Carleton Reunion Protest Report

I attended my college reunion this week (my 16th, my wife's 15th). It was, as always, a lot of fun to see old friends and old professors and old hangouts. 

Going in, I was curious about how much protest activity there might be (reunion is a huge event at Carleton, to the point that other schools send observers to see how we do it). Despite being on campus these past few months, I've actually been relatively insulated from major protest events: Lewis & Clark has been a lot quieter than other Portland campuses -- compare Portland State (where the library was absolutely trashed) or Reed (where a Jewish student was hit with a rock) -- and what protest activity has occurred centered on the undergraduate campus. I knew Carleton had an encampment at one point, but hadn't heard anything else about it, and my general rule of thumb on this subject has been "no headlines = good news."

 

Anyway, the answer to my question of how much protest activity would be found at reunion was "some, but not too much." There were a few alumni wearing pro-Palestine t-shirts -- I probably saw 3 or 4 over the course of the weekend. The major action item seemed to be a pledge to withhold donations "until divestment". I saw a handful of buttons to that effect, but it didn't seem to be very effective (relatively early in the weekend the reunion organizers announced that my wife's class had already blown past its fundraising target). On the last day, about a dozen alumni protested in front of a campus center, which to me just honestly looked boring -- standing in a line on a hot day chanting the same few phrases in unison? Subject matter aside, it's clear that protests just aren't for me. But it didn't really disrupt anything or cause any problems, so they can say what they want. And that was my general take on the whole weekend as well: there was a visible pro-Palestine presence, as was their right. It was a pretty small sliver of the overall attendance, and didn't materially impact the weekend. I won't go so far as to say one wouldn't even have noticed them without being on the lookout, but it was not some overwhelmingly or inescapable presence by any means.

As it happens, one my favorite professors at Carleton is an expert on protest politics, so it was fun to pick her brain as to what had happened on campus over the course of the year. Her take was that the student protesters, while "enthusiastic", were not especially good at protesting and lacked any robust theory of change. The encampment was mostly let alone and neither caused nor was subjected to significant trouble. The biggest "event" came when a group of about two dozen students decided to stage a sit-in inside a campus administrative building. The college responded to that by locking and evacuating the building, but a sympathetic faculty member arrived to ostentatiously unlock the building and allow the protesters inside. The administration set a deadline for the students to leave or face disciplinary action; about half left, half didn't, and the latter were put on disciplinary probation.

In terms of what the protesters were asking for, some of the major demands were (1) divestment and (2) termination of a scholarship program supporting students studying in Israel. The latter was never going to happen. The former was, in my professor's estimation, "ill-formed", mostly because Carleton has little, if any, direct investments in arms manufacturers of any sort and so the protesters were left trying to fit round pegs into square holes. As with most colleges, Carleton's endowment is primarily in funds with relatively opaque portfolios, so it's unknown who have holdings in, and it took some serious stretches to find problems with the known companies. For example, they found one company Carleton is invested in that sells, among other things, some form of air traffic management software that can have military applications and which has sales in the Middle East. The sales figures aren't further broken down by country, nor are civilian and military uses disaggregated, but by assuming that all the Middle East sales are to Israel and all the Israel sales are military, voila -- Carleton is killing kids. The level of attenuation made it hard for the college to take this seriously as an actual demand as opposed to a slogan, and so the divestment call also seems likely to be a non-starter.

I also read over how the Carleton administration had responded to campus protests over the course of the academic year. Again, the overall impression was that things were handled quite well -- there was no significant signs I saw of violence or aggressive police responses. One thing in particular that the college President did that I thought was extremely effective was that she maintained lines of open communication with the protesters, but was emphatic that these meetings and discussions were not some sort of "concession" to be extracted:

The reason I have made a point of offering meetings up front, before any sit-in or impasse, is to establish that I see communication as a given, not a negotiating tactic. I was, and am, willing to meet with you — not as a result of threats or demands, but because you are deeply committed Carleton students whose views are important to the institution and to me. 

