Talk:Grinnell College

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Original research, greivance and dinner plates

This addition [1] has become the topic of back-and-forth editing. It says "Despite the shockingly high tuition, its students eat without plates and bowls at mealtimes." The source is to an email the college issued to its students. As I explained on the

original research combined with unsourced editorial opinion. signed, Willondon (talk) 20:04, 25 April 2022 (UTC)[reply
]

Arithmetic

Am I missing some-thing? The text says, "Grinnell's combined tuition, room, board, and fees for the 2021–2022 academic year is $72,998. Tuition and fees are $54,648 and room and board are $14,350." Let's put it in pronumerals: Let E = Everything (i.e., total costs), T = Tuition, R = Room, B = Board, F = Fees. So, E=T+F+R+B=72,998; T+F=54,648; R+B=14,350. Thus, E=72,998=54,648+14,350=68,998 ! Why is there a $4,000 difference? Kdammers (talk) 17:59, 21 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Probably the total was updated for 2021-2022 while older numbers were used for tuition+fees and room+board. I've updated all to the values for 2022-2023. Plantdrew (talk) 18:14, 21 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Additions to Grinnell Student Dining Workers

I work for Grinnell College and would like an editor to review and add this if deemed appropriate. Thanks for your help.

  • Specific text to be added or removed:

After —

In 2016, Grinnell students founded the Union of Grinnell Student Dining Workers, or UGSDW, to represent student workers in the college's dining hall.[104] It was the first undergraduate student workers union at a private college in the United States.

Add —

In December of 2021, union leaders approached President Anne F. Harris about expanding their bargaining unit to other student employees at the College. In January of 2022 President Harris and College Leadership agreed to a series of meetings with Union leaders in which together they negotiated a neutrality agreement to govern how an election could proceed. [1]"

On Friday, March 4, 2021 the Board of Trustees ratified a neutrality agreement with UGSDW. The agreement outlines actions on both the side of UGSDW and the College that will “maintain a relationship throughout this process that is respectful to both parties and the College community as a whole.” [2]


  • Specific Text to be added or removed:

"The college then [remove "threatened" and replace with "planned"] to appeal that decision to national NLRB."

  • Reason for change: Neutral point of view


  • Specific change requested:

We'd like to enter a request for a citation for the following — "Proskauer Rose is noted for being involved in other anti-union efforts, such as among technology workers at The New York Times."

Thank you for your consideration. Sarah at Grinnell (talk) 22:02, 17 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

 Accepted Also cleaned up and made some additional edits to the GSDWU section. voorts (talk/contributions) 01:17, 29 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

References

  1. ^ "After student union victory, Grinnell College president expresses support for labor leaders". The Des Moines Register. April 29, 2022. Retrieved 17 January 2023.
  2. ^ "UGSDW and College reach agreement that paves the way for union expansion". The Scarlet and Black. Retrieved 17 January 2023.

Lead blanking

Between a couple of editors over the last two years, the lead of this article no longer really says anything about it being a currently operating college. Someone removed all the information about the academic program, someone else removed all the information about money, and what we're left with is "This college is a landmark with famous alumni". It ought to leave readers with an impression that is closer to "This is a college with students (also, some history involving landmarks and famous alumni)". This is really not a great result, so I'm going to try to find some time to clean up some of this. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:05, 27 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

