Star Tribune chronicles the return of a pilfered pennant
“When Charles ‘Chuck’ Schwenk showed up at his 50-year reunion at St. Olaf College last month, he didn’t come empty-handed,” notes a story in the Star Tribune. “He brought an oversized pennant that he and a group of Oles had stolen from nearby Carleton College more than 50 years before.”
Schwenk, along with classmates Al Andersen and Harry Schumacher, presented the pennant to St. Olaf President David R. Anderson ’74 at a reunion dinner.
“They were trying — but failing — to look repentant,” Anderson quipped.
Last week he returned the pennant to Carleton College President Steven Poskanzer, who was happy to have it back — and promised “general and lifelong amnesty to all the people who were involved.”
Star Tribune reporter Erin Adler notes that the easy banter between the two presidents is just one sign of a culture of collaboration that has developed between the colleges.
“That includes joint academic projects and faculty partnerships,” she writes. “On the social side, students can eat at the other college’s cafeteria using their regular dining card, and a joint fundraiser was recently held in which students could ‘Date a Carl’ or ‘Date an Ole.'”
The institutions have so much in common “that the rivalry is all fun these days,” Poskanzer tells the paper.