Whatever the outcome, President Brian Rosenberg said Macalester
will continue to devote a greater proportion of its resources to
financial aid than virtually any other college in the nation. "We're
not talking about turning Macalester into a college for the very
wealthy. Before or after these changes, we will be one of the most
accessible colleges in the country, including schools that are need-blind,"
he told the St. Paul Pioneer Press.
"Over the last five years," Rosenberg said, "the
amount of money we've been able to devote to our academic program
has gone steadily down and the amount of money we've devoted to
financial aid has gone steadily up. We're putting fewer and fewer
resources into the quality of education we provide to students.
Sooner rather than later, that's going to erode the quality of what
we provide for everybody."
The Board of Trustees ultimately will decide the issue in January
or March.
Macalester's need-blind admissions policy--offering
admission without regard to an applicant's ability to pay--has been in effect for freshmen U.S. applicants for at least
30 years. The college does not practice need-blind admissions for
international and transfer students.
The proposal to move away from need-blind grew out of a report to
the trustees by the Resource and Planning Committee, composed of
faculty, students and staff. The RPC said that while almost every
college--including need-blind schools--has
a financial aid budget, Macalester does not. Macalester's financial
aid has been growing faster than any other expenditure in the budget
and is projected within two years to equal or surpass the total
endowment distribution for the year.
The RPC report concluded that moving to a "need-aware"
policy for a portion of the incoming class might affect 30 to 50
applicants per year, save from $1.3 million to $2.3 million a year
and have no discernible effect on academic quality. If approved,
the new policy would not take effect before the fall of 2006 and
would affect only first-years admitted that fall.
The RPC recommended that Macalester continue to meet the full demonstrated
need of all admitted students. It noted that some colleges control
their financial aid spending by admitting students in a need-blind
fashion but then not offering them enough financial aid to enroll.
This method--known as "gapping" or "admit-deny"--would be both hypocritical and impractical at Macalester,
the RPC said.
By a vote of 55 to 5, the faculty approved a four-point resolution
in November recommending that:
86 percent of the Class of 2005 has returned for their senior
year.
These rates are from 4 to 7 percentage points higher than they
were as recently as five years ago. Comparable rates can be found
as far back as 1964 and the current rates are higher than they
have ever been, according to Dan Balik, director of institutional
research and associate provost.
|
Dancing Democrats
Andrea Johnson '06 (Mankato, Minn.) sashays up the aisle
to dance with a fellow Minnesotan and Macite, Walter Mondale
'50, at the Democratic National Convention in Boston last
July. The former vice president was the official head of
the Minnesota DFL delegation; Johnson, a political science
and French major, was one of the pages for the delegation
and also interned last summer in the Washington office of
Congressman Martin Sabo. PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER
|
All the lonely people
Do you know your neighbors? Do you go on picnics? Belong
to a club? The author of Bowling Alone explains why it
matters--and why we need to reinvent the ways we connect.
by Robert D. Putnam
"Social capital" in the broadest sense can be defined
as any form of connection between people. A primary form of connection
within any community lies within its organizations, and most organizations
keep membership records. You could therefore examine change over
time in membership of various organizations as a means of measuring
trends of social capital in a given community.
I added up membership counts in various clubs across the nation
and then looked at what those trends were over the course of the
20th century. Very simply, Americans for most of the 20th century
became more and more connected, and then we became suddenly less
and less connected. Organization membership numbers rose--with
the exception of the Depression years--and rose especially during
the 20 years after World War II. Then suddenly, silently, mysteriously,
all those organizations across America in the late 1960s began
to experience first leveling membership density and then plunging
membership density. By the end of the 20th century, every single
kind of civic engagement had decreased by about 50 percent. In
1973, about 22 percent of Americans said they'd been to some kind
of public meeting in the last 12 months; that's now down to about
11 percent. In 1975, the average American went to 12 club meetings
a year; the figure today has dropped to about 5 club meetings
a year.
| Something about the experience of struggling
together, not just on the battlefield, meant that [World War
II] generation for all their lives gave more to the community. |
Those figures are about organizational involvement, going to
clubs and such, but how about just hanging out with friends? Again,
results show the same basic decline. There's been roughly a 50
percent decline in the number of dinner parties held in America,
and people are also about 50 percent less likely to have people
over to play cards, or go bowling, or even go on picnics. This
decline extends outside the social realm as well. Voting trends
over this period look exactly the same: voting rises in the 20th
century until 1964, peaks in 1964 and then declines.