As a side note: Someone downplayed the amount of real estate the College owns (or "manages", as the lead puts it). Saying that they have significant real estate is not some sort of promotion. You could with equal justice write "The College harmed the town's, county's and school district's property tax base by buying multiple square blocks of the adjacent real estate". "Significant" in this context means a lot of property, and under Iowa law, each educational organization can claim up to 320 acres (half a square mile, about 100 blocks) tax free, as long as it's used for educational purposes.[2] Boasting about how much property they own is not really in their interests. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:25, 27 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@
MOS:EDITORIAL, which prohibits such language. If it is truly significant, it should be demonstrated by facts without such an attribution. GuardianH (talk) 03:52, 5 August 2023 (UTC)[reply
]
Is the word significant really biased? Your first reason for removing it was that it was "puff"; now that I've explained that it is fair to understand it as the opposite of puff, you're saying that it's prohibited by Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Words to watch (a guideline that not only doesn't discourage the use of that word, but which actually uses it in its own text). I also notice that the word is used in about a quarter million articles, so other editors obviously think it can be a useful, encyclopedic word.
If you dislike the word significant, then what words would you use to very briefly summarize (because it's the lead) the extent of their real estate control, so that readers can see at a glance that is not a trivial amount? A quick search shows that the college directly owns at least 83 parcels in town, plus CERA. For comparison against other large employers in the area, the City of Grinnell owns 50 and the hospital owns 10, and Jeld-Wen owns three large ones. Thinking about it more geographically, there are probably something on the order of 500 blocks in town, and the main campus is about 35 blocks – so somewhere between 5% and 10% of the town. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:14, 5 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
MOS:EDITORIAL
prohibits that which highlights something as particularly significant or certain without attributing that opinion. If it isn't in the source, a word like significant is imparting a viewpoint — that x plays a much larger role in something. If you have any doubts as to if it imparts bias, just think of it in the unattributed negative:
Grinnell College has the lowest endowment per student ratio in the United States, with students finding significant difficulty in acquiring funding.
Matriculants to Grinnell College have the most significant debt out of any other students in Iowa.
Grinnell College is the lowest-ranked liberal arts school in the Gazette of the United States, by a significant margin.
The fact that such and such number of articles use the word
WP:OTHER). To communicate the extent of their control of real estate, you let the facts speak for themselves; like I said, if it is truly significant, then the reader would know immediately based off of the facts. GuardianH (talk) 23:08, 5 August 2023 (UTC)[reply
]
I think that you have misunderstood MOS:EDITORIAL. MOS:EDITORIAL discourages editors from writing that the fact of their ownership is important. That would sound like "It's really important to remember that they own a lot of property", or "Significantly, they own property". It does not, however, prohibit using the word significant to mean "Reasonably large in number or amount" or "of a noticeably or measurably large amount" – which is what the article says. As it is used in this article, the word significant is a more formal, encyclopedic way to say that they control "a lot of" property in a small town.
I disagree with your personal opinion that all readers "would know immediately based off of the facts", because an acre of some land is enormously valuable, and an acre some of other land is an albatross around your neck. But even if we imagined that people from all over the world, whether they're in the million-dollars-per-acre real estate market or a twenty-dollars-per-acre market, would immediately come to the same conclusion, I point out (again) that we are talking about a fraction of a single sentence in the lead. There isn't room in this single phrase to provide all the facts, and therefore the reader will not, in what is only the fifth sentence, have any plausible chance to "know immediately based off of the facts", because the reader does not yet have those facts. Your position might be fine at the end of the Grinnell College#Campus section (where the facts are provided), but it is not sensible when we're talking about a fraction of a sentence, at a point in the article in which the reader does not yet possess the necessary facts.
Finally, on a more general point, I suggest that you think about
WP:NOTBURO and Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines. Our written policies and guidelines are meant to describe the everyday practices accepted by experienced editors. If we were to have a MOS guideline that decried the use of the word significant for any purpose, and editors accepted its use in 250,000 articles, then it would be the guideline, rather than the community's practices, that is wrong. This view, by the way, is the long-standing, written policy. Wikipedia is not some sort of game in which we mindlessly apply rules to the detriment of articles. If trying to squelch every bit of possible puffery or simple summary out of an article would make the article worse, then that action violates two of our most fundamental policies. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:47, 6 August 2023 (UTC)[reply
]

Notable alumni

After moving anything that wasn't already in the List of Grinnell College alumni over there (and removing it from this page), the following names were left in the article:

I have removed most of them, thinking if there's ~100 names in the main list, then perhaps 10% or so should be in this list. (Years ago, I think we tried to keep the list to six or eight names.) I selected alumni this based on page views over the last several years (example comparison, noting that it can only handle 10 names at a time, and it's easier to see the comparison on a log scale), rather than any personal preferences about whom to include. My thinking was that this would increase the likelihood of readers finding the names they're interested in. I've taken out a few iconic names (e.g., Harry Hopkins, Joseph Welch), and it feels like it overrepresents actors/entertainers, but it doesn't feel completely unreasonable. If anyone feels strongly about chaning a couple, I don't mind. As long as the list stays fairly short, then the exact number doesn't seem important to me. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:35, 27 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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