This, to me, is exactly correct. On the one hand, it is a very bad thing when college decisions are made simply by reference to whomever is yelling the loudest. At other schools where encampments and protests had been successfully "de-escalated" by promises that the college would hear and listen to various pro-Palestine pitches, there was some measure of frustration by Jewish students who did not feel like they were given the solicitude and avenues of access and basically wondered whether the only way they could get a hearing would be to occupy a building. That's a toxic dynamic. At the same time, it is part of the Carleton President's job to listen to and be attentive to student concerns. The President should hear what the protesters are saying not because she is forced to, but because that's part of her job description. The submission is not, or should not be, the point.

The final thought that pinged around my head related to the "no donations until divestment" campaign.  Again, it does not seem like this is making a material dent in Carleton's donations. Nonetheless, we are of course seeing many cases of donors publicly withdrawing contributions to various colleges and universities unless and until they adopt or alter this or that campus policy -- consider Bill Ackman and Harvard as an especially high-profile example. These initiatives I find a bit difficult. At one level, donors of course aren't obligated to give anybody money; if something about Harvard or Carleton or wherever renders it a place they're not comfortable supporting, that's their business. On the other hand, amongst academics it is generally viewed as a very bad thing when a university does in fact alter a policy or practice due to donor demands -- they shouldn't bow to outside pressure (and I think that this belief in institutional independence is at least somewhat severable from underlying opinions about the substantive merits of the underlying demands). So we're left in this weird space where we all agree that donors are absolutely entitled to withdraw their contributions in protest, but we also think that said protests should systematically fail.

In any event, on the whole I was pleased with how things played out at Carleton, and I'm glad that most stakeholders for the most part have comported themselves in a manner that allowed for that happy and peaceable outcome.

Off To Minnesota

It's double-Minnesota-trouble!

I'm heading off to Minnesota tomorrow. First item on the agenda: a wedding in Lutsen (way in the northeastern corner of the state). That's this weekend. But next weekend is my college reunion, down in Northfield (pretty far south, relatively speaking). We'll be staying with my in-laws in Owatonna (as featured in the New York Times!) for the interim.

So I'll be pretty busy. Looking forward to the trip, but not looking forward to the long flight or equally long car rides. Minnesota is actually pretty big, especially once you stop ignoring the northern two-thirds of it!

Taking Rural To School: The Carleton/Minnesota Case

MinnPost has an interesting article detailing the various programs and practices Minnesota private schools (including my beloved Carleton College) use to bring more students from rural communities to campus.

One thing I think the article does a good job of emphasizing is that attracting rural students, specifically, means being attentive to particular range of problems, concerns, or obstacles which transcend a simple, naked, "we're open to everyone" outlook. Obviously, scholarships are helpful -- and some schools have scholarship programs specifically open to students from rural backgrounds.

But another issue that is pointed out in the article goes to recruitment: when sending admissions representatives on recruiting trips around the country, it's obviously more efficient to visit densely populated sub/urban areas (particularly in relatively wealthy high-performing school districts) that are likely to yield more applicants. Hence, rural students may be less likely to hear about (say) Carleton or get information as to why they should attend or how it will be financially possible to attend. This is a structural disadvantage students from rural communities might face, and so it is incumbent on college admissions offices to take proactive steps to counteract it. Likewise, rural school districts may lack the range of extracurricular activities or programs that are found in their suburban counterparts, and so figuring out who are the true "stars" coming out of rural districts may require more work than simply an apples-to-apples comparison of applicant profiles. And for some schools (particularly those which are not themselves nestled in rural communities), there might also be some attention to mitigating the effects of culture shock -- the delicate balancing between wanting to expand horizons while also respecting that adjustment to new and different communities is something that requires work and support.

