MACALESTER SPRING 2020 TODAY “The greatest privilege of my professional life” SEE PAGE 18 MACALESTER STAFF EDITOR SPRING 2020 Rebecca DeJarlais Ortiz ’06 TODAY [email protected] ART DIRECTION The ESC Plan / theESCplan.com CLASS NOTES EDITOR Robert Kerr ’92 PHOTOGRAPHER David J. Turner CONTRIBUTING WRITER Julie Hessler ’85 ASSISTANT VICE PRESIDENT FOR MARKETING AND COMMUNICATIONS Julie Hurbanis 14 18 26 32 36 CHAIR, BOARD OF TRUSTEES Jerry Crawford ’71 PRESIDENT FEATURES DEPARTMENTS Brian Rosenberg VICE PRESIDENT FOR ADVANCEMENT New Realities 10 Points of Struggle, Correspondence 2 D. Andrew Brown The COVID-19 pandemic forced Points of Pride 26 Household Words 3 ASSISTANT VICE PRESIDENT unprecedented, and often painful, Charting Macalester’s queer history FOR ENGAGEMENT decisions at Macalester this spring. over six decades 1600 Grand 4 Katie Ladas Macalester’s next president, Open LEFT TO RIGHT: PHOTO PROVIDED; DAVID J. TURNER; PHOTO PROVIDED; LISA HANEY, TRACEY BROWN TRACEY HANEY, LISA PROVIDED; TURNER; PHOTO J. DAVID PROVIDED; PHOTO RIGHT: TO LEFT MACALESTER TODAY (Volume 108, Number 2) “I Like to Dream Big” 14 Legends of the Night 32 Pantry, and the EcoHouse is published by Macalester College. It is mailed free of charge to alumni and friends Researcher and artist Jaye Sleep experts share their best of the college four times a year. Gardiner ’11 uses comics to advice—as well as some of their Class Notes 40 Circulation is 32,000. smash stereotypes and engage own sleep practice. You Said 41 TO UPDATE YOUR ADDRESS: new scientists. Email: [email protected] Waging Peace 36 Books 43 Call: 651-696-6295 or 1-888-242-9351 Write: Alumni Engagement Office, Macalester How to Practice Medicine Two alumni collaborate to support Weddings 45 College, 1600 Grand Ave., St. Paul, MN 55105-1899 ON THE COVER: in Alaska 16 unarmed peacekeeping in some of “You’ve got to be In Memoriam 49 TO SHARE COMMENTS OR IDEAS: authentic,” says President Heidi Baines ’95 on the tools she the world’s most volatile conflict Email: [email protected] Brian Rosenberg, who carries with her in the frontier zones. Last Look 52 Phone: 651-696-6123 will leave Macalester at and beyond the end of May. “So many presidents, because of The Art of Data Science 38 all the pressure they’re “The Greatest Privilege of Statistician Brianna Heggeseth Macalester Today is printed under, forget that.” Royle to My Professional Life” 18 on quantifying representation on on Rolland Enviro 100, a place President Brian Rosenberg looks museum walls—and using the 45 100 percent recycled paper. Photo by David J. Turner FSC logo back on 17 years at Macalester. power of data to effect change Our printer, Royle Printing of Madison, Wis., is FSC® certified. (FSC® C22017) SPRING 2020 / 1 CORRESPONDENCE HOUSEHOLD WORDS Editor’s note Flatten the curve. Shelter in place. Variety of viewpoints Quarantine. As 2020 began, few of Thank you for publishing “How Macales- us could have imagined that these GONE ter made me the Republican I am today” words would become part of our (Winter 2020). I appreciated Mr. Laukitis’s vocabulary by March. I sought a theme and sought for it in vain, reflections on being an “out Republican” on Life looks very different this I sought it daily for six weeks or so. campus and hope Macalester continues to spring, including on Macalester’s Maybe at last, being but a broken man, be a place where students engage in the campus. As the COVID-19 outbreak I must be satisfied with my heart… challenging work involved in “understand- surged across the United States, –W. B. Yeats, “The Circus Animals’ Desertion” ing other people’s points of view” and clari- Macalester joined other institutions fying their own beliefs. Reading a variety of by announcing its decision to move To be honest, I don’t feel especially like a perspectives on the value of a Macalester to remote learning as of March broken man (though my back and my knees education based on the personal experi- 30, part of a nationwide effort to ache more than they used to), but the quote ences of students and what they take with slow the virus’s spread and prevent from Yeats was otherwise too good not them into their careers is part of what I ap- overwhelming the healthcare sys- to use for the final edition of “Household preciate about your magazine. tem. With the exception of a small Words.” After 17 years and close to 70 col- number of students with extenuating umns about everything I could think of and Nan Jackson ’74 circumstances who petitioned to stay some things I couldn’t—see Spring 2012, “A East Lansing, Mich. on campus, the college instructed Column About Nothing”—I am done. students to