Why should we worry about whether people know their neighbors
or go on picnics or even vote? It matters a lot, and in measurable
ways, whether people are connected or not with their communities.
Take crime rates, for example. A strong predictor of crime rates
in a neighborhood is how many neighbors know one another's first
names. Your physical health is also powerfully affected by social
connections. Holding constant all the other things that affect
your life expectancy, your chances of dying over the next 12 months
are cut in half by joining one group. As a risk factor for premature
death, social isolation is as big a factor as smoking.
| By the end of the 20th century, every single
kind of civic engagement had decreased by about 50 percent. |
There's only one exception to the declining trend of social capital
across America: the generation of Americans who were born before
or around World War II were very civically and socially engaged
all their lives. Something about Pearl Harbor and the experience
of World War II seems to have had a powerful effect on the people
who were your age then. Something about the experience of struggling
together, not just on the battlefield, meant that generation for
all their lives gave more to the community, and often in quite
simple ways.
Those of you who are under 25 and have lived through the experience
of 9/11 have an obligation to change the direction of American
history. Most of the major civic institutions that we see in American
society today were invented between the turn of the 20th century
and the 1920s. That generation did not try to go back to the old,
perhaps easier ways. Rather, they worked to invent new ways of
connecting by creating communities and civic institutions that
fit the new ways.
Today, we need to reinvent the ways we connect. The task that
history has assigned to your generation is to invent your own
new ways of connecting that will re-weave the fabric of American
communities in a context that is very different, a context in
which we understand we are not all alike.
There are different kinds of social capital. There are connections
to people like yourself, called "bonding" social capital,
and connections to people unlike yourself, called "bridging"
social capital. In a diverse society such as ours, we need a whole
lot of bonding, which is relatively easy to build, but we likewise
need a great deal of bridging social capital, something much harder
to create.
My assignment to you is to come up with new, exciting and innovative
ways to create bridging social capital in America, to bring Americans
together across lines of race and class. It's not an easy task,
but I know you're an astounding group of people, and I look forward
to seeing your papers when they're due.
Robert D. Putnam, the Peter and Isabel Malkin Professor of
Public Policy at Harvard, is the author of Bowling Alone: The
Collapse and Revival of American Community and Better Together:
Restoring the American Community. This article is adapted from
his remarks on "Community Engagement in a Changing America"
at Macalester's opening convocation in September.
Common ground
The Department of Multicultural Life seeks to welcome students
of color and help them adjust to college. Many of its programs
also engage white students and international students.
Rebecca Hossain '05 had never thought of herself as biracial
or as a student of color. Born in Austin, Texas, she has lived
all over the world including in Brazil and France. Most of the
communities in which she lived were homogeneous, white and upper-middle-class.
"My parents," she says, "never, ever talked about
race while I was growing up, even though both are minorities."
Her dad is from Bangladesh and her mother was born in Puerto Rico,
although she has lived most of her life in the United States.
Hossain resented such categories until she became involved with
the Lealtad-Suzuki Center in the Department of Multicultural Life.
"As I talked with the students of color, I realized that
they had gone through many of the same experiences I had gone
through, like walking through a store and having people watch
you," she says. Recognizing these shared experiences brought
"a whole bunch of 'ah-ha' moments."
Conversations about identity can be important formative experiences
for college students, and providing "safe" and supportive
ways to have those conversations is one of many ways Macalester
is working to make itself more welcoming and inclusive for students
of diverse backgrounds.
Leading that effort is the Department of Multicultural Life,
established in August 2002 by then-President Mike McPherson and
headed by Dean Joi D. Lewis. The department's most visible work
of the past two years is a broad set of programs organized to
welcome students of color, help them adjust to college and enable
them to explore issues of identity in structured and supportive
ways. Many of these programs also engage white students and international
students along with faculty and staff members.
