Carleton College - Algol Yearbook (Northfield, MN)

Page 9 text:

The Carleton Community (and other myths) Community (ke-miu’ ni-ti) 1. A body politic, as a village, town, city or state. 2. The public; any body of persons having common interests. 3. A sharing or participation.

Page 8 text:

COMMUNITY

Page 10 text:

“The Carleton Community”, it’s a slippery idea. Difficult to pin down. It defies definition, perhaps because it describes an enity whose bound- aries and structure are anything but precise. The College is so many things at once: an allegedly reputa- ble institution of academic endeav- or, a serene wasteland of arctic beauty, a continuing (but always changing battle between intitutional and radical politics, comps, a phan- tasmagoric maze of groups, clubs, committiees, associations, and spe- cial interests: inshort, anything but a community. How could any popula- tion so confusing, so consistently at odds with itself claim to be a ‘‘com- munity’? And yet the claim is still made, fueled by a very common feeling that there is something, well special about Carleton. Something unique, something that makes sense (if not order) out of the confu- sion. The College is an ubiquitous presence; in all its manifestations and various extensions, where it touches one, it touches all. And where all are touched, there is a shared sense, a commonality of ex- perience. A community. Look at it this way: Each Spring term there comes a day (early in the term in a good year, late in the term in a bad one) when the sun sudden- ly ups and shines for what seems like the first time since the previous September. The snow is gone and under the sun’s gentle prodding, the ground slowly warms to a point where it seems asin against all the gods of land and sky to keep your shoes on. Stereo speakers appear in dorm windows like rare flowers that only bloom once each year. Suddenly everyone is in shorts; ev-