As students, we always have a choice: between accepting the title ‘student’ as a guaranteed right, or as something to be earned, a privilege that requires a high-level of self expectation.

In the context of need-blind admissions, we are not called upon to do the work of the administration and decide the issues—no, we pay to entrust them with that task—but to investigate, to draw connections that underscore some and erase some other assumptions that we set in place as a matter of habit, convenience, or lack of close scrutiny.

As a student of this college, here is a first look at some of my investigations.

President Brian Rosenberg, often attacked as the sole decision-maker on campus, is consistently mistaken as more powerful than he actually is. His sole charge here is to encourage a consensus between the various disconnected campus constituencies. Difficult as that goal may be, he has chosen to make it much more difficult by attempting to solve our fiscal dilemmas through an informed consensus. And in doing so, he more than surpasses the standard grain for college presidents.

However, in trying to maintain diplomacy between the disparate parts of this campus, Rosenberg has presented a mixed message. This can be seen by drawing together two themes found in his centerpiece on “Quality and Access.”

On one hand, he considers the possible deviation from need-blind admissions of “compelling importance to the college.” According to Rosenberg, the implications of this policy decision cut into the basic question of how to maintain a “deep commitment to the mission and purpose of our great college.” Basically, this is a big deal.

But he softens the entrance of the proposed solution, a move to ‘need-aware’ admissions for domestic students, by insisting that “if there is an ethical Rubicon to be crossed between need-blind and need-aware admissions policies, we have already crossed it.” According to this analysis, a move from an 80% need-aware policy to a 75% need-aware policy (the statistical result of the proposed policy change) is then not such a big deal.

Diplomacy aside, Rosenberg has assured me in person that the key questions, of what to do with need-blind admissions and of how to balance the competing values and practical demands of this institution, are not rhetorical in nature. He assured me that if he is presented with a better offer, he is bound by his own convictions and values to accept it. And I believe him.

However, it is no secret that the question of our fiscal solvency is being offered in the same instant that one solution, above all others, is being sold.

As former Resource and Planning Commission Chair Danny Kaplan said in the spring of 2003, in a previously unrelated forum on the future of the Environmental Studies Program, “you cannot at once be an advocate and remain open minded.”

It is strange that after speaking these words, Kaplan was able to spearhead a report that claims to be open-minded, while still rapidly advancing towards a single point of advocacy.

The key then in this discussion, is not to balance our values with our financial capacities, but to balance our insatiable thirst for analysis with an equally overwhelming desire to be right from the very start. In my view, the staff and administration are blurring the line between open inquiry and preferential advocacy.

To their credit, Rosenberg and his staff are trying to keep the college afloat amidst a sea of competitive institutions in a very demanding world.

However, I expect students to know better and to prove it. I challenge each and every one of you to think before you speak, to read before you think and to put a better offer on the tables of the college president and the Board of Trustees.

And remember, that above it all, a college is a sum that is greater than all of its parts and this brief span of one semester in which to discuss and decide on the right balance for Macalester is a rare opportunity to show that we can work together and still achieve our goals.