Carleton Progressive

His Role as Carleton’s Dean of Admissions, Financial Aid, and Tales from Accepted Students’ Weekend

Scott Fox: How did you get involved in admissions and academia?

Dean Thiboutot: I’m a PhD candidate from graduate school years and years ago who decided he would give a try at some administrative work, and ended up working in graduate admissions, ended up liking graduate admissions, was offered a chance to undergraduate admissions, and so I did.

SF: How do you spread the name Carleton to the world?

DT: It’s similar to our American admissions work. There is mail and e-mail. You send materials to schools you can identify. You get materials to students through U.S. government agencies and the Fulbright Commission. There are a variety of resources internationally that students can turn to that is supported by counselors and other organizations. You then meet with representatives from different international organizations encouraging students to look at schools outside of the country and also visit international schools from various countries. It’s also hard to convince international students to attend a “college” because the word has a different connotation in some foreign countries as “university”, the word they use for schools we would consider as colleges and universities. There are many hurdles towards reaching an international audience.

SF: How did Carleton’s Office of Admissions come up with its humor-based literature and mailers?

DT: Look, it’s engrained I think in the college. I arrived here and thought this is a pretty fun place and started picking up on it. I would do it this way for admissions that (the college application process) all gets cropped up in the national press and media about young people sitting around saying, “Oh my god, this is the decision that’s going to affect the direction of my life.” We want to say, “Yes, it will, you know, and therefore, why don’t you cut your head off if you don’t get into the right college and of course, though, if you don’t want to go that root, consider Carleton.” In other words, that same sort of humor is how you get through winter here. You say, of course, it’s cold here. But the saving grace is that no one has lost a limb to the cold. And we keep track of that.

SF: What has caused the increased number of students from families making over $200,000 to come to Carleton as well as the widening of the socioeconomic gap among Carleton students?

DT: Yes, it has increased. Probably this is partially because there has likely been a parallel growth in the number of families earning over $200,000. Is our growth parallel to that?  I don’t know. But there is one another factor, which is our increased cost. It’s become that more families with means are the ones who can afford it. But the two factors have to run parallel.

SF: How much does the high school environment factor into admissions at Carleton?

DT: Yes, we factor that in but it ends up being somewhat of a subjective judgment on our part tied into any objective factors we have.  I would say our evaluation of high schools works on a sliding scale. Yes, there are high schools that we know that would be considered one of the top places in the country with all of their students going to college and have math classes beyond linear algebra all the way to the other extreme of a high school where there might be only nine students graduating and the top math courses you can take is trigonometry. And if you were number one in the class you wouldn’t be able to graduate in the top ten percent.

We’re not expecting the applicant from the less comprehensive high school to utilize as many resources as the applicant who goes to the top of the line school. We try to make a judgment call on the basis of what students are offered in their high school and how they took advantage of that and how well they did, and that it is as a good of a measure as I can think of because not every student has exposure the same kind of challenges. What you want to do is have as your boundary for admission to keep as level a playing field in terms of a criteria of how has the student responded to the opportunities available to him and what he ready to take a challenge of.

SF: Carleton has a policy of willingness to accept students from non-traditional high school backgrounds such as those who left high schools early when other similar schools do not.  Does that go along with the idea of leveling the playing field?

DT: I could say that. I mean we’re willing to look at students like that and there’s been a long tradition of that. You can go back and look at a college catalog from 40, 50 years ago and they would talk about the option if a student graduating or leaving their high schools early like at the end of Junior year if they have completed all of the challenging courses (their high school offers) and are ready to take off for the college curriculum. That’s a long tradition before we ever talked about non-traditional high schools and stuff like that. We’re ready to take a student if they’re ready for college and ready for the challenge of the kind of curriculum we offer.

SF: How will the new changes in Pell Grants that were recently enacted into law affect financial aid?

DT: It’s not the Pell Grant by itself that’s going to change financial aid much.  We still will be using Pell Grants in giving out financial aid. What is changing is that we are becoming a direct lender under the federal government and before we were a lender under banks. It’s not going to change financial aid in how we do it and the loans we offer; they’re the same federal loans but this an administrative change on how you process the loan. So what I think is that I hope nothing changes, but I may depend upon the efficiency of the Federal Education Department in how they deal with direct lending of loans. We’re just going to assume for a second that it’s going to be clean and efficient. We think it’s going to be fine and I say that with a smile but in fact, there are many colleges and universities that have done the step before and go back three or four years and they chose to become direct lenders, because there are several advantages to do that and they were able to do it and they testified, “No, it works very well. It is efficient and serves the students well.” So, there is evidence to be confident.

SF: The College recently renewed their commitment to Posse.  What forms of success has admissions have with the program?

DT: The reason why we are continuing with Posse is that its stated goal of encouraging non-traditional students who would not necessarily usually look at small, liberal arts colleges and selective colleges. Carleton works with Posse in the Chicago Public Schools. Posse’s claim would be with the exposure of the formation of a culture of students coming to these schools, it provides a reinforcement of their eventual success so they never have problems with highly selective, challenging academic environment. Why we continue with them is that it has proven to be undoubtedly successful.

This is not an argument that this is the only way to attract students from areas that would not normally look at a small, liberal arts college. They are usually from families in which they are the first generation to attend college and coming from an urban public school system which is not among the best. It doesn’t take long to look at a major urban public school system like Chicago or L.A. to realize that, boy, we need a lot of improvement there and those kids are not served very well. They’re not offered intellectually challenging academic options.

SF: Do you strive for geographic diversity?

DT: Yes and no. Yes, we give an edge to someone from a different geographical area (than the Midwest or Northeast). But then I have to tell you no. These students we select from other areas meet all of usual criteria. It seems to be working that we do attract pretty well-qualified, competitive students from all over the country. The difference might be, for example, let’s take Mississippi, we won’t have many applicants from there but among those that we have, we are easily admitting some. But would that mean that the criteria would give them an edge. Well, we’re glad they’re from Mississippi. They would have probably made it in given their qualifications if they were from the state of Oklahoma or Nebraska or even Minnesota but is there an edge? If, for example, they look like some of those candidates, that would be an edge for them.

SF: Any interesting stories from Accepted Students Weekend?

DT: None have materialized from this year. They sometimes take a little longer to materialize. We did not end up with too many complaints over the weekends. I think I got more deposits in hand this past weekend than ever before. One of them was in cash. We often get complaints from parents. And every now and then, you get the parent who expects us to really throw the red carpet out and yells at us, “Don’t you have this ready, right here?”

What do you study?
Whatever interests me. At the moment, that’s history and a bit of anthropology/sociology. But who knows? I could end up a bio major; it’s doubtful, but nothing is ever out of the question.

What’s the best way to make a political statement at Carleton?
Just speak up for what you believe in. I think that holds true wherever you are. Join clubs that support causes you believe in or just start a new one. Write letters to Congress, sign petitions. There are a million ways to make your voice heard.

What’s with the scarf?
The scarf. I don’t really know. I saw it, I liked it, and it was on sale. I’m just a dirty hippie at heart.

How has the economy influenced your style?
The economy hasn’t really changed my style mostly because I’ve never had much money. I’m the person who goes to the mall, shops the clearance rack, puts stuff on hold at almost every store I visit, and then goes back to purchase only what I really, really like.

Do you have any political inclinations or issues that are dear to your heart and soul?
I don’t know if you could call it political, but health. Not just health care reform (though I’m happy I might finally be insured). According to the USDA guidelines for public schools, French fries count as a vegetable. Seriously? Obesity and weight related issues are a huge part of this country right now, and the USDA is subsidizing processed crap for public schools? And the FDA is just screwed up, as is labeling. Did you know Cheetos can be called all natural? Those creepy neon orange things are natural according to the government. And supplements aren’t subject to approval by the FDA. Even your multivitamin could be killing you; there have been a few studies showing that the amount of certain vitamins and minerals is higher than listed on the packaging.

The CSA Budget Committee’s Weekly Recommendations*
Muira McCammon

Amount to fund the Carleton Bowling Club’s bowling expeditions for the rest of spring term: $799.92

Amount to support the Carleton Rugcutters Swing Dance & Social Dance Club’s annual Spring Swing: $2800

Amount to allow CSA to use campus vans to shuttle students to Speed Dating at St. Olaf: $10

Amount to run the Sayles’ Traffic Light Party: $275

Amount to facilitate three future trips by Nova Women’s Ultimate Frisbee Team to tournaments: $3253

Amount to fund Rotblatt: $3150

Amount to support the Cave and to solve its budget crisis: $7000

Amount for Happy Bodies to bring the Smitten Kitten to do a workshop about safe and healthy use of pornography and sex toys: $115

Members on CSA Budget Committee that think the  Arena is a “deathtrap.” : 1

*All data and quotes taken directly from: CSA Budget Committee Minutes (http://apps.carleton.edu/orgs/csa/bc/minutes/)

Samir S. Bhala

Assumptions form the basis of economic opinion. Whether it is an economist characterizing human behavior among peers or a politician invoking fairness among the masses, their assumptions largely determine the conclusions they reach. Economists describe three economic belief systems – Conservative, Liberal, and Radical – each of which makes its own set of assumptions about how economies work. My personal belief system is based on a repudiation of the Conservative approach; it is an eclectic mix of Liberalism and Radicalism, attributable to my family’s experiences and my own study of recent history.

My view of the world is not as much pro-Liberal as anti-Conservative.  The Conservative view is that freedom, alongside the market system and competition, can and will solve every problem, that government at its best gets in the way and at worst acts as an instrument of oppression. To the Conservative economist, government intervention—no matter how noble the intention—is not worth its inefficiencies.  The condition of the individual matters more than that of society. Businesses should value balance sheets above breadwinners. Society ultimately benefits as wealth created by entrepreneurs trickles down to the masses.

I, too, value freedom. But I also value a system that ensures that my economic freedom or my family’s does not fall prey to the whims of unfettered wealth-making by a few. Especially in the last year, the Conservative mantra—regulation is wrong always, everywhere, and for everyone—has failed spectacularly. Also, at some visceral level, I am repelled by the notion that after I consume as much pie as I can and leave some crumbs for those who have nothing, society will gain. I guess this makes me a Liberal. I do believe that government is necessary for the safety net it provides to the poor and powerless. However, I also feel strongly that government, like ordinary households and persons, should, by and large, live within its means.

I attribute both of these views, as indeed many others, to the way I was raised. Although personal responsibility, the crux of Conservative thought, was a sine qua non in our immigrant family, and so was the need for compassion for those down on their luck. When I was four years old, my father defined responsibility for me as “knowing what you have to do and doing it unasked.” The evil of living beyond one’s means, and consequent debt, was drummed into my sister and me on a daily basis. (If it were up to my father alone, we would not have had a home until he had the full amount in cash.) Despite his fiscal conservatism, my father never identified easily with wealth or power. He says this was because he never aspired to belong to an exclusionary club. He proudly pays his taxes, believing it to be a small price for the opportunities this country has given him.

I subscribe to Liberalism, because it tries to ensure that nobody falls behind and that everyone has an equal opportunity. The two major economic shocks during my lifetime, the Enron scandal from earlier this decade and the financial meltdown of the past two years, have convinced me that market regulation is a necessary evil. I am a Liberal because the Kenneth Lays, Dennis Kozlowskis, and Bernie Madoffs proved to me that unchecked greed, while very good for them, left society in a tremendously horrific condition. As we do on December 7 and September 11, I believe all Americans should chant, unified, “Never again.”

Since the current crisis began, columns by economists have strenuously made the case for financial reforms similar to those offered generations ago by Keynesian Democrats and moderate Republicans.  I find my Liberal ideology fueled at times by the fire of Radical populism. Fairness, ensured by Liberalism, should govern the economic world. However, in the society in which I live, the economy farcically resembles the movie Fight Club. To me, the greedy drive for material gains, for goods people want but cannot afford, causes crises to emerge cyclically. Unless we address this root evil, in twenty years the nation will face yet another mega-crisis. With the fate of the financial reforms we need in peril, it seems as though I have no power, no voice in this system in which hired henchmen, lobbyists, can deflect necessary regulation and those responsible for the mess receive only our ire, not punishment.

As an aspiring economist, I qualify the assumptions with which I view the world as reactionary. Informed by life experience, I choose Liberalism, bordering on Radicalism, because I do not find Conservatism palatable. Liberalism appeals to me because of my family’s background and our traditional commitment to social justice. Without government intervention to curb market excesses and ensure an equitable playing field, the social and political promise of the United States—that anyone can grow up to do anything or become anyone—ceases to exist.

Some may disagree with my own beliefs, but I find myself validated by the occurrences of the past two years.  We have been, from the time I entered college, in a recession. Those with more expertise in the field of economics would describe the factors that contributed to the recession in detail. But for the purposes of this narrative, we will focus not on what, but who, caused this panic.

In 1999, President Bill Clinton, riding the wave of regulated economic prosperity passed a repeal of the 1932 Glass-Steagall Act, which separated commercial from investment banking. Commercial banks loan out the money, invested in them by consumers, to businesses and individuals. Investment banks sell loans and other securities to other companies. At the same time, President Clinton had managed to control the nation’s finances in such a way that he left for his successor a projected budgetary surplus of approximately $700 billion dollars in 2010.

Yet, despite the good times, the nation became fatigued with the Democrats and George W. Bush became President. Following the attacks of September 11, 2001, a massive well of support materialized for President Bush. He could do nothing wrong. From there, he engaged the nation in a massive social experiment, one for which Conservatives from Milton Friedman to Alan Greenspan had pushed. The leaders of the Conservative movement, rendered delirious by their religious adherence to the allure of free, supply-side markets and deregulation, advocated for massive tax-cuts for the rich and an end to checking the American economic system. For them, any regulation was too terrible a price, too monstrous of burden, for the markets to bear.

From this philosophy emerged massive attempts to let the private sector run unfettered. President Bush basically refused to fund instrumental bureaucracies like the SEC, which checks to see if whether or not financial transactions are legitimate, and FDA, which ensures that the food we eat and the drugs we take won’t kill us. But, according to the economic gurus, markets are self-regulating. The 1980s hyperbolized mantras of “greed is good, greed is necessary, greed is right” became the standard behavior of both private and public sectors.

Spurred by a seemingly endless economic boom in the housing sector, the nation engaged in a massive spending binge, the consequences of which led to excess all in the name of the privatization. Corporate accounting fraud, betting on businesses failure, creating shadow companies to assume bad assets, results of a fundamentally corrupted system that was built upon absolutely nothing precipitated the market crash in 2008.

So, when it comes time to clean up, assess damage for the crisis, who gets blamed? Bill Clinton, the President who signed a law which garnered bipartisan support in the last year of his term in office, or the George Bush, who got drunk off the lure of money and free lunches for eight long, agonizing years of divisive partisanship?

Conservatives would have us believe that Bill Clinton caused this mess. While repudiating George Bush’s actions—the likes of the Wall Street Journal claim that Bush was not truly a conservative—they cheer him for his foreign policy doctrine that led us to fight two wars, antagonize the world and saddle the nation with a crippling debt.

Thus, conservatives wrongly disown any sort of agency they possessed in the system, distancing themselves from George W Bush, calling him “not a real conservative,” despite their 8 year cheerleading refrain for unfettered markets, deregulation, and the like.

In their warped reality, they did nothing wrong. “I truly thought,” Alan Greenspan testified to Congress, “that what we did was right.”  It is in their defense of Goldman Sachs that one truly understands the Conservative mindset.  In the mind of many, Goldman Sachs could possibly have not done something illegal, as it lost money on the deals.  To them, profit is the bottom line.  Regardless of the fact that the firm sold what could only be appropriately described by its own CEO as “shit,” Goldman bet against the nation and, often times, won.  The nefariousness of this Conservative ideology has steeped so far into the system that the SEC, the regulators, the watchdogs, apparently watched pornography on computers for as much as eight hours a day.  Now, calls for strengthening reform, or holding people accountable in front of Congress, are chided by the intellectually dishonest as playing politics.

The guiding light of the past eight years allowed for a system in which the winners were allowed to win much, win always, and win outright.  This damned the rest of society to having to bear the burden of unimaginable social costs.  Yet, now, instead of ameliorating the situation, those advocates of the entrepreneurial spirit instead refuses to innovate, thinking it better to wait out this Democratic President as they did the last.  And that, my friends, is why conservatives are anathema to me.

Gilah Benson-Tilsen

During the Quest for the Next President of Carleton, I heard the opinion expressed that our president should be a black lesbian atheist. It didn’t matter what the candidate’s qualifications were. We needed a woman, a member of a racial minority, a member of a religious minority.

This was flippant, I’m sure. Yes, yes, we all know there are limits to what affirmative action should do, and we can’t accurately quantify the discrimination and reverse discrimination that exist.

But still! It is frustrating that every president must be white, must be male, must be Christian, must be heterosexual, must be… Carleton will never have a president with blue hair, and we know it.

