Living and Changing the Carleton College Community
Today I went to a relaxing karimba performance in the Libe athenaeum. A karimba is an African instrument consisting of a wood component and metal tongs that are strummed. Here’s a brief video I took at the event, which shows some of the thumbwork and music.
Waiting to be served at Burton Dining Hall.
This week’s Carletonian featured two editorials arguing that Carleton should not go trayless. The first was by German Professor Anne Ulmer who writes of her concern that going trayless will cause the dining halls to be more chaotic and dangerous. The issue this editorial raises is a valid one, will going trayless make the dining hall less handicapped accessible? I don’t know the answer.
The second, more detailed editorial by Kyle Kramer makes a number of arguments that going trayless isn’t the best way to reduce food waste. He writes, “The effort to change peoples’ habits of taking too much food is much more likely to be successful if it does not hinge on making their lives more difficult.”
But I think this too narrow a view. It’s important to view the issue in context. Carleton students live some of the easiest lives on the planet. Imagine that you were offered the chance to switch places with a random 20-year-old somewhere on earth. You would be a fool to accept.
Furthermore, we live in country that is struggling with a food waste epidemic:
According to the U.N. World Food Programme, the total U.S. food surplus could satisfy “every empty stomach in Africa”.
If, by making this relatively small change, we can save a lot of food (and no one seems to disagree with that) then it is our obligation to do so. Humans are flexible and Carleton students are no exception. Most students make two trips to get food already.
I am a perfect example of why we should go trayless. I try not to waste food, but when I’m holding a tray it’s just so easy to take more. The huge size of the tray almost begs me to fill up the whole thing with food, and as a result I end up throwing out leftovers or stuffing myself.
I haven’t heard anybody make a better suggestion on how we can decrease our food waste. If there are no better solutions, I support going trayless without reservation.
I was looking for information about Carleton construction the other day, and I stumbled upon a great website with all kinds of historical Carleton information. Among other things, it has a number of photographs with historical and current day comparisons.
There’s also a forum called Cobwebs where members of the Carleton community discussed trivia and history. Some of the discussions have gems hidden in them.
We’ve all heard the legends of Joe Fabeetz, the fictional student who won CSA Senate elections with a write in campaign started in a Carletonian article. Here is the complete Fabeetz platform, thanks to the Cobwebs website:
Education. Have you ever been burned trying to know her? Raw sex, as they say, is better than cooked. Look around you. If you’ve any taste left at all you’ll realize that there’s no taste left at all. The once raw flesh is now bland and overcooked.
We devour whatever is put before us. The wild game in the bush is the best to be had, but it is to be pursued, not plopped down before us on a platter, cooked and dressed. We may consume great knowledge, but we never really taste it.
Pre-meds have become the slaughtered scapegoat of our hungry frustrations, perhaps because there the irony is most apparent. Where now is the life? All the vital forces have been drained away, our selves embalmed with deterministic mechanism. But I’m talking of more than just biology; the humanities too have lost their humanity. We are taught to grovel in the dust of ages, worshipping the earth once walked upon. As for myself, I’m not just running for CSA senate; I’m running for my life…for my reality.
While wandering around campus Carls often wonder, “Why are some of the buildings so artfully designed while others look so terrible?” Burton, Evans, and Norse are beautiful constructions of brick and mortar. Every year during room draw, these highly coveted dorms go quickly.
The entrance to Burton
Musser, Myers, and Watson are quite the opposite. They dominate the landscape with their brutal corners and eye-sore facades. Freshmen outnumber all others in each of these dorms, as they are some of the last chosen during room draw.
The sharp contrast in these buildings can be traced to two construction fevers which swept through the college. From 1914 to 1928, the college constructed eight buildings including Nourse, the Chapel, and Burton. These constructions still look wonderful with their brick facades and lavish woodwork.
But then the economy collapsed. Construction halted completely, and wasn’t begun again until veterans returning from World War II were pushing Carleton enrollment to record levels. The college desperately needed to expand, and in 1958 it began a decade of construction.
Unfortunately for the college, this construction took place during a tragic era of architecture. During this time, the college constructed no less than seven impressively ugly buildings, including Musser, Myers, Watson and the least popular of all dorms, Goodhue.
Myers
Minoru Yamasaki, the architect who later went on to design World Trade Center buildings 1 and 2, was there to help the college expand. A practitioner of “romanticized modernism,” Yamasaki designed West Gym, Cowling, Watson, Goodhue, Olin, and 4th floor of Myers which was added three years after the original construction. It was he who, inspired by the heyday of Cold War architecture, created the distinctly unappealing look of these buildings. He even designed another Musser/Myers clone for the location where the new dorms are being built now. Thank god it was never approved.
The new dorms under construction.
As time goes on the “legacy” buildings, those built before 1958, look all the more grand compared to those built later. The Language and Dining Center, completed in 2001, looks… quirky… but it is still modern enough to impress. Memorial and Cassat were obviously designed to emulate Norse with high-tech interior.
Like many institutions, Carleton can only mourn the construction it undertook in the 1960’s.
Special thanks to Carlteton Archivist Eric Hillemann, without whose help this post would have been even more inaccurate.
Because I’m participating in the Beijing Seminar, I need to declare my major this term. I’ve known for some time that I would be declaring an Asian Studies major focusing in East Asia/Political Science. Now I’ve officially checked the box and turned in the form.
Narrowing the focus of my study is exciting but disappointing. Exciting because I’m going to be studying abroad for three, maybe four terms. Disappointing because I wanted to explore so many other things at Carleton.
If I was magically given another year at Carleton, here is what I would study:
Freshmen and Sophomore years are supposed to be a time of exploration, but looking at my transcript, mine don’t look that way. Of the eighteen classes I’ll have completed by the end of sophomore year, only five of them will have been electives. I traded my electives for language classes and the opportunity to study abroad extensively. Although it’s a decision I’m glad that I made, I also wish I could have had both.
Oh well, at least I got to play broom ball.
The elections concluded last week with the uncontested election of CSA President-Elect Duer and Treasurer-Elect Duane. Despite the best turnout in years, the Carletonian titled “Uncontested Race for CSA President Points to Apathy in Students.” Few things are constant in life, but we can be confident in saying students will always blame other students for being apathetic.
Here is an excerpt about CSA written by Carleton Archivist Eric Hillemann, written in 1991:
It has been quite common for at least one of the three major offices in the CSA (President, Vice President, and Treasurer) to be taken by an unopposed candidate. Less frequently have there been two positions with unopposed candidates. In the past ten years, there have been a half-dozen elections with two unopposed candidates for office, and this year, all three positions were unopposed (for the first time? Possibly).
Students have been complaining in the Tonian about apathy towards elections and lack of Senate-Student Body communication for about twenty-five years.
That statement is as true today as it was when it was written 18 years ago. Every year a new class of students comes in ready to criticize each other for not being engaged. I did the same thing right on this blog.
Student life, like samsara, is cyclical.
If there is one defining aspect of student life, it is that you only do it once. The student body is driven by its constant regeneration; perpetually invigorating the leadership with new blood while robbing it of its experience. In some ways, it reflects the Buddhist cycle of rebirth, samsara.
As Robert Michels writes, “The democratic currents of history resemble successive waves. They break ever on the same shoal. They are ever renewed. This enduring spectacle is simultaneously encouraging and depressing.”
On campus, I hardly ever see anyone younger than 17 or older than 50. Everyone I spend time with is with a few years of my age. But last weekend my nine year old sister Claire came to visit me and I got to spend a day seeing the campus as she does.
Claire woke me up on Saturday at 8:30AM. That early in the morning the campus is like a ghost town. We went to the library and didn’t see more than half a dozen people.
Claire looks at the giant maps.
While at the library, I showed Claire the cushioned area next to the computer lab. You might not have noticed, but none of the pillows are attached and some of them are more than five meters long. We made a fort out of the pillows big enough that I could climb into it. Claire was ecstatic until she hit her head on the wall.
Construction
I'm in the castle.
Claire in the castle.
Afterwards we went ice-skating on the newly frozen Baldspot. I taught Claire how to play broomball, and she loved it. We played for something like two hours before I gave up. Claire fell and hit her head again.
We went swimming for an hour and were scolded for for too much splashing. For dinner we went to ASIA house for Japanese Cooking Night and ate shrimp and pork baozi. I don’t much like shrimp or pork, but the baozi were delicious. Claire and I ate a dozen between the two of us.
