St. Olaf --- What is it like?

rickyrosario
Sun, 30 Oct 2005 22:24:52 +0000

I want to stress that St. Olaf is an exceptional college in all respects. I would send my kids there without regrets. The non-alcohol policy is rather superb, and the nature of the kids attending is quite tame and most are hard-workers. You actually see students reading and studying (although their entering GPA scores [3.65] speaks more about their conformist attitude than of their inventive juices). Their international emphasis is recognized worldwide, and, to a certain point, it brings a welcoming fresh spirit to an otherwise unexciting spot in a rather cold state. What follows is more an intimate scrutiny of internal St. Olaf difficulties in regards to diversification.

What I meant with the phrase you quoted was that some administrators (not the professors at all) are not proactive enough in promoting diversity and/or attracting diverse group of students (not only ethnically, but financially and other sorts of diversity). There is a new dean of diversity and they even have a new program that brings a minority scholar for one year to campus (“Consortium for Minority Strong Representation” or something like that). But I noticed that a few in the administration were not courageous enough to leap into the aggressive recruitment attitude that Carleton College has, for example. CC has a noticeable stronger recruiting program, and thus, has a much more diverse student population–which always reflects well on its academic (I truly believe that the more diverse you are in academics the better academics you would have).

Their new rubric in deciding who is a student from a diverse cultural background has changed now, and in my opinion, is a bit deceiving. They have included most international students as part of their “diverse” student body because they have been more successful in attracting certain international students than students from St. Paul, for example. Most universities do not follow this practice. The idea is, of course, to look better in paper—they are locked into a competition with Carleton in this issue too.

The excuses that the administration provides are always in regards to money. But they have a larger endowment than the college in which I am now presently, and the things that they can do are not necessarily money-based. They could, for example, create pipelines with schools from new places (they have well-lubricated pipelines with schools in Oregon). They could move from their “Minnesota-nice” attitude to a more genuine- approach to students that are different. Their mentality is reflected in the faculty composition too. Look at this, there is only two black professors (one is a director of one of the choirs and the other an English Professor), an Asian, and an African professor (also in the English department). There is not a single Latino, gay (there is one and is only visiting), lesbian, or handicap professor.

The problem is not that there is a hostile environment to students who are not of Scandinavian background, but that there is not a concerted and sincere effort to create a diversity-friendly environment. Yet, the location does not lack opportunities. There is Carleton College at 2.5 miles from St. Olaf, and “Blue Mondays” in town. I hope that more students who are conscious of this problem would join with the majority of the professors who have wanted to do something about it, and change the make up of campus.