The search committee certainly did everything they could to find the right candidate. That was what I said when asked for my reaction to their decision: I think they did well. I fully believe the search committee did everything possible to choose the right candidate.

When I saw the name of Carleton’s new president (Stephen G. Poskanzer, for those of you living in The Cave), the first thing I thought was, That sounds like a Jewish name. And the next day my mother called me to say that my father had done research and found the names of Poskanzer’s great-grandparents, and they were unmistakably Jewish names. This made my parents very excited. And Poskanzer’s from New York, went to Princeton and Harvard, worked at SUNY for twelve years – I suppose that means he has the right background. There may be some Northeastern privilege in there somewhere; you might find it if you tried. However, why try? When I saw the videos of Poskanzer, I thought, He looks like a nice guy.

I haven’t met him in person; I assume he’s nice, because in the videos, he has a friendly smile on his face. Perfect for Carleton, no? My reaction to him was above neutral, if not enthusiastically positive.

However, when my roommate watched the same videos of Poskanzer, she said to me, “He’s so generic.” And, I noticed, she was right. He wasn’t saying anything unusual or even humorous. He was sticking to the safe answers – though I’m sure he genuinely meant them – using big words, smiling big, performing for the camera, trying to be impressively intellectual, a conscientious man, a trustworthy man, one committed to the ideals of this educational institution and blah blah blah. I have to hope that when he takes on the duties of a real president he’ll relax a bit and leave behind that job-interview mode, start expressing himself with more humor. Poskanzer will be cracking jokes and spinning yarns just like Oden. Not that I expect him to be flamboyant- this place isn’t ready for a real flamboyant character. Just an occasional spark of life, if you don’t mind! Thankfully, the interviews don’t last forever.

And now, for the question that motivated this essay: do I care that he’s a man? Answer: no. Not really. Honestly, I don’t much care about the president of a college. There are Ivy Leaguers with female presidents, so it’s been done and we shouldn’t sweat it.

What do I care about, though, is political power. I would so love to see a female President of the United States (and I could name a few presidents who were less equipped to handle the office than the average U.S. female). I would really, really love to see that glass ceiling shatter into a million beautiful sparkly pieces. My mother is a feminist, and it’s time she had something to celebrate.

I suppose that’s only a dream of a better future where there are no wars and children have health care and cities have public transportation and no one wears shoes and we all sit around the campfire singing sweet love songs.

But right now, at this point in real time, HABEMUS PRESIDENTUM! And I have no complaints about Stephen G. Poskanzer. I wish him the best of luck!

Claire Harper

This fall, I’m running Carls for Choice, Carleton’s pro-choice group. After receiving e-mails from the group all year, I finally got involved with it last spring. Spring Term, Carls for Choice had two events I participated in. On Good Friday, there was an anti-choice protest in front of a Planned Parenthood; Carls for Choice joined the pro-choice counter-protesters. The second time, I went up really early on a Saturday morning to escort women into an abortion clinic. Anti-choice protesters target this clinic every Saturday morning, so as escorts we are there to support the women entering the clinic and provide a barrier between them and the protesters. The clinic began collaborating with Carls for Choice as well as Oles for Choice, St. Olaf’s pro-choice group, last year, training our groups to escort and setting aside one day a month for us to do so. Carls for Choice also works to raise awareness of the importance of women’s rights to abortion, comprehensive sexual education, and access to birth control. We do this on campus through tabling, collecting signatures to support pro-choice legislation, and hosting other events.

At our first day escorting this year, one of the protesters yelled at me that my mother was ashamed of me for helping women get abortions. The protester could not have been more wrong. My mother made a choice to have my sisters and me. She raised me to believe in women’s rights, including their right to make the private decision of when and with whom to have a child. I have always found it disturbing that our government, comprised primarily of men, feels it has a right to make such a personal decision for all women in the United States. Forcing women to have children they cannot care for or do not want does not serve the needs of the mother, the child, or anyone else involved. Children deserve to be raised in an environment that can support them emotionally and economically, and our society ought to trust women to decide whether or not they are able to provide that support. I am a strong believer in adoption, but because of how physically taxing pregnancy is, women need the choice of whether or not to carry a child to term. Giving birth still forces women to take precious time away from their jobs and education even if they choose to give the baby to another family. Even if not legally given a choice whether or not to have an abortion, women would still terminate pregnancies if they felt unable to carry a child to term or provide for the child after the birth. Outlawing it would simply make getting an abortion far more dangerous. Women would have abortions secretly, leaving them unable to make sure the person performing it could or would perform it safely. It is so much easier to give women a choice, allowing each woman to exercise her own personal beliefs regarding abortion and when life begins, than to outlaw it and force women who feel they need abortions to endanger themselves by seeking an illegal surgery. I am not pro-abortion. I am pro-choice.

Being pro-choice means that I want to help women choose when and with whom to have a child every step of the way. Some of my favorite buttons I’ve distributed while tabling with Carls for Choice are the ones in support of comprehensive sexual health education. Abstinence-only and insufficient sexual health education fails people, leaving women with unwanted pregnancy and disease. By educating people on the methods of birth control available, pregnancy can be avoided, and the number of abortions will decrease, too. The more education people have, the better they will be at making their own decisions about reproductive health.

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His Legacy as Carleton’s President, Politics and Student Activism, and Not Knowing What Comes Next

Pedro J. Fernández

Staff Writer

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Pedro Fernandez: I know you’re a universally beloved figure at Carleton, but some of these questions will seem incisive and this one in particular is important to me. I’m a Hispanic, obviously, and I’ve had trouble finding other Hispanics at Carleton. In our floor, for instance, there are 50 people. 3 or 4 are African American, 1 Hispanic, which is not a microcosm of the entire school, but I wanted to know what efforts have been made and what efforts are being made right now to increase diversity at Carleton.

