Student Profile: Alex Cornell du Houx

When Alex Cornell du Houx first came to Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine as a freshman, he wanted to study astronomy and astrophysics. “No one from my [Maine] high school had ever attended Bowdoin, and I grew up in an area where 80 per cent of the population did not have any form of higher education,” Alex recalls. He had joined the Marines right after high school, and was already involved in community service projects like Habitat for Humanity and local food banks. While Alex found these community projects to be extremely important and valuable, he slowly became frustrated with the lack of long-term solutions to poverty and hunger. Several government and political science classes turned him onto policy and legislative solutions.

Six months before the 2004 election, Alex recalls that Bowdoin had no structures in place to register and encourage students to vote. In conjunction with the College Democrats of America, Alex traveled from campus to campus, holding bipartisan voter registration drives. They were extremely successful; by the end of the 2004 election season, 93% of his home campus had voted, and the state of Maine had .

Meanwhile, Alex spent his first summer at Bowdoin training with the Marines: “When I joined the Marine Reserves in 2002, I did not expect to be deployed to a war I disagree with; but it was my duty and honor to serve alongside my fellow Marines in Iraq last year.” Alex has been directly attacked for his position, including a smear by a fellow Bowdoin student who questioned the “logic and motivation” of Alex’s service and called him “one of the most vocal opponents…of our country.” Alex jokes that he’s the “token liberal” in his Marine unit, but enjoys the conversations he has with fellow marines about why he’s opposed to this war.

His advice for student organizers? “Keep your goal in mind. Don’t let little differences in opinion prevent your major goal from being achieved. These projects we all work on have real impacts on real people’s lives. Ending the war will make a difference to so many people and families, and differences in opinion on how to achieve this goal shouldn’t stop us from getting to the end goal.”

Having recently finished classes, Alex is now thinking about getting involved even more in politics – by running for local office. He’s been asked to run for the Maine legislature in 2008. No matter how Alex chooses to continue his activism, he places a high priority on speaking to students about how to get involved in campaigns and issues that they care deeply about.

If you’d like to meet Alex, sign up for our 2008 Iraq Action Camps. He participated in the summer 2007 camps, and will also participate this year.