St.Olaf: Too Liberal?

I have never talked much about my alma mater on this site before - despite the fact that my Five Year reunion is rapidly approaching - a fact I am vehemently denying and very much NOT attending. The denial is based much more on the unwillingness to admit that time actually progresses in a forward manner than my feelings towards St. Olaf itself. Thoughts of my college days really warm the cockles of my heart. Ahh, those heart-cockle warming memories...

Okay, sorry - enough reminiscing. Because of my loyalty, I get happy when I see stories that praise St. Olaf and get annoyed when I see stories that ridicule... wait! There aren't any stories that ridicule it (outside of the whole Golden Girls thing, which I'm not even going to address right now) I mean, really, what harm is St. Olaf doing - sitting perched up on its little hill in a little town in Minnesota?

Until now... [cue the ominous music]. It seems that St. Olaf's new focus on 'Sustainability' is a little too liberal for some people.

Come again? Sustainability? Liberal?

See, it seems that there is a new website, called Intellectual Takeout, that is being aimed towards 'conservative' college students with the intention to "support free exchange of ideas on campus" and "expose students to points of view not readily available in the classroom." In their debut editorial section, the piece focuses on St. Olaf's sustainability project (which includes such things as a composter, a wind turbine and community bikes) labeling the whole thing as tantamount to 'liberal presumption.' The main point of contention appears to be this essay that the school is requiring First Years to read. I must admit, I haven't read all 20-some pages, but the basic gist of the paper appears to be 'think about what you're doing and how it will affect the world and resources available to us and future generations.'

Intellectual Takout's beef is that the paper is only addressing one side of the issue, and doesn't give 'opportunity for dialogue' about the good things involved in just doing what you want to do without thinking about the consequences. They support themselves with such statements as (referring to a project involving biodegradable tableware): "As for the biodegradable tableware, it only has value if you believe we’re running out of landfill space, which we are not." Hmm. How is a statement made with such finality (without any evidence) supposed to leave an 'opportunity for dialogue.'

I'm going to come back to the fact that this is St. Olaf they are talking about. St. Olaf, where you can major in Norwegian or Organ Performance but can't drink on campus (it is a 'dry' campus). St. Olaf, where everyone is required to take two religion classes, and there are 20 minute chapel services every day. This was the school they chose to attack in their DEBUT editorial. Now, if you wanted to attack my school for not giving 'opportunity for dialogue' there are certainly some areas where I would support you, but sustainability is NOT one of them.

I can't help but think that someone at this web site heard 'liberal college' and 'Northfield, MN' and confused St. Olaf with our extremely liberal neighbors from across the river - Carleton College. (Oles had to go somewhere to drink!)

Okay. Diatribe over.