In the longer term, the department also seeks to create partnerships
among academic and administrative departments to infuse multicultural
awareness throughout all aspects of campus life.
"Our goal is not to make people feel bad," says Lewis.
"The college was not initially established with a diverse
community in mind--that was the times--but now we have a very
diverse community....We talk about how to make sure the values
and ethos of those who have been historically underrepresented
show up in the life of the college."
As an example, Lewis points out that Macalester, like many colleges,
is organized around the Christian calendar with days off at Christmas
and Good Friday but with no similar provision for the Jewish High
Holy Days or Ramadan. "[Non-Christians] shouldn't have to
say, 'Hey, what about us?' That's our responsibility. It
isn't right to say, 'It's OK for you to come here,' but then continue
to do things the way we've always done them."
Karla Benson Rutten directs the Lealtad-Suzuki Center, the programming
arm of Multicultural Life. The center is named for Catharine Lealtad
'15, a pediatrician who was the college's first African American
graduate, and Esther Torii Suzuki '46, who came to Macalester
from a Japanese American detention camp during World War II and
became a Ramsey County social worker and Macalester Alumni Board
member.
"Pluralism and Unity" is a Lealtad-Suzuki program
that engages a diverse group of some 30 first-year students in
dialogues about race and class and incorporates field trips into
various Twin Cities communities. At one P&U meeting, Benson
Rutten led an exercise she calls "Dominant/Subordinate Groups,"
in which students responded to 14 questions, noting whether or
not they were part of the dominant, privileged group. Male
or female or transgender? White or people
of color? Able-bodied or with a physical, mental, emotional
or learning disability? Christian or Muslim, Jewish, agnostic,
Buddhist, Hindu, atheist or other?
"The purpose," says Benson Rutten, "is to demonstrate
all the places we have privilege in our lives. Then we ask the
question: How can you use your dominance/privileged status to
be an ally to someone in the non-dominant/subordinate group?"
| 'We're looking at not just how our students
get here, but what structures we have in place to make sure
they're having a good experience.' |
Meghan Rockwell-Ashton '07, a white student from Fort Wayne,
Ind., was relatively sophisticated about issues of identity. Her
brothers are African American and adopted, and her father is a
sociology professor, so their family had discussed race, ethnicity
and privilege, but she says, "Doing that [dominant/subordinate
exercise] I came to learn how many different identities
people really have and live in everyday life."
Rockwell-Ashton became an American studies major and a student
assistant in the Lealtad-Suzuki Center where her responsibilities
include co-facilitating the Tapas Series, an open gathering that
each month considers an issue related to culture. The October
meeting, for example, looked at get-out-the-vote initiatives for
the 2004 presidential election based on popular culture and ethnic
cultures.
Hossain also deepened her involvement. As a mentor in the Emerging
Scholars Program, she now works with six first-year Scholars to
ease their transition to college, offering advice on time management,
applying for internships and other subjects. The program's one-on-one
mentoring is designed to increase the number of students of color
who participate in study abroad, fellowships and scholarships,
and who go on to graduate and professional schools. (Hossain herself
was recently selected for the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Program,
which provides financial and mentor support intended to draw more
members of underrepresented ethnic and socioeconomic groups into
selected academic fields.) Hossain also co-facilitates the Women
of Color Collective, where members discuss diversity issues first
among themselves, and then with the Men of Color, White Identity
and Black Women of the Diaspora Collectives.
Benson Rutten says the collectives exist "to get people
comfortable talking about hard issues without being so scared
they just don't talk at all." Currently, 70 participants
meet in the collectives. Collective facilitators are among the
approximately 35 Center Associates (students, faculty, staff and
alumni) who have been trained to carry on the work of multiculturalism.
|
Additional initiatives and programs
Alumni of Color and Friends Host Family Program--connects
alumni of color with first-year students of color or multiracial
students
Cultural House--a place where domestic students
of color and allies can connect in a multicultural environment
Harambee!--an annual reception recognizing those
who have made a positive impact on multicultural life at
Macalester
Soup and Substance Lunch Series--a monthly series
organized around the various cultural heritage months
Allies Project--a program through which faculty,
staff and students demonstrate their commitment to a safe
environment for everyone
See www.macalester.edu/multiculturalism and www.macalester.edu/Lealtad-Suzuki.
|
"The training consists of looking at their personal identity,
at issues of dominance and subordinance, and at facilitation about
issues of race in particular," says Benson Rutten. "What
kinds of things have I learned from my community or my family
that will impact how I have these kinds of conversations? What
kinds of things trigger me if I'm in a group, and how does that
impact my ability to be a facilitator?"
