wind and wave. Over the years, these lands have witnessed native Abenaki, English colonists, French missionaries, summer tourists and boaters, and asylum seekers. It’s said that Benjamin Darling, a slave on a New England merchant ship, saved his master when the ship collided with this jagged shore in the 1790s.

In return for saving his life, Darling’s master granted Darling his freedom and his name, and Darling settled nearby. A fair and upright citizen, he was a reliable worker at the local salt mill. He was mauled by a bear while trying to defend his neighbor’s corn patch. Eventually, he bought his own island, Horse Island. Fifty years passed, and the Civil War had reached its end by the time Darling’s granddaughters made a home on their own island, half a mile to the north of Horse, forty-one acres without a name.

Originally home to those granddaughters and Darling’s other mixed-race descendants, the island soon blossomed into a multiracial fishing community. Intermarriage was illegal, but the white mainlanders of nearby Phippsburg pretended not to notice—at least in the beginning. For those whose connections to the place run deep, the story of Darling’s granddaughters and their families is a tale of a quiet island community, “dyed in the wool,” that subsisted on what the Atlantic could offer and committed to teaching their children how to read, write, and eke out a life from the sea.

They called the island Malaga.

I came to Maine for college, a girl who shaded in the bubble for “two or more races” on the SAT, who left Texas for the whitest state in the nation. I was startled to view the coastline, to see the pines open up before me, to know a landscape that is both vast and deep.

Although it is often said that there are “two Maines,” there is an abundance of progressive history here: Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote much of Uncle Tom’s Cabin in the white clapboard house at 63 Federal Street, which the College now owns; one story claims that she read passages to celebrated Union general Joshua Chamberlain, Class of 1852, the war hero, Maine governor,

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Photographer Séan Alonzo Harris, who is Black and has a mixed-race family, saw metaphors of the long-gone Malaga residents in the island’s current life. Our photo captions explain the ways Séan expresses those ideas in his images.

Opening spread: Sun flares and rays turn light into presence, like spirits that linger.

Above: At the site of a well that was used by Malaga residents, its water now gives life to a community of ferns.

The questions were always variations of the same:

Where are you from? And why are you here? and Bowdoin president who was known for his valor at the Battle of Gettysburg. This history is a part of everyday life at Bowdoin: To enter campus from downtown Brunswick, you pass a statue of Chamberlain in a town plaza outside the campus gate; and historians seem sure that Brunswick was a stop on the Underground Railroad. Yet it was here, not in Texas, that I found myself confronted by carefully couched questions while I was waiting tables or reporting for the local paper. The questions were always variations of the same: Where are you from?

And why are you here?

The answer is neither linear nor easy to weave into casual conversation. “My mom’s from India,” I grew accustomed to saying, and leaving it at that. But inwardly, I found myself obsessed with quantifying my own identity: half-white, half-brown, part-Indian, mostly American, not Hindu, raised Christian, speaks broken Arabic; no, not Muslim either. How many times could I splice myself on the basis of imagined biological facts and the cultural codes they carried? They are constructs, and yet I molded myself around them, every day.

The world often presented narratives of race as monoliths—Black, white, brown—but I found fewer lampposts for being mixed-race. If I could find an exact story to match my complexity, perhaps I, too, could fit into a larger narrative, make sense of the world around me.

Then, sifting through old issues at the Portland Press Herald, the newspaper where I worked, I found Malaga. There were other people here once, living on an island twenty-five minutes away from my predominantly white town, people who confounded the essentialist ideas of race I kept encountering. I knew that I could not lay claim to Malaga’s history: I am neither Black nor a Mainer. But I wondered if learning about the descendants of this island might help me consider and navigate the

experience of being a mixed-race person in this very white state. Perhaps, if I listened long enough, the island’s history could help me learn how to inhabit two spaces in one.

Born across from the sardine factory in South Ferry, Portland, Marnie Darling Voter was disguised as a boy until the age of twelve. Only boys could be on the dock, and her father needed help fishing and hauling traps. Other days, she would go crab picking with her aunts. Later, Marnie, who is white, became a hippie, she says, and ran off without a destination—just a desire to live freely.

Everything changed years later on the day that Marnie’s late husband, Delmar, took her to peruse the genealogy records at the Augusta library, a straight shot up the interstate from Portland. Marnie was twenty-one years old and had never heard of Malaga. Leafing through the records, she found the link between herself and her last name: a Black man named Benjamin.

“I called my father immediately,” she says.

“He told me to shut the f—k up and never mention it again.”

Like many descendants of Benjamin Darling, Marnie’s father had been shamed into silence, but Marnie kept searching. She found out what happened to Darling’s descendants, a story that other local residents said was “best left untold.”

In the years after the island’s founding, hundreds of sensational accounts circulated about it, spreading claims of ignorance and contamination. A 1902 article from the Bath Enterprise, a local newspaper, condemned Malaga in the name of religious purism: “No worse heathenism we imagine could be found in far off heathen countries than can be found on this godless island.” Another article from the Casco Bay Breeze described the island as “the home of southern negro blood . . . [an] incongruous scene on a spot of natural beauty.” Word of

Malaga spread south as mainlanders grew fixated on an island that they believed marred the state’s idyll. Without these “incongruous” outliers, Maine might be easier to sell to tourists; shipbuilding, the backbone of the regional economy, was dying, and a tourist economy beckoned. Perhaps, without the island’s residents, Malaga could be made into a resort.

The interracial island community was nearing forty members when Maine Governor Frederick Plaisted told them to leave. The residents were too poor, according to the state, and too dark; within the framework of the emerging eugenics movement, the two were made out to be akin to immorality. In 1912, the county sheriff delivered the official notice: The islanders would have thirty days to leave Malaga and take everything, even their homes, with them.

Some floated their homes to the mainland, where they docked on a landing that a number of Phippsburg residents would call by a name that is both derogatory and offensive. The state government took others to the Maine School for the Feeble Minded. And the bodies of those who had lived and died on Malaga were unearthed, taken by boat, ferry, and then stagecoach to the same state-run mental institution, and interred there. The island was left barren.

It has hardly heard the voices of humans since.

I am looking for Marnie, but all I can see is fence. I continue driving for two miles and then I am there, face-to-face with a stone sign that reads PINELAND, taking in the red brick buildings with their blinding white details. Pineland Farms is a destination for cross-country skiers in the winter, for Maine weddings, for those interested in sustainable agriculture. It is a fivethousand-acre campus of farmland, cottages for rent, a market, and a business center.

It is also, Marnie tells me, a place of annihilation. All it took to get committed to

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Pineland—when it was known as the Maine School for the Feeble Minded—was the unanimous approval of a doctor, a sheriff, and a judge. For the ten or so Malaga residents who were brought here, already stigmatized, it wasn’t hard to get the stamp of all three.

Some were forcibly sterilized.

They, along with the remains of the disinterred people of Malaga, are buried at Pineland—but even here, they are not equal.

Divided in two parts, the cemetery is an object lesson in historical erasure. The front section, a conventional burial plot for mainlanders, faces the road. In a meadow beyond, facing the woods, lie those who were evicted. The tombstones there look like paint chips, and memorial plaques are placed haphazardly in a square area—maybe six-by-six yards—as if they were built at different times and for different reasons, placed there by people grappling with the past in different ways.

The largest memorial spells out the names of the islanders, one by one, and paints the fullest picture of what happened on Malaga. It was dedicated by the state in 2017, only two years before I made the visit with Marnie. The story is written on the stone: “From the 1860s until 1912, a community of laborers and fishermen lived on Malaga Island off the coast of Phippsburg. A controversial community for its time, white and black residents married and lived together on the small island until the state of Maine evicted them in 1912. Included in the eviction was the state’s removal of the island cemetery to the grounds of Maine School for the Feeble Minded, where some island residents were committed.

Remembered here are the community members exhumed from the Malaga Island Cemetery by the state and those who died here as patients.”

My eyes hover over the words for its time. I wonder if Malaga and its people aren’t considered controversial for our time, too: The story has been stifled for a century, but, depending on who you’re talking to in Midcoast Maine, the word Malaga can still be a slur.

Marnie surveys what’s left of her ancestors, small outcroppings of stone. Today, she is one of the most vocal advocates, the one who remembers the names by heart: Ben, Isaac, George, George, William, Leonard. She rattles

Opposite page: Exhumed remains of Malaga residents are buried in this section of a cemetery at Pineland, then the Maine School for the Feeble Minded, along with patients who died there.

Above: A final loss for the people of Malaga—identity.

In the move, bodies lost their names and record of their time on earth. “November 1912,” which marks all the graves of the exhumed, is the date when the remains were reburied.

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off the list, six generations of Darling patriarchs, ending with her father, without skipping a beat.

When speaking of the memory of the island today, she suggests that those buried here should be returned to Malaga. Their bodies might rest easier there. But then again, she says, they’ve been through enough already.

Opposite page: Evidence of life in layers. An antique nail sits on a bed of shells that was at the base of what had been a Malaga home, as plant life presses on.

Above: Broken and ancient trees stand like sentinels at the water’s edge on Malaga, keepers of its current resident, nature.

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Among the hundreds of known descendants of Malaga, only one family is Black. They are the descendants of Harold Tripp, a man who, at the state’s orders in 1912, sailed away from his home on the island. He was six years old; his mother died at sea.

Gloria, Harold Tripp’s daughter, grew up in Augusta, Maine, but didn’t know a thing about her connection to Malaga until a few years ago, when a reporter started piecing together their shared family tree. Gloria doesn’t remember much about her father except for his temperament. “My dad was a very angry man. [Angry] at

white people. Because there was nothing [in Maine] but white people,” she tells me over the phone. “I don’t think Maine has a special love for Blacks, or anyone else who’s not of the white race. They never have and they probably never will.”

Maine is changing, some say. In the news, Gloria reads about refugees coming to Maine, a steady stream of African immigrants, many from Somalia. Between 2000 and 2010, the state’s nonwhite population increased, according to the Bangor Daily News, mostly in the south and near the coast. Still, the state can be a difficult place for outsiders, or those perceived to be outsiders. By the time Gloria learned of Malaga, Maine was only a memory. She had moved away, partly because she grew tired of the separateness and otherness she had long felt. The history of the island lives on in those who are still able to call Maine home—like Marnie—as well as those who, like Gloria, chose not to stay.

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Opposite page: Two trees grow older together, like husband and wife, outside the foundation where a home had been.

One afternoon in late April 2019, I make the trip to Malaga. Marnie, busy caring for her grandchildren today, can’t come with me. Neither can Gloria, who now lives in Connecticut. So, I go without them, on a little skiff, accompanied by a woman named Caitlin Gerber. Caitlin is thirty, pregnant with her second daughter, and a land steward at Maine Coast Heritage Trust. Malaga is one of hundreds of properties owned by the trust.

Caitlin calls the landscape of Malaga “magical,” and through the spring mist I can see what she means. The island is lush. Moss spreads over the forest floor, and spruce trees shoot into the sky. And then there are the shells, crushed into smithereens, white and glinting, strewn along the shoreline: a reminder of the people who harvested clams here a century ago. After a long winter, everything is alive and covered in soft dew.

I am sad that neither Marnie nor Gloria are with me now, taking in the white shell beach or resting on the rippled rocks that jut out into the bay. Though the island is a public preserve, rarely do descendants make the trip. They, like Marnie and Gloria, have built new lives in new places. I know that there are many more who I may never meet, who straddle the space between the island’s ghostly past and growing present.

But there’s something about standing next to Gerber—trying to match our shoddy map with where we’re standing, hoping to pinpoint the place where homes once stood—that makes sense. We’re both outsiders, tenuously connected to this tiny community that stood a little too close to the mainland, trying to make sense of a story that, like the tide that pulls our skiff away from us, recedes with the passing of time.

I think back to Pineland, where Marnie asked me what I thought. Of all of this? I wondered.

I told her that the story was too heavy, too grotesque to fathom. Standing on Malaga now, the picture is fuller, clearer. Drawn to Malaga by the history of its inhabitants, I realize I was seeking some sense of solidarity. But my projections— about these people whose pasts I had pored over, and the codes linking them to me—had begun to splinter. Those who called Malaga home cared less for rigid racial narratives, I’d imagine, than others of their time. Yet it was because their existence violated the racist “rules” of their

time—rules that still have an impact on many of us, in many ways—that their island is now empty.

