Esthetic and Environmental. The College is dedicated to constructing and preserving buildings and campus spaces of the highest quality, believing that their beauty and serenity shape campus intellectual and esthetic life and inform the sensibilities of students who as graduates will influence the quality of spaces and buildings in their towns, businesses and homes. A quadrangle of oaks and pines, ringed with historic architecture, and containing two museums with major collections of art and Arctic craft, deepens a Bowdoin student's sense of place, history and civilization. Implicit in and explicit to its mission is the College's commitment to creating a moral environment, free of fear and intimidation, and where differences can flourish. Faculty and students require honesty in academic work.
Coaches instruct that fatigue and frustration are no excuse for personal fouls.
Deans and proctors set standards of probity and decency and enforce them, with student participation, in College procedures. It does so believing that students grow morally and sharpen personal identity by exercising free individual choice among varied alternatives, curricular and social. Bowdoin College seeks to be a fair, encouraging employer of all those who serve the institution, providing opportunities for professional development, promotion and personal growth, and recognizing the value of each individual's contribution to its educational mission. From its history of more than 200 years and its inheritance of buildings and endowment that are the gifts of Bowdoin alumni there derives a corollary. If the College is to pursue its educational purposes in perpetuity, its mission is also a provident and prudential one.