The Carletonian

These past few weeks, something other than Malt-O-Meal has been wafting through the Northfield air: the smell of protest. 

It’s the beginning of a new year and as people make their new year’s resolutions, we at The Carletonian would like to take this opportunity to make some resolutions of our own.

Campus was thrown into a frenzy last week in the wake of an abrupt e-mail announcing new changes to the alcohol and smoking policy. Students quickly began to worry that the anti-keg and anti-drinking game rules would threaten Carleton social life, traditions, and culture.

Welcome new students! Inside the following pages you will find useful background on Carleton culture and events, and survival tips that will guide you through these first few terms here in tropical Northfield. Hopefully by the time you finish reading, you’ll be all caught up.

Our reign began when we were charged with the task of cleaning out our entire office so it could be remodeled. We found ourselves picking paint colors and carpet samples. It felt like we were preparing a nursery for our unborn baby. In a way, we suppose we were.

Carleton is an elite liberal arts college filled with intelligent students and dedicated professors. We pride ourselves on being well-informed citizens of the world, interested in making a difference in our community, and taking a stand for issues we believe in. Why then, is there such limited interest in student government—the single organization on campus with the most power to implement real changes in college policy and the way our campus functions?

As every student recently found out, this past week Northfield adopted a new social host ordinance that gives law enforcement officials new abilities to charge people who knowingly host parties where underage consumption of alcohol is taking place. Naturally there has been a lot of commotion among the Carleton community as many students are worried that the police will come barging into every campus party and not only issue citations to underage drinkers but also start charging everyone who hosts parties under this new ordinance.

Sunday night, the villain of our generation was taken down. For many Carleton students, it was difficult to know how to react to Bin Laden’s death. On one hand, this is triumphing good over evil. On the other, it was murder.

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).

We’re lucky at Carleton. We have the GSC, a student body and administration that supports any and all sexual orientations and a diversity of these orientations. We value freedom of expression and general human rights. You can be any religion, any ethnicity, pretty much any anything. For the most part we love each other and this is all good. We are fortunate to have a faculty and staff who support us unequivocally in figuring out who we are.

Coming to Carleton requires making certain sacrifices. For example, you give up any rights you may have had to sleeping. You accept that you will spend the next four years alternately ghostly pale and sunburned, never will your skin tone look “healthy.” You also, and this is possibly our greatest collective loss, will never watch your college friend group get married and pregnant before graduation.

As you may have noticed by the confused looking slightly younger people wandering around campus today its Accepted Students Weekend! We opinionated editors of the Carletonian want to give accepted students our reasons for why you should come here.