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for media series

Word has been received by the college that Tom Wicker, syn
dicated columnist for the New York Times. is available to be the
inaugural speaker in the Time program in contemporary jour-
nalism. According to William Deminoff, Chairman of the Coma
mittee on the Time Journalism program, Wicker will appear on
campus shortly after the beginning of second semester. Wicker will
give a public lecture and lead workshops on the topic “Who, What
and How: Crucial Inﬂuences on the Performance of the American
Press."

The Time program is made possible through a $12,000 grant
donated to the college by Time, incorporated.

Coordinators begin
health fund drive

A fund drive sponsored by the Student Coordinator’ Office of SGA
and the Sexuality Resource Group to replenish the health care loan
fund, will begin next Monday, Initiated in 1972 with an anonymous
gift of $500, the fund provides interest-tree loans to Grinnell
students for gynecological care, abortions, and V.D, tests for
men and women. it now stands at $150, and in order to continue to
be effective, it must be replenished Contributions of any size can
be made through the campus mail, addressed to the Health Care
loan fund.

Reverend French to
discuss ministry here

The Rev. Porter French will speak on “What the Ministry Is
Like” at 7 pm. Sunday in the Religious Activities Room in Steiner
Hall, A discussion period will follow} The public is invited.

Now retired and living in Grinneli, Dr. French was minister of
churches in Illinois, Colorado, and Ohio. A graduate of Chicago
Theological Seminary, he also taught at Jaffna College in Ceylon
and served as a juvenile court social worker, prison chaplain and
counseling minister.

Campus GOP holds
Bakke discussion

The Grinnell College Republicans are sponsoring an open forum
on the Bakke case on Monday, November 21, at 3 pm. in South
Lounge. _

Four members of the faculty and administration Will be on the
panel. They are Janet Carl, Associate Dean of Student Affairs,
Professor Ira Strauber, Professor Joseph Wall and Professor John
Worley. Each panelist will discuss a specific topic relating to the

case of the white medical student who claims he is a_victim_of
reverse discrimination because of a school’s Affirmative Action

program.

College sponsors,
conference

A Conference on "Agriculture: Limits to Growth” will be held
here Nov. 28-30.

Representatives of agriculture, labor, business, consumer af-
iairs, government, and education will discuss ways and means of
sustaining long range productivity along with conservation of
natural resources.

Speakers will include US Rep. James Leach (R. Iowa First
District); Dan McCurry. director of Consumers Federation of
America and the National Consumers League, Lauren Soth,
columnist, Des Moines Register; Sam Garst, Congressional Affairs
division, USDA; tale Sen. Joan Orr, Iowa 36th District.

Also, Gordon Miller, vicepresident, engineering, John Deere and
Company; Dan Rowen, president, South Central Iowa Federal
Iowa Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO, Robert Voertman and Wayne
Moyer of the Grinnell faculty; and others

Topics for the various sessions include: the ethics of land use;
us. farm policy and its impact on farm structure; banks and the
capital cost of farming: the role of the family farmer; finite natural
resources and the limlts to growth: centralized and
decentralized ownership; consumer marketing systems. 50:] and
water conservation and others,

 

 

 

 

Bakke ramifications examined

By Bob Mitchell

The need to reverse historic
patterns of discrimination and
create opportunities for blacks in
higher education in a period of
economic contraction were the two
main arguments offered in favor of
Affirmative Action in a speech
given in conjunction with Black
Cultural Weekend last Friday.

Entitled ”Bakke and Affirmative
Action," the address was given
before a crowd of about 30 in the
South Lounge by Dr. James E.
Turner, a tenured associate
professor of Afro-American
Studies and director of the
Alricana Studies and Research
Center at Cornell University in
Ithaca, New York. At the end of his
speech, Turner was given a
standing ovation by much of the
audience.

THE MAIN issue posed by the
Bakke case. according to Turner,
is that blacks got accepted into the
medical program at the University
of California at Davis while some
whites did not. This, he feels, poses
a problem for the white com-
munity.

