There were students from China back in the twenties?

I was browsing through the St. Olaf Catalog from 1926 and found that there were two Chinese students! There were also one from Japan and a 2 from Canada. It was a surprise for me since who would think that international students would come to a small liberal arts college in Northfield. However, Elma Thorson does not sound Chinese to me, So I wonder if she was a second generation Chinese? Or even third? Or an American studied in China? So I went to the yearbook, curious about what she looks like. Here's a description and a picture.

I think that "American school" really solve the confusion. It was just a cool discovery.   

Liberal arts at St. Olaf

What I learn from the reading today is that an liberal art education is not just the education that make you more well-rounded. A liberal arts college is a "freedom school". I think it still depends on the students in the school to make the institution free. We need to know "our own minds in order to be good citizens of a free society", and know how to make what we've learn in the school "free" in terms of make them our own. St.Olaf has been a co-ed school since the beginning, contributing a egalitarian system for both women and men to pursue this freedom. I think this freedom is a different from the freedom we talked about first semester last year. Freedom in this context means the complexity and fluidity of intelligence that can be used to different disciplines. Sometimes I wonder if an liberal arts education is necessary or beneficial. It is a great thing to do in college, studying different areas, integrating passions yet to be explored. However, what can you do with a liberal arts degree later in life? I probably have to go to grad school if i want to be a biomedical engineer. But what if I only studied biomedical sciences and had already become an expert in during my college. Now we have college graduates with liberal degrees but not specialized in anything areas. Others would argue that liberal arts education teach us how to be a leader, how to learn, and how to deal with life later. I feel like it is not very clear to say it teaches me to learn how to learn. what does it mean? I don't feel any difference. It would be so much easier if I could just get out of college with a D.O degree, taking out fewer loans and start making a career i love.

Boe

Boe seems to emphasize on his identity of being a Lutheran more than on his Norwegian ethnicity. I find this also true when I was doing my research about St. Olaf in the twenties. In Rolvaag chapter, he reiterates  that the great Norwegian heritage is somewhat superior than the rest of the American, and before Boe became president of St. Olaf, Norwegian pride was definitely more dominent in the school. Boe, on the other hand, not an immigrant himself, focused more on the church affiliation to try to unite the student body. He claimed in his letter to Ditmanson that St. Olaf stands for cultural continuity. I find him really pushing the idea of an American identity, which for St. Olaf, a liberal art college, is the mixing of Norwegian and other ethnicity and culture. This question is still pertinent nowadays, particularly to the diversity that has been talked a lot today.      

Ladies and Norwegian

In class Wednesday DeAne told us about the shack dances in the woman dorms in the 1880s. "Although dancing was supposedly forbidden at St. Olaf, evidence of a grand ball in the attic of Ladies' Hall in 1894 has come to light. And the outdoor platform built in 1888 provided a pleasant place and prospects." - Lady's Hall. I think it is interesting that women in the old times were not rule followers- much like college students today. It is not to say obeying the roles is a bad thing to do, but I feel that having this piece of information is crucial to the understand a Ole more than 200 years ago. When I thought about women in that period of time, I thought about women dressing in modest clothing and staying in their room all the time, and the description of the Ladies' Hall pull me closer to the women then. Along with DeAne's essay, on Norwegian religious, political policy and identity, I feel that student life was not just academic itself but with many other important parts to it.