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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 1st 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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