Greeting from St. Olaf College
Greeting from David Anderson, president, St. Olaf College
Saturday, September 25, 2010
Good afternoon. I extend greetings and best wishes to the Carleton family on this important day from your friends and colleagues at St. Olaf.
President Poskanzer, I imagine that you will be spending part of your first months in Northfield absorbing the unique history of our town. Indeed, I understand that you have already been to the Northfield Historical Society to see one of our prized artifacts, the severed ear that purportedly came from the head of one of the Northfield bank robbers. It turns out that there is considerable dubiety as to the provenance of that ear. The plain truth is that we don’t know whose ear it is, but it is our ear
It’s hard to top that, but I thought I might share with you another piece of local history. St. Olaf College began as St. Olaf School, located in two buildings in downtown Northfield. Early in the institution’s second year, a Carleton student stopped by. He had been selling subscriptions to “Lippincott’s Magazine” and had been so successful that he had earned a set of Chambers’ Encyclopedia for himself. He announced his intention to sell enough more subscriptions to earn another set and to give it to St. Olaf. He did, and those volumes marked the first acquisition of St. Olaf’s library. We are told in an early history of the College that, “the books were well used for many years until they were absolutely worn out.” This generous and enterprising student was none other than Andrew A. Veblen, Thorstein Veblen’s older brother. This was apparently not Mr. Veblen’s first visit to St. Olaf. On January 8, 1875 he brought greetings and good wishes to his fellow Norwegians on the occasion of the opening of St. Olaf’s school. Blood, apparently, was thicker than inter-institutional rivalry.
Andrew Veblen’s kind and generous act set the tone for the relationship between our institutions. We have cooperated where we can, assisted each other when we could, learned from each other, and flourished together. The times call for us to bend our energies toward finding new ways to pool our resources to strengthen both of our institutions and to benefit our students. I am eager to do that work with you.
Meanwhile, all of us at St. Olaf congratulate our friends at Carleton on this great day and we extend our heartiest welcome to you.