The Distance

How did news of Carleton's antiracism training spread to conservative websites?
Zoe Pharo  

On Monday, May 24, faculty and staff participated in their last anti-racism training session, marking the end of a series of monthly community-wide webinar and affinity group discussions that have been required since January.

The impetus for the training was the August 9 “Open Letter for Carleton College” and demands from the Ujamaa Collective—made up of student leaders from the Black Student Alliance, African and Caribbean Association, Men of Color and Student Department Advisors for Africana Studies—which were addressed to President Steven Poskanzer, Carleton trustees, faculty and staff.

The demands outlined experiences of racism, discrimination and disenfranchisement of Black students, staff and faculty. Independently contracted “mandatory anti-racist training for all incoming and current faculty, staff, administrators, and students” was on the list of initial demands for institutional commitments against anti-Black racism and discrimination.

A hard look at Carleton's endowment
Ellie Zimmerman 

At the May 21 Convocation, climate action leader Ayana Elizabeth Johnson wasted no time. “Has Carleton divested its endowment from fossil fuels?” she asked with a knowing smile. “Not completely yet, no,” came the response from Kerry Raadt, Director of Events and moderator of the discussion. 

Carleton’s endowment, currently valued at $1.1 billion, is supposed to be the “lifeblood of Carleton’s mission,” per a December 2019 Inside Carleton article. But the extent to which the endowment—both in its placement in the market and its use on campus—supports that mission and the values of the community remains in question for many students who see the endowment as an amorphous sum of money that supposedly exists but can never be seen. 

Endowments of wealthy private schools across the country have come under fire in recent years for prioritizing the accumulation of wealth over enhancing financial aid and other resources to make an elite education more broadly accessible. In his 2015 New York Times article “Stop Universities from Hoarding Money,” University of San Diego law professor Victor Fleisher contended that wealthy institutions spend a disproportionate amount of their endowments on compensation for hedge fund managers whose job is to make the institution indefinitely wealthier. 

Carls shine at Track and Field National Championships
Zak Sather  

This weekend marked the end of the collegiate Track and Field season as four Carls—Matt Wilkinson ’21, Amanda Mosborg ’21, Lucas Mueller ’21, and Clara Mayfield ’23—competed in Greensboro, North Carolina for the D3 National Championships. 

Amanda Mosborg

Mosborg competed in the 5k on Saturday, May 29 alongside teammate Clara Mayfield. Mosborg, a senior, was competing in her first outdoors national championships and did not disappoint. She showed her veteran strength in the grinding middle section of the race, running a 5:34 second mile before closing in a 5:38 final mile. She finished in 17:20, good for thirteenth place in her final competition in a Knight’s singlet. 

Clara Mayfield

Mayfield proved her incredible resilience this weekend if nothing else. She started off the weekend with the 10k on Thursday. She ran a gutsy race, putting herself in seventh with less than a mile to go when disaster struck. Mayfield experienced a combination of debilitating cramps and heat stroke brought on by the heavy North Carolina heat (almost 90 degrees at racetime) that left her unable to finish the race. After such a physically draining and heartbreaking experience in her first national championship race, no one would have guessed Mayfield would come back with such vigor in the 5k only two days later. She finished fourteenth on Saturday with a time of 17:22, only two seconds and one place behind her teammate Amanda Mosborg, and closed with a blistering 1:17 final lap. 

For the Class of 2021: affectionate words of wisdom from long-serving Carleton staff
Don Smith   

Many staff members at Carleton have offered decades of service to our school and to its students. In advance of the class of 2021’s graduation, these small pieces of advice for our graduating seniors have been collected from some of the college’s longest-serving staff.

While few staff get to stand at the front of a classroom, they still watch our students work and grow and are deeply invested in their happiness and success.

The staff members quoted below represent many different divisions of the college, but all of them have given more than 25 years of service to Carleton students and to the Carleton community as a whole.

Honorable dishonesty: cultural differences in cheating from the U.S. to Thailand
Saly Sirothphiphat

When I wrote my first English essay at my U.S. high school, I struggled with citations—not the formats but when and what exactly to cite. The teacher said that if I took any ideas from another individual, including direct quotes and paraphrasing, I’m supposed to cite them as sources. I was confused because I thought that everything I knew, wrote, and said—not only the ideas, but all the words and sentence structures—came from someone else. Then, how far back did I have to dig to find the true authorities so I could do them justice when citing them? How should I know if my citation was the right one—what if someone else had this same idea first, but the author I read wasn’t aware of it? 

