In this article, you will get detail regarding Why Bowdoin’s commitment to the common good means it should do more for Maine
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Susan Young is the opinion editor of the Bangor Daily News.
Bowdoin College has a new president. For most Mainers, the news was met with a collective shrug. Last week’s online Bangor Daily News on the election of Safe Zaki to head the college, the first woman to do so in its 229-year history, did not elicit a single comment on our website.
This apparent lack of interest is too bad for the college and for the country.
Bowdoin has been educating the people of Maine (and the country and the world) longer than Maine has been a state. Still, many people in Maine don’t care about the private college in Brunswick.
A lot of people I’ve talked to in Maine don’t know Bowdoin is here. Some don’t know how to pronounce its name – the college, which was founded in 1794, is named after the second governor of Massachusetts, James Bowdoin. Most think that school – often seen as an elite place for rich people – is irrelevant to their lives.
Bates College also recently hired a new president, Garry Jenkins, the first black leader at the Lewiston school. So, why focus on Bowdoin?
First, I graduated from Bowdoin. That’s the main reason I’m in Maine. I first came to the Pine Tree State nearly 40 years ago to attend college. I lived and worked elsewhere after graduation, but returned to Maine in the 1990s in part because of my time in Brunswick.
My daughter is currently a student at Bowdoin, so I am literally invested in college.
I’m also deeply invested in Maine.
Then there’s this thing called the “common good.” It is Bowdoin’s slogan if you will.
But does Bowdoin serve the greater good of Maine?
Of course, the college employs many people and purchases millions of dollars worth of goods and services from Maine each year. It offers generous financial aid to Maine students, and many of its graduates remain in Maine, contributing to the state in many ways. Its students and staff volunteer with numerous organizations. College even has center for the common good which helps students who are interested in public service.
All of these are important and valued. However, leadership is both informing and encouraging the search for solutions to pressing problems. Especially if you pride yourself on being for the greater good.
Maine is a small, poor state. As such, powerful, wealthy institutions like Bowdoin can have a huge impact if they choose to engage more fully.
See Colby College, in Waterville. The college has deliberately chosen to be a more active, most would say positive, participant in the Waterville community, a place that has been hit hard by mill closings in recent decades. The college and donors have invested 85 million dollars in revitalizing Waterville. The college built apartments downtown, rather than on Mayflower Hill, where its campus is located, so students would be part of—and spend money in—the community. Other projects include a city center hotel, an arts center and a studio block.
Brunswick is no Waterville, but Colby’s president, David Greene, articulated this call to action well. “The world needs colleges and universities to be deeply engaged in their communities, to solve society’s problems,” recently said Inside Higher Ed.
Maine, frankly, has a lot of problems. Drug overdose deaths are on the rise and are happening more often here than in most other states. Housing is increasingly unaffordable in most parts of the country. Community leaders in the state’s largest cities are pleading for help for homeless people, and Portland is struggling to help newcomers from around the world, many of whom are seeking asylum in the U.S.
Meanwhile, many employers can’t find enough workers, and demographers warn that the state faces economic stagnation if more people don’t move here.
Bowdoin, of course, cannot solve these problems, but imagine if it invested more of its considerable resources—financial, knowledge, and otherwise—in the search for solutions. Imagine matching alumni and alumni giving with local nonprofits. Imagine Bowdoin’s Center for Rural Economics, in rural Maine.
I don’t know anything about running a college, so these may be unfeasible ideas. But I do know that in an era when higher education is denigrated as elitist and out of touch, colleges like Bowdoin need to recommit themselves to their home states and prove their worth to the wider community.
“It should always be remembered that literary institutions are founded and endowed for the common good, not for the private benefit of those who resort to them for education,” said the college’s first president, Joseph McKeen, in his 1802 inaugural address.
New president Safa Zaki will no doubt face many challenges and demands when she comes to Brunswick this summer. I hope they will rededicate Bowdoin to its charge of serving the common good of Maine.
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