Griffin '09 Moots for Her Majesty

Barry Griffin (Class of '09), a law student at King's College in London, was one of four top students who had the pleasure to moot — participating in a simulated court proceeding — for Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II. As part of her diamond jubilee celebrations, the Queen was on hand to formally open Somerset House, the new home of King's College School of Law.
Griffin served as president of the law school's Bar Society and is currently president of The Bahamas Law Students' Association.

Letter: SJU students' spirit at caucus encouraging

The Republican caucus of Collegeville precincts 1 and 2 was held Feb. 7 at St. John’s University, with standing room-only attendance.
It was refreshing and encouraging to see some 40 St. John’s students of Precinct 2 enthusiastically participating and volunteering to be precinct officers and delegates to the next level. Several of these young men spoke in support of candidates, participated in the discussion of platform issues, and interacted in a positive way with the 20 community residents present.
This was a great example of making quality intergenerational connections. I commend these young men for taking the time to become involved in this grass-roots process, and encourage them to continue to be active.


Written by
Bill Lewis
Cold Spring

8 CSB/SJU students, professor volunteer for roadside cleanup

Eight students from the College of St. Benedict and St. John’s University, along with Professor Matt Lindstrom, director of the Eugene J. McCarthy Center for Public Policy and Civic Engagement at St. John’s, volunteered for the center’s first roadside cleanup. The McCarthy Center recently adopted a 3.2-mile stretch of highway south of Avon. The cleanup was Oct. 9. The McCarthy Center will invite members of the CSB/SJU community to participate in this cleanup again each spring and fall. Photo submitted by Melissa DeOrio, Eugene J. McCarthy Center for Public Policy and Civic Engagement Written by
Submitted by Melissa DeOrio
Eugene J. McCarthy Center for Public Policy and Civic Engagement


Filed Under
Citizen Times
College Of St. Benedict
Eight students from the College of St. Benedict and St. John’s University, along with Professor Matt Lindstrom, director of the Eugene J. McCarthy Center for Public Policy and Civic Engagement at St. John’s, volunteered for the center’s first roadside cleanup. The McCarthy Center recently adopted a 3.2-mile stretch of highway south of Avon. The cleanup was on Oct. 9. The McCarthy Center will invite members of the CSB/SJU community to participate in this roadside cleanup again each spring and fall.
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FactCheck.org founder spends week at SJU

Written by
Mark Sommerhauser
msommerhauser@stcloudtimes.com

Like to follow politics through blogs, Facebook and Twitter?

Use of these and other social-networking platforms may encourage voters to type first and think later, a political expert with Central Minnesota ties said Tuesday.

Kathleen Hall Jamieson directs the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania and helped found FactCheck.org, a pioneering website that scrutinizes statements made by politicians in ads and debates.
Jamieson this week is a scholar-in-residence at the Eugene J. McCarthy Center for Public Policy and Civic Engagement at St. John’s University. That puts Jamieson in familiar territory, as she’s a 1964 graduate of St. Benedict’s High School in St. Joseph.

Few dispute that social-networking platforms have had a growing influence on politics in recent years.

That’s not necessarily bad, Jamieson said in a Tuesday afternoon interview with the Times. Such platforms help people connect with each other, and help them aggregate political information.

But they also may foster a climate in which observers continually comment on political speeches or debates, without pausing to consider or digest what politicians are actually saying, Jamieson suggested. She questioned how this could affect “our capacity for thoughtful citizenship and reflective engagement.”
Politics also is being changed by the emergence of technology to individualize Internet advertising, Jamieson added. That could occur when advertisers use a person’s Internet-surfing history to tailor political emails or ads to that individual.

The result: Different voters hear different political messages — and perhaps, different promises. That’s not necessarily a problem if the claims are accurate — but could be if they’re not, Jamieson said.

“Nothing in the media structure is set to capture these messages, to provide a forum to debunk them,” Jamieson said.

Jamieson also stressed the importance of educating high school students on civics — and on how to distinguish when a politician is telling the truth or when they’re fibbing. Increasing emphasis on core subjects like math and reading mustn’t displace such education, Jamieson said.

“It’s also important,” she said, “that we haven’t crowded an understanding of civics out of our curriculum.”