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President Rob Oden: Well, you probably know that this year’s freshman class has the highest Hispanic population in Carleton’s history. One answer to your question is, not only have efforts been made but we’re succeeding. Well, I have often said in every possible setting, to the Board of Trustees, to alumni, to separate groups of alumni, to my vice-president, that you can only have one highest priority and mine is diversity. So that is well known at Carleton. And the number—the diversity of students has increased significantly since I’ve been here. Even more impressive is the increase in the diversity of our faculty members. In our most ambitious comparison group—Carleton, Williams, Amherst, Pomona, Wellesley, colleges like that—when I arrived at Carleton we were near the bottom in faculty of color as a percent and now we’re either third or second from the top. So the efforts have been leadership from the top with a lot of pushing, lots of conversations, and continued pressure on the Dean of the college with regard to faculty and on the Dean of Admissions, Paul Thibodeau, with regard to students, though Paul’s heart with regard to admissions matters and diversity is very much where mine is, so there’s not much that—if I said pressure it might sound like these people were unwilling. We’re not satisfied, we’re not nearly where we need to be, but we sure are going in the right direction.

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PF: To move on to another legacy question, Carleton’s is a beautiful campus with lots of historic buildings, but there have been several new additions over the course of your tenure. Could you enumerate the new infrastructure or just talk about it generally—how Carleton has changed as a campus in your time as President.

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RO: I don’t know if the shape of the campus in that broad a sense has changed or should change, which is to say that I have resisted and will continue to resist efforts, for example, to build on the Arboretum, which was unpopular when it was bought and built and is always vulnerable. A lot of my efforts have been extended towards making sure that open space continues to be open space, most especially in the Arboretum, but that’s not all. Northfield is right on the edge of the prairie, right where deep woods meets the prairie, where the Midwest meets the upper Midwest, where the Great Plains meets the upper [Midwest]—we’re kind of an interesting location. But a part of our location is the importance of spaciousness, so over time I have tried always to keep in mind that an inviting characteristic of this place is spaciousness. Let me give you an example. I would never have built Musser where it is, because I think you should be able to walk down 1^st Street and out over the river valley into the west. So it’s not so much that I don’t like the shape of Musser—it’s just classic Bauhaus 1960s architecture—it’s that it’s in a location that sort of hems us in the way it shouldn’t.

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Among things recently built, of course what I’m most proud of are Cassat and Memorial halls. I don’t know if you all read the article in last Thursday’s Star Tribune, but it was the niftiest article. The thesis of the article was while other colleges and universities have built luxurious abodes and spent millions on flat-screen televisions and spas, Carleton spent its money on sustainability issues and on common spaces. So other people spent millions to keep students in their rooms; Carleton spent what money it spent so that students could be together, gathering. The most important facility that is not built but that’s well along in planning is the Arts Union. And that we don’t have an arts museum right now is my doing. When I came to Carleton, we were going to build an independent, free-standing arts museum. I spent way too much time at way too many liberal arts colleges whose arts museums are under-visited or unvisited. So my argument was and is that art museums make sense if they’re connected to the curriculum and if they’re connected physically to other facilities. So that’s what turned a small, free-standing art museum into what we’re going to build, which is a kind of center for creativity and inventiveness.

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The next thing that really needs to be done is work on Laird Stadium, which has been inadequate for very, very many years—press boxes overcrowded and an inadequate series of football offices and locker rooms and more. But my legacy—I don’t even like to use the term ‘my legacy,’ it’s our legacy. My legacy sounds way too egotistic. Whatever my legacy—whatever we have done in the last eight years is much more to do with people than with buildings. I’d much rather spend Carleton’s limited funds on financial aid and faculty compensation than on buildings.

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PF: On the topic of financial aid, how has the way aid is awarded to students, and the volumes in which it’s awarded, changed under you?

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RO: The former hasn’t changed at all and the latter’s doubled. So the way in which we award aid is absolutely the way it has been, it’s need-based aid. We do not reward test scores with money at Carleton; we make it possible for talented, smart, committed people whose families don’t have enough money to attend. So we are, as long as I’m here, never going to go in the direction of merit aid. It’s one of my sort of core, obdurate beliefs. I believe you use the limited financial aid funds you have to meet financial need. What we have—it’s not the way it’s awarded, but Carleton’s neediest students get much more grant and much less loan than they used to. The overall amount has doubled—in fact it’s more than doubled. When I came to Carleton we awarded a little over 13 million in financial aid; now it’s about 29 million, so it’s gone way, way up.

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PF: So does Carleton, then, have a financial aid budget?

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RO: We do.

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PF: So then is it truly need-blind?

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RO: No, since 1993 it has not been need-blind. So there is a budget that’s based on last on last year’s budget and we increase it by as much as we can. So, for example, from last year to this year, though every other budget line at the college was flat, we increased financial aid just short of 7 percent. You should talk to Paul Thibodeau, the Dean of Admissions, who’s the expert at this, but to really be able to afford to be need-blind and insure that for the future, we would probably need an endowment of two or three times ours. In the early 1990s, there was a long discussion among faculty, students, and staff and they decided that the only sustainable thing to do was to continue to base all aid on need, to continue to meet the full demonstrated need of every admitted student, but to have an overall limit, and above that, to go to need-sensitive if you need to. Now, in fact, two years ago we were need-blind; we went zero percent need-sensitive. This last year it was about 5 percent. So it’s very little need-sensitive, but absent an extraordinary and wonderfully generous gift, we’re not going to do that. Now, I’ve said, along with diversity as my number one priority, there’s nothing on the face of the earth for Carleton I would rather do than stand on the steps of Laird and scream out into the Bald Spot, “We are now need-blind!” It’s just exceptionally expensive.

