The Grinnell

Scarlet 8 Black

iUsPs ABE‘UGD}

Commencement Issue

These eager freshmen await their first Grinnell registration back in August 0! 1973. [look familia

Eric Christiansen and Drew Bergman

Attention

Howlon devoured a peach,
ieiore he finished chomping, he
.appened to look up in the sky. He
saw a bird—a beautiful, powerful
)ii‘d—i'loating lazily around in big
:ircles, then propelling itselt up
vards againr “Someday I want to
.e able to have the strength and
;race to ﬂy like that bird," he said.
Z‘rulp.

Howlon sat in the park the next
morning because there was
10thing to do. He thought about the
oird. l-Ie wished he was a bird. A
very rich man drove slowly
through the park, right by Howlon,
with a crowd of laughing. dancing
children surrounding and following
the car. The very rich man was
. ssing money to them; all were
.augh‘lng.

“SOMEDAY I WANT to be a
very rich man so that I can give
everything to the children and the
poor," Howlon said. Howlon now
thought about how he’d get rich,
what he’d do when he was rich, and

.‘IIOW happy he’d make people. He
didn‘t think much about the bird.
The ground was kind of wet below
h in. He got up and left.

 

Oldaz walked through the
1layground of Hillside Elementary

School, sticky icecream dripping
down on to his hand from the
vanilla ice cream cone. He looked
up to see Mr. Dogoode, sixthrgrade
teacher, put his arm around
Johnny Jones, who was the
smallest boy in the class and had
just been teased again.

“I wish l had made a different
choice in SchooI~I would have
been a good sixth-grade teacher,”
said Oldaz. He thought about how
much fun his elementary school
was and the times he had in sixth-
grade with his buddy, Freddy.
Where was Freddy now? Probably
an established lawyer somewhere.
”He always did get the breaks," he
said. The sticky ice cream was
down to his elbow, the children had
gone inside.

EYWICH JUST swallowed a gulp
of fresh coffee, The light rain had
finally stopped outside. The sun
was peeking through the clouds but
Eywich was thinking back to
where she had lived fifteen years
earlierithe Gulf Coast side of
Florida. “It never got this Cold
when we lived there," she said,
”Why we ever decided to move to
mountainous country, l’ll never
know." She used to swim in the
warm ocean water every day. She

loved to rest in the shade with a
good novel, after roaming the
beaches for awhile. She wondered

(continued on page 2)

5/22/77

Nancy Wagner

Griniiell College

Grinnell, Iowa
Vol. 87, No. 29

In search of _
a moral balance

1 refuse to write sappy, hearty
wrenching words during my last
days at Grinnell or to glorify my
freshman year with quainl
anecdotes of student life. Tear»
jerking journalism is ephemeral,
both to the reader and the writer.
and lacks the punch of words
designed to shake one’s 59“.
sibiiiiies. Graduation articles are
too oiten swamped in “au revoir"
sentimentalism which dscribes a
four year mystical transformation.

Really though, my Grinnell
years have changed me and I think
it only fair to consider the results,
Somewhere in the midst of [our
years of iriends, labs, papers and
lectures I acquired a sense of

responsibility.“ lwant to avoid the
1900s Progressivism of uniform,
Standardized morality and of
becoming Big Brother dictating
social policy to the masses, I
fought against the chilling idea
that maybe people really did not
know what was best for them, and I
could slep into an apprenticeship
asa moral tyrant alter graduation.

Social responsibility is a
demanding concept and, like the
scholar i am trained to be, i at-
tempted to define my terms. Social
responsibility is believing that
individuals should exist without
extreme suffering, and making
attempts to reduce that suffering;
it is service dedicated to eradicate
injustice and reduce inequalities,
whether these inequalities be

It was as if I suddenly took
to heart the thoughts of Dewey,
Ellison and Maslow

social responsibility. I use
”acquired" rather loosely; ac-
lually my meaning is more like
finding a book on your shell that
you do not recognize and cannot
recall. although it has your name
on the cover

lT was AS if I suddenly took to
heart the thoughts oi Dewey,
Ellison, and li‘laslow and their
questions of human dignity, justice
and equality could no longer
remain within the squiggly lines on
the page, Yet reality having im-
parted to me a thorough sense of
individualism. l declined at the
moment accept that social
respons' ty and its mysterious
demands,

I am not about to report a
miraculous conversion from Sell to
social responsibility. Despairing of
mutually exclusive choices (and
not really seeing the necessity of
either responsibility eclipsing the

inherent in the bureaucratic
system or a result of human
negligence and mismanagement. I
am speaking of a responsibility
which recognizes the respect for
human dignity as the life force of
society. Respect for humanity is
the first principle ol social
responsibility.

BEFORE I AM accused of un-
fettered idealism and lack of
sensibility I will forthrightly claim
that the gap between these
philosophical tenets and actual
behavior is wide enough so that the
potential responsible individual
Could [all into the Chasm of do-
Nothingness i do not expect
selﬂessness to exist as the twin
brother of social responsibility.
Like a stable teeter—totter a
balance must exist between the
two sides so that neither is guilty of
flagrant selfishness.

Neither am 1 suggesting that

other). I decided to incorporate everyone must hold VISTA jobs,

the best of both responsibilities into
a life’s philosophy. That decision
was relatively easy.

THE QUESTION WHICH tor~
ments me now is the implication of
this nebulous term “social

 

work in storefront legal olfices,
and volunteer to administer day
care programs, although all of
these activities are concerned with
the topic. I am asking myself and
others for that first recognition

icontinued on page 2)

 