Denis McDonough

Denis McDonough is the National Security Council's chief of staff and one of President Obama's closest advisers. Mr. McDonough is reportedly so close to the president that colleagues — even his superiors — often do not make a major move without first checking with him.

Mr. McDonough is well known for picking up the phone to take people to task, from reporters to Washington talking heads to other Obama officials who go off message. He has berated some of the Democratic Party's most distinguished foreign policy dignitaries when they have dared to critique Mr. Obama publicly.

Mr. McDonough began his Capitol Hill career as an aide to the House International Relations Committee, where he focused on Latin America. He went on to work for Tom Daschle, the former South Dakota senator and former Senate majority leader, rising to senior foreign policy adviser, and became legislative director for Senator Ken Salazar of Colorado after Mr. Daschle's re-election defeat. He was then a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, a Democratic-leaning policy organization, before joining the Obama campaign.

During the campaign, Mr. McDonough took on the role of Mr. Obama's foreign policy guru. He helped synthesize the contributions of some 300 foreign policy advisers, divided into teams based on regions and issues, to assist Mr. Obama in formulating and articulating his foreign policy. Mr. McDonough was often dispatched to brief reporters about Mr. Obama's positions.

His work during the campaign sealed his role as Mr. Obama's most trusted foreign policy aide in the White House.

He was born Dec. 2, 1969, in Stillwater, Minn. He graduated from St. John's University in Collegeville, Minn., and has a master's from Georgetown University.

Parker Rosen, LLC Announces Mark Kennedy as Senior Strategic Adviser

January 14, 2011 11:22 AM Eastern Time
Parker Rosen, LLC Announces Mark Kennedy as Senior Strategic Adviser
Former Congressman Adds Depth to the Firm’s International Public Affairs Practice
MINNEAPOLIS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Minneapolis-based law firm Parker Rosen, LLC, (www.parkerrosen.com), announced today the addition of Mark Kennedy as a Senior Strategic Adviser. Kennedy brings a broad background in business, public service and global initiatives to his role at Parker Rosen, a firm well known for its involvement in Minnesota politics, civic activities and public affairs in addition to its winning tradition in the courtroom representing local, national and international business clients.
“I’m thrilled to be joining Parker Rosen,” says Kennedy. “I’ve long admired the wise counsel and winning results of the firm, its commitment to its clients and its active involvement in bringing people together through its community and public affairs work.”
In his role at Parker Rosen, Kennedy will focus his practice on assisting clients with global public affairs strategy and international conflict resolution matters. Kennedy is also Chief Executive Officer of Chartwell Strategic Advisors, LLC where he applies his experience in both business and government to help clients achieve success in the increasingly globalized and competitive world.
According to Parker Rosen Co-founder, Andrew Parker, “Mark shares our belief that law firms must be focused on results and that achieving results requires expert advice. Mark’s experience in global business and government will help Parker Rosen continue to achieve the results that our clients need and expect in the ever-evolving environment of business and the law.”
Prior to joining Parker Rosen and forming Chartwell Strategic Advisors, Kennedy was in a global role with Accenture, a leading management consulting firm. He represented Minnesota in the United States House of Representatives for three terms from 2001 through 2007. Kennedy also served as a Presidential appointee to the Advisory Committee on Trade Policy and Negotiation under both Presidents Bush and Obama (2007 – 2010). Prior to his service in Congress, Kennedy held leadership roles with some of the area’s largest employers, including Pillsbury, Macy’s and ShopKo (then a subsidiary of SUPERVALU). Trained as a Certified Public Accountant, Kennedy was recognized by Institutional Investor in a feature on America’s Top CFOs.
An active speaker, Kennedy has also founded or co-founded three lecture series: the Minnesota Rough Riders, the Frontiers of Freedom Lecture Series at St. John’s University and the Economic Club of Minnesota (www.ecomn.org). He will continue to speak before civic, government, student and business groups in his role at Parker Rosen.
Kennedy is a graduate of St. John’s University and received his Master’s in Business Administration with distinction from the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan. He and his wife, Debbie, live in Watertown, Minnesota.
Parker Rosen, LLC (www.parkerrosen.com) is a Minneapolis-based law firm that represents select major corporations, small businesses, and other private and institutional clients in complex civil and commercial litigation, labor and employment litigation and investigations, eminent domain, real estate, and land use law, appellate advocacy, education law and, international law and public affairs. The firm looks to make a difference – in legal matters within the Twin Cities market and throughout the world – by bringing people with diverse backgrounds together to build a unified community.