Baozi with Japanese Circle
We concluded the night with a painfully long game of charades. Claire tried to mimic Aretha Franklin, even though she didn’t know who she is. We went to bed at 11PM, and Claire was awake the next morning at 7:30AM.
Wherever we went on campus, students were welcoming and eager to interact with Claire. At Dacie Moses sunday brunch, two students sat down with her for an hour to make sock puppets. Carleton can be a very serious place, and students really begin to miss the simple pleasure of playing with children.
Claire sees the campus in a different way than I do. I’d seen the pillows in the library many times and thought they were cool, but I never thought, “I should build something out of those.”
We’ve all seen somebody go the dining hall, pile up their tray with four plates of food, and then throw half of it away. If there weren’t trays, students would make better decisions about what they were actually going to eat and take only as much as they need.
When Bon Appetit met with CSA at the beginning of the year, they said the would be in favor of going trayless. The only roadblock to the proposition is fear of student backlash.
This friday when you go to lunch and see there are no trays, just think about all the food the college is saving and tell your friends to quit complaining.
In the CSA Senate, discussions about how to involve more students in the work of CSA senate is a constant topic of conversation. Now, with the CSA elections upon us, it briefly becomes a topic the whole student body has something to say about. CSA Senate wonders how it can involve more students, and at the same time candidates running for senate demand to know why the student government is so secretive.
I decided to take moment to look at what’s being written about CSA Senate by those involved, but first I would like to say that I support Khant Khant Kyaw and Eric Hitimana for Senate, and Jinai Bharucha for Vice President. I know Robert Stevens and I hope he continues to be active in Senate and Budget Committee, but I truly believe Jinai would make an excellent Vice President and I urge you to vote for her.
Please also vote on these important referenda.
Okay, now a few words about CSA.
The Bad
These comments are discouraging because they show a weak understanding of how CSA Senate works. I’ve been to almost every meeting for 5 terms now, and I truly believe that it is an open environment. There is nothing stopping regular students from joining the senate “task forces.” Students who visit CSA Senate can simply raise their hand if they want to speak, and I’ve seen visitors become more active than senators in the discussion.
Unfortunately, these quotes are representative of a conception in the student body that CSA Senate is arcane in its procedure and works only on trivial issues. Most disappointing is that most of the candidates have rarely, if ever, visited senate. There is no ban on visitors in the CSA Senate.
The Good
These candidates understand what CSA Senate is trying to do, however imperfectly. Behind the occasional trivial issue or complaint about procedure, CSA Senate is trying to inform, represent, and involve students. Not every student needs to be a senator to be involved in the campus life, but I think every student has at least one issue they care about.
Again, Boller’s editorial, “When you are encouraged, or pestered into voting this weekend, take a second to think about your place within the college, and if there is anything specific you care about. If you do, don’t regret you missed a chance to put your name on the ballot, join a committee or talk to someone about how to do something different. Senate is doing this, plus more busy work.”
Here’s the CSA Weekly Update for this week. Steve Wisener, Director of ResLife, explained some key issues about Northfield Option and the New Dorms. The CSA Elections have begun, I’ll write more about them later.
The dorms under construction.
Elections are this week!
• Go to the CSA Website (http://apps.carleton.edu/orgs/csa/) to read platforms and vote!
• Elections will be open until Sunday
• Important referendums will appear on the ballot
• Write-in’s are possible, your chance to become famous
What is going on with Northfield Option and housing next year?
• Administrators have been talking about reducing Northfield Option for years
• With the completion of the new dorms next year, there will only be 100 Northfield Option spots
• Currently there are 43 juniors in Northfield Option housing. If they are allowed to renew their housing, that will be almost half of the Northfield Option spots
• Steve Wisener, Director of ResLife, is looking for solutions that will be fair
• Several areas on campus where students currently live (Stadium, Page House) will be unavailable next year
• In addition, 20 rooms on campus will decrease occupancy (Watson triples)
Is the LDC going to be crowded next year?
• Yes.
• Students living in the new dorms will all be full board
• There will hopefully be “grab-and-go” options located around campus
• They will increase the seating at Burton and the LDC
• The Block 130 plan will no longer be available. Currently it is only utilized by 100 students
• Vice President Fred Rogers is in charge of housing and meal plan decisions.