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PF: On the topic of international students, the number of international students has grown exponentially during your tenure. There were this year 56 international students; 19 of those, or roughly one third, are Chinese. Many more come from East Asia and the Indian subcontinent. This compared to one student from South America and none from Africa. Do you think that more could be done to increase diversity of nationalities in that context?

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RO: The overall number of international students has gone up hugely. The class of 2000 had two in it, and as you mentioned 56 this year. My own way of thinking of that is, we—my wife and I—used to have a reception for new international students and their parents in a small corner of the living room in Nutting House. This year’s reception was most of the fourth floor of the library. A lot of the funding we have to support need-based aid for international students is restricted to East Asia. So one of the reasons why there’s a higher number is that that was one of the restrictions of a big gift we got. I would love more students from Eastern Europe, from Latin America, from Africa, from the Middle East, but right now the funds that we have are largely tied to East Asia.

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PF: Now to move on to politics and activism. How would you characterize the political climate at Carleton?

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RO: Well, you know, you would know so much more than I. I’m the President, I talk to students, I have taught a course or two occasionally, but I’m not there every night in the dormitories. I guess if you ask me for a single word for how would I characterize it, I would say ‘effective.’ Which is to say—this is my favorite single example—we would not have the wind turbine absent student activism. It was a student idea. When various people in the college refused the idea on the grounds that it was too expensive, they didn’t give up. I think it’s effective because it’s smart. Which is to say you can either scream and label people with whom you disagree with unfortunate and often hateful labels or you can say, ‘No, I’m less interested in labeling people and making people angry than I am in getting things done.’ So I think what’s really notable is that Carleton students are activists largely, I think, but they are in the best sense. I don’t care who gets credit for it, let’s get something done.

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PF: So sustainability you mentioned. Obviously a lot of inroads have been made in that regard, but are there any other initiatives that the college has pursued that students have urged the college to pursue?

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RO: Well, you have hit—put your finger on—the one that’s the biggest. And it’s not just the wind turbine. A host of our sustainability initiatives, including buying the extra hundred acres we did a few years ago, is because of student activism. Sure, we’re right now looking again at the entire college governance system. It’s interesting because it’s very involved and very consultative at Carleton, but precisely because of that it’s very complicated. And some good students last year, a student on College Council was among those who said it’s too complicated right now so that people don’t know where to start. So right now there’s an effort being undertaken as an offshoot of College Council to work on—do we have the right balance between involvement, consultation, deliberation, and simplicity or complexity. There are 58 standing committees at Carleton. Now that’s good because it means that a lot of people are involved in decisions, but is that so many that it’s hard to know where to start and where to finish. The New Student Week task force was initiated by student initiative. I think the most critical and important thing right now, the committee that’s working on sexual misconduct—the process by which complaints are brought forward, by which they’re appealed—totally came from a group of students who worked on that issue last spring. So there are lots of [initiatives the college has pursued at the urging of students].

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PF: Do you think that Carleton affords every student a forum in which to express his or her political opinion, given that it’s overwhelmingly liberal?

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RO: You know, that actually goes back to that earlier question. I don’t know. That’s what this group is investigating now. The College Council does—the whole curriculum revision was done by the E[ducation and] C[urriculum] C[ommittee], which has student members and I have to tell you that the students that spoke before the faculty meeting were incredibly knowledgeable and impressive. I think the vote went the way it did because of students. But your question is mine right now—I don’t know whether every student has the voice that they all deserve.

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PF: Now to the lighthearted questions. Obviously you’re kept busy by the business of running the school for the rest of this year, but what will this coming summer be like knowing that you won’t be returning to Northfield next September?

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RO: Thank you. I have known since I was 18 what I was going to do next, and I don’t now. This is a huge adventure for me; it’ll be great fun. Hanover, New Hampshire is a pretty nifty little town—a beautiful place to run and ride bikes and canoe and fish and hike and I’ve gotten to do almost none of that. So enjoying what it’s like to live in a beautiful place in New England without every hour taken up. It’s going to be interesting and it’s going to be puzzling. This is a wonderful job, but it goes all the time. There aren’t sort of unstructured or unfilled moments, even on the weekends. So I think I’m going to read all of the books that I haven’t read, to keep up with all of the New Yorkers I haven’t kept up with, to tie all the trout and salmon flies that I don’t have time to do, run farther and bike farther—and we’ll see. I know that I’m going to remain active on the board of the American University in Cairo, and more active, so that instead of going to Cairo once a year, in the years ahead I’ll go three or four times a year or maybe more. And I strongly suspect that [I’ll become involved with] a few more education or non-profit boards like the American University in Cairo. Truth to tell, I had a third grandchild born at 6 o’clock this morning—

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PF: Congratulations.

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RO: …and getting to know my children and grandchildren along the way is something I want to do.

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PF: So another popular question was, ‘Does Rob Oden have a Twitter?’

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RO: I do not. I do not. Thank you, I’ve got lots of other things. I’m connected in other ways but in this way I’m not.

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Karl Rove Reflects on Health Care Reform and His Scandinavian Roots

Muira McCammon

Staff Writer

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Karl Rove, who served as former President George W. Bush’s Senior Advisor and Deputy Chief of Staff, spoke for about an hour and a half on October 1^st at the Olie Skoglund Center Auditorium. A question-and-answer session moderated by St. Olaf’s Political Action Committee coordinator Akshar Rambachan ’12 followed.

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More than fifty Carls, of all years, took college-provided transportation to hear Rove’s conservative perspective on contemporary political topics in America, ranging from health care reform to potential Republican presidential nominees in 2012. In the days preceding Rove’s arrival, students responded to posters announcing his arrival, but it was unclear how community members and college students would react.