go home and stay home. The challenge of leaving, I have found, is Per the CDC’s recommendation to captured in a single question that has been Theater memories Last Look mystery limit large gatherings, Macalester haunting me for the past several months. I enjoyed reading of Professor Dan Keyser’s We loved this photo from Mac’s archives but will replace traditional in-person What do I do with all my stuff? catalog of Macalester theater and dance didn’t know many details —and alumni were Commencement and Reunion events This might appear to be a relatively productions through time in Macalester glad to help solve the puzzle. Thanks to all with virtual celebrations. trivial question in the context of ending Today (Winter 2020), then going through who sent messages, including Candice Be- Most of our spring issue was a college presidency, but, after all those the collection online. I had a sneak preview lanoff ’90, who recognized the group right completed well before the pandemic years of living in a big house, of inhabiting of it last June at my 40th Reunion. My par- away: “This looks like a lot of 1986-87 Big- accelerated, including our interview an office larger than many apartments, of Morrison, Hillary Clinton (too bad!); Carol opened? The pants that I wore when I had ents, Mary Ann MacDonald ’47 and Howard elow freshman kids.” We even heard from with President Brian Rosenberg (p. raising two children in St. Paul, there is in and me with Kofi Annan ’61 in his office in a size 32 waist (I had that size 32 waist for Huelster ’49, met as the leads during the one reader who was part of that group: 18) as he prepares to leave the college fact nothing trivial about it. Geneva and at a dinner on campus; me in a long time)? Those will be easy. 1945 production of Pygmalion. My father at the end of May. In late March, What do I do with all those books? a nightcap with a cow (check out YouTube); If I had to choose one item in my of- was Henry Higgins to my mother’s Eliza I did recognize myself in the picture! I’m on we spoke with Macalester medical Lining the shelves behind my desk are drawings and prints created and given fice with which I will never part, it would Doolittle. My parents had season tickets the far right, with short, curly hair. I can’t director Dr. Steph Walters about her hundreds of paperbacks—novels, poetry, to me by faculty and students; a football be a photograph, framed in black, taken in to the Guthrie Theatre from its inception claim any credit for the building of the approach to the crisis, as well as stu- plays, literary criticism—that measure out signed by the members of the team that 2006 during Kofi Annan’s visit to campus and the last play they saw together before snow person. We happened to be wander- dents and faculty to learn how they’re my years as a student, teacher, and scholar, won the Midwest Conference Champion- while Secretary-General of the United Na- their passing was the Guthrie’s production ing by when they were looking to take the supporting one another from afar years that now seem long ago but that de- ship in 2014. tions. He sat at lunch that day with Carol of Pygmalion. picture. Thanks for the memory! and transitioning to remote learning fined in a profound way who I became. The I have no room. I must make some room. and Adam and Sam and me, and Sam, then (see p. 12). This edition went to press copy of Dante’s Inferno that was the first And then, at home, there are the toys. 12 and growing about an inch a month, was Ross Huelster ’79 Ronda Hedger Hageman ’87 in early April. For current updates, book I read in college; the copy of Dickens’ A whole closet full of toys. Disposing of worried because his sport coat was very St. Paul San Antonio, Tex. visit macalester.edu/COVID-19. Little Dorrit, held together by a rubber these might be the hardest of all. Boxes obviously too small. Carol mentioned this, This summer, we will share more band, that I used in writing my doctoral of Playmobil sets opened on Christmas in some small talk, to Kofi, and the photo about how faculty and students dissertation; the copy of Mary Shelley’s and assembled (with no little frustration shows one of the most famous and influ- CORRESPONDENCE POLICY navigated remote learning, as well Frankenstein, covered with notes, that I as- and some cursing) over hours; pounds of ential men in the world complimenting We invite letters of 300 words or fewer. as stories about alumni who are signed in perhaps a dozen different classes Legos, once organized and now tossed my 12-year-old son on how nice he looked CONNECT WITH US Messages may be edited for clarity, style, working to combat the pandemic.