All of this is to say, to the extent a school like Carleton desires geographic diversity -- and it does, and it should -- it will have to take specific steps to make itself available and accessible to that community. Tailored scholarship programs, extra attention to non-traditional recruiting, and holistic appraisals of applications are just some of the ways Carleton might take these steps.

There's one last thing worth remarking on. Frequently, when talking about "affirmative action" programs, we hear a stock refrain about the "rural White kid from a small town in South Dakota -- what about him?"  As this article makes clear, the myth that colleges don't care about diversity when it comes to rural kids is just that -- a myth. But there's a bigger issue here. The implication of this critique is that concern for rural students is something competitive with, and antagonistic to, affirmative action programs which seek to increase enrollment of underrepresented racial and ethnic groups. In reality, they're two peas in a pod.

The strategies discussed in this article include scholarships that are just "for" rural kids (I wouldn't have been able to access them), specific efforts to recruit from these communities, and even certain types of "weighting" when assessing their application (why should their two extracurricular activities be more impressive than my seven?). These are no different in form than how racial affirmative action works. In neither case is the strategy simply a facial neutrality where we tally up GPAs and standardized test scores and rank accordingly. It isn't even a simple reduction of the entire program to class -- scholarships for people (regardless of race or location) below a certain income. Rather, both the race and the geography case involve taking specific actions that are tailored to, and sometimes restricted to, the particular underrepresented community.

Yet I think this article will elicit very few complaints about "special privileges", or the need for "location-blindness", or odes to the lost meritocracy of yore. I suspect most people will read this article and think these are salutary efforts to improve educational accessibility for a community that is often-overlooked in higher education.

For the record: it's the latter reaction that's the right one. While I myself come from the suburbs, and thus did not receive any of the scholarship money or specialized recruitment or tailored review of my application, I still consider myself a beneficiary of these programs. Why? Well, most obviously, I'm engaged to a fellow Carl who comes from what the article calls "Greater Minnesota" -- that turned out to be a great benefit for me. And of course, one of the many virtues of a truly great liberal arts education is getting to meet and learn from people who hail from a variety of different backgrounds.

My life and learning is better than it otherwise would have been because I got to meet and become friends with people from rural communities. It's also better than it otherwise would have been because I got to meet and become friends with people from lots of other communities, many of which were quite distant (spatially and otherwise) from where I grew up in the DC suburbs. Carleton's efforts to promote this sort of diversity are part of what makes it strong -- in all cases, not just some.

Next Year in ... Boston?

Off to the final leg of our holiday travels: Cambridge, Massachusetts, for an annual New Year's Celebration with some of my best college buddies. Since this is 2016, we need to catch a 6:15 AM (4:15 AM Pacific) airport shuttle to travel hundreds of miles away from where we went to college (Owatonna is just a hop, skip, and jump away from Carleton). But so it goes.

Quite possible this is my sign-off for the year. Soon 2016's reign of terror will close, and 2017 can bring in a new reign of terror all its own. In any event, I hope everyone's celebrations are fun and safe, and if I don't write again, see you on the flipside!

In the future, when skyscrapers yield to spacescrapers that reach out into the heavens, there will be no 2016th floor.

— David Schraub (@schraubd) December 29, 2016

Meanwhile, Back in Northfield...

I had a lovely conversation with some of my students yesterday during office hours. It was quite wide-ranging, but one thing we talked about was the Jewish cultural-shock of moving from (very Jewish) Bethesda, Maryland, to (very not-Jewish) Northfield, Minnesota for college. Northfield was, by and large, a perfectly fine place to be a Jew. Still, it was markedly different from Bethesda if only because there were so much fewer of us. And going from a place where everyone was intimately familiar with Jews (even if not Jewish themselves, they had a year-long crash course in synagogue practices from riding the Bar and Bat Mitzvah circuit), to a place where many people had never met any Jews at all, does change things. For example, I noted that unlike in Bethesda, at Carleton I did have to contend with people who believed that "the Jews killed Christ". Now technically, I heard that once in Bethesda too. Someone said it in 9th grade social studies, and the entire class burst out laughing. But that, to me, emphasizes the difference all the more -- it's not that there is nobody with anti-Semitic beliefs in Bethesda, it's just that the community culture is such that any such views are going to be marginalized and ridiculed. The difference in Northfield is not that I thought any large proportion of Carls thought I was a Christ-killer, but I didn't think that such views would be immediately understood as transparently ludicrous the way that they were back home.