“The case is really not about
whether there is a program of
racial exclusion. The question is
about the fact that there is one
white person who did not get in and
there were some blacks who did.
And in a period of declining and
limited opportunity, whites are
saying, ‘If it means I’m going to
have a hard shot to get in to
wherever I want to go , . . then i
want all the shots. I don’t Want any
of the shots to be denied to rne.Y Mr.
Bakke’s real problem is withithe
fact that . . . there is a limit of only
100 students going to Davis,” he
said.

[N TURNER'S View, the 011*
portunities Created for blacks by
Affirmative Action programs like
the one at University of California
at Davis are necessary because
blacks have begun “to run the
race” for economic opportunity at
a particularly bad time in the
economic history of the United
States. He feels that they have just

begun to surmount the historical

disadvantages they have faced at
a time when “the overall growth
pattern" of the Americ economy
“is progressively decli rig."

The response of American higher
education to this problem, 'hirner
said, is to retreat to a business-
oriented mentality which dictates
the raising of tuition and might
result in the distribution of
financial aid on the basis of merit
rather than ne'ed. Using the
example of Cornell, he questioned
why financial aid was cut instead
of academic amenities.

“WHY NoT reduce the upper
levels of salaries in order to
maintain social opportunity? Why
not eliminate the squash courts to

maintain financial assistance'.7 ’

Why not close one of four student
unions? Why not close one of a half
dozen tennis courts? Why not close
one of three golf courses so that
poor students can go to school?" he

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Thus, the real problem facing
American education today is to
provide more opportunities for
whites as well as blacks in the face
of the new limited economic
conditions.

“THE REAL question is: if there
is not sufficient opportunities for
the Bakkes of the world to go to
school, then it seems it is our
collective concern to raise the
question about expanding op-
portunity for young people in the
country who want to go to
professional school, not to talk
about limiting those few 0pc

economy to the other. And they
were in the center of the dynamic
growth in the economy. America’s
most profound growth was in the
nineteenth century. Blacks were
slaves, and in the early part of the
twentieth century, peons,” he said.

TURNER also rejected the
argument that Affirmative Action
amounts to “reverse
discrimination.” It is instead, he
said, the “social policy opposite"
of racial segregation Such
segregation has traditionally
Occurred, he said, when the
government leaves society to deal

The real question, Turner feels, is

to expand opportunities for all

young people who want to go to

professional school.

pnrtunities that exist for those who
have been handicapped by
America’s social history," he said.

In addition to raising this socio-
economic aspect of the Bakke case,
Turner also outlined the historic
pattern of discrimination against
blacks in American society to show
the necessity of Affirmative Aer
tion.

WHILE whites .were settling the
middle west and forming the basis
of America‘s farming population,
blacks weretied to slavery, Turner
said. Even the white industrial
workers of the nineteenth century,
whom Turner admitted were ex-
ploited, were free labor, whereas
blacks were a peasant class until
the twentieth century.

“What about those who came in
and became industrial workers?
They were free labor, No matter
whether they got a just return for
their wage, they got a return, and
they had the ability to transfer
their labor from one sector of the

wiﬂi racial issues on its own.

To illustrate this, he cited the use
of an exclusionary “grandfather
clause” in early American unions
which stipulated that a person
could join‘ the union only if that
person had a grandfather who
belonged to the union.

“Those people knew that those
blacks who came north during the
first World War to work in the
factories didn’t have grandfathers
in muse unions. They knew that.
That is Why they instituted the
grandfather clause,” he said.

THIS history, Turner stated,
raises a question of historical
understanding of Affirmative
Action. Whites today who ask why
the state must support blacks when
their parents “pulled themselves
up by the bootstraps” are ignorant
of the peculiar problems blacks
have faced historically.

“It‘s a question of un»
derstanding, because there is a lot
of mythology," he said.

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