 

by Mark Mayer

formula, a campaign of such

African investments was not

The Scarlet dz Blac

March 3, iota—page CI

Campaigntset; investments reviewed

Grinnell's' Board of Trustees
publicly announced the beginning
of a five-year comprehensive
development program and
reviewed and revrsed the college's
South African investment policy at
their mid-winter meeting. held on-
campus last weekend.

Though scheduled as a full board
meeting, it was not particularly
well attended, with only 15 of the
board's 33 members participating.
Chairperson of the Board of
Trustees Carolyn Bucksbaum
noted the low turnout but stated
that there was certainly ”more
than a quorum." Trustee Fritz
Maytag added that “while there
are some good people here, there
are some good people who haven’t
come." The midrwinter meeting,
he noted, has traditionally been
less well attended than the other
two yearly meetings due to
weather, business, sickness and
other problems.

The goal of the announced
campaign is 18 million dollars,
making it the largest fund-raising
effort in the college’s history.
While the new fund-raising cam-
paign has been common knowledge
on campus ever since the board's
previous meeting in November, the
campaign had not officially been
made public until this weekend.

According to a stock fund-raising

‘Inﬂ? Focus

magnitude is not made public until
at least onerthird of thevintended
goal has been raised privately,
from among trustees and trustee-
related sources.

AS (I? last weekend, the Office of
Development announced that
$6,479,909 had been raised
privately. Included is a $1.5 million
pledge train the Gardner and
Florence Call Cowles Foundation
in Des Moines,

Specific needs to be met by the
fund-raising campaign are:

—cxpansion of the endowment in
a number of areas including
faculty development, student
financial aid and library
acquisitions (budgeted at ap-
proximately' $8.1 million);

——renovation of. major campus
facilities including the residence
halls, Goodnow Hall, interior
expansion of Burling Library and
the Science Library and con-
struction of a gallery and storage
facilities for the college’s per-
manent art collection (ap»
proximately $5.6 million);

—additional funds to meet rising
yearly operating costs laps
proximately $4.3 million).

It was also announced at the
meeting that Maytag will serve as
general chairperson of the new
campaign.

WHILE THE

 

issue of South

 

originally on the trusteesi agenda,
the board's Finance Committee
brought it out of committee for full
board discussion on Sunday

Many trustees seemed rm-
pressed With the persistence and
amount of campus concern on the
issue of South AIrican investments.
on Saturday a small number of
students held a demonstration
outside of Burling Library. where
the trustees were meeting, voicing
their concern over the college’s
investment policy Earlier on
Saturday, SGA Vice-President
Linda Cornelius, speaking for the
SGA, requested in a meeting with
the trustees that the board “set up
a formal procedure to be followed
each time a proxy vote is (to be)
taken at a stockholder’s meeting
on an issue related to racial
equality in South Africa,”

IN SUNDAY‘S discussion the
board decided that a “letter of
concern” would be sent to all
companies doing business in South
Africa in which the college holds
stock. The letter will ask the
company to list what steps it is
taking and what steps it intends to
take in promoting racial equality
in South Africa. The letter is being
drawn up by Maytag and trustee
Fred Little.

In response to the SGA proposal,
the board apparently was satisfied

Demonstrators Courtenay McPherson and Doug Robertson bul-
tonhole an unidentified trustee outside of Burling Library last
Saturday. A small number of students gathered outside of curling,

where the trustees viere holding their ml

winter meeting. to protest

Grinnell‘s investments in companies doing business in South Africa.

with its present system of handling
proxy votes. Under the present
system, Treasurer Robert An-
derson notifies Maytag cl all proxy
votes concerning South Africa.
Maytag, as the board's investment
monitor. notiflﬁ the board if he
feels the college might consider
taking a political stand in the vote.

UNDER THE present system.
all proxies are open and available

Economic fears, history clash in canal

by Bob Mitchell

The national debate over the
Panama Canal treaties which will
take on a local significance next
Monday with the debate between
Iowa Attorney General Richard
Turner and political science
Professor H. Wayne Moyer, is of
particularly acute concern both to
American farmers and those in
terested in U.S.iLatin American
relations.

Many farmers and their
spokesmen feel that the treaties
would prove economically un-
profitable. At the same time, other
Americans, Panamanians and the
nations of central and South
America feel that ratification of
the treaties is necessary in order to
rectify some of the worst aspects of
Teddy Roosevelt’s “big stick"
diplomacy.

ONE or Attorney General

Fri. and

Turner's arguments against giving
away the Canal is that it would
increase the cost of exporting grain
for Iowa farmers.

The Canal, in fact, is an im-
portant element in the exportation
of American agricultural products.
According to a study by the
Foreign Agricultural Service that
was reprinted in the December 4,
1977 issue of the Washington Post,
the Canal “continues to be a key
east-west link for the US. farm
trade.”

THE REPORT found that‘one
out of every five tons of exported
U.S. farm products went through
the Canal in ﬁscal 1W6. In that
year, according to the study,
corn and soybeans accounted for
l6.3 per cent of all Canal traffic.
Only petroleum and petroleum
related products accounted for
more.

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In addition, the report found that
ill per cent of all corn, 15.3 per cent

'of all soybean, and 45 per cent of all

grain sorghum exported in 1976
went through the Canal. These
products earned $9.1 billion for the
United btates in foreign exchange
and represented a substantial
portion of the $23 billion in farm
exports that year.

The report concludes that
“. . .tl'ie Canal is a much more
economical means of shipping bulk
products than any other alter-
native route now available.”

WHILE retention of the canal
may be economically crucial to the
nation’s farmers, it is also, as
Mayer put it, a vatige of “Yankee
Imperialism."

The desire for a canal through
the Central American isthmus was
particularly strong in the 19th
century, prompting Ferdinand de

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Suez Canal, to make an un—
successful attempt at constructing
an interrocean canal.

THE NEW Panama Canal
Company, which took over the

assets of de Lessep's organization,

when it went bankrupt, faced stiff
opposition in its efforts to get the
'United States to select a
Panamanian route from various
interests who favored the con»
struction of a Nicarauguan Canal.
in order to counteract this op-
position, Phillippe Bunua-Varilla,
a Frenchman who was a large
stockholder in the New Panama
Canal Company, came to the U.S.
to lobby for the Panamanian route.

Bunua-Varilla skillfully ex-
ploited the aspirations of
Panamanian nationalism who were
seeking independence from
Colombia. l-le convinced the rebels
to empower him to negotiate a
canal treaty for them with the
United States.

THE TERMS negotiated by
Bunua-Varilla, concluded only
three hours before a Panamanian
delegation which was to'replace
him arrived in Washington, were,
as Secretary of State John Hay
admitted, “fully advantageous to
the United States, and. we must
confess. not so advanuageous to
Panama."

The treaty gave the United
States. in perpetuity, control over a
strip of territory ten miles wide
through the center of Panama.

Furthermore. the U.S. paid the
Panamanian nation Slo million and
promised to pay an additional
$250 thousand a year for use of the
canal. This annual fee was raised

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for viewing at the Treasurer’s
Office. There is at present,
however, no system by which the
campus is formally notified of an
impending proxy vote. President
A. Richard Turner defended the
present system stating, “if we're
interested. it’s assumed we'll go
over and get it.”

The next meeting of the board
will be in early June.

debate

to $450 thousand in 1936 and over $2
million in 1955.

IN ADDITION, the United States
extended de jure recognition to the
Panamanians only one week after
they declared their independence
from Colombia. This declaration
followed a thrée-week revolt in
which troops from an American
ship prevented Colombian soldiers
from attacking Panamanian
forces.

Fifteen days after the
Panamanian declaration of in-
dependence, Secretary Hay signed
the treaty with Eunua-Varilla.

The treaty and the "big stick”
diplomacy which accompanied it
caused an uproar in the U.S. and
Latin America. Roosevelt’s
Secretary of War, Elihu Root, is
reputed to have told the President
that ”You have shown that you
were accused of seduction and you
have conclusively proved that you
were guilty of rape."

FRICTION between
Panamanians, who feel the us.
management of the Canal is an
infringement upon their nation‘s
sovereignty, and Americans living
in the Canal Zone has erupted into
violence several times in the last 20
.years, In 1959, Panamanians who
sought to put a Panamanian flag in
the Zone rioted when they were
prevented from entering the area
by American officials,

Another incident occured in 1964,
when American high school
students in the Canal Zone
prevented the raising of the
Panamanian flag at their school,
which had been permitted by the
U.S. Governor. Panamanian and
U.S. students thereupon engaged in
a brawl, which soon grew into a
full-fledged, riot in which 20
Panamanians and four Americans
were killed.

Thus, the original treaty has led
to a legacy of bitterness between
the United States and the
nations of central and Latin
America. Much of the current
debate on the two new. treaties
revolves around those who want to
make amends for the ”big stick”
diplomacy- of an earlier era and
those, like Turner, who fear the
economic consequences of
Panamanian control of the Canal.

 

