 

FOG alternative

To the Editor: In previous years
the members oi the Foreign
Students Board. with the
assistance oi friends, has tried to
enlighten the campus community

the various delicacies available
gim other countries of the world
Various dishes are prepared and
sold at the nominal cost of 15 cents.
20 cents, or 25 cents. The servings
large enough to whet your
_ petites, yet small enough to
leave room for the next dish

The purpose oi this gesture is to
interest the community in exotic
dishes and to stimulate some taste
buds We hope that many students

N1ghtmares

To the Editor: To my shock and

‘ er horror. 1 found a notice in my
today which called for the
organization oi “a cheerleading
squad of dedicated individuals who
will promote school spirit,” i ask
.ﬁquestion, do you people know

é implications of this move?

Should Grinncll take a step back-
wards into the dark ages of shaved
legs, nylons, periuine, and noisy
shrieking at basketball games"
Should righteous Grinncll falls be
forced to listen to worthless rans
ting and raving. cartwheels, and
reckless running all over the
Court? Will we not he allowed to
watch our team take its lumps in
. eace”

‘hould we dispense with a
tradition as rich as the OB Squad’s,
whose exhortations have

cnaded oiiicials, opposing
tnams and visiting audiences,

take advantage oi this cultural
experience.

As an addition to the experience,
slides irom various countries will
be shown continuously during the
evening. Music irom ditierent
nations will also be played
throughout the evening.

Do not iorget. a cordial invitation
is extended to the entire campus
community. This cultural exe
pericnce will be held in the Forum
grill on Saturday irom ii to lo p.m.
Bring a set oi sensitive taste buds
and try to sample everything . , it
will be a good change from FOG —’
Foreign sinociits Board

of shaved legs

while simultaneously consuming
great amounts oI alcohul'l Will we
be deprived the thrill of violating
opposing cheerleaders ivith oral
and gesticulous insults? Must we
“Go, Fight, Win?”

It those people didn’t know, the
Grinncll spirit exists; it exists in a
iorm as unique as the men and
women that go here. it exists in the
iorm oi do your best and enjoy
what you are doing. It means
enjoying the game whether we win
or lose. it means irritating the
officials and others, to cveryone's
benciit. It means not committing
suicide after a good drubbing.
There are more Worthwhile
reasons ior committing suicide.
We are not UCLA or the University
of Michigan. Grinnell is a place
that encourages cooperation,
sharing, and having tun; not
winning. Robert Render

Grinncll is healthy says alum

To the Editor: 1 participated last
week in a conference on the
campus intended to allow a
sampling oi alumni to think with
iaculty and students about the
future of Grinnell. The practical
Value of such an exercise to the

,thl Grinnell community perhaps

iiicult to measure. Never-
theless, l believe it important to
express the feeling that the College
appears to enjoy very good health.
It is ﬁscally sound; it continues to
at dedicated to academic exr
cellence; the environment em-
bodies wholesome freedom of
expression; and the quality oi the
faculty, administration. and
student body is stable at a very
high level. 1 was further heartened
by a reaiiirmation on the part oi
the iaculty oi their primary
mission, namely, to develop among

students the intellectual skills
usually associated with a liberal
education.

Of concern was an indication by
a representative of the student
government that significant
“mistrust" of the administration
exists. During the same con»
versation a boastiul description
was given of his ability to rip off a
local government by collecting a
paycheck while not working for it.
My concern relates less to the
existence of an emotion or attitude
than to the etiology, the value
system, and consistency on the
part oi the student government
constituency» Surely President
Turner deserves better than this
William F. lchnii, l\'l,D., 'Iil

(Ed. note: Dr. l-lejna is a Senior
Vice President and Dean of Rush
Medical College»

“The moving ﬁnger . . .

by Scott McMiirray
ost Americans from a
moderate income
background (including
myself) have a
definite loverhale
relationship with the wealthy.
While we are quick to condemn
them for their excesses. we
secretly hope ior their continued
success. The reason behind this
apparent contradiction is quite
simple: The middle class always
dreams oi filling the shoes of the
wealthy. in the meantime, they
like to have the patent leather kept
as shiny as possible.

