In President Brian Rosenberg’s address in the past two issues of The Mac Weekly, he speaks of an inflating financial aid budget and writes that this limits us from spending money on the quality of education here at Mac. He describes the debate as a linear spectrum that contains ‘access’ on one side and ‘quality’ on the other, and a paradox that can seemingly only be solved by dismantling our need-blind admissions policy. In the following paragraphs I will attempt to outline an alternative view; one that is, I believe, shared by a number of students, faculty, and alumni, and one that is based on the beliefs that:

1. The quality of life and education at Macalester is based on more than a simplistic equation of opposites.

2. Macalester is strong because of our ‘less affluent population,’ not in spite of it.

3. Sticking to our core values will not only be morally fulfilling, but possibly financially rewarding.

The most important determinant of quality in a school is the students themselves, not how much money the school throws at us once we are here.

I remember my first day in Introduction to International Studies like it was yesterday. There I was sitting in my chair, jittery with adrenaline and close to peeing my pants, fearful of the imposing figure in the center of the room. Dr. Ahmed I. Samatar, James Wallace Professor and Dean of International Studies and Programming was right there in front of me, lecturing on the value of an education at Macalester, and you could have heard a flea hiccup during the pauses in his speech. While the fear of Professor Samatar has since faded (for the most part), what he said that day has stubbornly stuck in my head: “The most valuable resource that students at Macalester possess is their fellow students.”

Here was the founder of the International Roundtable, publisher of numerous academic books and articles, and respected intellectual to the nth degree telling this group of students that their best chance of learning and growing lay not with him nor with any other professor on campus, but with their fellow peers. This principle has been echoed by other professors here, especially Biology professor Mark Davis. Indeed, the quality of life itself at Macalester not only depends on the constituents of the study body—it is verily determined by the student body.

Quality and access are not at odds with one another, but intrinsically linked.

In stating, “What is invested in access to Macalester cannot be invested in what happens at Macalester,” Rosenberg errs greatly. The dichotomy that he proposes—the need to balance access with quality—is simplistic and false. He fails to recognize that student access determines the quality of the student body on campus, which in turn affects the quality of life and education here.

We are a strong because of our diverse students, not in spite of them.

It is an offensive and mistaken thought that spending money in the form of financial aid somehow threatens to “dilute the quality of a Macalester education.” Pardon me, but the quality of a Macalester education is determined by the quality of our students. The reputation of our school has, in recent years, been on the rise. We have giant pools of applicants, more accepted students have decided to attend than ever before, and the proportion of domestic minority students in the class of 2008 is substantially larger than it has been in a long time. At the same time, our financial aid expenditures are also on the rise. Instead of celebrating the effectiveness of our financial aid admissions policies as being integral to our increased reputation and popularity, Rosenberg frames this phenomenon as a negative relationship; that if we want to continue our success we need to cut back on the very processes that got us here in the first place. This seems foolhardy.

We are different from other schools, and that’s a good thing.

When I was still in high school and looking at colleges to apply to, I remember receiving a piece of mail that stood out in my mind. On one side of this envelope was a graphic depicting two leaves. The first was a green ivy leaf, underneath which was written “Ivy.” The second was a maple leaf in fall foliage, with the words “Not Ivy” written below. And what college do you think had affixed its John Hancock to the other side? It sure as hell wasn’t Williams, I’ll tell you that much.

In his article for The Mac Weekly, Rosenberg repeatedly brings up statistics comparing Macalester with other colleges “of similar quality and character.” The strange thing about these comparisons is that they all serve to highlight the differences between these schools and us. If we are so different than these other schools—our diverse student body composition, our higher financial aid budget, our commitment to internationalism and multiculturalism, etc.—why then do we continue to not only compare ourselves with these schools, but do so in a way that evaluates our worth in light of their values? Instead of looking outward at squabbly external standards, we should be looking inward to understand ourselves, and then ask how we can improve on our own terms.

Virtue can be rewarding.

Rosenberg states that our endowment is too small to complete all the tasks that we want to complete, and that alumni giving is down. Instead of taking these two observations as a call to prove to alumni that Macalester deserves their money because of its egalitarian practices, Rosenberg proposes cutting a policy that has much substantive as well as symbolic meaning. Many alumni are frustrated by the direction they perceive the school to be going—especially dealing with need-blind admissions— and it becomes clear after hearing from some of them that this is an issue that could have far-reaching implications for the future ability of our school to raise money. There is a web site I would encourage all interested parties to visit: www.needblind.com. It was created by a group of alumni concerned with the potential loss of need-blind admissions at Macalester. I believe this website to be indicative of a larger feeling among alumni, and if we can somehow harness this feeling into donations for the school, I believe we can turn this negative debate into something that is both positive and financially beneficial.