1909 — Commander Robert Peary, Class of 1877, and his party depart the USS Roosevelt to make the remainder of the journey to the North Pole by dogsled.
The compilation also includes the fact that Bowdoin purchased $16.3 million dollars worth of goods and services from Maine vendors, including $2.79 million from Brunswick vendors, and that Bowdoin students provided 38,248 volunteer hours to Maine organizations (of which 7,389 hours were spent tutoring local students).
The latest census figures show that the number of Americans living in poverty rose to 46.2 million in 2010. That’s against an economic backdrop in which unemployment, house foreclosures and cuts to social services have also been on the rise. Barbara Ehrenreich, author of the New York Times best seller Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America (2001), chosen as the book for the Brunswick-Bowdoin Community Read, lent her insight and observations to a discussion on the topic “Is the American Dream Fading” on the Al Jazeera program Inside Story US 2012. Also weighing in are political commentator and PBS talk show host Tavis Smiley, and philosopher, civil rights activist and Princeton University professor Cornell West.
