Frequently Asked Questions

The organizers are collecting feedback through a Google Survey here.

The Center for the Common Good is also sponsoring a debriefing on Friday, October 2, 12:30 pm, Daggett Lounge:  Join the community for Next Steps: Learn, Connect, Move Forward, an opportunity to share knowledge gained from the teach in, reflect, explore your personal passions, and help determine next steps.

#BowdoinTeachIn is ready for you.  As part of our campus conversation, data experts from the Digital and Computational Media Studies Program will gather data from this hashtag to map our connections and excitement!

If you need help getting started in the world of hashtags, Chelsea Doyle, Bowdoin’s Digital Community Manager has provided some basic instructions for you here.

Registration is recommended for just 17 of the more than 35 events on October 1.  These include smaller open classes designed just for today with small group discussion or creative activities and some larger open classes that are part of a semester course with limited space for additional participants.

There is no reservation for large forum events, scheduled in larger lecture spaces.  Seating at these events will be based on room capacity.  With so many parallel events, the organizers are confident that there will be opportunities for the whole campus to explore and enjoy the Teach-in.

Links to the registration tool are found on the detailed schedule and the open class registration page.

The Teach-in will be Thursday, October 1, 2015, from 10:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.

As members of an educational community, students, staff, and faculty at Bowdoin are committed to teaching and learning about the likely consequences of our current actions and about alternatives.

The dual threats of systemic inequity and climate destabilization are linked in both cause and effect.  We all agree they are serious problems, yet meaningful and productive conversations about them can be very difficult.

Some faculty and staff have specific scholarly understandings and longstanding engagements with these topics. We eagerly welcome that expertise and many of us can learn from our resident experts. However, as educated people we are all capable of making useful sense of the world, of asking pointed questions, of making connections between apparently unrelated things, of knowing and admitting the limits of our competence, and of conducting civil and reasoned dialogue across deep divides.

The organizers of the Teach-in encourage you to contribute to the dialogue both by sharing your knowledge and by modeling respectful public conversation.

Participation can occur in many ways. The more people engaging with the topics, the more valuable it will be for all participants. Here are some suggestions:

• Encourage your students to attend as much of the event as possible.
• Attend as much of the event yourself as possible. Sign up for events here (after September 15).
• Incorporate material relevant to the teach-in into your Oct. 1 class.
• Incorporate relevant material and move your class to one of the Teach-in time slots. See the schedule here  Contact the organizers about room reservations promptly, so we can help find an appropriate space.
• Consider redirecting your students’ learning  to the Teach-in.  The schedule will be full of interesting interdisciplinary presentations with broad relevance.
• Put together an open class, ideally team-taught, on some aspect of the teach-in topic. Here are examples. If you need ideas, we have them!
• Participate in a panel discussion. Here are some that are already planned.
• Plan a reading, short performance or presentation for the Arts Stage.

The wider ranging your politics and positions on the Teach-in topics, the better. We only ask that your contribution explicitly address the connections between racism, climate change and social justice.

We welcome any and all interested parties. The more people engaging with the topics, the more valuable it will be for all participants. Here are some ways for you to get involved

• Attend as much of the event as possible. Sign up here (after September 15).
• Spread the word to your friends, clubs or anyone else and/or help with postering and other advertising.
• Staff a table with information about campus programs and Intersectional opportunities at the Expo.
• Put together an open team-taught class (in consultation with the organizers), on some aspect of the Teach-in topics. Here are examples. If you need ideas, we have them!
• Participate in a panel discussion. Here are some that are already planned.
• Plan a reading, short performance or presentation for the Arts Stage.
• Become a volunteer organizer and get involved in planning discussions by emailing the organizers.
• Encourage your professors to be involved in the event by redirecting their classes to the Teach-in, incorporating relevant material in regular classes, putting together an open class or participating in a panel discussion.

The wider ranging your politics and positions on the Teach-in topics, the better. We only ask that your contribution explicitly address the connections between racism, climate change and social justice.

College operations will run as usual. Recognizing this, employees interested in attending will need to work with their supervisor to coordinate schedules and determine an appropriate amount of release time to ensure that offices can remain open.

All employees are encouraged to take advantage of the opportunities for teaching, learning and dialogue provided by the Teach-in.   The more people engaging with the topics, the more valuable it will be for all participants.

Here are some ways for you to get involved:

• Attend as much of the event yourself as possible. Sign up for events here (after September 15).
• Let the organizers know about your interest and relevant expertise.  We are very interested in staff participation in panel discussions, directing open classes, or facilitating discussion.
• If you are a supervisor, encourage participation by your staff as much as possible.
• Staff a table with information about campus programs and Intersectional opportunities at the Expo.
• Plan a reading, short performance or presentation for the Arts Stage.
• Put together an open team-taught class (in consultation with the organizers), on some aspect of the Teach-in topics. Here are some guidelines. If you need ideas, we have them!
• Become a volunteer organizer and get involved in planning discussions by emailing the organizers.
• Here is the current list of planned open classes and panels.  Consider participating as a panelist or audience member, but also suggest themes of interest that we may have missed.

The wider ranging your politics and positions on the Teach-in topics, the better. We only ask that your contribution explicitly address the connections between racism, climate change and social justice.

Faculty, students and staff have met many times since last December. This summer, working groups have distilled the content of these meetings and chosen four overarching intersectional themes for the day: Power, Resources, Communities and Equity.

We are aiming for panels and open classes that will consider these themes from a variety of perspectives and disciplinary approaches. We intend to have each panel include a fair combination of presentations addressing the effects of climate change and issues of environmental justice side by side with research, artistic and cultural production about the effects of injustice based on race and racialization, gender and sexuality, and socioeconomic hierarchies. We acknowledge and welcome the specificity of your area of expertise, and don’t expect you to touch on every element of this equation. However, efforts to think of intersections are encouraged at individual presentations, and expected from people co-teaching classes and chairing panels. The combination of local, national and transnational approaches to each of these matters should also be stressed.

When the faculty voted in favor of a day “dedicated to to a campus-wide teach-in on racial and social justice, climate change, and their intersections” they did not vote to cancel classes across the board.  Some Professors will be redirecting their classes to Teach-In events, others plan to incorporate Intersections themes in their scheduled classes and/or open their classes to Teach-In participants, and some may choose to meet their regular classes.  Students should check with their Professors about class plans for the day.

Intersections: People, Planet, and Power (IP3) is a group of Bowdoin community members committed to reframing the discussion surrounding injustice from a divided conversation to an integrated and holistic one. Across the globe, from Ferguson to the People’s Climate March, from the water wars of Bolivia and Detroit to the fight against discrimination right here on campus, people are standing up to resist injustice. The accelerating climate disaster, which threatens to destabilize all aspects of civilization within the next century, intensifies these conflicts and creates a new urgency for collaboration and unified action.

IP3 aims to bring together traditionally separated social movements, such as climate justice and social justice, in order to facilitate a multi-faceted approach to understanding and addressing injustice on all levels. We will host campus events that will serve as platforms fostering inclusive community discussion and education, and work together to design and take actions promoting a just and sustainable future for all. We will also work with existing organizations on campus to highlight their intersections and support them in developing alliances around issues of justice. We are committed to improving humanity’s relationship with both our natural and our social environments as an acknowledgement of our responsibility to the Common Good.