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Although there were no formal groups of protestors identified, the gathering itself was not without its share of political expressions. As members of the audience took their seats, one individual covered himself in fake blood, glued his body to the floor, and promptly received a round of applause from a crowd of seated students. In addition, a row of female Oles wore shirts, which cited the number of Iraqi civilian deaths that have occurred during the American occupation thus far.

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Adon Debiche ’13 said, “I hope someone throws a shoe at him and that he answers the questions.”

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Another Carl, Cooper Buss ’13 noted the rarity of the experience and expressed gratitude that the Carleton College specially provided free transportation to St. Olaf for the event.

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Among Oles, reactions were equally varied and heated. Laura Guzman ’10 noted, “Initially, I was very upset, because he [Rove] doesn’t represent the view of the campus. We don’t get a huge say in who comes to campus.” Nearby, senior, Jonathan Cappelli ‘10 admitted that he was glad Karl Rove had come in order to “portray another political perspective.”

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In the moments prior to Rove’s appearance, an unnamed SGA (Student Government Association) coordinator shared his reactions to meeting the “boy genius” earlier in the evening: “He’s really cool. I still hate him, but he’s really neat. He talked about Minnesota, wind turbines, and was just so laid back.”

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The audience remained quiet for most of Rove’s speech.

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Rove jumped from one hot topic to the next and peppered his dialogue with youthful jokes as well as jabs at politicians and pundits. However, as a recent inductee into the Scandinavian Hall of Fame, he chose to open the evening with a few icebreakers alluding to his own heritage. Describing his father as the quintessential Norwegian, Rove joked that he “loved his wife so much he almost told her.”

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The theme of patriotism was infused in what appeared to be an apolitical opening, as the great, great grandson of a Norwegian immigrant highlighted the current need for Americans to “serve something greater than the self” and embrace their citizenship as the “most valuable thing.” As the evening continued, his speech, far from wide-reaching, focused mainly upon the flaws and faults of President Obama’s health care reform plans.

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Extending government further—which Rove sharply criticized—would only plunge American citizens into further debt, he said. Admitting that some Americans did indeed remain without a health insurance plan, Rove approximated that the number of legal citizens staggered around a few million, instead of the tens of millions estimated by some analysts.

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“Democrats can pass almost anything, because they have the numbers,” Rove stated. “But, thank God, Mary Landrieu Senator Mary Landrieu (D-LA) doesn’t vote like Franken (D-MN).”

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Free market forces should drive changes to health care insurance, he said, citing the need to treat health care insurance like car insurance. “There should be a national market for health insurance,” he added.

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Health care reform itself should first entail practical changes, which do not allow government to gain stronger responsibility or control over the system. Among other ideas, Rove insisted, health care records should be made more electronically accessible to both physicians and patients alike.

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Alluding to his Texan origins, Rove’s expression became particularly heated and intense, when he described the “frivolous lawsuits” that trouble so many medical practices across the country.

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“We don’t have that problem in Texas due to our tort reform,” Rove said.

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Then came the statistics. “84% of people remain comfortable with what they’ve got,” Rove maintained.

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The lack of a patient’s ability to compare price and quality in different health care plans became a prime target of Rove’s criticism as well. Citing the low profit margin for health insurance companies (.03 cents out of every dollar), Rove described how further taxing health insurance companies would only put further stress on the system. Microsoft’s profit margin, Rove explained, was ten times that of the average health insurance company.

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“We are going to bankrupt the states,” he claimed.

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“Change is a constant message in presidential campaigns,” Rove continued. In 2012, 2016, and onwards, he remarked, the theme of change will remain the same, regardless of who is running.

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Towards the end, he joked, “Ask whatever you want to ask. If I can handle O’Reilly, then I can handle you.”

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Asked how he would have reacted had he been Gore’s presidential advisor and successfully managed his election bid, Rove bluntly responded, “I would’ve killed myself.”

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Later in the evening, he admitted that Governor Pawlenty, “[a] smart and thoughtful [fellow] with new ideas, ” remains a viable Republican presidential nominee.

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Following one of the last questions, a student shouted that Gore won the popular vote, but Rove was quick to remind the audience that event simply did not matter in determining the president. He urged that the only way to change that rule would be to change the Constitution.

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Rove did draw a substantial amount of laughter from listeners, when he likened himself to the forty-year-old virgin in the acclaimed film. He bounced from anecdote to anecdote, describing an afternoon conversation with Meg Whitman and then jumping to a discussion he had had with an OB/GYN at a 2004 White House Hanukkah party.

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By the evening’s end, the Q & A session had introduced countless topics of discussion to Mr. Rove’s speech, and he was eager to answer all of them. When discussing his involvement with the Plame Affair, Rove became visibly heated, when he claimed, “Joe Wilson lied.”

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Asked if he partook in scare tactics in deciphering health care reform, Rove nicknamed Obama, Mr. Popularity, and claimed that American leadership in presidents required something else. As the thirty- minute Q & A session came to a close, he encouraged audience members to purchase his upcoming book and concluded by wishing that “God [would] continue to bless our country.”

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Carleton, Alcohol Abuse, and the Amethyst Initiative

Emily Thomas

Staff Writer

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Living in Montréal this summer, I asked a guy of about my age if he ever went down to New York and Vermont. He smiled, thought about it a little and said “No, they’re a little bit too…restrictive.” I nodded and focused on finishing my pint. The whole summer I was never carded, never denied a drink, and, strangely, I never got drunk. Scores of students who have studied abroad could tell the same story. So why does it seem that lower drinking ages promote more responsible alcohol use? Is it actually a result of the lower drinking ages, or does alcohol just hold less allure in less alco-phobic cultures? Is it simply a myth that lower drinking ages promote responsibility at all? This is the question a group of college presidents tried to answer last fall by launching the Amethyst Initiative, a petition calling for a discussion of the current drinking age. Carleton’s own Rob Oden is not currently a signatory, but the presidents of comparable schools such as Pomona , Middlebury, and Dickinson have all signed on. As Sharon Herzberger, president of Whittier College, explains, “I decided to sign not because I ‘know’ the right answer to this frightening challenge, but because I agree with the call to have a national conversation…I was too aware that the current approach to discouraging and monitoring student drinking did not work.” Although the national conversation seems to have been moved to the backburner for now, the Amethyst Initiative has already engaged colleges, universities, health experts, and advocacy groups across the nation, and become a major talking point for Carleton students.

