Notes from the Grinnell Colloquium (#1432)

Topics/tags: Grinnell

Last week [1], on the day before classes, I attended multiple sessions of the annual Grinnell Colloquium [2]. The Grinnell Colloquium, for those not familiar with it, is a day of talks about various issues pertaining to the state of the College [3], its finances, and plans for the coming year. I particularly appreciate hearing about the finances of the College; we had a multi-year gap in those presentations after Kate resigned, and I’m glad to see them return. Knowledge matters.

This year, there were four topics: Finances of the College, Grinnell College in the Age of Generative AI, Declarations of Independence [4], and Evolving the Honor G. I attended three of the four [6]. Since not everyone attends, I thought I’d share some of what I heard. Recordings of all but the last are available to folks with a Grinnell account on GrinCo.

Perhaps I should start with the most terrifying part, at least to me. After our Chief Financial Officer gave the opening talk, she sat down in front of me, introduced herself, and said, You’re Sam Rebelsky. I’ve heard a lot about you. What do people say to our top-level administrators about me? Also concerning: In the Honor G section, President Harris credited me [7] for the Honor G revamp.

Much of the Finances of the College presentation was more of what we’ve heard in the past. Grinenll is conservative in our estimates. We’re worried about how much we rely on the endowment. Nonetheless, I learned some new things along the way. Development and Alumni Relations raised nearly $50 million last year. Congratulations! I’m thrilled to see that DAR is doing well; I assume that Anne’s enthusiastic talks about the College help. In addition, I was surprised to hear that we’d already met our first RED [8] target of a $5 million cut to the annual budget. Good job, everyone!

I’d forgotten (or never knew) that the Trustees are cutting our endowment draw from 4.5% to 4.0% in Fiscal Year 2029. That significantly affects the growth (or lack thereof) of the payout. I hope they consider making the cut more gradual, say 4.4% in 2029, 4.3% in 2030, 4.2% in 2031, 4.1% in 2032, and 4.0% in 2033. We’ll see.

Many of our financial estimates depend on the number of students we enroll. Hence, I asked about our target number of students [9]. I forgot to note the target enrollment—and recalled 1640—but I wasn’t sure. Fortunately, it’s also in the recording. Hah! I’m right. Anne mentioned the road to 1640. It’s at about 38:00, in the midst of the Sam asks too many questions segment [10]. I find it useful to know our target. And for those who care, we’re currently at 1625. Close, but not quite enough.

Most surprising to me was one of the new capital projects, which appear on page 18 of the slide deck. I knew that we were planning a new building for SHAW [11]. I knew that we were planning to add food service back to Quad [12]. I did not know that we were planning to build more residence halls. However, Townhouse Residences is one of the three main capital projects under serious consideration. It will involve two 32-bed suite-style townhouse residences, for a total of 64 more beds.

As you might expect, I asked about that, too, especially since there were so many student complaints about their inability to choose to live off campus. I was assured that students want this kind of living on campus, and we’re letting most of the people who want to live off campus do so. It also appears that Trustees who lived off campus felt less connected to the campus community, so there’s a push to limit off-campus living.

I didn’t ask for an explanation about the price differential from Renfrow, particularly in terms of why Renfrow cost so much. The two townhomes are estimated at under $10 million. I don’t know that there was ever an official cost released to the community, but I generally hear $60 to $70 million plus $10 to $20 million for enhanced infrastructure. Renfrow has about 128 beds. So its cost is about three-to-four times as much per bed as a more reasonable plan might have required. The Katherine Howell Weingart ’61 Civic Innovation Pavilion certainly added costs to Renfrow, but not that much.

Or perhaps it does make sense. $60 million total. $10 million of that is the KHW61CIP. $30 million of that is the Starchitect. That leaves $20 million, only a little more than the per-bed cost of the townhomes. At a time in which we’re cutting budgets, did we really need to hire the starchitect, whose name may no longer be mentioned? And what happened to the pyramid?

Whoops. Sorry for the digression. As a colleague has reminded me, it’s all sunk costs.

One other comment I recall from the presentation was, approximately, we spend our money on what we value. Our highest expense is personnel. Our second-highest expense is financial aid. After that, it’s debt service. I’m not sure we value debt service, but it’s necessary [14,15]. Next up is reserves.

I suppose it’s time for another digression. If I were a staff member, I’d bristle at the we spend our money on what we value. I hear from too many staff members that they feel underpaid and undervalued. And, while I don’t know staff salaries, I know that I worry that many important staff need to take second jobs. I wonder if we could convince the institution that instead of setting many staff salaries to match local norms, we set them to match the value of what they do.

