The Carletonian

Carleton can cross one more thing off its to-do list: hold the world premiere play of an award-winning writer. This past weekend, Little Nourse Theater debuted Security, a new play written by Rebekah Frumkin ‘12. With four showings over the course of the weekend, students had the opportunity to come out and witness a fellow student’s newest endeavor.

Carleton College students Cody Finke ’12 and James Lu Morrissey ’12 were both recently named Goldwater Scholars. The two were selected from a pool of 1,095 sophomores and juniors who had been nominated by the faculty of their respective colleges and universities.

The cold wind and rain did not stop hundreds of Carleton students from trekking over to the Grand last Friday, April 22 to support their peers in the annual event Battle of the Bands, where first place went to the band Ova Yonder.

On Wednesday, April 27, 2011, President Steven Poskanzer officially announced to the Carleton community via email that he has begun the process of creating a strategic plan for the future of Carleton. The overarching goal of the plan is to provide an undergraduate Liberal Arts education that is among the best in the world. The plan will be constructed in the upcoming months.

The Office of Civil Rights has released a “Dear Colleague” letter, a document intended to provide guidance for schools, colleges, and universities to better understand their responsibilities regarding sexual harassment and assault.

Author and Research Professor of Natural Sciences at North Carolina State University, Meg Lowman, delivered a talk entitled “Life in the Treetops: Conservation of the World’s Rainforests” at the Convocation on April 22.

On Thursday, April 21, students crowded into a lecture hall in Leighton to hear a debate of the question “How rich is too rich?”  Professor Michael Hemesath and mathematics major Isaac Hodes argued that there is no such thing as too rich. Opposing them were Professor Daniel Groll and political science major Kristen Vellinger. No side was declared the winner, but a discussion followed the debate.

Earth Week 2011, planned mainly by the Sustainability Assistants (STA) kicked off this year with a dinner and discussion at WHOA house on Monday, April 18. Martha Larson, Carleton’s Manager of Campus Energy and Sustainability, and Aaron Swoboda, an ENTS and Economics professor, led the discussion about Carleton’s Climate Action Plan, which commits Carleton to developing a carbon-neutral campus by 2050.

The Knights, not the Grinnell College Pioneers, were the team paving the way this weekend as the Carleton women’s tennis defeated Grinnell solidly, 9-0, last Saturday. While no team member even lost a set, Sarah Thappa ’12 blazed through her matches with a sound 6-3, 6-0 victory in singles and an 8-1 victory in doubles with partner Katherine Greenberg ’14.

The 3-6 Carleton Men’s Lacrosse season kicked off in February, with the team travelling to Augsburg to play in a dome against St. John’s. The Knights play St. Olaf tonight.

Carleton’s women’s lacrosse squad ended their season Thursday, April 14 in a disappointing home loss to their cross-town rival St. Olaf, 12-6. The Knights came out strong in the second half but were unable to recover despite the motivating presence of Stevie P. in the stands. 

On Thursday, April 21, Carleton sent most of its men’s track and field team to the Capitol City Championship hosted by Hamline in St. Paul. For the second straight week, inclement weather threatened to disrupt the meet, but the winds died down enough to allow several Carleton athletes to enjoy huge performances.The Knights were back in action on Thursday at the Macalester Twilight.

Wondering what happened to the women’s track team when no article was published last week?  It so happens that it snowed last Friday and the competition at St. Olaf was canceled.

Lousy weather continues to be the bane of Knights baseball, which, along with a plethora of on-the-field miscues, have collectively made for a tough slog of a season.  The familiar mix of errors, wild pitches, and a lack of timely hitting all contributed to Carleton’s defeats on Monday, when the team faced off against the Macalester Scots to observe Senior Day.

Due to rainy weather over the past two weeks, the Carleton softball team has a jam-packed schedule for their last week of regular MIAC season play. The team will play four doubleheaders in the next five days. The Knights will take on the College of Saint Benedict Blazers today in St. Cloud then return to Northfield to play St. Olaf College on Friday afternoon.

Here’s a crucial flaw with this new policy: many students don’t know by the end of 7th week whether or not they want to scrunch a class because they receive so much important feedback during the 9th and 10th weeks of the term. Moving the S/Cr/NC deadline forward requires students to make their decisions with incomplete information. 

Well, it sure took you long enough. I’ve been sitting around with all these new flip-flops, only to put my poor toes through about a month of cold and rain. It snowed the first weekend of April. It’s rained every day since. I entertained the idea of getting my winter coat out again from its hiding place in my closet, but I realized that my pride is too great and I huddled under sweatshirts and an umbrella instead. But warmth, you have finally made your appearance. Thank you.

Anyone under the age of 30 is usually considered to be pretty tech-savvy.  In the world of Twitter, Facebook and Google, it is more important than ever to make sure your tech skills are up to par when entering the workforce.

The following is an excerpt from a reflective essay I wrote after staying in a Rinzai Zen monastery for a month in Japan in February of last year. If you have any inclination towards meditation, I hope you will find it useful.

Can we put this issue to rest now? On Wednesday morning, President Obama surprised a lot of people by suddenly releasing his long-form birth certificate, which, of course, showed that he was born in Hawaii. In explaining why he
had decided to release it now, Obama explained that the issue had simply become too much of a distraction. There are more important things to do, and it is a waste of everyone’s time to be dwelling on this, he said.

The possession of wealth, power, and status does not equate to the possession of a good life. These things are valuable to the extent that they provide us with the opportunity to lead a good life, and yet continually we see those possessed of all three of these advantages squander this opportunity. This, it would seem to me, poses for us a serious problem.

Governor of Texas Rick Perry has been called upon by his commissioner of higher education to develop, a baccalaureate degree that costs less than $10,000 total. That’s right; Texas is trying to create a degree that costs almost a third of the cost for one year of Carleton tuition (and that doesn’t even consider room and board).

Along with the other Carleton student naturalists and Arb Director Nancy Braker, I set out into the gale to get a glimpse of what was supposed to be a spring scene at this thirty three acre slice of remnant prairie just eight miles from the Carleton campus. And in spite of the unseasonable weather, as we tromped through the wet grass we were confronted with unmistakable signs of spring.

Acclaimed Photojournalist Sebastian Meyer ‘02 Presents “Photography on the Edge”

4th Annual Northfield Earth Day Contra Dance

Week of April 20 to April 26, 2011

Highlight: Seven fire alarms were reported in total.  No fire in any of the cases.