As reported by Myles Radtke ‘09:
“Founded by the Minnesota Conference of Congregational Churches as Northfield College, in Northfield, MN, Carleton College has a truly interesting story behind its name. In 1870, the prosperous manufacturer of brassware William Carleton met the Reverend James W. Strong, the first president of the school called Northfield College. Shortly afterward, President Strong miraculously survived a horrific accident in which his carriage was struck by a train. Moved by Strong’s survival, Carleton donated $50,000 to the fledgling Northfield College. Out of gratitude, Northfield College’s board of trustees renamed the college Carleton College.
Due in part to Carleton’s donation, Carleton College became a highly-touted liberal arts college with an enrollment of 2,000 students. To this day, the story behind Carleton College’s name is told to incoming freshman, usually by President Oden.”
Northfield’s motto is displayed on the welcome signs from the Minnesota highways: "Cows, Colleges, and Contentment." Indeed, one could extrapolate a lot from this motto. For one, there are colleges here! But it also gives a good indication of the kind of life Northfield citizens live. It’s an extremely quiet town, with a quaint main street and a few scattered stores and restaurants. And, like the rest of Minnesota, Northfield is pretty cold in the winter.
Students appreciate Northfield’s proximity to Minneapolis, a city Carleton students almost uniformly enjoy and often frequent on weekends or during the summers when they offer a number of internship opportunities.
Goodbye Blue Mondays is the prototypical college town coffee shop, filled with kooky art and a good mix of students, professors, and people from town. Blue Mondays really is the place to be off-campus, and during the late afternoon and evening it can be a tough task to find a seat.
Paul Caine ’08 talks about some places students like to hang out:
“None of the three local bars that Carleton students visit are legitimately great, but each has its positives. The Rueb ‘N Stein is basically a redneck bar: a lot of wood paneling, pool tables, an interesting clientele, as well as a happy hour with free buffalo wings. Until the recent statewide ban, the Rueb was one of the last places in town to allow smoking indoors. The Contented Cow is the most upscale of the town bars, and is meant to be a British-style pub. They serve good, expensive beer, so it’s the sort of place you go to chat with friends or have a beer with a professor. The Tavern is notable mostly for its half-price wine night, which brings basically every senior to the bar and features countless messy re-tellings of stories from back in the day.
Northfield’s park is a place for innocent escape. On any given spring day, there are students tossing Frisbees, swinging on the swing set, sliding down slides, or perhaps just picnicking on the grass. Sure, Carleton has a lot of green space, but it’s nice to be a part of the greater community sometimes.”
In 1867, Charles Goodsell and Charles Augustus Wheaton donated two ten-acre properties to erect Carleton College’s campus. The Cowling Arboretum was created sixty years later and is now the environmental heart of Carelton’s campus. It encompasses 880 acres of forest, field, and floodplain, and the trails go on for miles and miles. The arboretum was conceptualized by the artist Christopher Williams.
Paul Caine '08 reports on these facets of campus:
"It’s often said that the library serves as Carleton’s de facto student center, and only part of that is because Carleton students like to study. The truth is that the library is a great spot to hang out. The boisterous top floor, filled with collaborative work areas and comfortable couches, is the place to see and be seen, with descending floors becoming less and less social. In the evenings, people wander from table to table to chat, which prevents the completion of homework but provides a stellar outlet for gossip.
Carleton’s student center isn’t flashy, but it is a major hub for students. The mailboxes, snack bar, bookstore, newspaper, and radio station are all based here, as are some recreational options like pool, ping-pong, and outdated video games. Day or night, you’ll see students shooting the breeze, eating unhealthy fried food, petitioning for certain causes or student organizations, filming movies, playing piano, and on Fridays, buying flowers for friends.
Carleton owns 800 acres of prairie adjacent to the campus and takes very good care of every one of them. There are jogging and biking trails, restored prairie plants, swimming holes, fire pits...really everything you’d need to enjoy the great outdoors. In the warmer months, there’s nothing quite so sublime as a bonfire deep in the Arb. Surrounded by friends and towering trees, one feels nothing so much as a profound communion with nature. The arboretum is arguably Carleton’s finest resource – it’s used by everybody, from biology classes to itinerant student fishermen – and one of the best spots for hanging out.
Carleton’s main quadrangle is called The Bald Spot. Unlike other colleges, this isn’t a fenced-off, untouched patch of grass. In the winter, the college floods the whole thing with water, creating two excellent rinks for skating and broomball. Come spring, the Bald Spot is the site for tossing a Frisbee, skimming over homework, and half-hearted attempts at tanning.
The Watson Japanese Garden is regarded as one of the best gardens of its kind in America. It’s a beautiful showpiece, expertly maintained by doting gardeners and respected by all who see it. It’s really that awesome. The location – tucked behind Watson Hall in a quiet corner of campus – keeps the crowds away, and ensures that the garden remains a place of tranquility and peace. The Watson Japanese Garden has a reputation as a kind of stoner’s haven, which is only partially justified and does a disservice to what is probably Carleton’s most impressive piece of campus art."
As reported by Paul Caine ‘08:
"Carleton students are generally pretty agreeable, so there isn’t too much fighting with the administration. One campus office that is poorly run and universally disliked, however, is the Office of Residential Life. Dealing with this office is hell, and everybody knows it, including the staff. While most college offices and departments pride themselves on their friendliness and accessibility, Res Life could hardly be more forbidding. Asking for exceptions, extensions, explanations, or for that matter, any sympathy at all is utterly useless with this department – it’s how they like it.
Take Northfield Option, the policy that allows students to live off-campus. Res Life likes to frame off-campus living as a kind of elite privilege, when in fact it’s a necessity for the college: If every student were to opt to live on campus, Carleton would require nearly 250 more beds than it has now. Despite this fact - which in practice means that every junior and senior who wants to can live off campus - the method for selecting Northfield Option is excruciating. Miss a deadline and you might have to wait another month before finding out if you can live off campus - crucial time that could be spent securing a lease. Inane, archaic, mean-spirited: this is the way of Residential Life.
Aside from this one blot on Carleton’s campus, there are few major 'clashes.' There are long-standing conversations over Carleton’s allocation of financial aid and recruitment and retention of minority students, but few would deny that the school is trying as hard as possible to move in a progressive direction as far as these areas are concerned."
