Monday, April 22, 2013

Hurry! Get Your Tickets Now!

As is our habit, we picked up the latest edition of The Bowdoin Orient.  Ever mindful of our readers’ interests, and their insatiable thirst for knowledge, we want to highlight a rare opportunity this week.

On Wednesday the 24th, there is an ‘event’ labeled:

“Tomorrow’s Parties: Sex and the Untimely in Nineteenth-Century America.”

It will take place in the Faculty Room of Massachusetts Hall at 4:30 p.m.

Here’s the enticing description (emphasis ours):

English Professor Peter Coviello will celebrate the release of his new book, which addresses queer theory and Mormon sexuality.

Well!  All we can say is finally, thank goodness, someone on the Bowdoin faculty has decided to explore a subject that has been ignored for all too long.  As a Bowdoin student said a while ago, “What is Brunswick without Bowdoin – nothing!”

This event/book should put an end to concerns expressed in the NAS report on Bowdoin, which suggested that trivial intellectual pursuits were all too common at the college.  And that a disproportionate fascination with all things sexual, especially queer theory, is reflected in course offerings and faculty publications.

By the way, you can pick up a hardcover version of the book and celebrate along with the author for $75.  The good professor has served in the past as chair of the program in Gay and Lesbian Studies, as Acting Director of the Program in Africana Studies, and is currently Chair of the English Department.  So he’s got all the bases covered, it would seem.

We’ll close with a “cranky comment” on the latest Security Report, which, with some irony, appeared on the page opposite the profile on Side.

There were five explicit reports on intoxicated students, including one attending a concert at Colby.  One report relates how a student vomited in a College shuttle van, and that it was taken out of service and the driver sent home.

A number of other items could possibly involve intoxication, though the word was not used.  Various forms of vandalism, and one case of falling out of bed come to mind.

But the top pick of the week has to be this one, in which intoxication, though not mentioned, may have played a role:

Two female students were warned for urinating in public within view of College Street.

Which might lead you to ask whether the warning offense was “urinating in public,” or doing it “within view of College Street.”

Side pretty much thought such behavior was the exclusive province of male students, but apparently, post-modern feminist theory has freed females to mark their campus territory as well.

I smell a new book in this somewhere, and perhaps even a related course offering.

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