For this reason I have been
saddened by the whole Patty
Hearst aiiair. Many people have
argued that the only rcason she
didn’t receive a harsher sentence
was because her lather is a multi-
millionaire. lpropose that this was
exactly the reason she was iound
guilty in the iirsi place A jury oi
what could hardly be called her
peers (not one of them is going to
inherit an amount even ap-
proaching one million dollars)
ignored the {act that she was
kidnapped and condemned her, in
part, for being a “spoiled rich girl
out on a lark." Even superlawyer
F. Lee Bailey, acquired at cons
siderable expense, couldn't rescue
Patty irom a guilty verdict. I ask
you, is there any hope {or the rest

Point of view

 

n

oi us ever attaining justice ii |l
can't even be purchased by the
rich'7

Amy Carter's education is
another case with which l leel all
rnlddle incomcrs should sym-
pathize. Although she is not the
daughter of a millionaire, her
father’s guaranteed two hundred
thousand dollars a year in at least
the next iour years can hardly be
considered working ior peanuts.
One would expect that Amy would
now be able to take advantage of
one oi the excellent private schools
in the Washington area. Instead,
anticipated public opinion has all
but forced the Carters to enroll
their daughtcr in the urban school
system. If her father's new~found
wealth cannot even secure the
exclusiveness which has been such
an integral part oi Amv's
educational heritage, is there any
hope for the middle class of
tomorrow?

This covert emulation of the rich
exists just as readily on campus as
in the real world. In fact, the word
covert should be dropped when
speaking oi a large segment oi the
student population. More and more
students openly admit that a larger
salary is the major objective oi
their Grinnell education. For this
and other reasons, the students of
today have been severely criticized

 

One for the money

by the alumni oi thc not too distant
past,

The alulnni of the 1960’s should.
however, not be quite so quick to
criticize. I don't think they realize
Just what current Grinncll students
are up against We have no Viet
Nam viar or Richard Nixon with
which to distract ourselves from
the glow of dollar signs on the
horizon. Besides, their protests
seem a bit shallow when Written on
corporate law office stationery.

It is not that today's student is
without worthy causes; the
problem lies in that it is no longer
easy to distinguish the good guys
from the bad In the face of such
complexity, most students have
turned lheir energies inward. The
result has been described as the
“narcissism of the seventies," It
has heightened many people's
interests in such diverse subjects
as meditation and material gain.

Lest the few remaining idealists
out there think all is lost, a small
number oi us still iancy ourselves
as being able to overcome these
petty innuences oi our time, We
shun both material gain and the
lotus position in our iight against
the evils in society Now if I can
just get that job with one of the
Hearst papers covering the
Washington school system. . ,

Mending out and looking book

by Bub Aldrich

he semester is, thank
God, almost over. In
three weeksthe papers
will be handed in, the
finals will be scrat»
ched out. I'll drink my

Iasl cup oi caiieine and quietly
disappear. Leaving Grinnell is not
like leaving irom anyplace else; it
is more irantic and desperate. I
always feel a compelling drive to
escape, and leave Ieeling a little
rcgrctful of the books unread and
the iriendships neglected. Like
most people, i do not like it;
everything moves so quickly that
“one cannot see the forest for the
trees " in order to have a per
spective on a situation one has to
be able to be in some way removed
irom it, and cxactly the opposite
process occurs over the next three
weeks. Perhaps it could not be any
other wayeit makes little sense to
try to review a semester at the
expense oi one's iinals.