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I expected an enthusiastic response to the initiative from Carleton students, and was surprised when even students under 21 who regularly consume alcohol seemed lukewarm about the idea of lowering the drinking age to 18. Their main concern? High school students receiving free access to alcohol during senior year, a time when most students are reliant on cars for transportation and, looking back on our own experiences, not particularly responsible. Ken Zillig, a freshman at Carleton, agreed. He avoided the drinking scene in high school, noting that “although they might not realize it until they get to college, high school students aren’t mature enough to drink.” For most of us at Carleton, hindsight is 20/20, but giving high school students even easier access to alcohol could be extremely dangerous. On the other hand, lowering the drinking age could, counterintuitively, decrease consumption of alcohol among high school students by depriving alcohol of its illicit mystique. Interviewees agreed that placing an emphasis on safety rather than punishment might be the most effective way to help binge drinkers in high school. Freshman Chris Densmore explains, “It’s important for parents to be realistic about their expectations, and it’s crucial for parents to emphasize that they need to be the first phone call when their children feel uncomfortable.” Much of the concern about high school drinkers centers around DUIs and car wreck deaths, but students suggested that this problem could be solved by better enforcement of laws against drinking and driving. While it’s true that, statistically, drunk driving deaths have increased among the 18-20 age group when the drinking age has been lowered, it is also possible that these deaths are now deferred rather than prevented. Mothers Against Drunk Driving strongly opposes the initiative, but students felt that by prioritizing education, safety, and tougher enforcement of DUI laws, many of these deaths would be prevented. All expressed strong opposition to drunk driving, and sophomore Milanda Landis noted that the greatest danger comes not from drivers who are completely drunk but from those who “may not know they’ve had just a little too much.” If the punishment for drunk driving were harsher, she said “people wouldn’t take the risk of driving with even a little alcohol in their systems.” In general, students felt that drinking was a personal choice that should be respected, and punished harshly only when it put others at risk.

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Carleton’s alcohol policy as a possible approach to underage drinking was generally seen as a good solution. “In general, I think colleges deal with it in an appropriate way” said Densmore. While Carleton’s policy prohibits the consumption of alcohol by underage students as required by state law, most Carleton students appreciate that Carleton emphasizes helping students who have problems with alcohol rather than simply punishing them. As Landis put it, “one great thing about Carleton is that you don’t have to be afraid to seek help for your friends.” A wealth of resources are available for students who consume too much alcohol, and most students agreed that if a friend had alcohol poisoning, their first priority would be to call 911 or campus security, not to worry about getting in trouble. On the other hand, campus security reported last week that during the 2008-2009 school year 11 arrests and 61 referrals for disciplinary action were made for liquor law violations, more than all the other referrals and arrests combined. It’s clear from these statistics that Carleton students are drinking to excess and are being punished for it, though the percentage of students involved in these incidents is remarkably low, about 0.2% for arrests and about 3% for disciplinary action. Most students are reluctant to give information about Carleton drinking culture, but anyone who’s been to a Sayles dance knows that a large portion of the student body consumes alcohol. Carleton’s alcohol policy seems reasonable, but at the same time it seems to do little to prevent drinking or promote responsible consumption among students. In one infamous 2003 incident, 8 students were hospitalized with alcohol poisoning in 8 days. Former Dean of Students Mark Govoni commented on this in the Carleton Voice in 2004: “This is not really new. It is a constant social problem at Carleton and has been for decades. [One] compelling finding is that we should not radically change our approach to student life and student drinking.” Like all campus alcohol policies, Carleton’s seems like a good compromise between excessive strictness and excessive permissiveness, but at times it can prove frighteningly impotent.

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The takeaway message from all this discussion may be as simple as the statement of freshman Tom McCary: “if you want to get alcohol, it’s easy to do so.” None of the students I spoke with, whether they consumed alcohol or not, said that the law was what prevented them from doing so. Densmore, like a good Carleton student, cited John Locke on this, saying, “the nature of the law is to protect people from harm, so if breaking the law doesn’t harm anyone other than me, the law is essentially useless.” Others who didn’t drink said they weren’t concerned about the law, but simply weren’t interested in drinking. Most alarmingly, those who did drink said that the law didn’t drive them to abstain, simply to conceal their drinking rather than do it socially. The simple truth is that the over-21 law, good or bad, isn’t doing what it’s supposed to, and in fact may have the opposite of its intended effect. Most students reported that they would have serious reservations about lowering the drinking age to 18, but they felt that 19 would be entirely appropriate. At this point, students have experienced and adjusted to college culture, and according to those I spoke with, would be mature enough to make their own decisions about alcohol. Other possible solutions, such as raising the driving age, requiring young people to acquire a “drinking license,” or imposing restrictions on drinkers under 21 while still allowing them to consume some alcohol were widely supported among students. What remains clear in all of this is that underage drinking isn’t going away, and there are no easy answers to the problem. For this reason, we hope that the Amethyst Initiative will bring about, if not solutions, honest discussions about the way American students think about and use alcohol today.

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References:

Carleton Campus Security Report 2008

http://apps.carleton.edu/campus/security/crimereports/

Amethyst Initiative: www.amethystinitiative.org

Carleton College Voice Fall 2004 https://apps.carleton.edu/voice/PDFStory.php?id=490&type=departments