The Scarlet 8r Black. Sept. 2!). 19787page 5I

 

Terri Tiddle

The cost of privacy

Priv cy- it s a rarc delicacy here
at G1Innell. it's a value some
cherish more than others. it
happens to be near the top oi my
list of priorities

Privacy, in all senses oi the
word, is not a natural right at
Grinnell. it is instead a privilege
which must be earned at sub-
stantial costs. Even then, there is
no guarantee that we will be able to
achieve personal privacy. The
right to privacy should not be
undervalued. 0n the contrary, i
believe we should be able, at a cost,
to get some privacy. The question
is how much we must iorieitto gain
this delicacy.

f REMEMBER living in Loose
one year and coming home alter
class to take an atternoon nap The
young man who lived next door
enjoyed blasting his stereo all
hours oi the day and night. Un-
iortunately, my bed and his box
shared the same Wall. Of course he
had every right to listen to his
music at high volumes, but when
we live in close proximity to each
other, certainly we should consider
not only our interests but our
neighbors' as well.

1 realize that going to college and
living in a dorm is supposed to
foster a community spirit or at
mosphere, And yet 1 would contend
that at certain times and in certain
places we should have privacy.

ONE SOLUTION is to move off
campus, The solution is not quite
that simple, however. It costs
money, and lots oi it, to move off
campus, Futhermore, it takes time
and energy to rind an apartment.
with the housing shortage on
campus, available spaces off
campus have diminished at an
unbelievably rapid pace. We must
also take into consideration high
food prices. exorbitant electricity
bills, and fantastic phone bills (for
some of ust.

A cost-benefit analysis of moving
oii campus, or any kind oi proncon
argument. depends to a great
extent on where we place our
priorities I place privacy on the
top of my list, so the costs which I
must incur by living oit campus

I i—~

 

are well worth it i must admit
there are other aspects of living off
campus that are not as positive.

FOR INSTANCE. when an off-
campus person la non-college
owned apartment oliscampus
person) has a problem with the
heat or stove or electricity tor
anything, for that matter), we
can't call 8&6. Sometimes,
depending on the landlord, it may
take a few days or even weeks to
get something repaired. There
have been cases where leaks in
roofs have been left for weeks
causing tenants to suffer enormous
inconveniences. At least those
living in dorms have somewhere to
turn. B&G is usually very
responsive to student needs

Another offrcampus problem is
the landlords themselves Many
students lease from either WG.
Eyestone or O H. Black. both of
whom have their idiosyncrasies.
Eyestone won’t tolerate pets
(which includes anything from
goldfish to gorillas). He is strongly
against cohabitation. He is slow to
respond to repair calls. And
iinally, his houses are not in the
best condition 410 say the least).

BLACK. ON THE other hand,
wtll respond relatively fast to
repair calls, He doesn't mind
cohabitation but he'd prefer no
pets. His houses are in iair to good
condition. But Black charges high
prices and is notorious for
”dropping in” on people whether
he does this to spot check for pets
or to get his kicks remains
unknown. The point is, both Black
and Eyestone leave much to be
desired as landlords.

I am not implying that the only
way to get privacy is to move off
campus. Nor am i insinuating that
by moving all campus you will get
privacy.

On the contrary, I believe that
privacy can be obtained on campus
if we would be just a bit more
considerate of each others' needs.
The right to privacy (whether it be
in the dorm rooms or In the
bathrooms or in the classrooms) is
a right which is greatly unr
dervalued and oftentimes
overlooked.

Treat yourself

to some cold

Busch

Bavarian Beer
It's worth it.

 

 

 

 

 

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October 1-4
Showtime—7:30

/MEL BROOKS

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Open Space

Let’s talk about cooties

y H. M. Stnncbcci
Do you remember cooties7
My father and i had a talk about
cooties recently, and I guess what
you remember about them
depends on your age. He said that

‘during the. First World War

soldiers used the word “cooties" to
reier to lice. it may have come
from the Malay. kiitii. ior louse,

LIFE CARRIED TYPIIUS and
other ricketsial infections, and
they lived rent-tree in the trenches,
(They inspired another of our slang
words, “lousy "l Vaccination
reduced the likelihood of the
diseases but not the prevalence of
the lice, which were tolerated and
even became a source oi humor,
both in and out of the trenchﬁ. A
woman's hair style oi the period, in
which straight hair was rolled up
around the back and Sides of the
head like a scroll, was known tto
men) as a ”comic garage." By
World War Two, the army licked
the lice problem altogether with
DDT. and both “lousy" and
”cootie" assumed a meaning
unrelated to insects.

My father had never heard of the
meaning the word had for me in
grammar school. He found it
amusing In my grammar school,
cooties were like a congenital
disease, but unlike other
congenital diseases they werc also
contagious,

SINCE CODTIES WERE ins
visible, the tricky thing was
identifying carriers. The infected
kid had on symptoms, but certain
signs betrayed the condition.
Overweight kids oiten carried
cooties Kids who wore very strong
glasses usually had them Kids
with buck teeth, a lot of freckles,
and white socks had particularly
virulent cooties. Sometimes an
unusual last name, or even an
unusual first name, signified a
carrier. Twilla Grumkin definitely
had cooties

There were two kinds of cooties:
those which were congenital in
boys and contagious to girls, and
those which were congenital in
girls and contagious to boys. I
never heard of a case in my
grammar school in which a boy
was Infected by another boy's
cooties. or a girl bv another girl‘s

SOME KIDS' cooties were more
dangerous than others‘, i
remember one girl named Linnea.
She had freckles and wore lumpy
clothes, and I rejected her irequent
overtures to walk home with me

out of 21 deathly fear that I could

contracta terminal case of cooties
irom tier. Just being nice to
somebody could get you their
L‘OOlieS.

1 had cooties, too (Linnea must
liavc posscssed an antlbodyt. but
not everybody had them. The
cutest boy and the cutest girl never
had them. Chances tire that the
best baseball player didn't have
them We didn‘t lI' e cheerleaders
nt mi grammar school. out it he
had had cheerleaders they
wouldn‘t hale had them

l\ ,\I\' \.\l.\i\li school the
smart kids (I n’t HL‘CL“\sIrIl_\‘ ha 'I‘
cooties. but He heard ul plnc
it here gurvt brains were a sure sign
of affliction Kids \i ItlI cooties n ore
avoided: kids without them were
sought ml‘ .

An attach oi cooties was sil‘iil

and complete. but iniection was
rarely permanent. This was for»
tunate. for although one could live
with one‘s own cooties, living with
someone else's was no joke, The
symptoms of iniection wcrc social
stigmatization followed by in
sanity.

TIME ALONE ['URED most
cases. For those too impatient to
iia . one satisiactory way oi
ridding onescli oi ioreign cooties
was to pass them on to someone
else While physical, verbal, or
even eye contact was suiiicicnt to
transmit cooties irom a congenital
carrier to someone else, getting rid
of loreign cooties usually required
physical contact with the victim
and a public announcement in
which the cooties' original source
was named: “You have Freddy's
cooties."

Passing on foreign cooties
usually conferred a brief period of
immunity on the donor, but not
with the most virulent cooties.
Generally speaking, there was no
prophylaxis One couldn't pass
cooties back to their original
source It would have been like
bringing coals to Newcastle

PASSING COOTIES in this way
occasionally led to a cooties

~way

epidemic. A serene playground
would be suddenly transformed
into bcdlam and pandemonium.
Kids would run all over the place.
shouting and screaming, touching
or trying to avoid being touched,
until everyone thought he had been
infected, at which point there was
nothing to do but resume normal
activtties.

rhc cootie craze provided us
\vithalotollaughs Most of us The
kids with particularly poweriul
cooties didn't laugh much, and
sometimes they cried. l oite
wondered if those kids asked thei
parents where cooties came irom.
I don’t remcmber parents ever
having cooties, or at least it we
thought they did nobody ever said
anything about it.

(‘OOTIES WERE THE bugabo
of our own social world. They
helped us identify inrgroups and
out-groups, inskids and out-kids.
They created public definitions 0‘
people.

when l was in grammar school, 1
never figured out why Linnea'ﬂ
cooties were so active on th
playground and so dormant when i
saw her away irom the crowd.
They were a little like lice that

 

 

 

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Carl F rantz

by Carl Frantr

I'm going to leave ott discussing
gay activism tor a while and do a
little good old»fashioncd book
reporting, That's right. book
reporting, You'll find it under the
heading or Reeducating the
Community or some such.

