In 1968, Macalester College began planning an ambitious program, which had as initial goals:
“To improve the educational resources of the College by expanding the diversity of our student body. It is educationally important to provide a community which is more representative of the economic, social, cultural and racial diversity of the entire nation.
“To provide opportunity for high quality liberal arts education to students who cannot otherwise attend a high-tuition college.
“To enable Macalester College to take a larger responsibility in the education of distinguished graduates who will play an important role in determining the destiny of our pluralistic society.”
The Expanded Educational Opportunities program came to fruition with the first group of 75 students entering for the 1969/1970 academic year. EEO would go on to change campus in profound and significant ways, despite existing for less than a decade before being irreparably cut and eventually morphing into the Office of Minority Affairs. The EEO program changed the Macalester campus and culture through changing student demographics, increased awareness around issues of race, and one of the most well-known instances of student protest at Mac in response to EEO budget cuts. Learn more about the EEO program and its legacy in the resources on this page from the collections of the Macalester College Archives.
Student takeover of 77 Mac
Since 1970, the EEO program continually saw cuts made to the program by the Macalester administration. At the beginning of the 1974-1975 school year, the EEO program faced severe budget cuts. On September 13, 1974, 21 students barricaded themselves inside the business offices at 77 Macalester Street until September 24th to protest the cuts.
Letter by EEO students August 25, 1974
To read more about EEO:
“Exhuming EEO“, a 4-part retrospective in The Mac Weekly by Dan Gearino, Class of 1998, which was published in March and April of 1998.
Rachel Boyle, Macalester Class of 2010: “Expanding Educational Opportunities (EEO) at Macalester College, 1968 -1975” in Tapestries: Interwoven voices of local and global identities, Vol. 1, Issue 1, Spring 2011.
“Shaping a Better Macalester: EEO at 50 Years” in the Spring 2019 issue of
Macalester Today.