"To move this work forward," says Lewis, "we
have to be in ally relationships with each other, or we're not
going to change anything....But it's about getting behind the
leadership of the group, not speaking for them. If we're
talking about issues around class, I need to be able to be led
by people who were raised poor."
At this writing, the college is in the process of selecting
a Dean for the Study of Race and Ethnicity. Both teacher and administrator,
this second dean will co-chair the Multicultural Advisory Board
with Lewis and will chair the new academic department called American
Studies: Comparative Racial Formations.
| 'As I talked with the students of color,
I realized that they had gone through many of the same experiences
I had gone through.' |
In May, the advisory board will recommend to the Board of Trustees
recruitment and retention goals and a plan to attain them. "We're
looking at not just how our students get here, but what structures
we have in place to make sure they're having a good experience,"
says Lewis.
"We have an opportunity here for folks to be engaged with
each other and then to become those citizen-leaders they are able
to be because they have had connections with people in other
communities. It really is about trying to collect all of our humanities
back together."
--Jan Shaw-Flamm '76
Global citizenship
Carol and Brian Rosenberg visited Secretary-General Kofi
Annan '61 in his office at the United Nations in October.
"Among other things, we talked about the proposed Center
for Global Citizenship at Macalester, a subject in which
the secretary general might be expected to have some interest,"
President Rosenberg reported. Macalester plans to formally
launch the new center in the fall of 2005. Rosenberg told
the faculty this fall that the center will serve as the
organizational heart of the college's efforts to educate
global citizen-leaders. He has named political science Professor
Andrew Latham to serve as assistant to the president for
civic engagement and to oversee the effort to establish
the center. UNITED NATIONS PHOTO/ESKINDER DEBEBE
|
Women's soccer team captures MIAC title with
10-0-1 record, earns berth in NCAA playoffs
The Macalester women's soccer team won the Minnesota Intercollegiate
Athletic Conference championship with a 10-0-1 record and, by
winning the post-season conference playoffs as well, earned a
berth in the NCAA Division III championships for the eighth time
in ten years.
The Scots advanced to the NCAA's Sweet 16 with playoff wins
over Grinnell and Loras but then lost a heartbreaker to Washington
University of St. Louis. Following a scoreless 90 minutes of regulation
and 20 minutes of overtime play, Washington won on a penalty kick
shootout 5-4.
Macalester ended its season at 18-3-2.
The Scots won five straight league titles before coming up a
little short in each of the previous two seasons. This season
they left little to chance by winning 14 of their first 16 to
move into the national rankings. Mac went into the NCAA playoffs
after shutting out Augsburg and Concordia in the conference tournament
and posting shutouts in 12 games. Erin Hoople '05 (Rockford, Ill.)
and Cara Goff '06 (Amherst, Mass.) led a stingy defense. Annie
Borton '07 (Berkeley, Calif.) scored 16 goals and Katie Pastorius
'06 (Arden Hills, Minn.) had nine goals and 14 assists.
Mac Coach John Leaney was named MIAC Coach of the Year and five
Scots were named to the All-Conference team: Borton, Hoople, Goff,
Meghan Leahey '06 (Wayzata, Minn.) and Sarah Marsh '05 (Lincoln,
Neb.).
Men's soccer
Macalester's bid for a fourth straight conference championship
came up short and the Scots finished third in the standings. A
win over co-champ St. Olaf in the MIAC playoff semifinals gave
the Scots a shot at nationally ranked Gustavus in the finals,
but the Gusties knocked them off in the title match. The Scots
finished 8-6-2 for their 18th straight winning season and got
some good play in the midfield from Andrew Wissler '06 (Annandale,
Va.), Michael Dannenberg '05 (Brookline, Mass.) and Magnus Oppenheimer
'07 (Stockholm, Sweden). All three were named to the All-Conference
team.