All of this is a segue to my collegiate town reentering the news in the worst way possible. The local watering hole, The Contented Cow, is hosting a series of talks by a prominent conspiracy theorist of the "Holocaust-denial, Israel is responsible for 9/11" sort. Because nothing goes with a pint like a side of HoloHoax1!!11!.

In any event, I am pleased to see that the community has, apparently, risen up in protest (the conspirator in question, James Fetzer, is complaining that Northfield has not accorded him the "powerful, positive response" he is used to). And in a sense there is nothing more that should be said on this. The pub proprietor's response is to change the format from a "lecture" to a "debate", but I agree with my former Professor Louis Newman that there are some ideas that are better off ignored.

Yet, I can't resist one more comment. The pub, you see, wants to make one thing very clear about its Holocaust-denying, 9/11-was-a-Mossad-operation guest. Can you guess what it is?

“Fetzer is critical of the Israeli government. Does that make him an anti-Semite? No."

Like clockwork.

Tripping

Lots of travel in the coming days. Tomorrow I fly out for my college roommate's wedding in Casper, Wyoming (the bride is also a college friend of mine -- it's going to be a fantastic Carleton reunion). This entails flying into Denver, renting a car, and then driving four hours. On Sunday, I'm flying back to DC (again, through Denver) to take the Maryland bar exam (Tuesday and Wednesday). I will then take some very deserved days of doing nothing. And then sometime the week following, I will fly back to Chicago, to prepare to move to Champaign (that will go down August 8th).

Uf-da. There was a time in my life I liked traveling, too.

In Cautious Defense of Legacy Preferences

At their eponymous blog, Richard Posner and Gary Becker offer up a partial defense of legacy preferences in college (particularly elite college) admissions.

Posner's argument is basically that, while legacy preferences are distasteful, their actual harm on society is minuscule -- boiling down to the non-legacy student who is "bumped" going to Michigan instead of Yale. Not only is this simply not a huge problem on its own terms, but whatever marginal harm the student faces by being a Wolverine is counterbalanced by the benefit that other Michigan students get by their association with top-quality students.

Becker is willing to make a more positive case for legacy preferences, observing that college's prefer legacies because they are more likely to accept admission offers, increasing the college's yield rate (he calls it their "harvest", which I think is a far creepier term for the concept) and their rates of alumni giving.

As for me, while I do think it is an inversion of justice that legacy preferences are permissible and racial ones are not, I'm actually more-or-less neutral on the justifiability of legacy preferences on their own terms. And basically, it's my time at Carleton -- a school that, at least in my impression, has a strong legacy presence -- that shifted me from opposition to neutrality.

Legacy admission hasn't directly been a part of my own life -- I attended public school K-12, and to my knowledge I have absolutely zero family connection either to Carleton or the University of Chicago. But, one of the things I really liked about Carleton was the school's sense of institutional memory, and to me, that was intricately bound up in the number of students who had parents, siblings, or other relatives who had attended as well. It created a positive school dynamic and sense of community that really was integral to the school's charm. And I think the alumni body's fierce loyalty to its alma mater is a crucial part of our school's appeal. Carleton has one of the highest giving rates amongst its alumni of any school in the country, and on many occasion, when I've told someone I went to Carleton, they've noted how they've never met a Carleton graduate who didn't gush about their time there.

One of the things I think admissions officers are doing, and should be doing, is trying to construct classes that will together form a vibrant, engaged community. That's one of the reasons I support diversity programs like racial affirmative action -- academic and social communities are simply more robust when they incorporate a broad range of different backgrounds and perspectives. To the extent that legacies help create this sense of vibrancy and community -- and in my experience at Carleton, they did -- that's a valid attribute for admissions officials to consider.

Of course, this does not answer just how much weight legacy status should carry in admissions decisions. Nor does it answer the counter-arguments about "rich-getting-richer" and entrenching inequality. I also think that the normative justifiability of legacy preferences is hinged upon the general permissibility of allowing college's discretion to create diversified academic communities -- it can't be that college's can only look to those non-metric-based personal characteristics when they benefit the already privileged. But, in a world where this sort of holistic admissions process is allowed and is the norm, I think legacy status has a place alongside other personal characteristics as a valid consideration in building the best incoming class possible.

Carleton Frisbee Dominates, but are they Historic?

Carleton College's ultimate frisbee team (CUT) won Division I nationals earlier this week, besting Wisconsin 11-5. It was a great victory, avenging an earlier defeat to Wisconsin in the North-Central Regional finals and capping an undefeated run by Carleton through the tournament. It's also Carleton's second championship in three years (and they were runners-up to Florida in 2010).

I told this to my dad, and he raised an interesting question. Carleton has an enrollment of a little less than 2,000 people. The University of Wisconsin has an enrollment of over 42,000 people (that counts graduate students -- but graduate students can be part of a college ultimate roster, and indeed, Wisconsin had at least one graduate student playing for it in the championship match). Carleton thus has 40,000 fewer students than Wisconsin -- it's over 20x our size. Our previous two D-I titles were over UC-Santa Barbara (2009) and the University of Georgia (2001), both smaller than Wisconsin (though Georgia clocks in at nearly 35,000 students) [my reading comprehension skills are terrible. Those were the women's champions that year -- Carleton defeated the University of Colorado (30,000 students) in both 2001 and 2009]. He asked whether, in the history of college team sports, there has ever been a championship match where the winning team was that much smaller than its opponent in terms of enrollment?

It's a fair question. In individual sports, of course, every once in awhile you get a standout who randomly is at some tiny school. But in team sports it is much rarer that a small school even plays with the big boys, and in the rare cases where they do and aren't utterly overmatched (e.g., Davidson in D-I basketball), they still don't typically win championships. Now, there might be some exception back in the old days when random teams came out of nowhere to win championships. And even today, one can imagine a sport like Crew or something where a smaller school might have matched Carleton's feat. But it's quite possible this is a unique, and uniquely impressive, accomplishment for CUT.

Anyway, regardless of whether it actually is a record, it's still a mighty impressive accomplishment. Congrats to CUT, and congrats to Carleton, for maintaining an elite level program in at least one sport for so many years.

Barack Obama Went to Carleton?!?!

Goldberg:

Such a ridiculous question, is Obama a Muslim? Of course he's not. He's a Druid. But a Reform Druid. Meaning he only worships shrubbery.

(See here).

The Espino Carleton Connection

Miguel Espino (20-2-1, 9 KOs), the handpicked opponent for Kelly Pavlik's return from a hand injury, doesn't have much of chance to win his fight this weekend. But he does have a sibling who attended Carleton College. So now, he's automatically one of my favorite fighters.

(His sister apparently transferred out to CSU-Northridge to be closer to their legally blind mother. But once a Carl, always a Carl -- I've known a few people who transferred out who later transferred back in. We hold on to our own).

Not Strep

The culprit for my recent rundown feeling is a fading viral infection, plus a canker sore in the back of my throat (which, annoying as it is, pales in comparison to the exquisite agony of having one on the side of my tongue). But I think I'm on the other side of the slope now, so that's good.

Also, Chicago's medical services best Carleton's by a country mile -- one of the few advantages I'll give to this school over my beloved alma mater.

Teaching Conservatively

Peter Berkowitz (via) has an editorial up on the WSJ calling for greater inclusion of conservative intellectuals in the syllabi of elite colleges and universities.

