Switching out the light clothing of summer for heavy winter coats, boots and gloves has been a Macalester tradition for as long as there have been students on campus.
According to the Minnesota Star Tribune, out of all U.S. states, “Minnesota had the second-coldest temperatures from December to February between 1971 and 2000.”
Assistant Vice President of Admissions & Financial Aid Brian Lindeman ’89 said weather is often a major factor in whether students decide to apply to Macalester.
“Some people are certainly using it as an early filter,” Lindeman said. “I think we are filtered out quite a bit because if you are from a warm climate, this feels scary, or if you’re from here, you want to get out of it.
“[If] you go to a giant college fair in Atlanta, and people come up to the table and say, ‘oh, where’s Macalester?’ You say Minnesota, [they’ll respond] ‘ah, too cold’ and they just walk away and you never hear anything from them again.”
Lindeman said that students who enrolled and students who were accepted but did not commit listed one of Macalester’s largest weaknesses as being too cold.
However, some current students didn’t consider the weather as important a factor when deciding to attend.
“Yeah, I thought about it, [but] it didn’t impact my decision to come here.” Piper May ’28 from Palo Alto, Calif., said.
Alma Capone ’28 who’s from a suburb of Nashville, Tenn., said: “I was choosing between two colleges that were gonna be in cold places anyway. Even though Ann Arbor, Mich. might actually be warmer than St. Paul, I didn’t really consider [the] weather to be an important factor.”
Rory O’Connor ’29, a first-year from Chicago, chose Macalester in part due to the similarities in climate between Illinois and Minnesota.
“I thought having something with four seasons would be really nice,” O’Connor said “I’m so used to having four seasons that I really wanted to continue with that — it’s a nice checkpoint throughout the year.”
For international student Nyx Hames ’28, the weather was a significant change from warm and humid Japan; however, she was prepared for it.
“[It’s] not as cold as I expected,” Hames said. “The snow was not as heavy as I expected and it could be so much worse. When it gets cold in Japan, the cold follows you inside. You don’t have heaters running as strongly, at least in the areas where I would be in Tokyo.”
Lindeman, along with the admissions office, tries to assuage the fears of prospective and incoming students by reframing perspectives on winter and emphasizing other aspects of Minnesota’s climate, like opportunities for winter sports.
“When we describe [the weather], we say, we have four distinct seasons at Macalester,” Lindeman said. “[We are] trying to say, ‘If you grew up in a place that doesn’t have snow, are you up for an adventure?’”
The sense of excitement is shared among some current students and alumni, including those who organize snowball fights between dorms, class years or friend groups, and other cold weather adventures.
However the strength of the winters may still come as a shock to many students, as Lindeman recalled through an anecdote of famed alumnus Kofi Annan’s ’61 first winter at Macalester.
“He told a story about his first semester here, and [as] it started to get cold…he didn’t want to put on ear muffs because he thought they would look goofy.” Lindeman said. “The lesson [he] learned was [to] never doubt the natives of any particular place — they know how to handle the climate so follow their lead.”
Dave Collins ’85, a research and instruction librarian, recalled from his first snowfall at Macalester experiencing “not a sense of dread, but more a sense of excitement at weather this extreme.”
With the concerns of students from warmer climates in mind, Macalester previously coordinated activities to help them acclimate to Minnesota’s climate. This had included a winter fashion show hosted by International Student Programs (ISP) to demonstrate what students should wear to keep warm. The event was then followed by a trip to local clothing stores so that first-years could be properly prepared for the coming winter.
But dedicated programs to prepare students for the cold likely no longer exist. Malawian international student David Manguluti ’28 reported that much of the preparation he did for his first winter was with the help of his friends.
“The college did help [me] prepare but I think they could have done a lot more,” Manguluti said. “There is the grant that they give some people to get acclimated to the U.S., [I think] that grant is great, and I really do appreciate that they do that for students who are [low] income.
“I was working at [Information Technology Services] and had to ask … [my] manager what [he] wears for the winter.”
After experiencing her first Minnesota winter, Hames strongly recommends high quality winter clothing to protect oneself from the harshness of the cold.
“If I could have talked to myself earlier, I would have told myself ‘screw the money,’ you need to get a coat,” Hames said. “Once I got [a coat], life became a lot easier. I could feel my extremities once more.”
Manguluti notes that Minnesota’s affinity for ice provides him with new ways to enjoy his time outdoors despite the cold.
“I went to a lot of cafés … [like] Duet Coffee in Minneapolis that has … an ice rink in its backyard that you can just use if you buy a coffee,” Manguluti said.
For Collins, his experiences as a student saw a campus community centered on a bond with and against the cold. Students, faculty and staff found ways to support each other with adapting to the cold as the temperatures fell.
“People went the extra mile to make sure everyone had what they needed,” Collins said.