DeLand column: Is there economic logic to a stadium?

DeLand column: Is there
economic logic to a stadium?

January 23, 2011

When Joe Friedrich looks at the issue from a
professional standpoint, it doesn’t make a whole lot
of sense.

What would be the financial benefit to Minnesota
taxpayers of paying for the majority of a new
stadium for the Minnesota Vikings? The economist
in Friedrich will tell you there really is none.

“Economists — except for those who have a vested
interest — pretty much cannot really find a
benefit/cost analysis to support a publicly financed
stadium, to the state or the government interest that
pays for it,” said Friedrich, a St. Cloud resident and
professor emeritus of economics at St. John’s
University and the College of St. Benedict (he retired
18 months ago).

“On the standpoint of strictly economic costs to the
state, I literally can’t find a study that comes up with
a positive return.”

But when Joe Friedrich the native Minnesotan or Joe
Friedrich the lifelong sports fan looks at the same
issue ... well, it’s not so cut-and-dried.

“The Vikings certainly add a lot of excitement,”
Friedrich said. “They do contribute to the spirit of
the state. Think of yourself and all the other people
for whom it’s a very real part of their life.”

Central Minnesotans who stand on divergent sides
of this issue will have the opportunity to talk about
it with Friedrich and others on Thursday.

The Eugene J. McCarthy Center for Public Policy and
Civic Engagement is hosting a discussion titled “
Your Taxes & Sports Stadiums: The Minnesota
Vikings” as part of its Politics & A Pint series.

The forum begins at 4:30 p.m. Thursday at Brother
Willie’s Pub in Sexton Commons on the SJU campus,
and the public is invited to hear Friedrich’s
economic insights on the issue.

“I’m just going to give 5-10 minutes of the ‘this is
the economic cost/benefit’ reality,” Friedrich said.
“I’m sure there’ll be a bunch of people there with
assertions. I intend to mostly ask questions back.”
The stadium issue is one that generates a lot of
emotions and a lot of passion, one way or the other.
However, economists aren’t supposed to operate on
emotion: They’re supposed to work with facts.


And according to Friedrich and other economists,
paying for a stadium doesn’t make much financial
sense to the general public. The return on other
investments — like, say, pre-kindergarten education
— is much higher.

But that doesn’t get you a football team ...

“There’s a lot of other reasons why you might want
to build a stadium,” Friedrich said. “But if you were t
alking strictly dollar-and-cents type of arguments, I
think the case is pretty clear that publicly financed
stadiums cost the public more than they benefit.

“It’s not just the Vikings — it’s just about
everybody. That’s the reason I said I couldn’t find
an economist who had a different opinion who was
an independent. (You’d have to) tell a story that’s
not false, but doesn’t tell the whole story.”

Does a new Vikings stadium make sense in other
respects? That question will be tossed around on
Thursday, and it’ll have to be answered before the
state legislature moves forward on this issue.

“The bottom line here is the state of Minnesota is
hardly in a position to be taking on too many
endeavors right now,” Friedrich said. “The
opportunity cost of a new Vikings stadium is
significant.”

In economist lingo, “opportunity cost” is what you
give up to get something else. And with a looming
$6.2 billion state budget deficit, that’s an issue.

On the other hand, Friedrich — a lifelong sports fan
— understands other viewpoints.

“I’m the kind of sports fan who in 1954 picked the
closest (major league) team to Minnesota — the
Milwaukee Braves — and has kept the Milwaukee
Braves as his team through their transfer to Atlanta,”
he said. “My favorite football team was the Baltimore
Colts — and they of course moved.”

Stadium proponents would argue that without a new
stadium, the Vikings eventually will do the same
thing.

“You try to ascertain from people, in a way that’s
truthful, how much they would pay for that benefit.
If there wasn’t the sport here, how much would you
pay to have that benefit?” Friedrich said.

“It’s environmental economics — what are the
amenity values? It’s really hard to do. But there are
methods in economics that do some of the
benefit/cost analysis.”


Proponents also tout the economic stimulus —
7,500 on-site construction jobs, by the Vikings’
estimate — that building a new stadium would
provide, and Friedrich says that might have some
value.