[M]ost students will hear next to nothing about the conservative tradition in American politics that stretches from John Adams to Theodore Roosevelt to William F. Buckley Jr. to Milton Friedman to Ronald Reagan. This tradition emphasizes moral and intellectual excellence, worries that democratic practices and egalitarian norms will threaten individual liberty, attends to the claims of religion and the role it can play in educating citizens for liberty, and provides both a vigorous defense of free-market capitalism and a powerful critique of capitalism's relentless overturning of established ways. It also recognized early that communism represented an implacable enemy of freedom. And for 30 years it has been animated by a fascinating quarrel between traditionalists, libertarians and neoconservatives.

While ignoring conservatism, the political theory subfield regularly offers specialized courses in liberal theory and democratic theory; African-American political thought and feminist political theory; the social theory of Karl Marx, Emile Durkheim, Max Weber and the neo-Marxist Frankfurt school; and numerous versions of postmodern political theory.

I want to say at the outset that I am and have long been in favor of greater integration of conservatives in the academic sphere (I've publicly called for diversity affirmative action for conservatives in highly liberal academic environs, a move that Berkowitz actively disclaims support for). But I'm not 100% convinced the problem is as stark as Berkowitz makes it out to be.

First, we do need to observe that at least portions of the conservative movement, comprising some of its most prominent public writers, bitterly decry "liberal bias" in the academy, but show an utter blindness as to what sorts of conservatives are intellectually sophisticated enough to merit inclusion in a high-level college political theory course. The folks that Berkowitz mentions (Roosevelt, Buckley, Oakeshott) certainly qualify. But I recall a poster featuring such "distinguished" academic lights as Ann Coulter, Dineesh D'Souza, Robert Novak, and Michelle Malkin with the tag "no education is complete until it includes us." Well, no -- I can't think of a single political theory course, including one specifically focusing on modern conservative thought, that would not be drastically diminished by the inclusion of Ann Coulter. To the extent that this is what some conservatives (presumably not Berkowitz) mean when they complain about their exclusion from academic halls, my sympathy is rather dramatically curtailed. The definitive anti-intellectual turn (see also) trumpeted by at least some modern conservatives is a barrier to including conservatives in any form they'd recognize as valid.

Second, I'm not hugely convinced conservatives are absent from political theory courses, at least those which are broad enough in scope so as to include a broad swath of political schools (I would agree that it would be interesting to have a course that focuses specifically on conservative political thought). I only have my own Carleton experiences to go on, of course, but let's run through the authors I read in "Introduction to Political Philosophy": Plato, Aristotle, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Burke, Mill, Marx. Plenty of names on their that conservatives would be happy about. My "Justice and Politics" class opened with a unit on libertarianism and was heavily invested in the Rawls/Nozick debate. My American Political Thought class, too, seemed to give the ideas that Berkowitz wanted aired their proper due. The thing here is that it's always possible to name another writer that wasn't on a syllabus -- an "inexcusable omission". But given that there is a limited amount of time, and allowing professors some leeway to teach courses from the angle that most interests them,* I'm not sure that conservative ideas are being short-changed.

Finally, I want to register a serious quibble I have with Berkowitz putting "conservative political thought" as a polar opposite of "African-American political thought". Obviously, as someone interested in Black Conservatism and Nationalism, I'm annoyed at this dichotomy. And it's not just my own idiosyncratic pursuit. I took a course in the Foundations of African-American Political Thought: The primary authors we read were Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. Du Bois, Alain Locke, and Marcus Garvey. I think both Douglass and Washington could rest comfortably in Berkowitz's conservative tradition; I also think you can make an argument that Garvey's Nationalism lies closer to it than it does to a Du Boisian liberalism. Between the fact that Berkowitz names solely White authors and the fact that he expressly casts African-American Political Thought as being a course one does instead of a course that might draw attention to conservative ideas, one gets the disturbing intuition that Berkowitz "doesn't count" Black Conservatives as genuine figures in his movement. But if Berkowitz is going to short-change his own side, no wonder he feels so lonely!

* My APT professor's primary research interest is in early 20th century American pragmatism, hence the Du Bois/Lippmann/Dewey stress. But interestingly, despite all being "liberals", they are very attuned to "moral and intellectual excellence, worries that democratic practices and egalitarian norms will threaten individual liberty, and atten[tion] to the claims of religion and the role it can play in educating citizens for liberty" -- the former two being the subject of my final paper for that class.

Congratulations

I'm blogging from the room Jill is moving out of, but I just wanted to publicly congratulate her for graduating today. She is now an official alum of Carleton College -- magna cum laude, and with distinction in Political Science. Same honors as me, actually (but her GPA was a little higher).

Not that I needed any ceremony to know Jill was a baller -- but it is nice to have something official to lay on all y'all.

The Summa of All Fears

Fred Barnes and Bill Bennett talk about Sotomayor's academic credentials:

BARNES: I think you can make the case that she's one of those who has benefited from affirmative action over the years tremendously.

BENNETT: Yeah, well, maybe so. Did she get into Princeton on affirmative action, one wonders.

BARNES: One wonders.

BENNETT: Summa Cum Laude, I don't think you get on affirmative action. I don't know what her major was, but Summa Cum Laude's a pretty big deal.

BARNES: I guess it is, but you know, there's some schools and maybe Princeton's not one of them, where if you don't get Summa Cum Laude then or some kind of Cum Laude, you then, you're a D+ student.

Ta-Nehisi Coates promises to stop being amazed soon. I'm just curious what Latin honors, if any, appear after their respective degrees.

Look, Carleton was one of those places where cum laude wasn't that hard to attain. It wasn't D+ work (3.25 average, so B/B+), but it wasn't difficult. Magna (what I got) required a 3.5 average, which still was quite doable for a hard worker. But Summa sat at a lofty 3.9 average, and it was quite an accomplishment -- I'd say that about 10 people in our class of over 450 reached it.

Chicago's equivalent honors (honors, high honors, and highest honors) are given at 179 (B+), 180.5 (A-), and 182 (A) respectively -- but thanks to a curve where the median is set at 177, any and all honors require serious chops. Only a bare handful achieve high honors, and highest honors, in fact, only pops up once every several years.

In sum, I'd be very surprised if at Princeton, or any other college in the country, Summa can be taken for granted. But if a Latina woman can get it, I guess it must come cheap.

Transfer Treason

Spotted in the Carleton alum magazine, The Voice:

Edwin Eck '69, Missoula, Mont., wrote, "At the suggestion of U.S. Senator Max Baucus '63, President Bush nominated me to a full 5-year term on the IRS Oversight Board. The Senate confrimed the nomination on October 2, 2008."

Max Baucus, Carleton alum? I looked it up on Wikipedia, and it turns out that Baucus did attend Carleton for one year before transferring to Stanford. Laaaame. No credit to traitors -- get out of my magazine!

(Congrats to Mr. Eck, though, who apparently graduated in good standing.)

Victory on MPIRG

With the votes tallied, the "no on MPIRG" campaign has won a crushing upset victory, 321-847. This is obviously a huge victory, and my congratulations to those who organized and led the campaign.

I sent an email to some of the MPIRG staffers asking them for comment. I laid my cards on the table about where I had come down on the referendum. But now that the election is over, I want to reiterate what I said in my piece: MPIRG is a democratic organization; ideally, it should take this resounding message by the voters of Carleton to heart as it evaluates how to grow and change from here.

MPIRG has the potential to be a great progressive backbone once more. But it will only get there if it takes seriously the concerns of its student members and gives them the space and respect necessary to do their jobs. It should not have come this far, but hopefully last night's elections were a wake up call.

I'll let you know what response, if any, MPIRG had to my inquiry.

No on MPIRG

Though not the type myself, most of my friends at Carleton were deeply integrated in Carleton organizing and activist community. So I was surprised when many of them told me they were opposing the renewal of MPIRG's (Minnesota Public Interest Research Group) automatic refundable funding program. I was even more surprised to find out that the very persons whom I had known as MPIRG leaders on campus were the same people leading the charge to defund it.

But the reason I was surprised is the same reason I take these people seriously. And their indictment is a serious one. MPIRG, they argue, is wasting Carleton student funds on overhead and salaries that could be put to better use on campus. MPIRG has set its agenda with an eye towards bigger chapters in the Twin Cities, while ignoring the goals, desires, and priorities of Carleton students. More damningly, they have dealt with the students they are supposedly "representing" in an arrogant and high-handed manner, effectively ousting several long-time student organizers, prompting a massive turnover in MPIRG's Carleton leadership as many of the group's longest-standing members left in solidarity. Those people -- who had direct experience with what MPIRG has and hasn't been doing -- have come to the conclusion that it's time for Carleton students to take control of their own destinies. The old MPIRG would have taken this groundswell of popular discontent as a signal. The MPIRG we have seems to see it as insolence.

MPIRG hasn't taken these charges lying down. And they are certainly entitled to state their case. But unfortunately, their argument seems to be high on mud-slinging and political tricks, and light on substance. They implied that the constructively dismissed student leaders had engaged in harassment -- a vile slander of some of Carleton's most hard-working activists. They took credit for the accomplishments of the very organizers they successfully pushed out of the group. And unfortunately, they've only brought more of the same to this campaign: bringing in their professional organizers to tear down opposition posters, accost students in class, and illegally place posters in campus bathrooms (in violation of election rules). I wonder if MPIRG supports EFCA -- for it certainly seems that their commitment to fair and deliberative democratic process is, at best, a fickle thing.

I know the students who are leading the anti-MPIRG fight. They are an incredibly accomplished group of activists who show the full breadth of Carleton's talents and ingenuity. If they feel stifled by MPIRG, I believe them. If they believe MPIRG is poisoning their efforts to enact progressive social change, I believe them. If they feel that MPIRG has been disrespectful of Carleton students and Carleton values, I believe them.

MPIRG proclaims itself to be a democratic organization. Democratic theorists will tell you that democratic organizations respond to one and only one type of pressure: that of the voting booth. So long as MPIRG thinks it can maintain the blind support of the student body without a corresponding commitment to humility, engagement, and respect, we can't be surprised when it doesn't enact those values. You make MPIRG better by sending it a message: shape up, or ship out. Vote no on MPIRG.

More on the "no" campaign can be found here.

Fleeing the State

The prom was a wonderful night. But now I must flee to Minnesota, where Jill will be delivering her senior thesis talk (for distinction!). No laptop, though I might commandeer hers. I'll be back in Chicago Monday night.

Home and Away

I'm leaving Carleton this evening to return home to Maryland, but essentially turning back around immediately to go to Chicago.

So, to tide you over, here are a few links:

Italian prosecutors are trying to send a comedian to prison for insulting the Pope. State-sponsored censorship of religious parodies is so much better than the spontaneous, riot-inducing variety.

Tim Wise on what this election (and particularly Sarah Palin) is telling us about White privilege.

Sarah Palin had no Blacks on her staff in Alaska and said she had no obligation to hire any. In her defense, I'm she'd say she would hire a qualified Black staffer. Unfortunately, none possessed the relevant qualification of being her childhood pal.

Also, Governor Palin's approvals are starting to falter.

Old Stomping Grounds

I'm off to visit Carleton this weekend (Friday -- Tuesday). Then I'm going to Chicago on Wednesday, moving in, driving to Milwaukee on Sunday for a wedding, and finally coming back to Chicago for good a week from Monday.

Blogging, understandably, will be sporadic in this period.

Catch y'all later!