Magazine

Thomas Williamson ’86, the Kenneth Bjork Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Anthropology, has spent years researching the evolution of American colleges and universities. As St. Olaf marks its sesquicentennial, he reflects on how the college has become increasingly complex over the last 150 years — and what that means for its future.

Writing the story of St. Olaf gets increasingly difficult with each passing year. If the familiar narrative mode for such accounts is “continuity and change,” the sheer amount of change makes the story more and more intricate. In 1924, the story might have been “St. Olaf survived.” In 1974, it might have been “St. Olaf is managing intense growing pains.” In 2024, the headline might be “St. Olaf is complexifying in ways that challenge its coherence.”

To better grasp these dynamics, it helps to think historically and in a larger frame. Institutions like St. Olaf were always optimistic, fragile ventures in the American landscape. When the college was founded as an academy in 1874, its prospects were not so promising. Many colleges and universities opened in that decade, as the United States expanded westward and recovered from the Civil War. Joining St. Olaf in 1874 were Macalester College, Smith College, and Colorado College. Others from that era, like Illinois’ Lombard College and Michigan’s Grand Traverse College, floundered and then went out of business.

For St. Olaf, there were many questions with unknowable answers. Would students show up, and would Norwegian-Americans find this particular school useful? Would benefactors donate money, and the church sustain its support? Would Minnesota grow and thrive, and would Northfield prove to be a fortunate location or a dismal one? 

By 1924, there were affirmative answers to most of these questions. The college had moved from Northfield town proper to the hill on its outskirts. There were buildings beyond Old Main, including dormitories for men and women, a library, and the grand construction of Holland Hall. The institution no longer depended on younger students but instead solely enrolled those ready for post-secondary education. Rail magnate James J. Hill had offered some of his largesse as support, and Minnesota had grown from a few thousand people to nearly a half million. The United States was in the midst of an enormous industrial transformation.

Fifty years later, in 1974, the college had experienced decades of phenomenal expansion. The number of structures mushroomed, including a music building, a student center, an impressive chapel, and a major athletic complex. New dormitories ringed the quad. The student body had shifted from the children of farmers, clergy, and teachers to young people from professional families in the affluent suburbs of Minneapolis and Chicago. The counterculture had ended single-sex dorms and dress codes, bringing in a party scene, dancing, and political activism. Assumptions that students would be Lutheran or attend worship services ended, and the institution dreamed of being more cosmopolitan.

Reaching the present period, the changes continue. The United States is much more prosperous in 2024 than was the case even a half century earlier. St. Olaf now features elaborate academic buildings, first-rate laboratories, well-appointed dorms, and a rich range of dining options. Students can study all over the world, and a number of them arrive on campus with international travel experience. The campus community is more diverse in most demographic categories, including region, religion, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status. The student parking lots are packed full of cars, and many faculty and staff commute to Northfield rather than live in it. The college endowment might one day soon begin with a “B.”

How else has the college shifted? If the humanities disciplines of religion, history, philosophy, and literature once formed St. Olaf’s academic core, they have been replaced by the STEM fields of chemistry, biology, statistics, and mathematics. New fields like neuroscience, environmental studies, gender and sexuality studies, and public health are highly popular with students.

The college now features a host of institutes and centers, like the Lutheran Center for Faith, Values, and Community; the Taylor Center for Equity and Inclusion; the Piper Center for Vocation and Career; and the Institute for Freedom and Community. These significantly stretch the college’s functions and expand its mission.

Athletics continues to grow in intensity and skill, recruiting players from across the country (and internationally). Ole teams travel far beyond the Midwest for competition, including the baseball team going to Florida, the football team to Norway, or the Ultimate Frisbee team to North Carolina. Many of these games are streamed online with multiple cameras and commentators. 

All of these changes reflect a widely enhanced institution in a highly affluent society. That is what makes narrating what St. Olaf “is” in 2024 such a complex task. Colleges like St. Olaf have grown to be so many different things that it is not always clear what holds them together. The campus continues to expand, out into the prairie but also down Ole Avenue with the new housing project, featuring townhouses and a large dormitory dramatically expanding the campus eastward. A new president’s house, renewable energy projects, new sports fields, and endless renovations keep the existing campus environment a work-in-progress. St. Olaf also now extends outside the Midwest. It recruits students in California, Texas, and East Asia, it sends students everywhere, it maintains connections with employers in New York, Seattle, and Denver. “Where is St. Olaf?” is a question not so readily answered by “in Northfield, Minnesota” anymore.

These dizzying changes have also made the past more difficult to understand. Where the institution once featured a triumphant confidence in its Norwegian founders, it now wrestles with a land acknowledgment statement that recognizes the significant violence that made Minnesota a state and St. Olaf a college. The students and faculty of old St. Olaf are no longer regarded solely as immigrants but also thought of as colonial settlers, in ways that previous chroniclers rarely considered. The year 1874 has moved from a date of pride to a much more mixed emotion. Is St. Olaf unambiguously a force for good in the world? Or something perhaps a bit, as the saying goes, “problematic”?

It’s fascinating that the 2024 sesquicentennial will not feature a celebratory college chronicle detailing diligent presidents and accomplished musicians, but rather a volume titled Honest Storytelling: A Sesquicentennial Exploration of Identity, Mission, and Vocation at St. Olaf College that also includes the more ambiguous and painful aspects of the institution’s past. This will include voices rarely highlighted in St. Olaf history, like Oles of color, Oles who identify as queer, and low-income Oles.

Indeed, the ways that St. Olaf is now mediated continues to shift in complex ways. The institution now highlights news and campus events through a professional Marketing and Communications team, an Athletic Department news service, and multi-channel broadcasts to alumni. Many prospective students first encounter St. Olaf through admissions videos, Instagram, and TikTok. “St. Olaf” exists in these virtual spheres as much as it does in real life. If the 20th-century technological progression went from film, to radio, and then to television, the arrival of the internet has clearly reshaped campus life in ways we are only beginning to understand. Work from home, Zoom office hours, and students at dinner glued to their phones are all key features of contemporary campus life. They no doubt stress the campus experience of community just as they expand its enactment in cyberspace.

As previously mentioned, the dominant narrative of institutional biography is “continuity and change.” This brief accounting has emphasized “change” that has thoroughly reshaped “the St. Olaf Experience.” If Oles from 1874 or even 1924 could visit our contemporary campus, they would no doubt be a bit lost. What is this place, with all these fancy buildings? Where did these thousands of people come from, in all their multiplicity? Why, they might wonder, is there an enormous wind turbine and so many shiny solar panels?

For all of the likely confusion, the ancestors would still notice resonances of their age in ours. St. Olaf is still in Northfield, still shaped by the sleepy rhythms of small town American life. Students study in small classrooms, taught by faculty adept at capturing their wandering attention. The library remains busy on Sunday nights, and daily chapel, if only modestly attended, still happens. Music thrives everywhere, from the spectacular choirs and ensembles, to solo singing in the shower. Mealtimes persist as a primary form of socializing, sports and the arts command community attention, and Carleton still endures just across the Cannon River. As always, these Minnesota campuses magically transform young people into adults, transmit and extend knowledge, and serve as a stabilizing force in a dynamic society. 

Fram! Fram! into the next 50 years, whatever that might bring us. Happy sesquicentennial, St. Olaf College!