“Now is probably the best time,” he said. “If you had
7,500 workers you had to get away from other
construction sites, and if you had to buy concrete
away from other sites, that would bid up the price.
But right now, it’s likely there’s a lot of excess
supply in the construction industry. There is a small
gain.

“But if you spend $900 million for a domed stadium,
how much of that is really additional and how much
is just workers moving from one site to another?”

Whether public financing for a new Vikings stadium
makes economic sense or not, it’s Friedrich’s
opinion that it eventually will happen.

“I think when push comes to shove, something will
be worked out,” Friedrich said. “They’ll cobble
together a set of taxes and fee charges that fall on
people that use the facility.

“‘Use’ can be a very vague word. What they’ll try to
say is people who get the benefit from this stadium
should pay for it.

“I think at the end of the day, a stadium will be
constructed that will somehow be funded — at least
orally — by those who benefit from it. Of course,
there’ll be infrastructure expenses.”

Even if that doesn’t happen, and the Vikings do
leave Minnesota, Friedrich’s economic background
tells him the state would survive without them.

“Sid Hartman once commented that without the
Vikings, Minneapolis would be a cold Omaha,”
Friedrich said. “Well, Omaha was just listed as one
of the 10 best places in the world to live.”

But most Minnesotans would prefer that the Vikings
stayed. And not everybody uses everything that the
state government pays for.

“That’s why we tax people — everybody can say,
‘Oh, that doesn’t mean anything to me’,” Friedrich
said. “There are things in life that are not really
easily translated into dollars and cents.”

When an economist says that, you can take it to the
bank.

This is the opinion of Times sports editor Dave
DeLand. Contact him at 255-8771 or by e-mail at
ddeland@stcloudtimes.com.

The Conversation: Four Myths About the Constitution

James Read, Joseph P. Farry Professor of Political Science at the College of Saint Benedict and Saint John's University has an op-ed column on the Constitution in the Sacramento Bee forum section (Sunday January 23). The title is “Four Myths About the Constitution,” co-authored with Alan Gibson of California State University – Chico, who is a scholar of the political thought of the Founding era. In the column both authors use the new House Republicans’ ceremonial reading of the Constitution to challenge several myths about the Constitution and its history. Follow the linked title of this post to view the article.

Dr. Matt Lindstrom, Director of the Eugene J. McCarthy Center at Saint John's University quoted in Star Tribune

Along the great divide

CURT BROWN and RICHARD MERYHEW, Star Tribune staff writers
LONSDALE, MINN.