In Thailand, where I’m from, students in both public and private schools never write essays—neither in Thai nor English (maybe students attending international schools and college students get to do that, but not us). This is probably because all college entrance exams are in multiple-choice format, so only rote memorization is emphasized—the smartest memorize the most. I don’t know at which point I came to a realization of what and when to cite, but coming to the U.S. for high school and college forced me to figure it out and acclimate to these standards of academic honesty—something that was relatively unknown to me in Thailand. Now, reflecting on it, I have seen this same cultural difference of academic honesty play out in different ways along my educational path. 

From Professor Fred Hagstrom: a message to seniors
Fred Hagstrom

To the Class of 2021,

I suppose that I would feel unusually close to your class since this is my last year of teaching. You are the last class I have been with for all four years. But my respect for you as a group is not just based on that.  Three and a half years ago I had a class in observational drawing that was reserved for students in your first year.  It was among the best and most enjoyable of any class I ever taught.  Following that, I took 13 members of your class abroad on an off-campus trip, again impressed and grateful to work with so many of you.  And in the next few years, I met more members of your class.  I currently have 17 seniors in my courses this spring.  At every step, I have felt grateful to be working with you.  

You have had one third of your time at Carleton compromised to some extent by the pandemic.  Some of you have missed opportunities like off-campus programs, participation in sports, or occasions to travel or work with internships. With your fellow students, you have followed the rules that have kept us safe and able to have as much freedom as we could while being on campus. You have made the best of a difficult situation. And from my perspective, you have also made the most of your education and have done terrific work.  Graduation time is always a time of congratulations.  I feel that every year, especially as we meet your families and say goodbye.  But this year, my congratulations to you feel more important and meaningful  than ever.

On pre-med culture
Marianne Gunnarsson

Years ago, I, having read Oliver Sacks’ “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat” as well as Paul Kalanithi’s “When Breath Becomes Air,” and having thought to myself, “Hey, that seems legit,” decided that I was going to be a doctor. What I did not initially realize was that the culture within college pre-med classes, despite their collaborative nature, can create a problematic atmosphere at times.

Most, if not all, of us who chose the pre-med track selected this with a compassionate or intellectual aim, wanting to help, not hurt, in this life, and seeking, perhaps, to tread more softly on this world in which there is still so much violence and hate. Many of us might also be fascinated by a particular topic and wish to spend a life dedicated to such a topic. These two reasons for wanting to go into medicine—compassion and contributing new research—make it particularly confusing to me as to why the pre-med courses can feel so competitive, why we are forced to worry so much about our grades in these classes, and why the culture can be so off-putting. 

No nuance between life and death 
Henry Brown   

Last week, an unsurprisingly-anonymous op-ed in this paper bemoaned the lack of “nuance” regarding what the author referred to as “the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.” The article was fairly long, but a key sentence in this article read.: “I cannot understand this complicated geo-political and ethno-religious conflict as the ‘good’ versus the ‘bad,’ as one side against another side.” That’s too bad. The ongoing, bloody Zionist occupation of Palestine, and the systematic destruction of Palestinian towns and neighborhoods in favor of illegal Zionist settlements, is not actually so complicated.

Carleton Cryptids: Perish House
Sue Dounim

The school year is nearly over. Practically doubled over from the weight of their leaves, the trees mask the still-roaming spirits. And I prepare to abandon my column for the summer and drift back home.

I’m from Illinois, in case you were wondering. Not the Al Capone part of Illinois. The Huck Finn part. I’ll be working at my parents’ hog farm. My record for shucking an ear of corn is 8.57 seconds. I intend to beat it.

But I digress. I am only reviving the past because I cannot live in a future without Steven G. Poskanzer.

One aspect of this campus I have never been able to appreciate is the extent to which we mock our president. He awakens each morning in Nutting House, dons his academic robes, and sets to work bolstering our student lives. Yet we assail him with cutesy nicknames, as though this man is not the purest and liveliest being on this haunted campus. As much as I detest the mockery, I never imagined President Poskanzer would pack his bags and leave. Something more sinister was at play.