The Scarlet a Black, February 17, ism—page 5

 

Russ Winicle

Malaise still plagues society

Well folks, here it is—19787thc

tenth anniversary ot 1968, a crucial ‘

year in my sociopolitical
development. A decade ago I
watched in horror as the Chicago
police, inﬂamed by Mayor Daley's
”Shoot to skill" order, in
discriminatcly attacked and
brutalized antirwar demon-
strators. reporters, and onlookers
in the streets and parks
surrounding the 1968 Democratic
National Convention. The following
year. 500,000 dissident young
people reveled in the music and
camaraderie of Woodstockiwhich
became symbolic of the new youth
“subculture "

The majority oi the older
students at Grinnell were imbued
with this spirit when I first enrolled
here in 1973. The SDS and TimothV
Leary did not speak ior us. but we
were politicized and somewhat
radicalized during a period fraught
with protest and fury generated by
the country’s senseless and ime
moral involvement in the Vietnam
War, where 45,000 Americans lost
their lives, and an era of active
struggle against racism and
repression

WE WERE repulsed by
worldwide human suffering, but
oriented towards examining and
understanding its origins. And we
were infested with alienation from
the sickness in our own societyia
sickness evidenced by crime,
hatred of others and of self,
materialism, corruption, the war,
and the enormous disparities in
access to the privileges of the
“American Dream ” We decried
this sickness and suiiering, arid
strove to contravene it.

But iniquity remains epidemic,
and some of usiundaunted by tor
still shielded from) the diverting
and assimilative pressures of the
real worldwontinue to feel as
malcontent and estranged as in
l968. Uniortunately, however, the
iormerly recognizable
“movements" have become
fragmented. Many people
evidently found themselves in»
creasingly disinclined to continue
struggling against society's en»
trenched malaises. Vietnam
madness. the main rallying point,
is over and nothing has emerged to
effectively take its place.

THE erstwhile leadership has
almost totally disappeared. For
example, the Chicago >Seven

 

figures lTom Hayden. Abbie
Hoffman, etc. . .) have moderated
their goals or faded away. Stokely
Carmichael‘s contemporary
appeals for “scientific socialism"
and PanrAfricanisr'. aren't cons
sidered newsworthy by the mass
media. Huey P. Newton, back from
exile in Cuba, is awaiting some
kind of trial in California. Martin
Luther King and Malcom X were
murdered, their assassinations
drastically altering, perhaps, the
course of social history.

Eugene McCarthy's recent bid
ior the presidency was hopeless
and pitiful, In 1968 thousands of
students. myself included,
mobilized behind McCarthy,
working within the system to have
him nominated over Hubert
Humphrey. whose vague promises
to get the us. out oi Vietnam only
seemed to mirror Richard Nixon's,
Today, political activism on
campus is often viewed with
amusement or suspicion.

lSi’iB WAS also a year when black
ghettoes across the country were
the scene of riots and violence, as
the rage fostered by the unabating
system of racism and oppression
reached its visible apex. The
iollowing year, a peace march on
Washington attracted a million
demonstrators. Six months later.
Nixon's invasion of Cambodia and
the officially sanctioned murders
of protesters and bystanders at
Kent State and Jackson State
Universities exacerbated resent-
ment to the point where dozens of
colleges across the land, Grinnell
included, were forced to make
their first political statements by
closing their doors early, since so
many students refused to carry on
with academic business as usual—
desiring instead to mobilize the
masses against the war.

Today, a good friend of mine at
Berkeleyisupposedly a symbol
and the last real bastion of the
spirit of the late ’603 and early
‘7057iniorms me that many of the
students there. just like those here,
are too plugged into the system of
grades and career»preparations to
be truly concerned about much
else. He says the political
ignorance and racism on the
Berkeley campus is unbelievable,

THE ecology movement,
highlighted by the launching oi the
iiist Earth Day in lam, has
somewhat fizzled and en

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vironmentalists are now oiten
labelled “extremists." The
feminist movement has made
some progress and women are
increasingly demanding their
rights and casting away the
shackles imposed by traditional
socialization patterns and sex
rules. But the ERA is in big
trouble.

In 1973 Grinnell students voted
overwhelmingly to prohibit the
purchase of noanFW lettuce by
the food service. The liberals of
today would probably find as many
reasons for voting against the
lettuce boycott as they do for
supporting Allen Bakke in his
attempt to have federal policy
prohibit affirmative action against
the effects oi 400 years oi op-
pression and discrimination suf-
fered by racial and cultural
minorities in the United States.

GRINNELL‘S Student govern
ment is now afraid of setting a
“dangerous precedent" of
allocating its funds for political
purposes. But just such a
providence was routine during the
antirwar era. Today's college
students have rarely had to
struggle for anything. The cared
dorms, aboliton of curfews and
dress codes, and acceptance at pot
are all examples of victories won
during the late '50s and early '705
that are taken for granted today
So getting high and occasionally
sleeping with each other no longer
indicate that we are hip and
nonconformist

This school year, students have
come to me with all sorts of
reasons why little or no economi
pressure should be excited again
the apartheid system in Sout
Africa How many people reall
give a damn about South Africa, .
Chile. or Iran" True, we’re force
to spend many oi our hours i .
mersed in organic chemistry an
fifteenrpage papers, but is that a
excuse for lack of concern?

EVEN IN the old days, thos
signiiicantly committed to workini
ior meaninglul change constitut-
only a minority oi young peopl
But today apathy seems to hav
reached paralyzing altitudes. Loo
around Grinnell~do you see th
sort ol people who are likely lo roc
the boat, to light ior human rights

There is So much more that
as some have asserted. that we ar
now beginning to see a -
emergence of youthful activis
Because when one compares mos
of today's students with those 0
just 5 or 10 years ago, its obviou
that a monumental generation gal
has developed.

 

 

 

Open Space

Sees bondage in

sex roles

by Andrew Schultz

Boys will be boys; girls will be
girls, Unfortunately, that's still the
way it is.

Men, when was the last time you
were picked up by a woman7
Despite the progress of the great
social movements of the '60'5, and
despite all of the openness we now
experience in the discussion oi sex,
I believe little has Changed in the
way the sexes behave towards
each other.

HOW DO the sexes react towards
each other? What are the
“behavioral realities?"

It seems to me that males are
still cast in the familiar role as the
“macho” sexual aggressor. Men
are infused with the machismo

 

mystique of our societv. The

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[am not saying that there are not
exceptions to these attitudes.
There are exceptions, My point,
however, is that these are indeed
exceptions; they are not the
examples of the general rule, In
this case, the general rule is that
little has changed.

E dominant attitudes
regarding sex roles carry over, oi
course, into the ”mating game " It
is still the male who must “make
the moves" in these games.

l heard a very disturbing cons
vel‘satlun the other day. Two
women were discussing the woeiul
state of a certain young man
because he chose to treat women
the samc way he treated men,

”He doesn't know how to act
around girls.”

I'VE HEARD this kind of talk all
my lire. It seems to me that women
have a certain advantage in
relationships. They have the power
to encourage or discourage them,
Figuratively speaking. they can
react to overtures with a simple
yes or no, This is the classic for»
mula for male and female roles,

l wish this formula was not so
prevalenttoday as it seems to be at
Grinnell

SOCIOLOGISTS and biologists
have done studies on what
determines sex roles. Some
biologists identify this determinant
to be in the chemical instructions
found in the DNA molecules of our
cells. Sociologists identify the
environment as the critical factor

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