The Carletonian

The Sayles ladies are reassuring constants in the life of a hungry Carl. Students can count on taming those late-night munchies by placing their orders with Joan Jandro and Kim Little, two familiar faces in the Sayles Café.

On Monday students participated in a special room draw to live in the renovated Evans Residence Hall when it reopens this winter.

Last Saturday was Carleton’s 31st Annual Spring Concert, an event that most students look forward to all year. Now that it has come and gone, the questions that remains is, was it worth the wait?

Carleton alumnus Nat Turner ’93 has worked with the youth of New Orleans’ Lower Ninth Ward for the past few years, transforming a former grocery store into an urban farm.

The Carleton Student Association (CSA) heltd its annual spring debate and elections. Elections are held each winter and spring for student representatives.

The Carleton History Department will offer a new course next year on the production and consumption of public history.

Last Thursday at 8 p.m., over 70 students congregated on the Bald Spot in anticipation of the Gender and Sexuality Center’s annual presentation of “SpeakUp.”

Unless you have already graduated, chances are you don’t have many opportunities to shrug off all other responsibilities and just read. Enter Clara Hardy and Anita Chikkatur.

Tying for third at the USA Ultimate Division III Championship last weekend in Appleton, WI, Eclipse solidified their place among the top women’s D-III teams in the country. As Robyn Fennig writes in her review of day one of the tournament, “Eclipse might be the most fundamentally sound team from top to bottom from what I saw today” (skydmagazine.com).

Carleton College swimmer Erik Klontz ‘13 was voted to the Capital One Academic All-District At-Large Team as selected by the College Sports Information Directors of America (CoSIDA). The award honors the nation’s top student-athletes for their combined performance in competition and in the classroom. 

CUT, Carleton’s top Ultimate Frisbee team, will be travelling to Boulder, Colorado this weekend to compete in the Division I USA Ultimate National Championships. The third seed overall, CUT looks to defend its 2011 Championship title.

Kathryn Schmidt ’12 ended her career as a Carleton Knight with a fourth consecutive trip to the NCAA Individual Championships. A three-time All-American, Schmidt was one of just 32 players in the nation selected to participate in the tournament.

Someone told me once that hatred was just the inverse reflection of love, but I think that’s pretty facile. When I talk about things that I hate about this school, it’s ultimately rooted in some kind of grand belief in the merits of this school on an abstract level, in the Nobility of this Institution that I’d like to bring to life by systematically attacking what I dislike about it.

When we proposed a Real Food Commitment for this fall, you dismissed the plan as unrealistic. Throughout the year we have responded to your requests for data, and gained support from large parts of the Carleton community, demonstrating that our goals are not idealistic. Sir, we have done everything that can be expected to meet your demands.

As a proud Carleton alumnus, I am deeply troubled by the recent revelation that kegs will be banned from Rotblatt this year. I still have a lot to learn in life, but one thing I know is that this venerable institution has not lasted 146 years by drinking beer out of cans!

We hold it within ourselves to alter our situation, to change our country, to view life as a series of trials, and to never let individual setbacks mire us in thoughts of greater failures.  Frustrations may mount, but nothing defeats you unless you let it.  So it is imperative that we never quit, and that we rely on each other to grow and to change the world.

On some level, as much as we complain about the endless papers, the all-nighters, the last minute rewrites, the collapse in a heap by the end of 11th week praying to God that we never have to go through that again, we love it. The one thing that Carleton has taught us is that what really matters is the energy, excitement, and exuberance we bring to the tasks we do. 

At the very end of the year – or, for that matter, six months from now – I am most likely not going to remember where deadweight loss can be found on a graph, what exactly is included in the theory of multiple intelligences, or how to calculate a test statistic.  Introductory classes, I am convinced, are not for gleaning information.  They are for learning and evaluating paradigms of thinking.

We would like to think that we left The Carletonian in better shape than we found it. However, undertaking this challenge hasn’t always been easy. Libby has had to endure Nick’s “singing,” and we both suffered the consequences of too much Dominos. (How many years have we taken off our lives by eating CinnaStix every Thursday for the past three terms? We’re guessing it’s not insignificant.)

When I first came to Carleton, I was really excited about the Arb because it was so much bigger and closer than nature preserves that I had visited in Chicago. I went out in the Arb to look for birds at least once a week, and often more.

The 2011-12 school year has been a great year for Carleton sustainability.  In addition to continuing past initiatives, new major projects were implemented and we even gained recognition for our efforts.  Here’s a brief recap of the major events this year.