Conversations about Life and Politics from those who know it best.

Monday was the Opening Convocation for the 2011-2012 School Year (which I capitalize to give it the gravity it deserves as my SENIOR YEAR OF COLLEGE… honestly, where did the time go?), and in my opinion it was the best Convocation since I got to Mac. The subject was “A Conversation about Life and Politics” with Garrison Keillor and former Vice President Walter Mondale, and it was a lively reflection on all sorts of things, from Minnesota guilt to new runways at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, to the current political situation in America. I was expecting it to be informative and enlightening, but I was quite surprised as to how funny the entire thing was. I haven’t laughed that hard in a long, long time. The gymnasium was packed with students to the point where there were students standing on the second floor area in addition to the hundreds of seated students on the gym floor.

Also, our esteemed student body president got to see herself larger than life on a projection screen. Behind her? A clearly amused President Brian Rosenberg.

Probably my favorite part of this entire thing was the fact that Garrison Keillor came up with the idea and had already planned out some of it with Vice President Mondale before approaching President Rosenberg about it. What makes Mac really cool, I think, is that things like this end up happening a lot. We’ve always got great speakers and performers coming to campus. Seriously, always. So often that I have problems trying to go to everything I want to go to – it’s just not possible.

But that’s okay. The things I am able to go to, like Convocation, are fantastic. As members of the MCSG (Macalester College Student Government) executive board, we had to look our best for the occasion. Here’s us looking really classy outside of the Leonard Center in the Anderson Portico: