Main Content
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1960s
Bowdoin desired to create a "spirited and diverse" community of "students with different talents, of differing backgrounds, different places and with different points of view." Bowdoin identified admitting students from the "inner-city and the ghetto" to its campus as necessary to the representation it seeks for its campus.
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1970s
An “overseer” sees Bowdoin’s initiatives to admit "poor black youngsters” as “heroic." While financial aid has allowed for greater representation of minorities and economic classes that otherwise would not be able to afford a Bowdoin Education, the language used strikes a paternalistic tone.
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1974
By creating an admission policy in which SAT scores are optional, Bowdoin is attempting to allow for a more holistic admission process and increasing the diversity of students admitted from minority and low-income backgrounds.
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1980
The Admissions Office and Afro-American Society sponsor a "Weekend for Black Prospective Freshmen" to target black high school seniors to attend Bowdoin and increase diversity. As the Assistant Director of Admission notes, the "number of black freshmen at Bowdoin is embarrassingly low (six)."
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1983
"Weekend for Black Perspective Freshmen" turned into the "Weekend for Minority Students." The Afro-American Society still is involved in the program, but the program no longer targets just black students, but minorities of all racial backgrounds.
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1990
“Weekend for Minority Students” turned into “The Bowdoin Experience.” The program invites low-income, first-generation, and minority students to experience Bowdoin. The Bowdoin Experience happens at the same time as "Admitted Students' Weekend".
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1990s
This pamphlet highlights how Bowdoin's scholarships and special aid packages for "black, Hispanic and Native American students" are means to support students of color accessing a Bowdoin education.
Since Bowdoin was founded at the end of the eighteenth century, the college’s racial makeup has changed dramatically. The Bowdoin of 2019 is far different from that of its original conception. Interested in this seemingly sudden shift towards the promotion of racial diversity on Bowdoin’s campus, we hope to focus on the question of how Bowdoin’s community has come to look like it does today. Specifically, what steps has the college taken to increase enrollment of minority students overtime? What did the process look like?
In order to answer this question, our team has analyzed and gathered several files within Bowdoin’s Special Collections that tell us about the history of students of color at Bowdoin. While looking at these archived letters to prospective applicants of color, admissions and financial aid-centered materials, and demographic information, we have identified core ways that Bowdoin has appealed to students of color. The renaming of an event once known as a “Weekend for Black Perspective Freshman” to what we now recognize as the “Bowdoin Experience”, for instance, speaks greatly to the recruitment efforts Bowdoin has made overtime, and makes up one of many of the school’s efforts. Other outreach efforts have included letters and pamphlets sent to prospective minority students, financial aid and scholarship expansion, and the implementation of the test-optional program to make admission more accessible to a greater variety of students, and all files that we hope to share.