Returning to campus

MLC enrollment drops to less

than 950

By KURT NESBITT

Journal Staff Writer

NEW ULM -- The campus was busy Sunday afternoon as the last of the students at Martin Luther College moved into their dorm rooms and unloaded carloads of clothes, furniture, stereos and computers and said farewells to their parents.

The streets surrounding campus were lined with the cars of parents and the parking lot right behind Concord Hall was full of students' cars with license plates from Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Washington, Florida, California, Missouri and Colorado.

All of the doorways on the residence halls were propped open to enable parents and students to transport armload after armload of belongings up to a dorm room.

The MLC bookstore saw some action as students bought supplies and textbooks. Those looking for a discount consulted the bulletin board besides the mailboxes, which was papered with offers of books for sale or books for rent.

A large-screen television set brought the matchup between the Twins and the Cleveland Indians to a student lounge filled with only three guys who were too busy shooting pool to watch the game.

To Susan Willis, director of women's housing, the activities signaled the arrival of fall. While the first few weeks are often hectic, the student body typically settles into its groove about three weeks after Labor Day, she said. Two hundred women live in Augustana Hall and an equal amount of men stay in adjoining Concord Hall. Freshmen are placed either in those two halls or in Centennial Hall, which is at the other end of campus. Seniors get their choice of staying on campus, in Luther Manor, which is off campus or renting their own place.

"It's definitely a positive," said Willis. "Everyone's up and back. The campus gets awful quiet in the summer, so when the students come back it livens up again."

Sunday was the last day for MLC freshmen to move into their rooms. Check-ins for freshmen opened the day before. Upperclassmen started coming back to New Ulm on Thursday, Willis said.

David Sigrist, a sophomore pastoral studies major from Columbus, Ohio, ended a day-long car trip from Brooklyn, N.Y. in New Ulm around 2 p.m. Sunday. Sigrist was visiting his brother, who attends college in New York City. His parents had reached New Ulm on Saturday, stopping once during their 20-hour ride to rest.

Like many parents, the Sigrists were busy helping their son move into his room in Concord Hall. David said he chose MLC because he wanted to be a pastor in the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod. Now that he's a sophomore, he's familiar with New Ulm and sometimes drives to Mankato to shop and visit friends at Bethany Lutheran College and Minnesota State University-Mankato.

"In order to be a pastor, you have to go out here," he said.

Willis said MLC is the only college that trains pastors for WELS in the United States. She said most students come because they want to become pastors or teachers. She said student population ebbs and flows each year and is currently at ebb tide.

While MLC hasn't many changes to its campus or to its faculty except for what MLC President Ted Olsen called "infrastructure-type stuff," Olsen said many MLC officials are disappointed at this year's enrollment.

In the past three years, enrollment topped 1,000, but that number has dropped below 950. Olson said officials are unsure if the decline is because fewer churches are calling students or because the overall pool is shrinking.

"We're going to work on it and figure out what the situation is," Olsen said.