Women's cross country
The Scots earned a spot in the national top 25 rankings about
midway through the season after they won the St. Olaf Invitational,
took third in the Luther All-America Race and were fourth out
of 22 teams at the UW-Oshkosh Pre-National Meet. Koby Hagen '06
(Minneapolis) and Francie Streich '06 (Lincoln, Neb.) received
All-Conference honors by placing 14th and 15th, respectively,
at the MIAC championships to lead the Scots to a fifth-place team
finish. They were the team's top two runners in every meet. Anna
Shamey '07 (Leverett, Mass.) and Anna Gordon '06 (Eugene, Ore.)
were the team's third and fourth runners at the conference meet
with top 35 performances. The women placed seventh at the season-ending
regional meet, moving up four spots from last season.
Men's cross country
The Scots took fourth at the MIAC meet for the second year in
a row after placing second in the St. Olaf Invitational and fifth
at the UW-Oshkosh Pre-National Meet. Macalester had one of its
best fall seasons in years and was led in every meet by Bo Rydze
'05 (Iowa City, Iowa), who earned All-Conference honors for the
second year in a row with a 13th-place finish at the conference
meet. Roscoe Sopiwnik '06 (Frederic, Wis.) also made All-MIAC
by finishing 14th. Dylan Keith '07 (Soldiers Grove, Wis.) and
Eric Olson '05 (Faribault, Minn.) were honorable mention All-Conference
runners with top 25 finishes. The men placed seventh at the season-ending
regional meet, moving up two spots from last season.
Football
Although the Scots finished 1-8, their only victory coming in
a 27-20 decision over Knox (Ill.) midway through the season, they
enjoyed some success on offense. Quarterback Adam Denny '05 (Preston,
Minn.) set school records for most career passing yards (5,716)
and touchdowns (33). Running back Nate Vernon '06 (Fall Creek,
Wis.) was among the national Division III leaders in yards from
scrimmage, running for 746 yards and catching 49 passes out of
the backfield for another 617 yards. With just one senior on the
roster, the Scots were a very young team and it often showed on
defense. Safety Tim Burns '06 (McFarland, Wis.) had over 100 tackles
and three interceptions to lead the defense.
Volleyball
Mac just missed the six-team MIAC post-season playoffs by one
position in the standings for the second year in a row and finished
11-16 overall. The team faced a rugged schedule and nine of its
16 losses came against teams ranked in the final national poll.
Of these nine defeats, six came in hard-fought five-game matches.
May Lin Kessenich '05 (Milford, Conn.) was named MIAC Defensive
Player of the Year for the third season in a row after ranking
among the national leaders in digs per game. She also made the
All-Conference team. Lauren Eberhart '07 (Madelia, Minn.) finished
second in the MIAC in kills per game and Maggie Buttermore '06
(Lincoln, Neb.) was among the leaders in blocks and hitting percentage.
Men's golf
Macalester moved up three spots at the season-ending conference
tournament by placing seventh. The consistent Kramer Lawson '05
(Holly Springs, N.C.) was the team's low scorer in every tournament
he played in for the third year in a row and earned his third
straight top 20 finish at the MIACs. Lawson was 14th with a 155
two-round score at Bunker Hills and missed All-Conference honors
by just a couple strokes. Wes McFarland '05 (Arden Hills, Minn.)
scored a 157 and placed 23rd.
Women's golf
The Scots featured one of the MIAC's top young golfers in Kristen
Ausan '08 (Mahtomedi, Minn.), who was the team's low scorer in
every meet during the fall. Ausan peaked at the MIAC championships
at Willinger's in Northfield and earned All-Conference honors
with a fifth-place finish, posting a 170 score for the two-day
tournament. Kylie Thomson '07 (Seattle) was the team's No. 2 golfer.
Hall of Fame adds four
Macalester's M Club Athletic Hall of Fame inducted four new
members in October:
