Housing options at Bates are extremely varied, and since students are required to live on campus all four years, most get to experience a range of residences. The ten dorms and 25 college-owned houses offer rooms from singles to quads and most of them provide residents with a kitchen, laundry and lounge. The houses on Frye Street are ideal for those wanting to be the center of the party scene, quiet dorms are perfect for students wanting a 24-hour study/napping atmosphere, and the theme houses provide a place for students with common interests to group up. The school also offers “chem-free living” for those who’d like to opt for a boozeless, drugless existence. As at most schools, freshman year will be spent in the dingier dorms and upperclassmen with high lottery numbers will secure the ritzy rooms. With a small student body where everyone knows each other, doors are always left open and halls quickly become tight-knit friend groups.
Elaine Tuttle Hansen is Bates’ seventh president and served as Provost of Haverford College prior to relocating to Lewiston. She oversaw a huge fundraising effort that raised $120 million to go toward the new dining commons and other facilities that are in the works. Hansen has ambitions to make student financial aid a priority, increase faculty and staff salaries, and widen the diversity of the student body. Hansen’s vision seems grand, but some students are hard to impress. As Marie ’08 states, "The administration is filled with lovely people though actively struggling to restructure the community and the President consistently fails to lead or take a stand for its students in any meaningful way (though, to be fair, she will rack up the endowment). Alas- why can't every school have a Ruth Simmons?"
Robert F. Kennedy (1944-1945) attended Bates for naval training during WWII and was JFK's little bro and US Attorney General.
Bryant Gumbel (1970) was a personality on NBC's The Today Show.
David Chokachi (1990) was a hunky cast member of Baywatch and Witchblade.
Dorothy Clarke Wilson (1925) authored Prince of Egypt, which became the 1956 Academy Award-winning film, The Ten Commandments.
Justin Freeman (1998) is a professional skier and was a member of the 2006 Olympic Team.