Malaga reminds me: Our bodies draw no borders, nor fences, nor fine lines. Why had I sought to articulate my identity—trying to split myself up into little percentages of white and not white—by using a bigoted framework akin to the one that justified the removal of people from Malaga? I had conformed to the language of cold categorization, standardized test questions, to tell me who I was. The existence of this island, and the people who lived here, shows the inadequacy and harm in those narrow definitions.

And it is a violence that has been buried deep. Malaga didn’t open my eyes to injustices committed against Black and brown people, but such loathsome history is presumed by many in Maine to be imaginary, or at least hidden. So erased from accounts of Maine’s racial history was Malaga that finding it, for me, feels like the bridge between what Maine professes to be and the hefty weight of its iniquitous history. Looking at Malaga, Maine’s whiteness and seeming progressivism make sense. It has silenced, and then shamed, those with another story to tell.

The water is still as we motor back. For a moment, it appears that we are skimming the reflected clouds above us, not ocean expanse.

We chat about the people Caitlin has encountered over the years—the local artist who envisions a community center on Malaga; those who want to see the island unchanged; the descendants who want to see the bodies of their ancestors returned. I feel the weight of a great silence, and the imperative to tell a story that is truthful, that accounts for the story of Malaga— and Maine—as it truly was and is.

Surya Milner ’19 is a freelance writer living in Los Angeles. This story originated in a long-form writing class with professor Alex Marzano-Lesnevich, and a version of it appeared in Catapult magazine in August.

Séan Alonzo Harris is an award-winning commercial, fine art, and editorial photographer living in Waterville, Maine. See more of his work at seanalonzoharris.com.

For more information about Malaga Island, see the Maine Coast Heritage Trust website at mcht.org.

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Lab instructor Bethany Whalon and professor Justin Baumann use a GoPro camera at the Schiller Coastal Studies Center to record footage for students in their Biology of Marine Organisms class who are studying with them online.

Connection Bowdoin faculty responded simultaneously to two historic challenges while maintaining the core values of a Bowdoin education. The experience has been a lesson in curiosity, compassion, and understanding in an exceptionally unsettling time.

BY REBECCA GOLDFINE | PHOTOGRAPHS BY FRED FIELD

L

LAST SPRING, BOWDOIN FACULTY had to shift

quickly from not only what was tried and true over the College’s history, but what was legitimately Bowdoin’s hallmark: intensely personal teaching face-to-face with students. Faculty leaned into that shift online and learned from it, but it was not a shift that anyone expected or wanted. As the days ticked by in June, it became clear that, although everyone had hoped that all students would be back in the fall, that simply couldn’t happen. The Continuity in Teaching and Learning Group had been convened months prior and had worked hard all spring and into the first part of the summer to research how best to tackle another remote semester. Just as they concluded their work, it was announced that teaching for the semester would be almost completely remote, but now faculty had data and recommendations and advice to follow.

Nearly simultaneously came attention to a second pandemic, one that many knew had been there all along: pervasive, systemic, and profoundly destructive racism in America.

Faculty are responding to the challenges of this historic confluence with creativity and energy, rooted in pedagogy and propelled by the deep sense of duty they feel to their students and to this moment.

“Our faculty really rose to the occasion and understood that this was an opportunity for all of them to collaborate, to share ideas, to draw on our expert staff, and to build long-term best practices in teaching to deliver courses that achieve our goals of equity and accessibility,” said Elizabeth Pritchard, associate dean for academic affairs and associate professor of religion.

Faculty stretched themselves this summer to adopt new technologies and new strategies for teaching online. At the same time, many also reconfigured their courses to include a more pronounced anti-racism focus. While some introduced new books, new writers, or new sessions into their syllabi, others responded by designing new courses to specifically address anti-racism in their field.

“One of the things I’m going to be doing on my sabbatical this year is creating a new course that is centered on this material,” said Eric Chown, Sarah and James Bowdoin Professor of

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Digital and Computational Studies. “If you’re going to talk about things of a digital online nature, then you have to talk about the hate online, you have to talk about the racism online, and you have to talk about why it’s happening and what sorts of things we can do about it.”

Lecturer in English Meredith McCarroll chose a new book to use in her first-year writing seminar on whiteness—How to Be an Anti-Racist,

by Ibram X. Kendi—because she thought it would give students an intellectual and practical grounding in the subject. “The book gives us really concrete language on what anti-racism means in practice, and how to think about structures of racism in concrete ways,” she said.

As faculty adapt to unique and challenging circumstances and to pressing social issues, they are being supported at every turn by Bowdoin staff. In particular, they’re receiving technological and pedagogical guidance from a group called BOLT, or Bowdoin Online Learning and Teaching. Led by Pritchard and made up of faculty and staff from academic affairs, the library, information technology, and communications, BOLT was “born from the desire to make sure faculty had everything they needed to be successful in the fall,” as BOLT Operational Lead Themba Flowers put it. He likened the College right now to a nimble start-up requiring its team to learn something new every day.

Through July and August, BOLT organized a slate of conferences, seminars, and weekly consultations with instructional designers. By summer’s end, 86 percent of faculty had attended at least one BOLT offering, with most attending many more. Another thirty-five lab instructors, departmental coordinators, curators, and academic staff also participated in trainings.

Additionally, many departments organized book reads among their faculty members to start discussing how to integrate anti-racism into their classes. Other professors took advantage of a campuswide reading of Me and White Supremacy, organized by the Office of Inclusion and Diversity in Student Affairs.

One of the outcomes of these twin crises, many have observed, is that faculty are expanding their definition of the common good and working harder to make their classes inclusive.

This may be due in part to what lies at the

“ AS WE GO ONLINE, WE HAVE TO THINK ABOUT HOW DO WE BUILD COMMUNITY, HOW DO WE DO IT INTENTIONALLY, AND HOW DO WE WELCOME PEOPLE IN?” —Professor Madeleine Msall

root of both online teaching and anti-racism education: both require a sense of community and connection to be successful.

“The pandemic circumstances are terrible, but it’s a moment in which we are being required to be creative about what we do,” Professor of Physics Madeleine Msall said. “As we go online, we have to think about how do we build community, how do we do it intentionally, and how do we welcome people in?”

Pritchard noted that BOLT encouraged faculty this summer to think about ways to develop online communities. “Today’s technology is good at facilitating communication, but the most effective and long-lasting learning is social,” she said. “Communication must entail a feeling of connection and community. It must reflect responsiveness to each and every student, a sense of our shared humanity, a sense of purpose, and a sense of the common good.

“And technology per se doesn’t do that,” she continued. “So professors had to intentionally build into their virtual interactions that sense of humanity and sense of purpose. Faculty at Bowdoin are really good at doing that in person, but I think they had to think carefully how they do that online.”

Pritchard also credited BOLT’s outreach for strengthening collegiality among faculty. “I can’t stress enough how the creation of BOLT has helped shift the culture around teaching so that it is more collaborative,” she said. “I think Bowdoin faculty rightly value autonomy and

value their ability to innovate on their own terms, but it has been so inspiring to see the level of collaboration.” She mentioned a BOLT crowdsourcing site on which professors daily pose questions or problems and quickly receive answers and suggestions. “With all that is on their plate, they help each other,” she added.

For example, government professor Allen Springer joked that, after being exhausted by online teaching last spring, he at times contemplated retiring this summer. But he found inspiration from his peers. “One thing that has really been very helpful are meetings with other people in my department,” he said.

The communal experience of revamping traditional teaching methods to fit a new digital environment will have longer-term impacts, Springer thought. “That collaboration has been really helpful, and that will stick well beyond this experience, because we have talked an awful lot more about how we teach than we had earlier.”

Professor Springer is not alone in realizing that all of the investment Bowdoin is making now will have abiding effects—from the goal of turning Bowdoin into a more transparent, more inclusive campus, to leading to adjustments in faculty’s approach to teaching.

Because “in some ways, really effective teaching looks very similar in person and online,” said Katie Byrnes, director of Bowdoin’s Baldwin Center for Learning and Teaching and a BOLT member.

Pritchard agreed: “The criteria for success are the same for online and in-person teaching.

But having to redesign courses for online delivery has prompted faculty to be really intentional in their course design and to articulate their course goals and expectations for students.

That intentionality about their teaching is something they will take with them long-term and improve education for all students once we return to an in-person context.”

“One of the things that has become evident is that excellence in online teaching has a lot in common with excellence in in-person teaching: it is driven by careful attention to learning goals, is deliberate in its design, and fosters excitement for learning,” said Jen Scanlon, dean for academic affairs.

MARINE BIOLOGY: THE WORLD BEYOND OUR SCREENS In more typical years, Biology of Marine Organisms takes advantage of Bowdoin’s location on the coast of Maine to introduce students to marine ecology. Throughout the semester, the class makes field trips to nearby rocky intertidal zones, mudflats, and salt marshes.

After learning in July that their class would be online in the fall, Visiting Assistant Professor of Biology Justin Baumann and Biology Lab Instructor Bethany Whalon spent many hours traipsing around the seashore with a GoPro camera to develop a trove of videos, photographs, and data to share with students who couldn’t be here in person.

With Baumann working the camera and Whalon serving as nature guide, they attempted to recreate these habitats digitally as best they could. All together, they made nearly seventy videos about a range of subjects.

“We are trying to still get them out there and to show them Maine,” Whalon said. “We’re trying to give them the Bowdoin experience, even though they are not present.”

By virtually trailing Whalon and Baumann on YouTube, students learn to identify marine organisms like bivalves, crabs, snails, barnacles, and algae. They study how tidal pool water chemistry and composition are affected by factors such as water depth, the time between high tides, and the pool denizens that contribute to or remove oxygen from the water. And they see how ocean wave energy affects rocky substrata, depending on the site’s exposure and steepness of slope, and how this influences the organisms that live there.

Alexia Brown ’21, who is taking the class from her home in New York City, said following the video forays is “the closest thing to an ‘escape to the sea’ from the four walls of my apartment.”

Before the class began, Whalon and Baumann sent out what they affectionately call “lab care packages” to each student. The “ecology near me” kits included a ruler, a caliper, a tape measure, colored pencils, a Rite in the Rain notebook, a small magnifying glass, two quadrats (a frame to mark out an area of habitat), and even snacks.

With these tools, students can head outside no matter where they are to study the environment

Associate Professor of Asian Studies Vyjayanthi Selinger, in her office at 38 College Street, conveys her passion for language and care for her students through the special online courses she developed over the summer.

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around them. “They can learn about ecological systems in any setting,” Baumann said. “How do you really learn environmental science? You basically go to the environment and watch it.”

Baumann and Whalon asked the students to find one small area—perhaps a portion of sidewalk with weeds poking through cracks, an urban garden, a spot near a pond or in a forest—and observe it over eight weeks.

“The more we look at the world around us, the more we see,” Whalon said. “They’ll start noticing things they never saw before. It doesn’t matter where they are, what they find, or what organisms are living around them. They’ll start realizing that the weather, humidity, time of day, and season affect everything, and that there is a rhythm to everything.”

Each week, the students make a new video of their sample area and upload them to Flipgrid, a video discussion and sharing tool. Since the students are spread out across the world—from Nantucket to New Zealand—they are sharing discoveries about diverse ecosystems.

Anneka Williams ’21, who is in Washington state, said that while it is disappointing not to be doing field-based work in Maine, she appreciates how the course is pushing her to explore her local surroundings. “I think it is strengthening our ability to be scientists in a lot of different environments as opposed to a pre-defined ‘lab’ environment,” she said.

Baumann is using the remote semester to teach his students how to use R, a statistical programming language, to analyze their data and reveal patterns in their findings. “These are transferable skills they might as well learn, since we can’t teach them how to do comparative anatomy or whatever we would normally do in the lab,” he said. “Instead, we can teach them another skill, [one] that they can learn remotely.”

As they respond to the isolation the coronavirus pandemic has wrought, faculty are also responding to the pandemic of institutionalized racism in the academy, so Baumann and Whalon are also devoting class time to looking at racism in science. “The field of marine ecology is very white and historically male, and it continues to struggle with colonial and postcolonial undertones—or overtones might be more appropriate,” he said.