Back to where our money goes. We’re now on to individual parts of Program and Utilities [16]. Highest is Academic Affairs, which represents 20% of Program and Utilities. Yup, something we value highly. It’s good to see it at the top of that category. Next up is Institutional expenses, which includes off campus study program tuition, propery/casualtyinsurance, associations and dues, auth/bank charges, spending from donor gifts and external research grants, etc. I’d call that an interesting combination of necessary expenses, student support, and faculty support. Can you guess what’s next?

That’s right, Information Technology Services, with Facilities Management close behind. Can you believe that ITS takes over 1/8 of our Program and Utilities Budget? Terrifying. And that’s the non-personnel costs. I think it also ignores the lifecycle replacement costs, which come from the reserves. Ouch! Perhaps it makes sense. In terms of future costs, I see that setting up Colleague SaaS+ is budgeted at nearly $5 million and eliminating WebEx is about $160 thousand.

I suppose those are the highlights of the first part of the colloquium. At least they’re all I recall, and I have no desire to listen to the recording. Let’s skip ahead to the last session.

For those who missed my earlier musing on the Honor G, there’s a problem with Grinnell’s athletic logo: It looks surprisingly like an iron cross. Jewish students, faculty, and staff have raised concerns about it for years. Others have, too. Most of us realize that Grinnell’s use of the iron cross precedes the Nazis’ use. Nonetheless, Grinnell should not be using a symbol that is so closely aligned with a hate symbol. I was intrigued to hear our designers say something similar, We looked at almost every college logo, and none has the same hateful connotation as Grinnell’s. I was surprised to hear from Communications that we were not allowed to share the draft replacement. No photos. I’m also sticking with No descriptions, even though we did not receive those explicit instructions.

I was saddened to hear some of the responses from alumni and student surveys, such as I don’t see anything wrong with the logo and If you change the logo, I’ll no longer donate. I’d expect better of Grinnellians.

Although the designers are still working on a final version of the new logo, the basic framework seems reasonable. It does not look like any of the other G schools’ logos. It does not seem to convey hatred. At least most versions don’t; I worry about a few of the variants I saw. Most importantly, the students, alums, and athletics faculty and staff who commented on it agreed that it could serve as a source of honor and pride [17]. I’d love to compete with that on my chest typified the comments the designers shared with us.

It sounds like the designers would have preferred to work on both the logo and possible replacements for Pioneers simultaneously [18], but I don’t think we’re ready to go there yet, if ever [19]. I’m also not convinced that it’s necessary to do both simultaneously; the new design should suffice no matter what we call the teams.

I’m happy to hear that the Trustees will be voting on the new logo this fall. I look forward to a successful vote. I wish it were before this fall’s athletics honor event.

Were there other things to share? Let’s see. Nearly $50 million in donations. 1640 students. New dorms are planned. Renfrow was overpriced. Our staff salaries need work. ITS costs a surprising amount. The Trustees are voting on the Honor G this fall. What else?

Oh, that’s right. I asked about the Forum, that inaccessible building that, nonetheless, shines the light of wisdom onto campus. It’s under consideration, but probably nothing will happen for a few more years. Others asked about the library. That’s a much bigger project, and, while it’s under consideration, it will require much more development, including a clear approach to funding.

That seems like enough. I hope you found this helpful. I’d encourage you to consider attending next year, whether in person or virtually.

[1] Should I still say last week when it’s now ten days or so?

[2] My typing brain gets confused by the you-eye-you in colloquium.

[3] Iowa.

[4] An exploration of how we are marking the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, including talks, reading groups, dinner discussions with the president, and more [5].

[5] I hope we also mark it by replacing the flag on central campus.

[6] I’ll leave it up to you to guess which one I missed.

[7] Perhaps blamed me would be more appropriate, even though I don’t think Anne was casting blame.

[8] RED is our TLA for Reduce Endowment Dependency.

[9] I asked a lot of questions. I need to learn to moderate myself.

[10] I do not like hearing my voice on recordings.

[11] I was part of an external review of SHAW in 2013. One of our highest-priority recommendations was find a better space for SHACS, as it was then called. Fifteen years from recommendation to implementation is, um, less quick than I’d like.

[12] Also known as The Harry Potter Room.

[14] Perhaps we shouldn’t have developed three major projects without first securing donations.

[15] If I recall correctly, taking on debt was a net positive, because our endowment income is higher than our interest.

[16] Note that Program and Utilities, alone, is about twice Debt Service and Reserves, combined.

[17] GC Pride!

[18] I’ve suggested Menagerie, which embraces the teams that have additional nicknames, like the Dogs, Ducks, and ’Roos. I’ve also suggested Green Aliens.

[19] There are multiple ways to consider the word. Does it refer to the people who went west and captured land, or does it refer to innovators? After all, we call chemists, authors, and more pioneers. We should reject the appelation if it’s the former and embrace it if it’s the latter.

Version 1.0 of 2026-09-06.