The Bowdoin Orient

PRIMARY QUESTIONS: Democratic primary candidates for U.S. Senate from Maine Janet Mills and Graham Platner speak on Tuesday and Wednesday nights, respectively, in Mills Hall. In town halls organized by the Bowdoin Democrats, the candidates discussed their backgrounds and policy platforms before answering audience questions. PRIMARY QUESTIONS: Democratic primary candidates for U.S. Senate from Maine Janet Mills and Graham Platner speak on Tuesday and Wednesday nights, respectively, in Mills Hall.

The faculty and staff neurodivergence book group met for the third and final time last Thursday in Hutchinson Lounge to discuss the book “Of Many Minds.” The book is a collection of personal essays spotlighting the experiences of neurodivergent faculty and staff in American higher education. For three weeks, over lunch, participants discussed each one of the three parts, “Coping and Masking,” “Higher Ed Structures” and “Stigma,” coming up with takeaways at the end of each meeting.

It was my first move-in day at Bowdoin. After lugging all my suitcases up to my room on Appleton fourth floor, I walked over to Farley Field House with my new roommates for the cookout. I quickly found my orientation trip (o-trip) group, lined up, set my plate down on the grass and before I took my first bite, I snapped a picture of it. That picture later became the first photo I uploaded to @mybowdoinmeals, an Instagram account I started after returning from my o-trip.

In an email to all students this past Monday, Bowdoin Student Government (BSG) announced the winners of both this year’s class council and executive board elections. This comes a week after the results of the presidential, vice presidential, chair of the treasury and charterer elections were announced, marking the third year where the BSG election cycle has been split into two weeks.

On Wednesday evening, Bowdoin Student Government (BSG) assembled in Daggett Lounge to discuss allocating its remaining funds. BSG President Alex Kruse ’26 opened the meeting by congratulating the winners of the executive board and class council elections, the results of which were announced on Monday. Kruse noted that the election process will continue in the fall for vacant positions.

On Tuesday evening, the women’s sailing team was selected to compete in the team race nationals at Tulane University next weekend. The nomination marks the first time in program history that the team has qualified for the team race competition, with boats in previous years qualifying for the fleet race nationals. Team race sailing is a strategic event, with three boats per school competing to finish in the highest places possible.

I try not to go into my interviews with a thesis. But the notion of a couple who has run a bookstore on Maine Street for over four decades was catnip to an already hopeless romantic. Before I even met Gary and Beth of Gulf of Maine Books, I was already writing their love story in my head—the kind with Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan and a bookstore that smells like old paper and devotion. I have a “You’ve Got Mail” poster on my dorm wall. I was not going to be objective about this.

What happens when a writer loses the world that made him legible? That is the question that keeps bringing me back to Ovid’s exile poetry, the “Tristia” and “Ex Ponto,” written after Augustus banished him in A.D. 8  to Tomis, a city on the Black Sea far from Rome. If Ovid’s name is familiar, it is usually because of the “Metamorphoses,”  that dazzling epic of transformation, or the “Ars Amatoria,” the elegant and mischievous poem that may have helped send him into exile.

THE (W)HOLE IDEA: Professor of Physics and Astronomy at West Virginia University Maura McLaughlin speaks on Wednesday night in Kresge Auditorium. McLaughlin discussed fundamental processes of the universe, such as black hole mergers, and how physicists seek to understand them.

EYE ON IRAN: Associate Professor of History Salar Mohandesi speaks on Tuesday in Searles Hall. Mohandesi offered a historical perspective on the ongoing conflict between the US and Israel against Iran, focusing on themes of imperialism, sovereignty and democracy in Iran’s history.