It was just a six-player card game at the Whistle Stop Tavern and Grill. But even the longtime friends playing a boisterous game of euchre over morning coffee were split.
Dairy farm worker Julie Schmaltz voted for Mark Dayton for governor. Nancy Walker, a nurse sitting across the table, picked Republican Tom Emmer, while Angie Skluzacek, a retired bartender, opted for Independence Party candidate Tom Horner.
It was the simplest of splits, but one of countless divides across the state that created another nail biter on election night and left Minnesota bracing for the unimaginable: a second statewide recount in two years. But what seems like a giant divide is really a narrow crack, experts say, where a big chunk of voters easily "slosh" one way or another from election to election, creating the ideal environment for recounts.
"We have a tremendous amount of voters in the middle," said Matt Lindstrom, a political science professor in Collegeville, Minn. "And these voters are less loyal to party identification than they are to ideas and candidates. And that's why we see an ease with which voters can flip flop back and forth."
To wit: Minnesota voters sent four DFLers and four Republicans to Congress. They handed control of both the state House and Senate to Republicans, while picking a DFL slate of constitutional officers -- if Dayton's playing-card thin lead over Emmer, hovering just under 9,000 votes, withstands a likely recount.
"If you take a look at the big middle, and I regard myself as part of it, we're kind of sloshing back and forth," said former Gov. Arne Carlson -- who years ago was a Democrat, was elected governor as a Republican, voted for Barack Obama for president and endorsed Horner for governor this year. "And it doesn't take that much to push us in one direction or the other," he added.
Wide or narrow gap?
Political scientists scrutinizing results in the aftermath of Tuesday's election insist that the idea of a big divide is deceiving.
The state's voters, Lindstrom says, are rather "closely divided," meaning that they are a mix of moderate Republicans, Democrats, Independents and casual political participants. Yet the state's two largest political parties keep sending them more and more extreme and polarizing candidates. So elections tend to distort the state's political divisions like a circus funhouse mirror.
"We have a conservative Republican in Tom Emmer and a liberal Democrat in Mark Dayton, so it causes this divide. But that doesn't necessarily mean Minnesotans are quite as divided as the choices they are presented with," said Kathryn Pearson, a political science professor at the University of Minnesota.
Party insiders have a louder voice in deciding who ends up on the ballot than voters who skip caucuses and primaries and only turn out in November.
"It's the activists on the left and the right that are most involved in the selection of candidates," said Lindstrom, director of the Eugene McCarthy Center for Public Policy and Civic Engagement at the College of St. Benedict and St. John's University.
Social issues such as gay marriage and abortion also act as wedges, even though they took a back seat to economic concerns during the 2010 campaign.
"Wedges are designed to split the log and galvanize support on one side," Carlson said. "But they also draw some very sharp lines that I think further narrows and create a lot of breaches."
The combination of the polarized candidates and volatile social issues can also spark third-party candidates, whose presence can pull votes from one candidate or the other or both, tightening vote margins between the frontrunners.
Four years ago, Republican incumbent Gov. Tim Pawlenty beat DFL Attorney General Mike Hatch by 1 percent of the vote. Some analysts believe that Independence Party candidate Peter Hutchinson's 6 percent support helped Pawlenty get reelected.
This go-around, Horner garnered 12 percent of the vote in the race with Emmer and Dayton.
Dan Hofrenning, a political science professor at St. Olaf College in Northfield, is among those who think that Horner, a lifelong Republican, hurt Emmer more than Dayton.
Horner hoped his message would resonate with the 60 percent of Minnesota voters he thinks fall in the political middle, prompting a late surge. Instead, some voters shied away, afraid that they might waste their vote.
"They get caught into the fear factor that only a Republican or Democrat can win," Horner said.
Splitsville, Minn.
The taut battle for the governor's office played out on a smaller scale, too.
In sparsely populated Grant County on the state's western prairie, Emmer beat Dayton by 18 votes. That's no surprise. Two years ago, in the last statewide recount, Republican incumbent Norm Coleman edged Democratic challenger Al Franken by 14 votes in Grant County. In recent gubernatorial races, Grant County voters flipped from Republican Tim Pawlenty in 2002 to DFLer Mike Hatch in 2006.
Grant County auditor Chad Van Santen said many of the 6,000 residents vote Democrat because that's the way their farming families have voted for generations.
"But now we see more people retiring from the metro area in lake homes, so the line is split into two scenarios," he said. "There are those who have voted the same way forever and the other group with a different philosophy."
At Ruby's City Restaurant in Ashby, politics is debated daily at the round table by the kitchen.
"There's just a few Republicans and most are Democrats," said owner Gail Johnson. "They're Democrats because their parents were Democrats. It doesn't matter if a trained chimpanzee [was] running. If he was a Democrat, that's who they'd vote for."
In Rice County, about an hour's drive south of the Twin Cities, Dayton won by 2.8 percent of the vote, almost a complete flip from eight years ago, when Pawlenty won by a 3.8 percent margin.
"A lot of it starts at the national level," said Fran Windschitl, Rice County auditor and treasurer, who supervises county elections. "Two years ago it seemed like the economy was starting to go down the tubes and they blamed the party in power. There was a mass shift to the DFL. This year, it seems like things aren't improving, so they started to shift the other way."
Just how tight the vote got around Rice County was evident in one local legislative race, where incumbent Rep. David Bly, DFL-Northfield, lost by 31 votes, triggering an automatic recount. Bly, a schoolteacher, lost by 46 votes when he first ran for the House seat in 2002. Four years later, he won by 60 votes in another recount.
"I think we're in a point of our history where people are really divided," Bly said. "I suppose Rice County is a good microcosm of that."
A mix of small towns and rolling farmland, Rice County once was seen as a largely conservative territory. Only the area around Northfield, home to Carleton and St. Olaf colleges, leaned to the left.
But as suburban sprawl pushed south, the county -- and small towns such as Lonsdale, which was once predominantly Catholic and Czech -- has become more diverse and, come election time, unpredictable.
"It's like putting Wyoming and Massachusetts in one state," said Hofrenning, from his office at nearby St. Olaf.
Sharon Kaisershot, a lifelong Rice County resident and 23-year election judge for rural Erin Township just south of Lonsdale, offered up a variety of theories for the split, ranging from the nation's obsession with style over substance to the county's changing demographics.
"Years ago it was easier. You kind of knew what your neighbors thought," said Kaisershot, who watched 369 people file into the 122-year-old township hall to vote Tuesday. "Now you don't know who your neighbors are because so much has changed."
Her colleague, township treasurer Elgin Trcka summed it up simply:
"I'll tell you what happened," he said. "Half the people think this way. Half the people think that way. And it just comes together like that."Staff writer Glenn Howatt contributed to this report. curt.brown@startribune.com • 612-673-4767 richm@startribune.com • 612-673-4425

