Carleton College

Helping orphans the way you would do it

Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota was founded on November 14, 1866 by the Minnesota Conference of Congregational Churches as Northfield College. In 1871, the name was changed in honor of benefactor William Carleton of Charlestown, Massachusetts.

The school is an independent, non-sectarian, coeducational, liberal arts college with about 1900 students. The College respects its historical ties and gives continuing recognition to them through membership in the Council for Higher Education of the United Church of Christ.

Several of Carleton's properties deserve some historical recognition. Carleton's Goodsell Observatory, built in 1887, is on the national registry of historic places. Its arboretum, purchased in the 1920s during difficult financial times by then president Donald J. Cowling, was first called "Cowling's Folly" and later called his legacy. It consists of approximately 880 acres of forest, floodplain, and many miles of trail. Finally, an intricate series of heated underground tunnels connect all campus buildings, though they have not been in general use since 1988 due to concerns related to asbestos and security.

Carleton is nationally recognized as a substantial academic force. It is consistently ranked in the (admittedly dubious) U.S. News and World Reports college rankings within the top five liberal arts schools. Carleton competes in quizbowl and won the 1999 National Academic Quiz Tournaments undergraduate championship.

Carleton's varsity sports teams are competitive, but none has won such national acclaim as the student-run frisbee clubs, most notably the Carleton Ultimate Team (CUT) and Syzygy are national forces. CUT has qualified yearly for nationals since the late 80s, and won the national championship in 2001 after several years of being the "perennial bridesmaid".

Table of contents

1 Carleton traditions and other facts
2 Notable people associated with Carleton
3 External links

Carleton traditions and other facts

Carleton's campus life shows no lack of traditions. Many of these are pranks, such as (in violation of college policy) painting Northfield's water tower with a caricature of a college official, a frequent target being beloved President Steven "Skeetch" Lewis. Most notably, a remarkably accurate likeness of President Clinton, smoking a joint, was painted the night before his commencement speech, and repainted very early the following morning. Clinton mentioned in his address that he "would've liked to see it." Administrative attitudes toward this particular phenomenon have changed over time. For liability-related reasons, even climbing the water tower is now considered a grave infraction, and the tower is equipped with a 24-hour alarm system.

Streaking is also a ubiquitous phenomenon, even despite winter temperatures that average about 15 degrees Fahrenheit (-9 C), and sometimes reach as low as -25 (-32 C). More perplexingly, a bust of Friedrich Schiller appears frequently and randomly at campus events, most notably dangled from a chain attached to a helicopter at a football game against Northfield rival St. Olaf College. Those who possess "Schiller", as the bust is known, keep the fact secret but arrive, masked, at public events displaying it, shouting "Schiller!" This is a tacit challenge to other students to try to capture Schiller by tackling its current possessors and seizing the bust (which, frequently broken in this process, has been repaired or replaced many times.) The tradition reportedly dates back to about 1957, when the original Schiller, a bust owned by the College President, was stolen for use as a room decoration by students pressed into service to carry books and other items from the former library (in Scoville Hall) to the newly completed library on the site overlooking Lower Lyman Lake.

A baseball game known as Rotblatt, in honor of player Marvin Rotblatt, is held every spring. While Rotblatt used to be an actual intramural baseball league, it has since changed into one solitary event: a faux baseball game involving the heavy consumption of alcohol. In 1997, Rotblatt was featured in Sports Illustrated's "Best of Everything" section, with the award, "Longest Intramural Event."

The inventor of the card game Ambition is a student at Carleton, and the first known tournament of the game occurred there on March 11, 2004.

Notable people associated with Carleton

Eric Hillemann, archivist at Carleton College, won the Carper Award in 2003. He is known as a formidable quizbowl player, and coach of the Carleton team.
Melvin R. Laird, President Nixon's secretary of defense from 1969 to 1973, is a 1942 alumnus of Carleton.
Barrie M. Osborne, producer of the Lord of the Rings film trilogy, is a 1966 alumnus of Carleton.
Peter Tork of The Monkees was a student of English at Carleton for three years until, to pursue music full time, he dropped out.
Garrick Utley, correspondent for CNN perhaps best known for his reports related to the 9.11.01 terrorist attacks, was a 1961 alumnus of Carleton, who majored in political science.
Thorstein Veblen, American economist and author of The Theory of the Leisure Class, was a Carleton alumnus.
Paul Wellstone, a U.S. Senator from Minnesota until his death in 2002, was a professor of political science at Carleton from 1969 to 1990. He was known as a maverick liberal, both in the Seante and at Carleton, and his activism resulted in controversies surrounding the College's decision regarding his tenure.

External links

Carleton University in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada was formerly known as Carleton College.