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The Distance

Sunday, March 7, 2021
Welcome to the eighth and final winter edition of The Distance brought to you by the Carletonian. It has been an honor to deliver this newsletter fresh in your inbox these past eight Sundays, and we cannot wait to start back up when the weather gets warmer come spring!

First, we remember the joyful life of longtime Carleton custodian Teresa Pittman and share Arthur's photojournalism piece on the Sayles Girls. Then, Hannah covers how Carleton students in Texas experienced the severe winter storm, Xena dives into Carleton's preparations for the long-shot chance of receiving vaccine allocations from the state, and Zoe explores the launch of the Carleton Bike Cooperative.

In Sports, Zak dives into how the Carleton track program is figuring out its spring season, both Ryan and Zak cover the Carleton athletic department's spring season game plan and Oliver Jacobs details SAAC's COVID-safe competitions. In Viewpoint, Aldo writes a piece about the difficulty of choosing a major, Dane writes about why an inability to choose a major is actually a strength, and Professor Noboru Tomonari, Chair of Asian Languages, shares her thoughts on a manga about ostracization and COVID-19. In Bald Spot, Phoebe shares a humiliating comic and, as always, an Arb notes — on a marsh 10,000 years in the making.

That's all!  And as always, reach out to us (kwaits@carleton.edu  and bromana@carleton.edu) if you want to get involved with the Carletonian. We'd love to have you write, take photographs, or copyedit for us!  Thank you for your continued readership and thoughtful comments.  

Happy Spring Break,
Sam and Amelia, Editors-in-Chief

This past week

First, here's the latest in News and Features:

Remembering the joyful life of longtime Carleton custodian Teresa Pittman 
Ellie Zimmerman 

It’s hard for anyone to picture Teresa Pittman without a smile. She carried it with her everywhere, so much so that her husband Mark Pittman, thinking about something to dedicate in his wife’s memory, said, “is there such a thing as an everybody smile and get along day?”

After 23 years working as a custodian in nearly every building at Carleton, Pittman, 56, died on February 9 at Abbott Hospital in Minneapolis of complications from COVID-19. She is the first member of the on-campus Carleton community to pass away from the disease.

Carleton prepares for long-shot possibility of vaccine allocation from state
Xena Wolf  

Having been approved as a vaccination site in February, Carleton is now in the process of strategizing priority groups, gathering data on eligible community members and managing a myriad of other distribution logistics.

Dean of Students Carolyn Livingston told the Carletonian that “as a community clinic, we are abiding by the same phases that everybody in the state is abiding by.” That means that if the college is allocated any doses while Minnesota is still in the current Tier 1 of the 1b vaccination phase, the doses would only go to staff, faculty and any of their household members who are age 65 and over. However, Livingston stated that “we have not been given any vaccines for distribution on campus,” and it is unknown if or when the state might begin to allocate doses to the college. 

Sayles Girls: first-year Black women support each other on campus
Arthur Onwumere

My interest in doing a photoshoot with the Sayles Girls was to highlight a small, relatively unknown BIPOC women’s group on campus. The Sayles Girls are a group of Black women and femmes from the Class of 2024 who share a common sisterly bond like no other. What started as a study group in Upper Sayles to maintain the academic standards of Carleton has since branched out into a beautiful support group for these BIPOC women on campus. The friends can be seen all around campus, still frequenting Sayles, but also working out of the Classics Library Lounge and the 1st and 3rd floors of Olin.

Cold and hungry: how Carleton students survived a severe winter storm in Texas
Hannah Davis

When Sergio Gonzalez ’23 woke up in Houston on February 17 and checked his faucet to see if his water was running again, he couldn’t believe that he could see his breath indoors. At first, he thought he had to be dreaming; it couldn’t be that cold inside the house, could it? He checked the thermostat. It was below freezing.

Beginning around February 11, a severe winter storm generated record cold temperatures throughout the United States. In Texas, temperatures plunged into the single digits for the first time in decades. The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) instituted rolling blackouts beginning on Monday, February 15, to prevent uncontrollable blackouts due to failure of a power grid unequipped for extreme cold, according to the Texas Tribune

Funding approved for Carleton Bike Cooperative to enable student repairs
Zoe Pharo  

On February 15, over $3,800 in funding was unanimously approved by the Carleton Student Association (CSA) for the Carleton Bike Cooperative—proposed by Jacyn Schmidt ’21 and Andrew Farias ’21 in partnership with the Sustainability Office and the Makerspace

The funding comes from the Student Projects Committee, which Chair Polycarpe Bagereka ’22 said is used for projects that may not be associated with any chartered organization. He added, “We review every submitted project idea and when it is worth pursuing, we work collaboratively with the students and any appropriate parties to bring the project to fruition.”  

And now for an athletics update:
Sports

"If there's a will, there's a way. Do we have the will?": track coach Dave Ricks on spring sports
Zak Sather

As Carleton administrators mull over the choice to opt in or out of a MIAC spring sports season, track and field Coach Dave Ricks believes that spring athletes can, and deserve to, return to play. “Hopefully, our administration will show that they see the value of intercollegiate athletics by supporting athletic competition this spring,” said Ricks. “I know that every athlete and team works hard and deserves this opportunity.”