To a higher degree: Respect in politics central to SJU

St. John’s was founded by five Benedictine monks
who had traveled to Central Minnesota when it was
still a territory in 1857. Though more than 150
years have passed since its founding, we continue
to be guided by the principles and values that have
been part of the Benedictine tradition for more than
1,500 years.

“Listen … with the ear of your heart.” These are the
first words in the Prologue of The Rule of St.
Benedict. The Rule teaches about the basic monastic
virtues of humility, silence and obedience, and
provides directives for daily living. Those seven
words are not just significant for ancient monks and
Catholics, but for all of us who live in today’s world
of extreme political views, vitriolic discourse and
blistering sound bites meant to pass as persuasive
information.

We have all heard enough political ads in recent
months to know that politicians and pundits are too
often not listening to each other at all, much less
with an open mind and heart.

As a Benedictine, liberal arts college, we have a deep
commitment to remaining open to the voices and
ideas of others. We are committed to providing
students with a broad-based education that teaches
students how to think, but not what to think. Our
mission is to send students into the world prepared
to lead and serve.

To do this we must be an intentionally welcoming
place for people of a variety of beliefs to engage in
respectful, open and challenging conversations
about current issues and problems. Like other
educational institutions, we can perform a valuable
service if we model the way and lead by positive
example.

The Eugene J. McCarthy Center for Public Policy and
Civic Engagement at St. John’s University is one
venue through which our students are provided
opportunities to learn about and engage in politics,
public policy development and service to the
common good.

The center was named for McCarthy, Minnesota’s
former Democratic senator and 19-year-old
graduate in St. John’s class of 1935. The center’s
website states, “In this day and age of ‘Crossfire’
political reasoning and us/them political rhetoric,
many young people are unfortunately steering away
from political engagement. As a result, the faculty
and core group of students from the Center work
diligently to create venues for constructive,
responsible and interesting civic debate and
engagement in community affairs.”


The center hosts a variety of seminars, study
programs, internships and public lectures. The
Mark Kennedy Frontiers of Freedom Lecture Series is
one such event. (The series is named for former
Republican U.S. Congressmen Mark Kennedy, SJU
class of 1979.) The goal of this lecture series is to
intentionally add “intellectual diversity” to the center
so that multiple political perspectives are presented
and critically evaluated.

The Eugene J. McCarthy Lecture is also hosted by
the Center and seeks to inspire a new generation of
young people to pursue fresh ideas, to challenge
the status quo, to effect positive change in their
communities and, like McCarthy himself, to lead with
honesty, integrity and courage.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., presented the fourth
annual lecture this year and was introduced by
former Sen. Dave Durenberger, R-Minn., SJU class of
1955.

In closing her lecture, Klobuchar quoted a 1967
speech by Eugene McCarthy in which he declared
that the American spirit has a grand purpose and a
clear prerogative, “to offer in place of doubt, trust;
in place of expediency, good judgment; in place of
incredibility, integrity; in place of murmuring, let us
have clear speech; let us again hear America
singing.”

In this season of heated political debate, I urge you
to study the issues by listening with the ear of your
heart, and then respectfully express your opinion
through your vote at the polls.

This is the opinion of the Rev. Bob Koopmann, OSB,
president of St. John’s University. To A Higher
Degree is published the fourth Sunday of the month
and rotates among the presidents of the four largest
Central Minnesota higher education institutions.