Please send letters intended for publication to Letters to the Editor, Macalester Today, College Relations, Macalester College, 1600 Grand Ave., St. Paul, MN 55105-1899. Or by e-mail: mactoday@macalester.edu. We reserve the right to edit letters for conciseness and clarity.

Quality and access

I read with interest President Rosenberg's letter in the Fall Macalester Today outlining proposed changes to Macalester's financial aid policies. I applaud his willingness to address this thorny issue before it creates a financial crisis at Mac similar to what we have only narrowly escaped in the past.

While Macalester's commitment to financial aid to facilitate diversity is, and should remain, a core principle of the school, it is only one of several valid and meritorious principles. Small student-faculty ratios, a top-flight teaching faculty, world-class academic resources and modern facilities are all critical components to delivering on the promise of excellence that Macalester makes to all incoming students. Without all of these components, Macalester will not be able to continue to attract the high-quality students, financially needy or not, that make an education at Mac so compelling. Entering students and their parents have alternatives, and Mac has to offer more than the mantra of diversity.

Macalester is not and should not be run as a for-profit institution, but nor can it be run in a cocoon of financial oblivion, and no institution should be managed without control over its largest financial expenditures. I am sure this issue will create much debate within the Mac community, as it should. I hope the debate will match the thoughtfulness and respect for all views that President Rosenberg and the Board of Trustees have demonstrated with their proposal. Macalester has an obligation to the students, parents, faculty and alumni who support the school to earn that support by balancing a complex array of objectives, rights, duties and aspirations. I for one believe this proposal strikes a sensible balance between financial prudence and academic ideals.

Michael Huber '90
New York

The Fall issue features a letter from President Rosenberg in which he discusses the school's financial constraints. One sentence that helps sum up the first part of this letter is: "This combination of factors means that at present Macalester is able to spend considerably less on our students than do most of our peers." He goes on to explain that faculty compensation is falling, staff size per student is the lowest among our peers, expenditures in technology and the library are well below average, student-faculty ratio has increased from 10:1 to 11:1, and controllable expenses have decreased over the past three years, with "much more cutting than adding."

Then I turn the page and read that Ruminator/Hungry Mind, and its owner, is going bankrupt, while owing Macalester over $650,000.

I have great memories of the bookstore and Hungry Dave myself; I played on his 1981 intramural softball team and we had a blast (although we lost the championship game). And I suppose when something like this happens, it's better to remember the good memories than dwell on the negative. But still, one would think that the school losing over half a million dollars by unwisely backing a bookstore that had "been in financial trouble for several years" might somehow have been mentioned in President Rosenberg's letter (by adding a bullet point mentioning unwise business management decisions by the school as another reason for the financial pinch, perhaps).

Mark Satterstrom '81
Harris, Minn.

My reasons for supporting the modification of our current financial aid policies have much to do with Macalester's history.

In the early 1970s, much like today, financial aid expenses threatened to consume our entire endowment income. Back then, we let exactly this happen and relied on tuition charges exclusively to pay for everything else, from the electric bill and books for the library to salaries for everyone.

Without endowment income to cushion all these costs, tuition charges soared. Fine students and faculty, many of them people of color, exited in droves.

Then the bottom fell out, and guess who got blamed in the aftermath? The very same (now departed) low-income students that our financial aid policies had been designed to help. "Access" itself became the ultimate casualty.

The modest changes being proposed for financial aid will prevent this sorry history from repeating itself.

James B. Stewart
James Wallace Professor of History

Political diversity

I, too, am concerned about the lack of political diversity and tolerance on the Macalester campus ("Doing Macalester from the Right Wing" by Jay Cline '92, Fall issue). It bothers me to hear Macalester faculty who consider themselves liberal Democrats complain that even they are a tiny minority "on the far right" among their colleagues.

How can institutions educate rather than only indoctrinate with such a bias among teachers? Students tend to be liberal anyway. How can any intellectual balance be achieved with a majority of faculty just as or more liberal than even the students? Why are personal politics so imbued into campus pedagogy?

I don't want our academic institutions, private or public, indoctrinating anyone in a political philosophy rather than educating young minds in thinking and learning accurate information about many points of view and how to synthesize cogent and meaningful conclusions for themselves.

I think the most unfair, ill-advised and most destructive thing the college could do is hire a blatantly far right-wing ideologue to balance off everyone else. Many great minds today, like David Brooks of the New York Times, bring reasoned, disciplined and creative thinking to alternatives other than social democratic ideologies.

Cherie Riesenberg '72
St. Paul

I just read "Doing Macalester from the Right Wing," and it brought back some memories of my own. I attended Mac from 1978 to '82. Apparently it was friendlier than Mr. Cline's era. We were a pretty homogeneous lot, left of center. I recall Reagan's presidential candidacy seeming humorous, since he admitted in interviews to not understanding things about world politics--the name of a leader or the location of a country, for example--that many Mac students regarded as basic knowledge. His comment about "trees causing more pollution than cars" was a popular joke for those interested in the environment. Then, he won.

When conservatism took hold in Washington after the election, education was placed on the defensive. The Cold War-fighting investment in intellectual capital of the '50s, '60s and '70s was suddenly deemed a waste, and attacked as such. It was like a vendetta in tone and spirit. An example of an '80s epithet would be "National Endowment for the Arts"--sort of like "Purple Heart" is this year: once highly esteemed, and now vile.

