The Voice of the Carleton Alumni debuted 90 years ago this fall, filling a gap left when The Carleton Circle was discontinued in 1932 in the depths of the Depression. Founded as an “independent organ” of the College, the new magazine aimed to be “a personal link between Carleton and her far-flung family,” according to the book, Carleton: The First Century. “It is not regarded as an instrument for fundraising. Its pages are designed to report rather than exhort.”
Perusing nine decades of the Voice, it has proven to always strive to be informative, relevant, surprising, and innovative in both its storytelling and its commitment to art and design. Below are some key moments along the way.
September 1935
“This bulletin must be one that you like, for it is yours,” write Voice editors in the first issue. “We want to make it so realistic and true to Carleton days that you’ll mutter rah rah’s when you read its pages.”
May 1942
“Carleton Faces the War” outlines the College’s wartime response, including a new Summer School (intended to graduate students in three years) and new classes, like Military Map Interpretation and Red Cross Nursing. Despite the changes, writes Robert E. Barton, assistant to President Cowling, “In no sense has the college renounced its confidence in the liberal arts tradition and in those qualities of education and character which give both courage and competence to men and women in times of national crisis.”
November 1961
A new commissioned typeface, Carleton Gothic, debuts, with a stained glass–inspired typographic cover. Created by Al Squillace, the artist behind the magazine’s 1958 redesign, it’s an early example of the Voice’s commitment to visual art and artists./
July 1962
The first color cover photo bears the “rugged physique,” in the words of editor Beatrice Wardell ’32, of Laurence Gould. Retiring after three decades, he served as both a geology professor and, for 17 years, as Carleton president, a period in which seven buildings rose on campus, including Olin Hall, Boliou, and his namesake library. Wardell ends with some of Gould’s final words on the job: “I shall lay down my tasks with many regrets that I have not done better and yet with the feeling that if I had my life to live over again, I could not invest it with greater satisfaction to myself than I have done at Carleton College.”
September 1966
Celebrating the College’s first 100 years entirely with photos came with a caveat: Because so much early photography was “invariably posed,” as the intro states, it was hard to capture the vibe of campus life. But amid stately presidential portraits and building shots, some Carleton quirk shines through: a dorm wall plastered with photos, an 1890s Algol team sweating a yearbook deadline, a horse buggy hoisted onto the roof of Goodsell Observatory in 1893, one of the many pranks later captured in a 2011 Voice roundup of campus hijinks.
Fall 1970
While still officially “the voice of the alumni,” this redesign features only the name carleton on the cover—in lowercase type, like all its headlines—a decision that would last only until 1974. Introducing the typeface Cooper Black into the mix, the issue includes a look at changes to college governance, including an 8-page insert on maize paper featuring the essay “authority, shared and increased,” by then-dean Bardwell Smith and physics department chair Robert Reitz.
Spring 1971
“We stand ready to accept praise or damnation and await a deluge of letters,” writes editor Jon Nicholson ’58 of this issue’s formal experimentations. Arriving in shrink-wrap, the “changing campus” issue comes in four nesting parts: a blueprint-style cover; a smaller four-page news section on blue paper; a yellow alumni news section; smaller yet, a brown-paper insert on the inauguration of Howard R. Swearer as president; and a foldout insert celebrating 100 years of the performing arts at Carleton.
Spring 1981
With a new Science, Technology, and Public Policy program launching in the fall, the Voice examined the way the named disciplines intersect with the environment. Key stories include an excerpt from the new book, Powerline: The First Battle of America’s Energy War, by physics professor Barry Casper and political science professor (and, later, U.S. senator) Paul Wellstone; a look at the “Human and Environmental Costs of Coal” by religion and physics professor Ian Barbour; and the policy piece, “Science and Risk Assessment in the Courts” by Norman Vig ’61 and Patrick Bruer.
Summer 1998
The summer issues—which represent the first edited by Teresa Scalzo, who led the Voice until 2022—represent another new look: full-color photos on every cover and in interior pages. This applied to regular issues and each summer supplement, special issues that, from 1994 to 2007, offered a deep dive into commencement, reunion, and stewardship efforts.
Spring 2002
Interviewed upon his retirement after 15 years as Carleton president, Stephen Lewis reflects on all facets of the job, from students and campus culture to working with faculty and alumni. In closing he invokes Langston Hughes’s 1943 poem “Freedom’s Plow”: “Hughes writes that a man starts with his own dream; but then he has to find other people who will make it their dream, and it’s all about people working together. That for me has been the fun of it. . . . The teamwork and the people—that’s what we’ve enjoyed the most. That’s what we’ll miss the most.”
Spring 2011
With exceptional storytelling, including a photo essay on Iraqi Kurds by Sebastian Meyer ’02 and a look at Carls’ sustainable living efforts, this issue’s gem is “Carleton Capers,” a 12-page survey of pranks, including one from 1957, when Bruce Herrick ’58 relocated a bust of Friedrich Schiller from the Scoville solarium to his dorm room, unwittingly launching an enduring decades-long tradition, and 2010, when students transformed Goodsell into a larger-than-life version of Star Wars’ R2D2.
Winter 2015
Another redesign, by longtime designer Emily Aldrich, brought the Voice we recognize today: perfect-bound, glossy cover, and our current Voice nameplate. A standout story inside: Joel Hoekstra on why so few people remember Minoru Yamasaki, the architect behind the World Trade Center as well as Olin, Goodhue, and West Gymnasium.
Fall 2016
This issue was thick, at 80 pages, befitting the event it commemorates, the 150th anniversary of Carleton’s founding. Features include interviews with presidents Steven Poskanzer, Robert Oden, Stephen Lewis, and Robert Edwards; brief histories of the Cowling Arboretum, Carleton Farm, and KRLX; and a look at unrealized campus architecture, including a towering recitation hall, complete with Byzantine dome, conceived in 1919 to be erected across the courtyard from an expanded Skinner Memorial Chapel.
Summer 2021
Dedicated entirely to fiction and poetry by alumni writers, this issue feels like no other: small enough to carry in your summer beach bag, it was printed on uncoated paper with four different covers by photographer Sara Rubinstein ’98, wrapping from the front of the magazine to the back. Guest edited by David Wright Faladé ’86, it won a Bronze Circle of Excellence award from CASE (the Council for Advancement and Support of Education): “The content made the judges want to curl up and read it all over again.”
Fall 2021
“Building and maintaining community is not a flavor-of-the-month corporate catchphrase” for Alison Byerly, writes then-managing editor David Schimke as she starts work as Carleton’s twelfth president and the first woman to hold the post full-time. In a wide-ranging interview, she discusses her ideas on inclusion and campus culture as it pertains to faculty, staff, and, most importantly, students.