That is to say, I am trying to
point people in the direction oi
material which may hopefully
ause some of them to doubt the
alidity of traditional gay
tereotypes. This is also in case
here is anyone out there who
docsn'thave enough to read tand if
lcan get a list of them I'll see that
they-re dealt with).
A historical problem of literature
dealing with homosexuallife is that
't is usually condemning. Even
'hen it is sympathetic it deals with
he darker aspects of gay life and-
r the hero meets with a tragic but
morally necessary end

Tins PROBLEM MAY have
lended with the publication oi The
Lord Wnn't Mind, the first
homosexual novel with a happy
ending (which is a pretty dubious
distinction when you think about
ill. It the title suggests a syrupy
lushy story, it is. It’s a protracted
alc about two unusually handsome
blond young men who look almost
xactly alike, right down to the
eavy artillery.

To justify the happy ending the
author has Our Pair spend two
hirds of the book In emotional, and
ccasionally physical, anguish If
on like tacky love stories, this
ne's ior you. There is a sequel
itled One for the Coils. They can
ave both of them

THE NEXT GAY novel to gain
ide popularity was The Front
Runner which, because It dealt
\‘Ith gay athletes and tho ()lymr
idles, “as supposed to be some kind
if milcstonc 'l‘lic book does pmnt
ut many or the prcjudicial at
itudes with which gay people must
ope. and the élutlicress seems in
re lruh - ’mpathctlc to the cause
lltmuvel‘. throughout the book
lie reader has the uneas} sense
not Something Tragic Going
to llappcn, and ot’cui soil rlocs. l
H“ In all candor admit that III_\
throat clenched and my eyes
mistrrl uheti ll (lid. but then i cried
at \ Shir Is Born tstricsnnrl. lint
(ilu‘lalidl so you see how little that
menus

'l'llls li!{l\(iS I\‘

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tn IOd'J '-

Gay lit quality varies

by Mary Renault, I discussed the
other books to warn you oil, but
this one you should read. It is an
accurate but fictional account of
the conquests of Alexander the
Great. but It begins with the story
of Bagoas, a Persian boy who at
the age of ten sees his family
brutally slaughtered in a coup
detail. and is gelded and sold into
slavery

Over time he becomes courtesan
to oarius, king oi Persia, and then,
after Darius has been
assassinated, he is given to the new
King: Alexander the Great

THE STORY. TOLD by Bagoas
as a memoir. entails a factual lto
my admittedly limited knowledge)
account of Alexander's most
famous marches, battles, and
conquests. It is a living, breathing
recreation of history done with a
story oi love, understanding and
caring between two men It con
tains jealousles, plots, intrigues,
polsonings, etc, with which to
titillate the reader, and it does not
resort to the cheap thrill of semi-
pornographic sex episodes coms
men in much oi gay literature, Sex,
when it occurs. is an exchange
between two people, not an act oi
throbbing pulsing organs.

Since The Persian lioy is told as
a memoir the death of Alexander is
no surprise when it occurs.
However. it is. even for the teller,
an event in the past, a matter of
historic record. Bagoas has had
more than enough time to cope
with his grief and loss, thus the
reader is not oppressed by a sense
of tragedy milked ior more than
it's worth. Further. the death of
Alexander is not quite the end of
the story The title 15, after all, The
l’ ' an i '

'r not It Ills telling of the
story you witness the unlolding of
his own lite A young boy whose
manhood and selfrl'espcct are torn
from him at an early age gradually
regains his selfrrcspt‘ct and sense
oi intiiinootl.

fl is Bagoas‘s story you have
read. r; rytlnog is seen through
his eyes. with hi. reactions (Ind
interpretations. llfifl in the end it is
his sit -. his triumphs over his intc
vhich arc the most moving
, elements of the story. it is a bean
liflll. beaulilul book if you're not
loo burned out on books to read
something tor the sheer pleas-arc of
It. read this

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