I'm hopeful learning will regain some luster, even though we're bound to breed a bunch of independent thinking, critical types who may be hard to categorize.

John Klatt '82
Aurora, Ill.

I was at first amused but then saddened by Jay Cline's opine in Macalester Today.

John Eisenhower, the son of President Eisenhower, might have said it best when he suggested that being a Republican is supposed to be synonymous with the word "responsibility" (New Hampshire Union Leader, Sept. 9, 2004).

The Mac Conservatives in the early 1990s, with whom I was often mistakenly affiliated, always appeared to me to be more about "race-baiting" and divisiveness than promoting a sound or rational ideology with which other students could align. To many of us, they were on a path of destruction.

Campus conservatives could have worked for protection of individual liberties, fiscal responsibility with campus funds, or even helping limit student government; all respectable conservative values. Instead I found myself listening to proposals to bring a white supremacist to campus and other sad arguments for "fighting back" and working "against" fellow students. Jay refers to a "right-wing uprising" with fondness as though one should be proud of a group that simply lashed out with hatred of others, while claiming to be helping them.

Opposite of Jay's background, I grew up in rural Kansas and I know first-hand what it takes to be a true conservative, as opposed to a right-wing radical or supremacist. What I found at Macalester were a few students who felt marginalized by the mainstream culture, and who wanted to push an unwelcome agenda through self-promotion rather than help preserve core values and bring everyone towards a better world.

Professor Chuck Green once told me that he saw the roots of Macalester liberalism in the national anti-Vietnam War movement. Jay would be wise to consider the history of this movement and how liberals helped bring our great country back from the brink of disaster at the hands of extremists posing as conservatives in the White House. Conservatives never really left Macalester, they just lacked an angry and shallow agenda that favors open confrontations over progress. As Americans we face similar issues today, and while I celebrate the diversity of opinion of Macalester alumni, I hope that we all find the wisdom to put aside labels and think carefully about our common ground.

Davi Ottenheimer '93
Santa Cruz, Calif.

I was quite glad to see that Jay Cline has maintained some of the broad thinking perpetuated with humor that marked his days as a Weekly columnist. He was always able to see beyond labels and to search for the humanity in an issue.

I'm glad to see this trait has stayed with him. I only wish he'd voted for Kerry this November.

Chip Smith '92
Ann Arbor, Mich.

An apology

I've come to recognize that I was generally a nuisance during my time on campus, particularly during my senior year. My arrogance and self-righteousness manifested themselves in many obnoxious, destructive and unloving ways--too many, unfortunately, to catalog and specifically repent of here.

I regret all of the irritation, hurt feelings and frank harm that I caused, both to individuals and Macalester as a whole. Please accept this inexcusably late apology.

David A. Frenz '92
Golden Valley, Minn.

Commencement

I wanted to send my compliments on Mac Today. Four years ago I wrote a letter for the opposite reason--I was disgruntled about the coverage of commencement in the Today's pages. I felt that the graduates received short shrift in favor of the reunion attendees.

I have paid close attention to that particular issue in the intervening years and I want to express my deep appreciation for the wonderful coverage of commencement that has taken place, especially this year, which prompted me to write. There was such a clear effort to celebrate this year's graduates, through the commencement spread, the story on the Holmgren family, the excerpt from Daniel Ungier's impressive address and the wonderful photo on the inside front cover. Commencement is such a joyous moment--it is uplifting to see it portrayed, even if you recognize no one.

And more than that, I have to say what an excellent publication you edit overall. I always find the stories insightful and well-written, timely and beautifully laid out. I have a good friend with whom I dissect every issue, because we read it cover to cover! So, my thanks.

Catherine Davies '00
St. Paul

Remembering Julie Olsson Graham '70

On Sept. 26, 2004, which would have been her 57th birthday, my husband, son and I joined over a hundred friends and family in Brooklyn, N.Y., to celebrate the life of artist Julie Olsson Graham '70.

We viewed photos of a loving marriage, tender mothering, a joyous extended family, gallery openings, ski trips, views of Florence, her NYC marathon finish and her grin at the 2002 antiwar march. I read from her writings, her delight in the subtleties of rock and sky, her passion for perfection, her desire that her art stand as a testament to a universal meaning, not her personality. "I want to be a good artist," she wrote, "No. Make that a great artist."

"Julie had the courage of her convictions," Elaine Stathopulos Strompolos '70 wrote in a letter read at the memorial service. "She never failed to challenge us to be our best because she always challenged herself."

Julie, Elaine, Bill Whitlow '70 and I struggled to shape a Macalester yearbook out of a fiery year of academic upheaval, anti-war protests, sit-ins and Kent State. Yet Julie's eye was clear, and her painting made the Walker Art Institute Biennial. Ted Thirlby '70, a constant friend for decades, spoke of the power of her seemingly simple works, whose complex layers of gesture and color achieve a profound beauty.

Macalester brought a circle of minds together that remains unbroken, still loving each other, still influencing each other. We all still hear the song of Julie, and always will.

Diane Worfolk Allison '70
Brooklyn, N.Y.