Greetings and blessings to you in your new installation President Byerly. Carleton is a fabulous place to be president of and I’m sure your time here will be as special and unique as all of ours were. Here’s hoping to meet you this coming summer in person on campus for our 50th reunion.
As I note in my subject line, we who went to Carleton in the 70s are ourselves now 70 — so that’s quite a conundrum. We were there during the War in Vietnam; we are the class who are famous for integrating the dorms by gender. Yes! that involved carrying mattresses across campus. We burned our bras and cut our draft cards. We shut the whole place down along with the other colleges of the Associated Colleges of the Midwest, and proudly so. We were proud to be protesting War. And our class also demanded that the student body and the faculty resemble diversity in the nation at the very least by race and ethnicity.
Some of those same fights are going on today and we’re still in it. We’d like to get in it with you and have some Nitty Gritty talks, rap sessions, conversations, and challenge each other and with you when we can have a Cuppa Java on the bald spot. Here’s looking forward to ice coffee in the summer and wishing you a long many months of engaging with Carls, who coming from all over the world, make that world a better place.