May 24. 1912

By Way Of
Introduction

Commencement, a beginning as well as an
end, is the obvious time for looking back"
and ahead--on our experiences. Our own
feelings, as we write this after Sunday
night's Senior dinner, fall somewhere be-
tween the satisfaction and fulfillment of
being within a few days of receiving a
bachelor of arts degree, and the frustra»
tion and disappointment of realizing that we

still do now know how to properly eat a
Cornish Game Hen.

But we hope to provide something more
substantial than that for this 5513 Come
mencement Magazine-mot to encompass all
the experiences past and present of the class
of 1972, but to take in some of them,
namely:

unlock at what has happened politically
on this campus, and on others, in the last
four years. They have been as Al Jones
writes below, very political years, and the
reports of Bill Thomas and Joseph Wall
confirm and expand on this.

"Four individual, very personal, views of
what education should be, by two professors
and two students,

e-Some speculations, tenuous though they
must be, by five professors on what the
immediate future holds: for the colleges,
politics, the environment, and the economy.

--Two notes on the urban-rural dynamics
of Grinnell.

"An essay each by two Presidents: former
student government executive Shelley Floyd
on Grinnell personalities, and college presi—
dent Glenn Leggett on an often neglected
part of the Grinnell curriculum.

--Some poetry and some photos and
sketches, the collection of the latter blend—
ing both objectivity (events, news, content)
and subjectivity (nature, art, iorm), If you
miss the distinction, so much the better;
enjoy the issue.

Steve Grow and
Mark Sableman

From
Apocalypse

To Beethoven

by Alan Jones,
Professor of History

On a hot August day in 1963, i returned
to Grinnell from an apocalyptic experience
as an alternate delegate at the Democratic
Convention in Chicago, arriving at the bee
ginning of New student Days. The new
students were the class of '72, and I ob—
served their coming with uneasiness and
uncertainty, They had been politicized by
Chicago, by political assassination, by war
and riot; many already drifted between radie
cal politics and drugged apathy. in general,
my mood led me to believe that everybody,
certainly the class of ’72, would be in for
some difficult times, that it might be very
hard to carry on anything like a traditional
liberal education at Grinnell or elsewhere.

Looking hack now and surveying the last
four years of the history of the College,l
think I was a little too uneasy, a little
too apocalyptic, The class of "72 is grad»
hating, the College survives and prospers,
the world goes on. Yet from my perspec»
live as a faculty member, an alumnus, a
part-time political activisit and member of
the Grinnell City Council, and as a his-
torlan, my premontions of August, 1968,
were partly right; the fundamental pattern
in the history of the College in the last
four years has been a political pattern, a
pattern chiefly imposed by external national
and international events. As President Lega
gett put it in a convocation address in
September 1969, the College has been “al-
most terrifingly reflective of national
agonies.”

The class of 1972 came in with the Chicago
Convention and the election of Nixon; halfway
through its college career it was ravaged
by the Cambodian invasion and Kent State;
it graduates in the wake of the mining of
the port of Haiphong and the bombing of
Hanoi. A perusal of the last four years of
the 5&8 (and of selected issues of
Pterodactyl and The High and Mighty)
everywhere reveals the presence of exterv
nally imposed political themes — Ted Glick
and the upsidevdclwn flag; the several

The Scarlet and Block

Vietnam Moratoriums, students going to
Washington, Des Moines, Chicago (and cone
tinually canvassing the town of Grinnell),
the ROTC issue, the closing of the College
after Kent State. And where external themes
of power are not explicit, their indirect
implications are evident - in demands for
student power, black power, woman power,
in drug incidents and annual drug symposia,
in constant crisis situations: the Schneirov
case, the Playboy case, the B, andG. strike,
the demands of Concerned Black Students,
the Nasser case. And implicitly related
to political themes extending beyond the
campus were the more academic issues of
the four years * the student role indecision»
making, student housing arrangements, the
question of comprehensives and of general
requirements, the faculty debates on Currie
culum and on faculty and administrative
reorganization.

For all their hectic, tluid, and changing
character these events have a coherence
and a unity that is political. They are all
variations on themes of knowledge and
power, on the role oflntellectuals in society,
on the political responsibility of institutions
and individuals, on how to create and mains
tain communities of scholars and men -
locally, nationally, and internationally.
Grinnell, of course, was not unique in its
experience of the last four years. But there
are particular nuances, and perhaps aparti.
Cular rhythm in the Grinnell experience,

The various crises and issues did lead at
Grinnell to moments of anger and bitterness.
They took their toll in disaffected and dis-
mayed individuals, in real threats to the
institution and to the idea of community.
But from a comparative perspective, these
angered and anxious moments did not
dominate the last four years. They challene
ged individuals and the institution, the clir
mactic moment occurring after Cambodia
and Kent State whenthe College Closed early.
Paradoxically, perhaps, that moment of crir
sis, led also to a signiiicaht spirit of
community, a spirit which had been present
before and which incrased_thereafter, par-
ticularly present in the campus reaction
to the mining of Haiphong two weeks ago.
The serious but basically quiet and tole-
rant mood of last week - evident in the
candlerlight marches, in the contacts with
townspeople and police, has been a persiss
tent feature, really, of the whole four years.
Grinnell is a fragile institution, all glass,
and again speaking comparatively, one has
to note the absence of violence at the College
throughout the various crises. There have
been protests and demonstrations and anger,
but in the manner in which most members
of the community have treated each other
and the institution itself. And for that there
is reason to be pleased and proud

What I conclude, then, is that in the last
four years the College has weathered uneasy
and uncertain times iairly well, that the
tensions between the College and the polir
tical world outside and between its constir
tuent parts inside have been resolved in a

GRINNELL HISTORIAN Al Jones ponders
and writes on the life and times of the
class of me, Time is running out.

manner in which both community and instir
tutlonal integrity have been maintained.
In addition, improvements have been made
in curriculum, in facultyestudent relations,
in broader participation in decisionrmaking
If the College has been newly politicized,
it has also remained consistent with valu—
able traditions of its earlier history as a
center of antirslavery, social gospel, and
progressive ideals, And the new politl~
calization has not dimished the continuing
significance of other traditional values~
the Values of liberal education Classically
understood, the values of art and musicand
literature, of science, history, and miles
sophy. The dialectical rhythm of these
years has, i think, reintorced the signiiie
cance at these values for many. Certainly
one of the most interesting phenomenon at
recent weeks was the last concert of the
Francesco Trio - a beautiful Beethoven
evening in the chapel enthusiastically re
ceived by a packed student audience, the
some students who would pack the same
chapel two nights later in an antiwar rally.
So while I am still uneasy and uncertain,
i believe the College has managed better
than most places in the last few years,
that it has been liberated into a new con-
sciousness of itself as a community, that
it remains Lt delicate and beautiful place
which deservedly commands the affection
of those associated With it.

Success,

Failure
Of Student

Power

by Bill Thomas

On a warm day in 1969 a few Grinnell
students, sitting out in front of the Forum,
started what was to become known (some
what pretentiously) as the Grinnell student
power movement. it was early in the fall
semester, and students were as usual grlp~
ing about decisions that had been made
without much consideration of student feet-
ihgs. However, a couple of incidents where
student mobilization had seemed to have
some effect had led us to think that, per—
haps, students might become a little less
passive in the shaping of their educational
and living experiences,

So, those people who were sitting in front
ol the Forum (there were only three or four)
decided to contact a few interested friends
and get together to talk it over Bill Stranger
gave most of the impetus to that original
meeting Eventually, a meeting was
arranged which includeda person from
every lloor or every dorm. People agreed:
students should have self-rule in their lin
ing situation; students should be involved
in the academic decisions of the college
(at that time,’ no one had any idea how
academic decisions were made), and stur
dents were the primary element of Grinnell,
and in general should have something to
say about how the place was run We were
tired of being shoved around, etc it was
true.

Soon enough, there were large meetings in
Roberts Theater, and the issues began to
be better defined. So did the one problem
which was to be the continual hangvup for
student progress. The problem.was dis-
cussed under the heading ”decisinnrmaking
process at Grinnell”, and it centered in the
vagueness and informality of that process.
As the various task groups which came out
of the moss meetings began to research
their areas (dorm life, counseling, student
services, and academics), they found that
authority lines were subtle and complex
There was no place to simply plug in stur
dent input; rattler, there were many places,
none of which could guarantee any weight
to that input. Nonetheless, a tremendous
amount of research was done, and each
group came up with a report and set of

(Continued on page a)

 