Ricks, who has been Carleton’s head coach for both cross country and track, is not under the impression that holding the season will be easy. The MIAC winter season that Carleton opted out of had over 80 postponements

To play or not to play? Carleton prepares to make decision on spring season
Ryan Flanagan and Zak Sather

As the snow melts and COVID-19 cases fall across the country and in Minnesota, the spring offers a promising glimpse into a post-pandemic future. Yet the fate of the upcoming spring athletic season weighs heavily on the minds of athletes, coaches and administrators as they attempt to balance community health concerns with their desires to return to competition.

With the Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference’s (MIAC) March 3 announcement of its plans to go ahead with spring competition—and a March 5 deadline for member institutions to opt in or out—stakeholders across the Carleton athletic community have been forced to contemplate where they stand on the matter. 

SAAC hosts COVID-safe competitions for student-athletes
Oliver Jacobs

Carleton student-athletes would typically be wrapping up their winter seasons this week; a cumulation of many hours spent competing against athletes from other schools in gyms and pools throughout the Midwest. However, as with the last three athletic seasons, COVID-19 robbed student-athletes of yet another opportunity to compete this winter.

While nothing can compare to the thrill of live competition, the Student Athlete Advisory Committee (SAAC) took initiative to fill the void of games and meets on campus this winter by organizing small weekend competitions among lifting pods from various varsity programs. The effort was a huge success, and provided student-athletes with an opportunity to socialize with members of other teams in a COVID-safe environment. 

Here's what students are thinking about: 
Viewpoint

I'll pick your major if you pick mine
Aldo Polanco  

As of the time of writing, there is a month and some until the Class of 2023 has to officially declare a major. I find that this deadline is an interesting one, not because of what it is, but because of the differing emotions sophomores feel towards it: anxiety, worry, relief, stability and a bunch of other emotions someone declaring psychology can tell you about. Still, one must admit that it is a Carleton milestone, but certainly not one I am happy to be hitting. 

I, like many others, came to Carleton with some idea of what I wanted to major in. But the liberal arts model seems to actively frown upon those who do. It got to the point where I cannot tell you all of the majors that I considered at some point. Sure, I applied to Carleton as a cognitive science major…or maybe it was computer science…actually, I think it was political science. Truth is, I have no idea, nor do I care. 

Why your inability to choose a major is your greatest strength
Dane Swanser 

I am a sophomore whose major changes every hour of every day. I have bounced between everything from CAMS to political science, history to art history, and biology to French (fun fact: I’ve never taken a biology class at Carleton). The only thing that comforts me when I wallow in the pits of my indecisiveness is that my struggle is not singular to me, but is reflective of a common battle amongst Carls against our own combatting interests. 

If I had a dollar for every Carl that I have heard say, “Oh my god, I cannot believe we have to declare next term,” I might just have enough money to fund a search party to find Lyman (#findlyman).  

"You are not failing to commit, but exploring a myriad of interests that speak to your uniqueness."
 

Retreat and advance
Noboru Tomonari 

Noboru Tomonari is the Chair of Asian Languages and Professor of Japanese.

“My firm belief is that the only thing we have to fear . . . is the fear itself – nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.” These are the famous words of Franklin D. Roosevelt at his first inauguration on March 4, 1933. He was speaking in the aim of trying to combat the Great Depression although fascism was also on the rise. I agree with his sense of needing to fear “fear itself” even when we are dealing with the pandemic this time. I also suggest, however, that strategic retreating has its merits too and the kind of “advance” that we make needs to be thoroughly analyzed before put into practice. 

The Carletonian sent me a manga (Japanese cartoon) and solicited my thoughts on it. The manga was on a Japanese high school student who came to be ostracized by his friends at school because his mother worked as a nurse at a hospital that was treating COVID-19 patients. The Tokyo Metropolitan government commissioned the manga and had shared it with the Japanese and non-Japanese students at K-12 schools in Tokyo.

Now for a few laughs: 
The Bald Spot

Daily humiliations
Phoebe Ward

And finally, Arb Notes!

Kettle Hole Marsh: 10,000 years in the making
Sydney Marie Jones

Carleton’s Kettle Hole Marsh sits alongside a trail through the prairie in the Lower Arboretum. The marsh, now covered in ice and cattails, is about 10,000 years in the making. Its story begins at the time of Minnesota’s last glaciation.  

About 15,000 years ago, an ice sheet covered most of western Minnesota. Over the course of 6,000 years, the glaciers retreated northwards, leaving chunks of ice scattered throughout the landscape. Some also floated downstream on major waterways, washing ashore during periods of intense flooding. These chunks then melted, leaving an array of “kettle lakes” behind. Most of Minnesota’s 11,842 lakes—from the 5.1-square-mile Red Lake to tiny Kettle Hole Marsh—were formed through this process. 

A note to confused readers: Arb Notes is published in our Bald Spot section, but is not itself satire. Arb Notes, unlike other Bald Spot material, is earnest. But because it is a break from our more traditional pieces, we publish it in the "fun" section!
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Copyright © 2021, The Carletonian, All rights reserved.

Photos by Isaac Crown-Manesis '23 and Arthur Onwumere '24. Photo of Teresa Pittman courtesy of the Pittman family.



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