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“ THE EARLIER THAT WE ARE EXPLICIT ABOUT RACE AND IDENTITY WITH YOUNG CHILDREN, THE MORE IT HAS A MEANINGFUL IMPACT ON THEIR BELIEFS, ATTITUDES, AND ACTIONS FOR THE REST OF THEIR LIVES.” —Professor Margaret Boyle

Many of the discipline’s “classic experiments” and papers, from the 1950s to 1970s, were by white men in the tropics. To counter this, Baumann has assigned many journal articles by women and people of color.

“Before the class discussion, I do a short profile on the lead author and talk about who they are, where they come from, and their contributions to the field,” Baumann said. “And we are going to get into issues of colonialism and racism in the second half of the class as we discuss tropical ecosystems.

“We want them to have tangible, usable skills,” Baumann continued, “as well as an appreciation of the world around them.”

them. “And I hope my students still see my passion for Japanese, and my care for them— that these are coming through, just expended in another way,” she said.

Additionally, because she believes “the beating heart of every class is community,” she is selecting technologies that she believes can best bring students together. One app she’s excited by is Spatial Chat, which tries to recreate the experience of an in-person social gathering.

Students studying Japanese are using Spatial Chat to organize trivia nights, movie nights, and communal study sessions so students can drop in for company or to do homework together.

“It allows for the more natural gathering activity that usually happens,” Selinger said.

TEACHING JAPANESE ONLINE: USING TECHNOLOGY TO CONVEY PASSION

FLUENCY

Typically during August, Associate Professor of Asian Studies Vyjayanthi Selinger works on her research. This summer, though, she put away her books on July 31 to dedicate the remaining summer to learning new technologies for her fall classes. With help from her teaching assistant, Ella Jaman ’22, she created many hours of engaging interactive content for her students— including video lessons and quizzes—by using HP5 software and one of Bowdoin’s newly issued iPads. (In support of online learning and to foster accessibility and equity, the College distributed an Apple iPad Pro with available Wi-Fi and cellular data connectivity—activated and covered by the College for those students who have internet needs—an Apple Pencil 2, and an Apple Magic Keyboard for iPad.) While she did this to develop fun and effective asynchronous offerings (which is when students engage with class material independently), she had a couple of other goals in mind too.

With less in-person time with her students now, Selinger said she still strives to inspire

Students in professor Margaret Boyle’s class Teaching and Learning Languages and Cultures are teaching Spanish, French, Russian, Chinese, Japanese, and Arabic to students at Kate Furbish Elementary School in Brunswick, Maine.

While the Bowdoin students are bringing language instruction to a public school that does not have the budget for it, they are also introducing children, in grades pre-K to second grade, to different cultures.

“I’m asking my [Bowdoin] students to understand language pedagogy and anti-bias education,” Boyle said.

While language learning at a young age has numerous benefits for cognitive development and sets children up for second-language fluency as adults, it also offers the opportunity to foster openness and tolerance, Boyle explained.

“Kids are not too young to talk about race,” she said. “The earlier that we are explicit about race and identity with young children, the more it has a meaningful impact on their beliefs, attitudes, and actions for the rest of their lives.”

Associate Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures Margaret Boyle leads Bowdoin language and culture outreach at Kate Furbish Elementary School in Brunswick.

Boyle’s language outreach in the community did not start off with such an ambitious social agenda. It was born from a volunteer student club she launched at Bowdoin in 2017 called Multilingual Mainers. Up until last winter, club members proficient in a language other than English offered regular lessons to elementary students during their lunch break.

Boyle also volunteered at the school from time to time. As she was reading a Spanish version of The Hungry Caterpillar one day, she recalled, some of the children responded, “That’s so weird!” This prompted her to start a conversation with the five-year-olds about why it can feel strange to be around something new.

“Then I realized the program had this importance I wasn’t intending,” she said. “It isn’t only about language proficiency and early access to languages, it’s also about culture and identity in Brunswick, Maine, and why it matters that students are exposed to a variety of languages and cultures.”

Boyle began to think about how to expand the program so that Bowdoin students could

gain teaching skills while fostering in children “curiosity, compassion, and understanding across difference,” she said.

Racial unrest in the country and the Black Lives Matter movement gave her even more impetus to put a formal program in place.

To support her goal, Boyle received a $10,000 seed grant from the Whiting Foundation’s Public Engagement Programs.

Though she designed the course before the pandemic and envisioned her students in school classrooms, Boyle said the class has adapted well to the online environment. “I feel excited about the possibilities for the course and how we can support the schools when teachers are needing extra help with distance learning,” she said.

Students create weekly videos for the children—on themes like greetings, numbers, holidays, cuisines, and cultural traditions—and occasionally join them for live online sessions.

Sam Kingsbury ’21, a math and Hispanic studies major, was drawn to the class for its integration of languages and anti-racism. He is considering pursuing a career as a Spanish teacher.

“The class had two things that strongly appealed to me: one was the actual experience of working with kids and teaching them, even though it is via Zoom or video lessons,” he said.

“And two was its strong focus on intercultural competence and race, which is something we don’t think about much but is crucial in terms of second language acquisition.”

“Our experience of these twin pandemics demonstrates the profound necessity of a liberal education,” Scanlon said. “In our case, one that commits to a twenty-first-century common good, one that is anti-racist, inclusive, and celebratory of the profound power of learning in the natural sciences, social sciences, humanities, and arts.”

Rebecca Goldfine is assistant director and content producer in Bowdoin’s office of communications and public affairs.

Fred Field lives in Portland, Maine, and is a frequent contributor to Bowdoin Magazine. More of his photography can be found at fredfield.com.

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Assistant Professor of Government Chryl Laird’s book with Ismail White, Steadfast Democrats: How Social Forces Shape Black Political Behavior, had the authors making the rounds on national news programs throughout the summer.

Solidarity What prompted the research in this book?

We were trying to understand Black political behavior, specifically with partisanship. In our field, “linked fate” is the concept that has traditionally been used to explain Black behavior—that Black people behave in a political way where they believe that what happens to the group has an effect on their individual lives. But when we did analysis of linked fate, it didn’t actually predict democratic partisanship.

Typically, as the landscape has become more polarized in terms of the two parties, ideology is often the best predictor of partisanship. So conservative ideological individuals typically vote Republican; liberal-leaning ideological individuals vote Democrat. But that ideology doesn’t predict with African Americans, who lean conservatively on social issues. Black people vote for Democrats. Why? And why don’t our traditional measures tell us this? And we came to this idea that it seems to be much more of a social phenomenon and that we need to think more about the social forces that are at play for why this works so effectively. No other group really has been able to replicate this degree of cohesion when it comes to their partisan politics.

So that’s what we investigate in the book, trying to not only theorize it, but figure out how we empirically test a social process.

Why do you think the book has garnered so much attention?

We wrote a book about Black people having political agency in a capacity that I think is woefully underestimated by our politicians, by the media, and by people who discuss Black

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politics. I think there’s often an overly simplistic explanation for Black behavior. It is one that assumes a naiveté of Black people. It assumes a lack of awareness. Ismail and I point out that Black people are incredibly savvy. They’re incredibly sophisticated. They’re very aware of the constraints of the system that they are in.

And, because of all of that, they are engaging in solidarity politics to maximize and optimize their voice in a system that has them in a minority position. They know the forces at hand that try to diminish that power, and they are clear in understanding the need to really think about how they engage in politics to ensure that they have a say. It speaks historically to how spaces operate. The decision to be pro-partisan toward the Democratic Party, as opposed to anti-Republican, is very different than what we’ve traditionally seen and is an outcome of the very thing that was used to keep them away from white people—segregation. And, again, that nuance is not typically explained. That’s one of the reasons why I think it has gotten a lot of attention.

In a country that places such value on “democracy,” why is US voter turnout so low?

One reason is that we make it very difficult to vote in the United States. Why isn’t election day a national holiday? Why is it that you can’t vote early in some states, but in other states you can?

Why is it that voter registration isn’t on-the-spot in most places? In the US, there are a lot of hurdles to voting, and those challenges create a system and a structure where people are less inclined to vote.

Also, our system, with a winner-take-all, single-member district design, limits the party system to two parties at the federal level, in terms of actually winning office. If people are disenchanted with both parties, they don’t necessarily have a lot of options, because third parties typically won’t win. It creates apathy. It leads people to thinking that their vote doesn’t matter. I teach about this notion of political efficacy in my political behavior class: I have to feel like what I’m going to do is going to matter.

In a system that works against Black people, how do Black voters continue to motivate?

I think it stems from an awareness of history and that voting is one of our only weapons to fight for improvements for the group. And those improvements have been realized. Activism and the efforts of abolitionists led to the end of enslaved Black individuals in this country.

It has led to representation. It led to access to power and the ability to be elected into offices.

It has led to policies to address discriminatory practices. The Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, and the Housing Rights Act are the biggest pieces of legislation to affect race relations in this country. I think Black people recognize how much power is in the vote for them. Why are people doing so much to keep you from voting?

If it didn’t matter that much, no one would be trying to stop you.

Chryl Laird teaches courses in race and ethnic politics, urban politics, American politics, and political behavior.

For more from this interview, visit bowdoin.edu/magazine.

PHOTO: SÉAN ALONZO HARRIS

Column

A Force of Change When he was a student at Bowdoin, Bill de la Rosa ’16 received a John Lewis Fellowship to study human rights. As the country celebrated the life of the late Congressman, who passed away over the summer, Bill recounted the vital lessons he learned from the humble civil rights giant.

THE WORLD LOST an extraordinary man and force of change

when Congressman John Lewis died on July 17, 2020.

John Lewis was “the boy from Troy,” a giant of the civil rights movement who dedicated his life toward building a more compassionate, just, and equitable America. He was also my role model, and I will always treasure the impact he made on my life.

When I was a junior at Bowdoin, I was one of thirty lucky university students from around the world who were selected to participate in the inaugural John Lewis Fellowship, an intensive human rights educational program launched

by Humanity in Action. For four weeks in the summer of 2015, I joined the other John Lewis Fellows at the National Center for Civil and Human Rights in Atlanta, Georgia, and immersed myself in the study of diversity and civil rights in America.

The John Lewis Fellowship profoundly influenced the person I am today. We examined the history and legacy of American slavery, the codified system of racial segregation under Jim Crow, and the continuing fight for equality in the United States. We also analyzed the parallels between the American civil rights movement and the global struggle for human rights.

I will never forget recognizing the key difference between civil rights and human rights—a distinction I had taken for granted as an American. Unlike civil rights in this country, human rights do not stem from the Constitution or any other government charter. Human rights are universal, inherent to all human beings by the sole virtue of being human, regardless of race, gender, sexuality, socioeconomic class, disability, religion, or legal status. Human rights are not confined by the boundaries of a nation; they supersede any virtual, racial, or physical walls that divide us.

We had the honor of hearing from John Lewis himself toward the end of the fellowship. I remember his gentle and humble demeanor as he entered the room to thundering applause. John Lewis spoke about caring for his family’s

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chickens as a little boy in Troy, Alabama, listening to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on the radio in 1955, meeting him for the first time as a college student, and deciding to do something about racial injustice in America.

The son of sharecroppers, John Lewis led the Freedom Riders in 1961, was brutally beaten by police in Selma in 1965, and served as the moral conscience of Congress from his election in 1983 until his death. John Lewis taught me that the moral arc of the universe bends toward justice, as Dr. King famously said, because of people who speak up when they see something wrong.

On May 29, 2016, the morning after I graduated from Bowdoin, I was at the airport in Portland, Maine, waiting to board a plane to Washington, DC. I had bumped into a friend there and was talking with him about my experience during the fellowship when, out of nowhere, John Lewis emerged from the security clearance gates. He was gentle and humble that time too, traveling alone and hauling his own luggage. He had just delivered the commencement address at Bates College. People stood on their feet and removed their hats as he made his way to our gate. We were in the presence of a courageous and remarkable man.

A few months later, an interview panelist asked me who was the person I most looked up to. “John Lewis,” I said.

“Congressman John Lewis.”

I will always remember John Lewis. I hope none of us forgets his sacrifices. The work for a more compassionate, just, and equitable world is far from over. May we be a force of change today. And when we see something wrong, as John Lewis always reminded us, we shouldn’t be afraid to “get into good trouble, necessary trouble.” For me, it is the least I can do.

Bill De La Rosa ’16 is a PhD candidate at Oxford University, where he is studying border criminology. His story about growing up in Arizona the child of Mexican immigrants was featured in the Spring/Summer 2016 issue of Bowdoin Magazine.

Congressman John Lewis, caught in mid-sentence, talking with friends Adam Cohen (left) and Bill de la Rosa ’16 (right) during a coincidental meeting at the Portland, Maine, Jetport. To further the coincidence, Adam was inspired by Bill and by this meeting, and became a Lewis Fellow the following year.

PHOTO: COURTESY OF BILL DE LA ROSA ’16; ILLUSTRATION: RAFAEL LÓPEZ

Whispering Pines

On Digressions “The past is never dead.

It’s not even past.”

—WILLIAM FAULKNER, REQUIEM FOR A NUN (1950)

MAINE HAS A LONG TRADITION of storytelling, often infused

with humor and local color. Before the recordings of latter-day humorists like Marshall Dodge (“Bert and I”), Steve Merrill ’35 captured for posterity a number of stories on the vinyl record “Father Fell Down the Well.” Steve was a photographer whose work often graced the covers of the alumni magazine in the 1950s, and in his voice and his stories he evoked a Maine that was rapidly fading in the years after World War II. While his tales contained rich details, they are not “shaggy dog” stories that go on endlessly for the sole purpose of taking up time, but the various digressions about personal and historical background provide context that supported the main narrative. A brief aside may reveal why a character responds in a particular way in a story, lay out the historical basis for a grudge, or outline the meaningful features of a landscape. Merrill’s description of “a great, big man, bald as an egg, who used to tie a string around his head to tell how far up to stop washing his face” plants a vivid image in the mind’s eye that animates the story he then tells.

At the risk of elevating these tales and subjecting them to scholarly review, I see in their reliance on digressions some parallels with ring composition, a narrative structure that is most often studied by classicists and medievalists.

Briefly, there may be a point in a story (A) that requires some explanation (digression B), and within the digression

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there may be a need for an additional detour (digression C).

Instead of the story spinning into chaos, ring composition re-spools the narrative from C to B to A. The most commonly cited example of ring composition is in Homer’s The Odyssey, in which Odysseus returns (unrecognized) to his home after twenty years. His wife, Penelope, instructs the old nurse, Eurycleia, to bathe the stranger’s feet as a gesture of hospitality. The nurse discovers Odysseus’s identity through a scar on his leg. At this point, Homer circles back to tell the story of Odysseus’s birth, and of how the scar was caused by a boar’s tusk on a hunt, before he reconnects to the main narrative. At Odysseus’s urging, the nurse keeps his secret until he is ready to reveal his true identity.

The relating of a Maine story or a Homeric epic requires some backfilling for the narrative to be most easily understood. Any presentation of Bowdoin’s history requires similar digressions in order to be more than an unconnected sequence of events or an aggregate of individual life histories.

Our desire to understand the present prompts a never-ending search for the historical precedents and precursors that might provide clues about how we arrived at a particular moment in time and circumstance. This suggests that the shape of history is not a single upwardly trending line that measures evolutionary “progress”; it is not circular, returning to an earlier state; and, while significant events or circumstances may cause great disruptions, the shape does not correspond to random walk. Catastrophic events (e.g., floods, hurricanes, wildfires, and pandemics) may temporarily alter trajectories, but they are more likely to unmask the underlying conditions that expose some people to greater risk than others.

The search for historical precedents for present events creates a dynamic interaction with the past, and for this reason, there can be no such thing as a definitive history.

On national and international scales, shifting geopolitical conditions, pandemics, natural disasters and longer-term environmental threats, race relations, immigration issues, political partisanship, and growing income inequality force us to interrogate the historical record with new eyes. Bowdoin is washed by the waters of these same broad currents, although these pressing issues also call for ongoing investigations into the College’s own past, a history populated with “hidden figures” whose contributions have been passed over in earlier narratives. It will be a complex history to untangle, with many digressions, but may yield narratives that connect us to a shared heritage.

John R. Cross ’76 is secretary of development and college relations.

ILLUSTRATION: ERIC HANSON; PHOTO: TRISTAN SPINSKI

Connect ALUMNI NEWS AND UPDATES

EAGER BEAVER

Danny Mejia ’17 set an unsupported FKT (fastest known time) of the 100-Mile Wilderness, often regarded as the wildest section of the AT. Despite spraining his knee with twenty miles to go, and running out of water for a few hours, Danny finished in 33:18:55, besting the previous record by 53 minutes.

PHOTO: ARTIST_CREDIT

I was inspired to thru-hike after leading an orientation trip for Bowdoin along the Appalachian Trail (AT). We ran into many thru-hikers, and when I asked one man how he had enjoyed his trip so far, he looked me in the eyes and said, “It’s the best thing I have ever done.” Over the course of two thru-hikes, one of the AT (my trail name is Beaver) and one of the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT), I learned that I was a strong hiker, but not how strong or how fast. When you’re thruhiking, you never want to compromise tomorrow’s miles.

I’d looked for years at the unsupported fastest known time (FKT) of the 100-Mile Wilderness section of the AT and thought that it was still achievable—before the elite runners of the world decide it’s a record they want. I made it my pet project, to test my limits and find out what I was capable of.

After failing last year, I learned how to train and prepare for this year’s attempt. I decided to focus on becoming a stronger and more proficient runner. I spent the winter and spring running six days a week and getting comfortable running on tired legs. I immersed myself in the discourse around FKTs, learning how ultrarunners hone the skills of visualization and dissociation during long races, and about planning to combat the effects of sleep deprivation.

I asked friends from Bowdoin to record videos and send them to me ahead of time so I could save and watch them to help me through some of the darker times while my phone was in airplane mode. Those were a huge pick-me-up. Also, the bag of Totino’s Pizza Rolls I packed for the fifty-mile mark!

For more of our interview with Danny, visit bowdoin.edu/magazine.

Connect

1956

Reunion

Paul Kirby has been honored by the Alumni Council with a Polar Bear Award in recognition of his significant personal contributions and outstanding dedication to Bowdoin. Forty-one years after winning the Alumni Service Award (the highest honor given by the Alumni Council), Paul is again recognized for his “unwavering and outstanding” service to Bowdoin, including a long spell as class secretary. His efforts have also included many years of exceptional volunteer work with BASIC, now known as BRAVO (Bowdoin Regional Admissions Volunteer Organization), for which he was presented with a plaque that read “Mr. BASIC.”

1957

Chester Cooke has been honored by the Alumni Council with a Polar Bear Award in recognition of his significant personal contributions and outstanding dedication to Bowdoin. His formal volunteer work for Bowdoin includes membership on his fiftieth Reunion Committee and his long-standing service as a class agent. He received the Harry K. Warren trophy for volunteering in 2007.

Ed Langbein: “Pleased to learn of our two class scholarship recipients. Class of 1957 Scholarship: Shane M. Araujo ’23 of New York City. His interests are art and environmental science.

Charles A. Chapman Scholarship: Jordy P. Dushime ’23 of Lewiston, Maine. Jordy, who wrote expressing his gratitude to the class, is a biology and chemistry major who sings with the Bowdoin Community Gospel Choir, plays club tennis, and works in the admissions office.

“Eliza Madigan ’24, granddaughter of Robin and Bob Goodfriend, joined other first-year students on campus in late August.

“The Common Good Committee, undeterred by the coronavirus, raised over twenty thousand dollars for nonprofit groups in midcoast Maine. The program, designed to provide hands-on experience, raises funds from alumni and friends, invites applications from local nonprofit groups, coordinates on-site visits as part of the review process, and awards grants.

“A barrage of ‘checking in’ emails prompted numerous replies and ‘all well, so far’ reports. Marti and Dick Chase returned (on deserted highways) from Hilton Head, having earlier enjoyed a trip through the Panama Canal. John Collier is holding forth in the western mountains of North Carolina, while on the eastern coast John Humphrey is constructing a boat.

Katherine and Walter Gans shifted from New York City to Connecticut, while other Gothamites, Mary and Jim Kushner and Joan and Peter Strauss, remain in place (carefully). Sandy and Erik Lund shifted north to their home on the banks of the Kennebec, while many others simply extended their winter stays in Florida. Kay and Dick Lyman announced they would be moving from Sweden (Maine) to The Highlands retirement home in Topsham, expanding the local class representation, which has dwindled to Bill Cooke, John Davis, and me. [Sadly, Dick passed away on August 23.] John Simons is back on the road after spraining his left knee in a late January road tumble, and Bob Wishart is still active on the tennis courts. (I believe he and Tut Wheeler are our last hyperactive sportsmen.) And, after five

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“The Fat Boy Drive-In has a new owner and opened for the season.

Otherwise, Brunswick was quiet— almost in shock.”

—ED LANGBEIN ’57 ON TOWN AT THE START OF THE STRANGE COVID-19 SUMMER

decades in the same home, Julie and Ray Smith are downsizing within Severna Park, Maryland. Marsha and Nate Winer enjoyed a visit to Hawaii and returned to ‘lockdown’ in California.

“After two years on the market, the Fat Boy Drive-In has a new owner and is open for the season. It offers ‘the old favorites’ and will accept credit cards. Otherwise, Brunswick is quiet— almost in shock—with announcements that the Maine State Music Theatre and Bowdoin International Music Festival would not be opening; festivals in Yarmouth (clams) and Bath (Heritage Day) were canceled; many stores are closed or operating with customer occupancy restrictions; restaurants are offering curb service, take-out, or delivery; and banking is by drive-up window or telephone appointment to enter the lobby.

And, wear your face mask.”

1959

Reid Appleby was recognized with the Foot Soldier of Bowdoin Award, which was created by the Alumni Council in 1999 to honor “one who exemplifies the role of a foot soldier of Bowdoin through his or her work” for the College, and made possible through the generosity of David Z. Webster ’57.

Along with the award, a scholarship is designated in the recipient’s name to a deserving Bowdoin student through the Foot Soldier of Bowdoin Scholarship Fund. Reid has served on numerous reunion and gift committees and is a respected and well-known alumnus among fellow Rhode Island Polar Bears. Described as the “true glue” that holds the Class of 1959 together, he won praise for his efforts in helping to organize last year’s sixtieth class reunion.

ILLUSTRATION: ERIC HANSON

Remember

The following is a list of deaths reported to us since the previous issue. Full obituaries appear online at: obituaries.bowdoin.edu

Paul F. Dudley Jr. ’53 May 31, 2020

Howard W. Hickey ’62 January 30, 2020

Dionyssios S. Kotsonis ’53 May 9, 2020

Wayne T. Adams ’63 July 28, 2020

Allan B. MacGregor ’44 August 11, 2020

Kenneth P. Winter ’55 May 9, 2020

Blaine G. Murphy ’63 May 12, 2020

Paul R. Aronson ’48 August 13, 2020

Terry D. Stenberg ’56 July 5, 2020

Donald J. Krogstad ’65 August 14, 2020

Peter T. Babalian ’50 August 12, 2017

James J. Hughes ’57 September 2, 2020

Richard R. Norris ’65 July 20, 2020

John F. Gustafson ’50 June 9, 2020

Richard B. Lyman Jr. ’57 August 23, 2020

Lawrence R. Hibbard ’67 May 19, 2020

David P. Johnson ’50 June 16, 2020

Gordon E. Page Jr. ’58 April 29, 2020

Calvin S. Whitehurst ’68 June 2, 2020

Milton Lown ’50 April 25, 2020

Olin M. Sawyer ’58 June 25, 2020

Alan M. Barron ’69 May 23, 2020

Robert B. Mason ’50 May 1, 2020

Allan D. Wooley Jr. ’58 August 22, 2020

Andrew A. Jeon ’73 May 16, 2020

Stuart B. Morrell ’50 August 1, 2020

Edward B. Maxwell II ’59 April 25, 2020

Eric S. Baxter ’75 July 15, 2020

Raymond S. Troubh ’50 August 24, 2020

Mark L. Power ’59 August 23, 2020

David M. Fickett ’81 February 17, 2020

Frank S. Beal ’51 September 5, 2020

Michael A. Iwanowicz ’60 June 28, 2020

Philip C. Boggs Jr. ’82 July 28, 2020

Charles A. Bradley III ’51 May 2020

Albert W. Lowe ’60 May 19, 2020

David J. Powers ’82 May 30, 2020

Burton A. Nault ’52 August 17, 2020

Richard N. Mostrom ’61 June 29, 2020

Marilyn S. Gondek ’88 April 18, 2020

Craig S. Shaw ’52 August 14, 2020

William J. Cunningham ’62 July 3, 2020

Ernest L. Levroney III ’96 July 18, 2020

Richard T. Wright ’52 April 19, 2020

Harald K. Heggenhougen ’62 August 12, 2020

PHOTO: ARTIST_CREDIT

GRADUATE Ralph W. Hilton G’62 September 3, 2020 John B. Manning G’65 June 15, 2017 George B. Allan G’67 May 15, 2020

FACULTY/STAFF Helen B. Johnson May 20, 2020 Barbara J. Kaster May 9, 2020 Howard E. Skillings July 10, 2020 William L. Steinhart July 8, 2020

Bowdoin obituaries appear on a dedicated online site, rather than printed in these pages.

Updated regularly, the improved obituary format allows additional features that we can’t offer in print, specifically the ability for classmates, families, and friends to post photos and remembrances.

BOWDOIN MAGAZINE FALL 2020 | CLASSNEWS@BOWDOIN.EDU 51

Connect Doug Hotchkiss ’66 adds the final piece to a puzzle featuring the Hyde Plaza Polar Bear statue, which he rediscovered and completed early in the COVID-19 lockdown.

“It was the perfect distraction,” he said.

Jeannie Brountas ’83 bumped into “two gracious and charming Polar Bears”—Calvin Kinghorn ’21 and Itza Bonilla ’20—while on a summer sail to Edgartown, Massachusetts.

1962

The Class of 1962 has been recognized by the Alumni Fund with the Class of 1916 Bowl, awarded annually to the class with the greatest improvement over its Alumni Fund performance of the preceding year. The class raised $154,979 in 2020—a 63 percent increase over 2019. The original Class of 1916 Bowl was presented to the College by the Class of 1916 in 1959.

Fred Hill: “I will have three books published in 2020. They are A Flick of Sunshine—with my son Alexander Hill—about the adventures of a bold and brave Maine seaman (Sheridan House Press); Dereliction of Duty: The Failed Presidency of Donald John Trump, a collection of my columns for the Dallas Morning News, The Baltimore Sun, The Seattle Times, and the Bangor Daily News, with endorsements from William S. Cohen ’62, H’75, Thomas R. Pickering ’53, H’84, and Tom Allen ’67, among others (Amazon); and On the Wallaby: The Short Stories of Richard Matthews Hallet, a Maine author who wrote hundreds of short stories for the Saturday Evening Post, Harper’s, The Smart Set, etc. I did an interview by Zoom [in early September] for a Portland cable station that goes to 70,000 households in Maine, more in the south (unfortunately) than the second district. Overall it came out OK, except my not remembering I was on camera for a few moments at the beginning. Zoom is tricky!”

You can find the interview online at YouTube.

1963 In mid-July Jean Clough ’88 and Frank Perdicaro ’87 held a mini-reunion on the top of Mount Saint Helens before sliding more than a mile down the glacial snow field.

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Tony Antolini, director of the Bowdoin chorus, is one of the stars of the campy retro soap opera Restless Shores, a podcast that

“explores the intrigue surrounding Roupp Pharmaceuticals, a billion-dollar enterprise located in the coastal city of Gamote Point. Scandal, intrigue, and salaciousness, fifteen minutes at a time.” Antolini plays the part of ruthless Russian mobster Ivan Bulgakov. Denise Shannon from the Office of the Dean for Student Affairs also performs as the calculating love interest of two men.

The podcast, which premiered in January 2019 and currently has eighty-three episodes, utilizes Maine talent and has listeners worldwide.

For more, visit restless-shores.com.

1966

Reunion

“In drafting and proposing a Black Lives Matter-based resolution for a [Durham, NH] town council meeting on July 6, councilor Wayne Burton was reminded of the man who directly inspired his longing to create change: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Passed unanimously by the council, Resolution #2020-15 condemns ‘racism in all its pernicious forms and the violence it begets by embracing the goals of Black Lives Matter and advocating an end to recent incidents resulting in death to Black people as has occurred in Minneapolis and other cities.’

For Burton, the resolution is just another chapter in his life’s call to activism. On May 6, 1964, when he was a student at Bowdoin, Burton was alerted by his roommate that Dr. King was in town to speak to students and community members about the civil rights movement.

Burton, breaking a nighttime habit of doing his economics homework before grabbing a few drinks, decided to attend and was profoundly touched by what he witnessed. After his speech, Dr. King

and roughly twenty students sat down and conversed more about the movement to end segregation and discrimination. When asked how a white male in Maine could play a part in combating racism, according to Burton, Dr. King left a message of ‘borderless conscience.’

He said, ‘You’re just as responsible for what happens in Birmingham as you are in Brunswick.’ Burton wanted to bring such advocacy to New Hampshire politics. ‘If town leaders at the local level don’t embrace change, then how can we expect a national movement?’ he said.” From a fosters.com article, July 11, 2020.

Doug Hotchkiss: “While being quarantined for this pandemic, I dug out a Bowdoin puzzle. I think we received it as a reunion gift years ago. Needless to say, I had not done a jigsaw puzzle in many years. It was the perfect distraction during the early days of the lockdown. Not only was it a great challenge, but it brought back old memories of my days on campus. My freshman dorm was Maine Hall, and the Polar Bear statue was right outside the door. Since women were not allowed inside, it became the designated meeting spot for my mom, dad, and I. If any alumnus wants it, I will be happy to mail it to them.”

1968

The Class of 1968 class agent team—Alan Fink, Elliot Hacker, Nathaniel B. Harrison, Robert Lakin, and Thomas Sides—has earned the Fund Directors’ Trophy. Established in 1972 by the directors of the Alumni Fund, this award is given annually to the class or classes that, in the opinion of the directors, achieved an outstanding performance that

deserves special mention. This year, these recognized volunteers helped the class achieve an 84.8 percent participation rate, the highest of any class in the 2020 fundraising year.

1970

George Isaacson has been named to The Best Lawyers in America 2021.

“Isaacson represents multichannel marketers and electronic merchants throughout the United States in connection with state sales, use, and income tax matters, as well as regulatory issues. He has earned the longest consecutive selections in the firm, having appeared on the list for seventeen years.” From a Bran & Isaacson press release, August 20, 2020.

1972

In response to the coronavirus outbreak, Stephen Fendler and his brother Michael—the fifth generation of their family to run the 128-year-old company CM Almy, in Pittsfield, Maine—pivoted their business of manufacturing clergy apparel, vestments, and decorative hardware for churches to making, selling, and donating masks made with cotton shirt fabrics. Working with Partners for World Health, they distributed the masks to the vulnerable and needy. They also offered a “buy-one, donate-one” option to their customers. Founded in 1892, CM Almy has been manufacturing decorative products for churches through both World Wars, the Great Depression, and a myriad of other global challenges.

From a CM Almy press release, May 12, 2020.

1975

The Class of 1975 has been awarded the Alumni Fund Cup, given annually since 1932

to recognize the reunion class making the largest contribution to the Alumni Fund. The class raised $424,901.

1976

Reunion

Shaun Gilmore: “My wife and I moved to Laguna Beach, California, two years ago to be closer to our daughter. Not a bad spot to be self-quarantined for five months!

Still working as an executive at the American Red Cross (twelve years), where I recently oversaw the startup of our COVID-19 convalescent plasma collections.”

Douglas Kennedy was featured on the front page of the May 31, 2020, edition of the French daily newspaper Le Monde, which featured an essay, “The Age of Uncertainty,” that the celebrated author wrote during the early stages of the pandemic in his tenth week of isolation in Wiscasset, Maine.

Kennedy’s latest novel, Isabelle l’Après midi [Isabelle in the Afternoon], was published in January and is currently a bestseller in France.

1977

The Class of 1977 has been recognized by the Alumni Fund with the Leon W. Babcock Plate for raising $503,207 in the past year, the largest contribution to the fund by any class. The Babcock Plate was first presented in 1980

by William L. Babcock Jr. ’69 in honor of his grandfather, Leon W. Babcock ’17. The class also earned the Harry K. Warren Trophy.

Beginning in 1998, the award recognizes the two reunion classes achieving the highest percentage of participation in the Alumni Fund.

During their forty-third reunion year, the class achieved a 66.1 percent participation rate in the fund.

1979

“Many of the redwoods along the Pacific Coast are 150 years old.

Or, about as old as Steve Dunsky feels working on the first virtual Visions of the Wild. Sponsored

by Dunsky’s employer—the U.S. Forest Service [where he’s a filmmaker]—and the Vallejo [CA] Community Arts Foundation, the fifth annual event has been challenging. Technology, naturally, was the major obstacle in pulling off a virtual Visions of the Wild, which has a mission of connecting nature, culture, and community, and ‘how the arts can be used to inspire people to be better stewards of the environment,’ said Dunsky.

‘We’re fortunate in a sense, now that everyone is working from home, meeting virtually with Zoom. It made this so much easier to do something like this…to get people from all over the place together.’” Each presentation will be recorded and can be viewed online at visionsofthewild.org. From a Times Herald article, September 22, 2020.

1980

Douglas Henry and Sara Jane Shanahan ’91 “were named to The Best Lawyers in America 2021.

Both attorneys work at the firm Sherin and Lodgen; Henry in real estate law and Shanahan in insurance litigation. “Inclusion is based entirely on peer review.

The methodology is designed to capture, as accurately as possible, the consensus opinion of leading lawyers about the professional abilities of their colleagues within the same geographical and legal practice area. Best Lawyers has been published since 1983 with the goal of highlighting the top legal talent in America.” From a Sherin and Lodgen press release, September 10, 2020.

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Connect Meghan Cox Gurdon ’86

Catching Up

SAYING IT OUT LOUD As children’s book critic for The Wall Street Journal and author of The Enchanted Hour: The Miraculous Power of Reading Aloud in the Age of Distraction, Meghan Cox Gurdon ’86 writes about the power of books to connect people.

READING ALOUD TO MY CHILDREN was the central civilizing event of our family life, a daily practice as important and nonnegotiable as toothbrushing—but a great deal more fun. It was not until technology began encroaching on our lives that I began to notice how reading aloud seemed to be giving us back certain things that our phones and screens were taking away. In 2015, I wrote a newspaper piece that discussed the tension between the warm, human, literary connection of a read-aloud and the dopamine-triggering lure of tech. It went viral, and I sensed a hunger for the topic that led to The Enchanted Hour.

IF I COULD HAVE ONE MORE DAY BACK AT BOWDOIN, I would visit every building and walk through every bit of campus. I would stand in the pines and breathe deeply. I would sit in the chapel and look up. I would take my time in the galleries of the museum. My goal would be to memorize every bit of Bowdoin’s beauty and tranquility. I’m pretty sure I’d also have a good cry—part melancholy, part gratitude.

For more of our interview with Meghan, visit bowdoin.edu/magazine.

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1981

Reunion

Charlotte Agell: The awardwinning children’s author and illustrator took time over the summer to share some of her work with the Bowdoin community in a virtual book reading via Zoom. Agell is also a teacher and lives near the College’s campus in Brunswick. Since 1991, she’s published numerous works of young adult fiction, chapter books, and picture books, including Welcome Home or Someplace Like It and The Accidental Adventures of India McAllister. On Zoom, she read from three of her books, including her latest, Maybe Tomorrow. Described as a “heartwarming story about loss, healing, and how to be a friend during hard times,” Maybe Tomorrow was the winner of this year’s Maine Literary Award for best children’s book. Watch the video at bowdoin. edu/news. From a bowdoin.edu/news story, June 24, 2020.

1982

David Sugerman “has joined Maine’s Mount Desert Island (MDI) Hospital as the medical director of the emergency department. Sugerman spent three previous summers in MDI Hospital’s emergency department as an attending physician. Specializing in emergency medicine, he has served as an emergency physician and medical director in several emergent care settings in the state of Ohio.

Over the years he has held several positions relative to his sports medicine training, including event physician for the US National Figure Skating Championships (1998), team physician for the US Freestyle Ski Team (1994–1998), and race physician for America’s Opening World Cup Ski Races (1994–1995).

Outside of the office, Sugerman

enjoys hiking, biking, sailing, and skiing. From a Mount Desert Islander online news article, June 17, 2020.

1983

Jeannie Brountas has been honored by the Alumni Fund with the Robert M. Cross Award. Established in 1990, this award is bestowed annually to the class agent or agents whose outstanding performance, hard work, and loyalty to Bowdoin, as personified by Robert M. Cross ’45, H’89 during his many years of association with the fund, are deserving of special recognition. Jeannie also writes: “My husband, Gary, and I have a sailboat. We sail to Edgartown [Martha’s Vineyard] almost every weekend. Gary wore a Bowdoin T-shirt one recent Saturday and we were surprised when two people stopped him to ask him if he went to Bowdoin. He said no, but that I had.

We were so impressed and excited to speak with Calvin Kinghorn ’21 and Itza Bonilla ’20. Gary and I also met Hannah Buckhout ’24, just a few weeks away from starting her first year at Bowdoin. All of these students and alumni are terrific—no worries on the next generation!”

1984

George Reisch recently published The Politics of Paradigms: Thomas S. Kuhn, James B. Conant, and the Cold War “Struggle for Men’s Minds.” The work is a monograph that “shows that America’s most famous and influential book about science, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions of 1962, was inspired and shaped by Thomas Kuhn’s political interests, his relationship with the influential Cold War warrior James Bryant Conant, and America’s McCarthy-era struggle to resist and defeat totalitarian ideology.

PHOTO: MICHAEL BENNETT KRESS

Through detailed archival research, Reisch shows how Kuhn’s well-known theories of paradigms, crises, and scientific revolutions emerged from within urgent political worries—on campus and in the public sphere— about the invisible, unconscious powers of ideology, language, and history to shape the human mind and its experience of the world.” From the State University of New York Press.

1987

Paula (Tremblay) Burke: “My side hustle, serving as the town’s election warden, offered up a lot of surprises this year. But we did get all of the votes counted on time!”

Gerald C. Chertavian has been honored by the Alumni Council with a Polar Bear Award in recognition of his significant personal contributions and outstanding dedication to Bowdoin. Gerald has a remarkable record of service to Bowdoin and received the Common Good Award in 2017 for his work outside of the College.

Frank Perdicaro: “In mid-July we had a small reunion on the top of Mount Saint Helens. Was it a Bowdoin reunion or an ARU [Alpha Rho Upsilon] reunion? Both Jean Clough ’88 and I climbed to the rim and then slid more than a mile down the glacial snow field.”

1995

Sean Marsh has been honored by the Alumni Fund with the Robert M. Cross Award. Established in 1990, this award is bestowed annually to the class agent or agents whose outstanding performance, hard work, and loyalty to Bowdoin, as personified by Robert M. Cross ’45, H’89 during his many years of association with the fund, are deserving of special recognition. Sean, the 25th Reunion Committee chair,

helped the class raise $75,000 more than the class’s largest gift total to date.

1996

Reunion

Jen Collins Moore: “I published my debut novel, Murder in the Piazza, on September 22. I left the world of brand management in 2010 to found Meez Meals, Chicago’s favorite meal kit service, and have been writing fiction for the last five years.”

1998

Kalena A. Griffin Costa has been honored by the Alumni Council with an Alumni Footprints Award, which recognizes a volunteer who, in organizing at least one event or program during the preceding academic year, has given back to the College through demonstrated enthusiasm, initiative, and outstanding execution and achievement. Kalena was instrumental in the first Sophomore Bootcamp, a large-scale, careerfocused program for sophomores held on campus in January of this past year. Nearly two hundred students returned to campus for this five-day program to develop careerbuilding skills, from self-knowledge to résumé writing.

Timothy Kuhner: “My family and I relocated to New Zealand in 2018, which is proving to be a great place to live. I teach anti-corruption law at the University of Auckland and have just published a new book, Tyranny of Greed: Trump, Corruption, and the Revolution to Come.”

1999

Kyle Hegarty “has published The Accidental Business Nomad: A Survival Guide for Working Across a Shrinking Planet, his first book and a

Gifts That Keep on Giving Throughout Bowdoin’s history, the future of the College has been reinforced by alumni, parents, and friends who have included it in their philanthropic plans. The most popular ways to meaningfully impact Bowdoin’s future are to include a provision in a will or trust, or to designate a percentage of certain assets.

Our Plan That Counts Quick Planner outlines these options—along with others—to provide for the College, as well as for yourself and loved ones.

Gift plan following death

Will/ Living Trust

Designation

X

X

Asset types: Cash

X

Securities

X

Retirement assets

X

Life insurance policy

X

Financial account

X

Real estate

X

Art, collectibles, etc.

X

Benefits: Estate tax savings

X

Avoid probate Lifetime control of assets

X X

X

X

Review the complete Quick Planner at bowdo.in/quick, or contact Nancy Milam or Liz Armstrong in the Office of Gift Planning, giftplanning@bowdoin.edu or 207-725-3172, to explore your options for supporting the From Here campaign.

THE C AMPAI GN FOR B OWDOIN

BOWDOIN MAGAZINE FALL 2020 | CLASSNEWS@BOWDOIN.EDU 55

Connect manual for businesspeople stepping out of the traditional workplace into a globalized and uncertain world.

Hegarty, who lives in Singapore, said the book is aimed at people who find themselves working internationally when they didn’t quite expect it and cites studies that examine the customs and cultural variations of doing business in other countries. Over the summer, the author had help with his book campaign from new alumna Itza Bonilla Hernandez ’20 and current student Elliott Ramirez ’21, both of whom also joined him in a July 15 panel discussion about finding job opportunities in a recession and how to leverage a liberal arts education.”

From a bowdoin.edu/news story, July 5, 2020.

“When Ryan Ravenscroft moved back to Brunswick in 2017 with his wife, Courtney Mongell Ravenscroft ’01, he wanted a career change. He left a fourteenyear banking career in Boston and took a position with the Mid Coast Hunger Prevention Program (MCHPP) to fulfill his dream of sustaining farms while helping to feed his neighbors. He grew up on a cattle farm in western Pennsylvania and watched as his diversified farming community with its many small farms was gradually replaced by big soybean and corn producers.

When the arrival of COVID-19 put additional strain on smaller farms—and made it more difficult to secure basic food items from grocery stores—MCHPP decided to take action on Ravenscroft’s plan.

With support from donors and a $15,000 grant from the Elmina B. Sewall Foundation, the MCHPP has launched its new Farm-to-Pantry program. To date, Ravenscroft has negotiated to buy food from five farms. They will provide MCHPP’s

food bank and soup kitchen with carrots, tomatoes, squash, sweet potatoes, and other fruits and vegetables.” From a bowdoin.edu/news story, June 10, 2020.

2000

Jayme Okma Lee: “We just returned to Maine on our forty-eight-foot sailboat from the Caribbean. My husband and I were both on the Bowdoin sailing team, so when we were in Florida, we reached out to the team to see if any Bowdoin sailors would be interested in joining our boat and helping us sail offshore from Florida to Maine.

We got lucky, and two Bowdoin freshmen—to-be sophomores— joined us! To learn more about us you can visit our website, sailingsargo.com. We also have a nice Instagram, @SailingSargo.”

The Class of 2000 earned the Harry K. Warren Trophy.

Beginning in 1998, the award recognizes the two reunion classes achieving the highest percentage of participation in the Alumni Fund.

During their twentieth reunion year, the class had a 45 percent participation rate.

Christo Sims: “I’m happy to report that I received tenure from the University of California San Diego in 2018 and that I’ll be spending the 2020–2021 academic year as a fellow in the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.

After eight years in San Diego, I’m looking forward to spending the year closer to many Bowdoin friends and classmates!”

2003

Joy Giguere’s path to Penn State, where she was recently granted tenure, is perhaps an unusual one for a professor of history. “While

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at Bowdoin, I double-majored in anthropology and music and was really interested in pursuing a career in archaeology.” Graduate school at the University of Maine, however, fostered an interest in the study of gravestones, cemeteries, and other aspects of historical archaeology. In recent years, one of her special areas of interest has become the public commemoration of the Civil War and the erection of public monuments. “What interests me is how communities used these cultural landscapes and monuments to create a shared memory of the war and give it meaning, and how establishing this Southern counternarrative of the Civil War has resulted in the kinds of ongoing conflicts regarding the public memory of the war that we have today,” she said. “I tell my students that, as a general rule, history is written by the victors— except in the case of the American Civil War. Nowhere else in time and space do you see both the victors and the vanquished coming out of a massive military conflict establishing dual narratives of how to understand that conflict literally etched in stone for posterity. If we can wrap our heads around these competing narratives and counternarratives of the war, we can better grasp why our society is still so fractured in its understanding of the war and its legacy today.”

From a bowdoin.edu/news story, June 15, 2020.

2004

In May, the Foreign Policy Research Institute announced that Gil Barndollar was one of three selectees chosen from an impressive set of applicants for the Lt. Gen. Bernard E. Trainor USMC Veterans Fellowships for

2020. “Barndollar is a senior fellow at the Catholic University of America’s Center for the Study of Statesmanship (CSS). His writing has appeared in USA Today, The Los Angeles Times, The National Interest, The American Conservative, US Naval Institute Proceedings, and The Marine Corps Gazette, among other publications. He holds an MPhil and PhD in history from the University of Cambridge.

From 2009 to 2016, Barndollar served as an infantry officer in the United States Marine Corps. He deployed twice to Afghanistan, as a light armored reconnaissance platoon commander and as a combat advisor with the Georgian Army. He also led a Fleet Antiterrorism Security Team (FAST) platoon during deployments to Guantanamo Bay and the Persian Gulf. He continues to serve in the Rhode Island Army National Guard. During his fellowship, Gil will conduct field research to do reporting and long-form writing on the underexplored international security issue of the use of Sudanese mercenaries as proxy forces in Libya. His goal in doing so is to examine the human side of proxy wars, providing insight into the expendable surrogates who are doing much of the world’s fighting today.” From a Foreign Policy Research Institute online announcement, May 4, 2020.

Kristin Pollock has been honored by the Alumni Fund with the Class of 1976 Trophy.

Established in 2004, it is awarded annually to the class agent, associate agent, or team of volunteers whose energy, creativity, and leadership in a non-reunion year are deserving of special recognition.

Crystal Welch, professor and supervising attorney at the

Mississippi College School of Law, has been active in the effort to replace the Mississippi state flag.

“No one fighting this fight thinks we won’t win. The participants are optimistic,” Welch said. Welch prefers the flag designed by Rocky Vaughn, which includes the magnolia, Mississippi’s state flower.

She is opposed to the “Stennis flag” because it inverts the Confederateera Bonnie Blue flag. But Welch is open to other ideas. “Any flag that doesn’t include Confederate iconography” is better, Welch explained. From a Jackson Free Press article, June 24, 2020.

2005

Karsten Moran “was one of 126 winners of Communication Arts’ 61st Annual Design Competition. His photograph—which ran in the New York Times story ‘Pop-Up Diners That Share a Culture, Course by Course’—featured Trinidad-born chef Leigh-Ann Martin in her home kitchen. It was one of 2,947 total entries from which a panel of jurors selected the winners. The magazine is the largest international trade journal of visual communications, with coverage that includes graphic design, advertising, photography, illustration, and interactive media.”

From a Communication Arts announcement, June 2020.

2006

Reunion

Allie Yanikoski Nerenberg: “My husband, J, and I welcomed our third and final baby boy this spring. J, Jake, Sam, Ben, and I live outside Burlington, Vermont, where we regularly adventure with Chris Eaton and his wife and son. I work for the Department of Mental Health for the State of Vermont as a licensed clinical mental health counselor.”

2007

James Gadon: “When COVID first broke out in North America, I started reflecting on my career and decided to write an article called ‘An Unbalanced Mix.’ It explores some of the inequalities (particularly having to do with gender) in the music business. I held off from publishing it online but recently made some tweaks given the current political and social climate, and decided to post it on my website, jamesgadon.com.”

Janelle Charles ’06

2008

Krystal Buissereth has been honored by the Alumni Council with an Alumni Footprints Award, which recognizes a volunteer who, in organizing at least one event or program during the preceding academic year, has given back to the College through demonstrated enthusiasm, initiative, and outstanding execution and achievement.

Krystal was instrumental in the first Sophomore Bootcamp, a largescale, career-focused program for sophomores held on campus in January of this past year. Nearly two hundred students returned to campus for this five-day program to develop career-building skills, from self-knowledge to résumé writing. She was also honored for contributing to the panel discussion “A Seat at the Table” as part of the AF/AM/50 celebration in November 2019.

Wellesley Wilson has been honored by the Alumni Council with a Polar Bear Award in recognition of her significant personal contributions and outstanding dedication to Bowdoin, especially the guidance and leadership displayed during her service as national chair of BRAVO, supporting and expanding the outreach of the admissions office in the recruitment of qualified students for Bowdoin.

PHOTO: MARK WOODING, COURTESY OF UCSF SCHOOL OF NURSING

Catching Up

PRACTICING CARE Janelle Charles ’06 is a full-time student in University of California San Francisco’s FirstGenRN program, pursuing a dual nurse practitioner specialty while also working full time as a nurse in a California corrections facility.

WHEN I ARRIVED AT BOWDOIN, I thought I was going to major in government and legal studies to pursue a career in civil rights law. However, while studying abroad, I befriended a medical student and began to learn about the universality of medicine.

After Bowdoin, I was accepted into San Francisco State University’s postbaccalaureate pre-health professions program with a focus on medical school admissions, but with just a few courses to go, I couldn’t afford to continue. Working at a nonprofit, and taking the remaining medical school prerequisites one at a time, I had an opportunity to volunteer at a women’s clinic, where I saw the wide scope of practice of nurse practitioners and decided that was the path for me.

THE MOST REWARDING ASPECT is caring for people most in need.

I work with individuals who have been forgotten by society.

As a BIPOC [Black, Indigenous, and people of color] nurse, I have an opportunity to work toward changing a system that has historically been biased toward and difficult to navigate for many in my community. Bowdoin’s dedication to the common good has impacted every part of my life.

For more of our interview with Janelle, visit bowdoin.edu/magazine.

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Connect Allie Yanikoski Nerenberg ’06 and her husband, J, welcomed their “third and final baby boy” this spring.

Johnny Coster ’12 and Katie Woo Coster ’12 welcomed daughter Maven Coster into the world in February 2020.

On August 1, hard-core Polar Bears Connor Phillips ’17, Charlie Southwick ’18, Lily Bailey ’18, Ellie Hands ’18, Cirque Gammelin ’20, and Christian Gostout ’20 raced the Rendezvous Hill Climb at Jackson Hole Mountain Resort in Jackson, Wyoming.

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2010

The Class of 2010 has earned the Robert Seaver Edwards Trophy. Awarded annually to one of the ten youngest classes making the largest contribution to the Alumni Fund, the trophy honors Robert Seaver Edwards, Class of 1900. It was presented to the College in 1965. The class raised $44,611 over the past year.

Maxine Janes has been honored by the Alumni Council with the Young Alumni Service Award in recognition of distinguished and outstanding service to Bowdoin.

This award recognizes exemplary continued service to the College by a graduate of the past ten years.

Maxine has stayed connected to campus through her work as a BCAN advisor, class agent, regional volunteer, and chair of both her fifth and tenth Reunion Committees.

Shavonne Lord: “My husband, Tom (Vautour, Boston College ’11), and I welcomed a baby boy, Myles, in March 2020.”

2011

Reunion

Evan Fricke: “I am a postdoctoral fellow at the National SocioEnvironmental Synthesis Center, a research center at the University of Maryland supported by the National Science Foundation. I study how animals influence the biodiversity and functioning of forests. My major focus is on birds and mammals that eat the fruits of trees and other plants and disperse their seeds. These are nature’s gardeners, helping with the natural regeneration of forests and responding to challenges like climate change. The article in Nature takes a global perspective to ask how human activities have impacted the mutually beneficial relationships between fleshy-fruited plants and the animals

that disperse their seeds. It’s exciting to reach a broad audience with this research by publishing in one of the highest-profile scientific journals. One cool part of this story is that some of the data were collected by Bowdoin emeritus biology professor Nat Wheelwright. He amassed a large dataset in Monteverde, Costa Rica, around 1980. It’s awesome to see that fieldwork from decades ago is contributing to cutting-edge research today.” From a bowdoin.edu/news story, September 11, 2020.

“Robinson and Cole is pleased to announce the addition of James F. Lathrop as an associate in the firm’s bankruptcy and reorganizations group. Lathrop concentrates his practice on bankruptcy and corporate restructuring matters in the firm’s Wilmington office. He represents debtors, committees, and creditors in Chapter 11 reorganizations, bankruptcy proceedings, and out-of-court workouts. He also has experience in ad hoc creditor group representations. His work spans a variety of industries, including oil and gas, transportation, telecommunications, retail, technology, and automotive. His in-court experience includes prepackaged bankruptcies, 363 sales, and traditional Chapter 11 restructurings.” From a Robinson and Cole LLP press release, July 29, 2020.

2012

Throughout the month of September, every day the weather allowed it, University of New Brunswick PhD student Gina Lonati headed out into the Bay of Fundy on a chartered fishing boat. She brought along a drone outfitted with two cameras: one to capture thermal images and the other to shoot high-resolution footage.

When she spotted a whale, she flew the drone into position over

the surfacing animal. The highresolution images allow her to measure the ratio of body length to width, to see how lean or robust they are. When a whale briefly opens its blowhole to take a breath of air, the thermal imaging camera can get a reading of its core body temperature. To get a more specific number, she also had temperature probes measuring the water surface and air around the whale to compare with the whale’s internal temperature. When she returns to her lab, Lonati uses this data to see how whales’ physical condition could be affected by human impacts or food availability, and how it could be affecting their survival and reproductive rates. To protect the world’s remaining right whales, scientists and officials in Canada and the US are focused on better understanding the whale’s habits, and how climate change is affecting their foraging, migrating, and breeding behavior. From a bowdoin.edu/news story, September 21, 2020.

2013

The Class of 2013 has earned the Class of 1929 Trophy from the Alumni Fund. Established in 1963 by the Class of 1929, the award recognizes one of the ten youngest classes attaining the highest percentage of participation.

This year, the class had a 38.7 percent participation rate.

On August 4, the WNYW “Good Day New York” morning show named artist Louisa Cannell a “Hero of the Day” for her mural commemorating workers on the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The work—which hangs in the lobby of the Midtown Manhattan Hippodrome—features a banner that reads “back to work thanks to everyday heroes” and includes

illustrations of people in medicine, delivery businesses, sanitation, and food service, among others. Louisa has contributed illustrations for several Bowdoin Magazine issues, most recently in the Winter 2020 edition.

View her work at louisacannell.com.

Jacob Dickson: “Nikki [Kuna] and I moved to Austin, where I am attending the full-time MBA program at the University of Texas McCombs School of Business. Nikki recently graduated from the master’s in health administration program at Johns Hopkins and is working in health care consulting.”

THE CAMPAIGN FOR BOWDOIN

“This campaign is a moment for each of us to step up and give back to a community we love.

This is our moment to ensure that Bowdoin is still a place that gives smart, kind young people the best education in the world regardless of their family’s ability to pay for it.”

—SYDNEY ASBURY ’03

2014

Evan Gershkovich works as a reporter for The Moscow Times, a post he has held for nearly three years at the independent English-language news website.

After working in communications for an environmental rights NGO based in Southeast Asia and freelancing for a few local Englishlanguage outlets on the side, he decided he would give journalism a real try. But, when he moved back home to New York, it was tough to break into that world. He took jobs as a cook for a catering company and at a restaurant until he landed a job as a temporary night clerk on The New York Times’ foreign desk. Eventually, he found himself a full-time assistant job at the paper and worked there for nearly two years. Then, in the summer of 2017, The Moscow Times was looking for a reporter. Because his parents are Soviet émigrés, he grew up speaking Russian at home and applied for the position. Now he reports news features and covers major news events and breaking news. For the past several months, he has focused on stories around the pandemic.

He says, as Russia begins lifting

A commitment to financial aid opens Bowdoin’s doors to students regardless of their financial means. bowdoin.edu/fromhere

BOWDOIN MAGAZINE FALL 2020 | CLASSNEWS@BOWDOIN.EDU 59

Connect quarantine restrictions, his focus will likely shift away from the immediate news and more to political and economic stories, as the effects of the past few months begin to surface and ripple. From a bowdoin.edu/news story, June 5, 2020.

Katie Ross: “I have been working with another Bowdoin graduate, Marcus Schneider ’13, to start up a circular fashion brand (again&again) while we’re pursuing MBAs at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management.

Again&again has a fun additional tie to Bowdoin. It’s a fashion brand that exists to inspire circular living through more comfortable jeans designed to never be thrown out.

Instead, we upcycle our jeans into new ones using a clean chemical recycling process. The secret is our 100 percent lyocell fabric, which makes our jeans softer, lighter, and more breathable than cotton.

Every element of our design has been carefully considered with comfort and sustainability in mind: from the dark wash (saves water in production) to the rivetless design (makes upcycling possible) to the non-leather back patch (saves cows and reduces greenhouse gas emissions). Again&again is revolutionizing the way we make and wear jeans, offering consumers a brand they can feel great in and great about. Marcus is applying his Bowdoin physics education (and the material science engineering degree he obtained through the 3-2 Program), along with his experience in Nike operations, to bring to life a radically innovative product. I am running the company’s marketing and communications efforts, relying on the skills I developed at Bowdoin as a government and Asian studies double major and during my time working at Deloitte and P&G. It’s

a socially responsible brand that ‘counts Nature a familiar acquaintance.’ In keeping with the Offer of the College, again&again takes environmental stewardship seriously.

Again&again uses a fabric that can be upcycled into new jeans again and again, and we have created a circular, closed-loop cycle to keep the process going forever. The products are 100 percent vegan. To top it off, we plant a tree for every pair of jeans purchased!”

Madison Smith described it as a “once-in-a-lifetime” experience—the chance to take part in what’s being described as the largest polar expedition in history. After quarantining in a German hotel room for two weeks, Smith made her way to the Arctic to join an international team of researchers. She was part of the multidisciplinary drifting observatory for the study of Arctic climate (MOSAiC) expedition. Inspired by the Norwegian researcher and explorer Fridtjof Nansen, who completed the first drift across the Arctic Ocean over the course of three years during the 1890s, the project was established by a consortium of leading polar research institutions. It centered around the German icebreaking research vessel RV Polarstern, where Smith lived and worked until she returned home in August. The ship itself is spending a total of one year drifting with the Arctic sea ice, in order to help scientists better understand the changes happening in the region as the epicenter of global climate change.

From a bowdoin.edu/news story, May 28, 2020.

2016

Reunion

Kristen Hilbert and Dustin Biron ’15: “We were married in a private ceremony on May 9, 2020,

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“This is old-school matchmaking.

No algorithms are involved.”

—OLIVIA ATWOOD ’17 ON LIV’S LOVE POOL, THE PHONE-BASED DATING APP THAT SHE CREATED DURING THE PANDEMIC LOCKDOWN

in Basking Ridge, New Jersey— nearly seven and a half years after meeting for the first time on Bowdoin’s campus. Our ‘pandemic wedding’ turned out to be a beautiful opportunity to focus on one another, and we look forward to celebrating with all of our family and friends in 2021!”

2017

Bored and living at home during the pandemic lockdown, Olivia Atwood took a cue from the reality TV show Love Is Blind and started Liv’s Love Pool, using Instagram to invite people who want to be matched for a blind phone-call date to submit three facts about themselves, including age and location. She would use these facts to set up a phone date with someone she thought was suitable.

So far, she’s matched close to 400

people and enjoys an astonishing 85 percent success rate. The runaway success of Liv’s Love Pool has forced Atwood to take the step of making it a fully professional operation. Much of the appeal, Atwood thinks, is due to the bespoke nature of the service. Furthermore, there are no photos used in this app. The emphasis, says Atwood, is very much on getting people talking. So Liv’s Love Pool is, in many ways, tailor-made for the lockdown.

Deprived of their usual social lives, single people have become isolated and frustrated, so a phone-based dating app makes perfect sense.

From a bowdoin.edu/news story, July 15, 2020.

On August 1, hard-core Polar Bears Connor Phillips ’17, Charlie Southwick ’18, Lily Bailey ’18, Ellie Hands ’18, Cirque Gammelin ’20, and Christian Gostout ’20 raced

ILLUSTRATION: ERIC HANSON

the Rendezvous Hill Climb at Jackson Hole Mountain Resort in Jackson, Wyoming. (“The race had staggered starts and masks were required at all times while not running,” Connor noted.) Winding from the base of Teton Village up almost 4,000 vertical feet, the racers then plunged down a 1,200-foot descent to complete the nearly eight-mile race, dubbed “the hardest race you will ever love.”

2019

From September to December 2019, Will Bucci traveled to eight monasteries and meditation centers to study different Buddhist traditions.

“I wanted to start my twenty-third year of existence going all the way into this meditation thing and see how far I could take it,” he said.

By wintertime, he was flying to Myanmar for what would become a sixty-five-day silent retreat at the Panditarama Hse Main Gon Forest Center in Bahan Township. “We weren’t supposed to look at people, talk, or write notes,” Bucci said. For those who know Bucci, the idea of him remaining quiet for such a long period of time comes across as just short of miraculous. “Honestly, in normal life, I am outgoing and talkative, but in these retreats I settle into the silence fairly easily.” His stay in Burma was cut short by the COVID-19 pandemic, and he flew home in late February. “I thought that the only way I could get to where I want to be was by being a Buddhist monk. But I can get to that place by teaching music in a high school or opening a bakery,” he said. At the moment, he’s focusing on writing and playing music, and eventually would like to go to graduate school to become a psychotherapist.

From a bowdoin.edu/news story, May 26, 2020.

“Five accomplished Illinois Computer Science (CS) graduate students, including Beleicia Bullock, have been recognized for their academic achievements and leadership, joining the 2021 class of Siebel Scholars. Each year, the Siebel Scholars program recognizes the most talented graduate students at the world’s most prestigious graduate schools of business, computer science, energy science, and bioengineering. Siebel Scholars are examining some of today’s most pressing problems and advancing on solutions. The principles underlying their efforts are social responsibility, entrepreneurship, and lifelong community. Bullock is exploring ways to leverage computer science education and humancomputer interaction to develop preventive measures that protect marginalized communities from technological and algorithmic bias.

Her current research efforts broadly revolve around two projects—CS ethics interventions and diversity in CS graduate programs.” From an Illinois Computer Science press release, September 25, 2020.

Donald Detchou, a second-year medical student at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine, is the lead author of a new paper about a novel surgical technique to remove chordomas— rare, locally aggressive spinal tumors that can metastasize to the bone, lungs, liver, and soft tissue.

Studies have shown that taking out the entire tumor ensures survival of those affected by the cancer.

However, removing malignant growths on the spine is precarious, as it’s easy to damage nearby blood vessels or nerves and cause permanent damage or prolong patient recovery. In the paper, published in World Neurosurgery,

Detchou explains that his team of UPenn researchers—led by chief of neurosurgery Neil R. Malhotra— developed an innovative approach to operating on these tumors, which lessens the chance of inadvertent harm. The tool they use, an ultrasonic bone-cutting device with a serrated tip, utilizes microvibrations to distinguish between hard and soft tissue and selectively cut mineralized structures, including bone. In the surgical world, this technique is known as piezosurgery. Since 2016, Malhotra and his group have utilized the ultrasonic aspirator on eight patients—in three different areas of the spine—and all have had successful post-surgery outcomes.

From a bowdoin.edu/news story, August 21, 2020.

Jack Richardson has been research assistant for Russell Crandall ’94, a professor of political science at Davidson College, on a new book on the history of the United States in Latin America, Russell reports. “As a history major, Jack’s exquisitely trained to dive right into the entire manuscript: fact checking, researching, and even writing some original sections. What’s especially cool, I think, is that I’ve been able to integrate Jack into my own writing and publication work, enough to where he’ll be a coauthor on at least twelve publications in this single year, which is pretty impressive (and rare) for someone just out of undergrad. He is slated to start up at Johns Hopkins to study for his MA in international relations.

I actually went to the same grad school program, so he’s keeping in the family, in addition to being my cousin once removed.”

Photographer Darius Riley’s work was featured in San Francisco advertising agency Duncan

Channon’s campaign “Suppress This” in support of Vote From Home 2020, an organization that works to empower “dual-risk voters” of color—those who face higher risks of COVID-19 and voter disenfranchisement—to vote by mail in November. The creative featured portraits of Black and brown Americans shot by Riley and Andrea Granera, while highlighting the mailin ballot as the solution for voting challenges from both systematic suppression and COVID-19. From a San Francisco Egotist announcement, September 15, 2020.

2020

Thomas Barzilay Freund’s short film, The Caller, premiered on July 8 at the 2020 Maine International Film Festival in Skowhegan. The film is seven minutes of eerie, atmospheric tension, in which a young man is troubled by a familiar yet mysterious visitor. It was included as part of the festival’s Maine Shorts, with a showing at a Skowhegan drive-in theater. Freund shot and edited the film last fall for the Bowdoin class “Filmmaking and Born-Digital Storytelling,” taught by Visiting Assistant Professor of Art and Digital and Computational Studies Erin Johnson. “I like the idea of conveying a strong emotion in a short window of time. You need to be concise with your work,” Freund said. The first film Freund made for Johnson’s filmmaking class, My Rifle, My Pony, and Me (inspired by a Dean Martin song), was also selected for a Maine film festival last fall hosted by the University of Maine. It came in second place. Both films feature Freund’s roommate Cirque Gammelin as the main actor. From a bowdoin.edu/news story, July 7, 2020.

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Connect

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Celebrate

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1. Andrew Sinnenberg ’08 and Lauren Blatt (Georgetown University ’08) were married on February 1, 2020, at Brooklyn Winery in Brooklyn, New York.

Pictured: Gordon Convery ’08, Corey Bergen Caras ’08, Lauren Canzano, Scott Caras ’08, Jonah Platt-Ross ’08, Lauren and Andrew, Max Key ’08, Michael Giordano ’08, Anushka Gupta Giordano, Armin Drake ’08, and Alex Gluck ’08.

2. Kristen Hilbert ’16 and Dustin Biron ’15 were married in a private ceremony on May 9, 2020, in Basking Ridge, New Jersey. Pictured: Kristen and Dustin.

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3. Roman Jackson ’06 and Linda Trotter (Cornell University ’06) were married on July 25, 2020, at St. Ignatius Loyola Church in New York City. It was the first wedding the church held as it started to reopen to the public after the COVID-19 stay-at-home order. Pictured: Jamaal Redon ’06, Roman and Linda, Emily Abrons ’07, and Anton Handel ’07.

4. Tori Guen ’13 and Momoho Takao (Brown University ’03) were married on August 3, 2019, at Grounds for Sculpture in Hamilton, New Jersey. Pictured: Samantha Leahy ’13, Erica Nangeroni ’14, Jim Reidy ’13, Caitlin Shaffer ’16, Frances Gurzenda ’16, Momoho and Tori, David McMillan ’81, Terry Guen ’81, Amy Guen (widow of Edward Guen ’49), Leo Guen ’76, Tim Guen ’79, and his wife, Janet Guen.

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5. Jacob Dickson ’13 and Nikki Kuna ’13 were married on October 12, 2019, in Catonsville, Maryland.

Pictured: Nikki and Jacob, Sunnie Kuna ’14, David Dickson ’76, Peggy Zhao ’13, Leon Dickson ’67, Benjamin Wei ’13, (a cardboard cutout of) Spencer Vespole ’13, Megan Wei ’13, Tori Guen Takao ’13, Margot Chapin ’13, Raksa Son ’13, Jonathan Song ’13, Miko Lim ’14, Jesse Gildesgame ’13, Ben Hill Lam ’13, Susan Rice H’18, and Audrey Loke ’13. (Spencer Vespole ’13, battling cancer, could not make the ceremony. He succumbed to the cancer on December 13, 2019.)

6. William Kenefake ’16 and Anna Zimmerman (Emporia State University ’16) were married on December 31, 2019, at the historic post office in Ottawa, Kansas. Pictured: Tomas Donatelli Pitfield ’16, Trevor Murray ’16, Sergio Gomez ’16, Jacob MacDonald ’16, Simon Pritchard ’16, William and Anna, Jacob Muscato ’16, Lucas Shaw ’16, Jenny Hughes ’16, and Woodworth Winmill ’16.

7. Shavonne Lord ’10 and Thomas Vautour (Boston College ’11) were married on January 19, 2019, at the Bedford Village Inn in Bedford, New Hampshire. Pictured: Jessica Britt ’10, Lauren Barrasso ’10, Jayme Woogerd ’07, Caroline Ferrari ’10, Courtney Jane Bell Rossi ’10, Christopher Rossi ’10, Samantha Schwager Downing ’10, Courtney Grater ’09, Shavonne, Thomas Kilcoyne ’73, Kelly Overbye ’09, Maggie Brenner ’10, Clare Ronan ’10, Jon Karl ’10, Sarah Lord ’10, Kara Kelley ’10, Eric Harrison ’09, Kate Chin ’08, Julia Jacobs ’10, Emily McKinnon ’10, Libby Wilcosky Lee ’10, and Eric Lee ’08. (The groom is not pictured.)

BOWDOIN MAGAZINE FALL 2020 | CLASSNEWS@BOWDOIN.EDU 63

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BY EDGAR ALLEN BEEM P’13

PORTLAND’S APPROACH Lelia DeAndrade, who taught Africana studies at Bowdoin from 1994 to 2001, is now vice president for community impact at the Maine Community Foundation. She also co-chairs Portland’s new Racial Equity Steering Committee, charged with “reviewing the City’s approach to public safety” including the roles police are being asked to play in the community, the way in which the City interacts with nonprofits in the name of public safety, and how policies, structures, and procedures related to public safety may disproportionately impact Black people and other people of color.

NEW GLOUCESTER UNITED AGAINST RACISM There are Black Lives Matter ally groups in many Maine cities and towns, and one of the most active small-town groups is New Gloucester United Against Racism. The group demonstrates on the twenty-fifth of each month (the day of the month of George Floyd’s killing) and has been working to get the local AMVET group to stop flying the Confederate flag during parades and Civil War reenactments.

ANTI-RACISM IN MAINE LAWMAKING

“We must acknowledge the historic inequities that have established a system of structural racism that impacts all Mainers.”

—STATE REPRESENTATIVE RACHEL TALBOT ROSS

Maine’s new fifteen-member commission began by reviewing 454 of some 2,000 bills submitted to the 129th Legislature, designating twenty-six that should be passed immediately and twenty that should be revised to help combat racial disparities.

The bills address everything from criminal justice to education, health care, homelessness, and tribal sovereignty. Rep. Rachel Talbot Ross (D-Portland), whose father was the first African American elected to the Maine legislature and is herself the first African American woman elected to the legislature, chairs the commission. “In short, we must put racial equity and justice at the heart of our lawmaking,” says Talbot Ross. “We must acknowledge the historic inequities that have established a system of structural racism that impacts all Mainers.”

IN THE BRUNSWICK SCHOOLS As soon as Philip Potenziano took over in July as superintendent of the Brunswick School Department, he began work on an equity initiative, inspired in part by the national drive to address institutional racism, which Potenziano describes as “a transformational moment for our nation.” This new steering committee of teachers, administrators, students, parents, town councilors, and community members will examine everything from board policy and curriculum to implicit bias and diversity in the workforce.

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NAME CHANGES Though Maine outlawed racial slurs as place names in 1977, five Maine islands—three bearing the N-word and two a derogatory slang word for a Native American woman—finally had their names changed this year. More than thirty Maine public schools once had sports teams with names and mascots offensive to Native American people. In 2019, Maine passed a law banning Native American mascots.

PHOTO: ANDREW ESTEY

FOR THE CAUSE Maine is widely known as “the whitest state in the nation,� and indeed our demographics put us fiftieth for percentage of people of color. But whiteness does not mean blindness to issues of racial inequity and a need for justice. There are many ways to fight for those causes locally, and you can see many signs around Bowdoin like this one on Union Street in Brunswick.

Bowdoin Magazine Bowdoin College Brunswick, Maine 04011

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“ In that instant I began to understand what African Americans call, among ourselves, the ‘Black Tax,’ which is not only what we have to do extra, but also what we cannot do, what we must accept.”

—Anthony Walton, Senior Writer-in-Residence