What happens is that little
overall evaluating ever takes
place, and the College, like most
other colleges, Just dritts along, 1
exclude here outside evaluations,
reierring instead to students'
perspective on the school (I oitcn
have the vague feeling when I read
about Grinncll in the White Paper
or the Grinncll Magazine that they
are speaking about someplace
other than the Grinnell that i know
and inhabitJ

So where are we7 In a semester’s
time, there have been maybe two
or three hot issues and a score of
minor ones, and we even got to
watch an administration admit
that it had made a mistake, a
minor victory of sorts. But after all
of this, where are we indeed? Ms.
Dentel and Ms. McCluskey's status
remains unknown, the status of
women on campus remains
dismal, the Forum is still using
those damn Styrofoam cups and
base “fast food”looktoit,anditis
already cold and snowy outside It
could be a long winter

Were all of this not enough, there
are two more additions to the
community tsuch tis it is)7a
growing conservativisln on the

right paralleled by a growing
interference on the left.

The College is no longera bastion
of the political left, although it has
held out longer than most other
institutions, The country, and
Grinnell along with it, is becoming
more conservative, more in
alignment with the “stable values"
of Americaijobs, security, homes
and cocktail parties Yes, i freely
admit itil rind it disappointing,
Along with this change has come a
corrcsponding dccrcasc ior social
concerns. We have no national
cause to rally around, and it shows.
The lettuce boycott passed only
marginally on campus, and it is, i
think, an odd perspective to place
our liking for lettuce ahead of
another person’s right to a decent
job and dignity. We are putting
ourselves first. The “revolution" of
the late 60's and early 70's never
occured, and the little that did
occur is easily iorgotten.

There is. as well a growing in-
tolerance on the remaining
political left. at least in Grinnell.
Witness the “cheerleading
episode,” whereupon a couple oi
unsuspecting students endeavored
to start a serious cheerleading
squad, only to be engulied under a
tide ofprotest. I do not particularly
want to see cheerleaders around
either, but we always seem to
forget that it is people that propose
such ventures. I sometimes
wonder ii We don’t wander around
aimlessly until anything comes
along that qualities as an ”issue,"
whereupon we leap at it, claws
bared, until it too passes away with
all of the others.

The problem is that there are no
lasting issues as there were in the
60's that capture the public at-
tention. People of that era were not
any more intelligent or sensitive to
the concerns around them; rather,
one issue led to another, and the
climate' begat a political
awareness and involvement. Those
times have passed, leavuig ti
remnant oi students who are just
old enough to have participated in

 

that era and who are now left
without direction

The aimless drift is compounded

by a mediarhype at whatever
comes along, an abnoxious
phenomenon that wears out an
issue before it is resolved. We tire
oi things quickly, especially when
bombarded by them. be it a top-40
song or administrative
reorganization

Unfortunately, the relative
popularity oi an issue is no Iris
dicallon of its status Problems
i-cmain long aiter they are
iorgotten. in this respect, being a
columnist is an exercise in im-
potence, One can shout like a
madman, but there is no guarantee
of change, or even that anybody
ever reads what is written. Like a
radio announcer. a columnist has
an unknown audience. and cannot
see the reactionu

One reaction to all of this is that
the experience at Grinncll tas
opposed to the Grinnell Ex-
perience) IS. short lived and
transitoryiwe are not here long
enough to affect any lasting
change. True, all too true; change
here takes time. And too, students
eXlst in a kind oi powcr vacuum:
everything seems to be bigger and
more time consuming than we can
deal with, So it is little wonder that
the issues of the {all have faded
away, except for a dogged tci .
besides, indifference is more in
keeping with the spirit of the times.
And, lest you forget, finals are just
around the bend.

The indifference has been
written to death; my polemics will
not change the status oi that liere.l
offer Instead a statement by Elie
Wiesel: ”To flee to a sort of Nir-
vana—whether through a con-
sidered indifference or through a
sick apathy—is to oppose humanity
in the most absurd, useless, nd
comiortable manner posstblc.‘

There is one final remark as
regards the local politics hcrc, and
it is directed to the administration:
If nothing else, PreSidcnt Turner,
call a spade a spade Talk straight
to us, and give us the chance to use
our cogniiivc faculties, That is.
ailer all, part of what we are here

 

for. and most of us do not mind the
exchise

 

