6 May 24, I972

The Scarlet and Black

Some Armchair Speculations
From Grinnell Scholars:

Tick, Tock, Or
Grandfather’s
Clock Revisited

by Phillip Kintner,
Professor of History

As the student generations pass through

these ivy walls, their presence and depar-

ture bring pleasure and pain, hope and desi
pair, friendship and distrusteeindeed, nearly
the whole gamut of human emotions, Some
bring happiness with their arrival and sad
ness at their leaving, others have the re-
verse effect. But it is impossible to watch
this human tide with indifference.

A college like Grinnell seems to die in
the summer. Instructors and staff inhabit
their offices, Clear the debris from the
preceding year and prepare for another,
write the inevitable articles and books, read
tor the coming months oi teaching. All oi
them breathe 8 sigh of relief (no doubt

“

”The same idealism which
led itudenti to rebel against
restraints in their social
and political world now
leads them to insist that
some restraintx are neces-
sary, and rightly so. ”

echoing the students) as the campus empties.
But most welcome the return of the human
tide in the fall, for like the ocean tide it
contains a dynamic interplay of forces which
molds creativity and builds a community at
learning.

There have been students who taught me
things which I could never have taught them.
The first freedom marchers in the ‘fifties.
The young man who now professes philr
osophy who enlisted several of us in his
fight to save a young Black waiting on
Death Row. The political and moral activists,
idealists with a lively sense of know-how.
And the often forgotten, nonetheless essen-
tial persons whose creative questions may
open trains of thought as yet unexplored.
Such experiences and people-mot just the
passmg along oi accumulated knowledge—-
make a college live.

Good learning always moves in two direc-
tions. However, the style and even the
content of learning change with student gen-
erations. What changes may be expected in
the next few years? Historians should not
prophesy (the owl oi Minerva, and all that),
but since the editor of this paper assures
me that national coverage is unlikely, I
have agreed to some mild speculations.

The future will bring fewer students, for
one thing, and a very changed market {or our
graduates, Some colleges will no doubt cease
to function for these reasons. we must hope
and Work for the continuation of this one,
and there is every reason to believe it will
hold its own. Equally sure it is that the
future will bring students different from those
of the past, though I hope that there will be
a good range to provide internal diiierences.

The "now” generation, with its distrust
of age, its preemillennial, incredibly idealiSr
tic and urgent longing for a better world
provided a necessary antithesis to the materr
ialism so rampant after World War II. This
secular millennial movement had its leaders,
ideology, and iaith in the inevitability oi
success. Though it failed in its larger goals,
the “revolution" did break down social re-
straints, questioned outworn lawsvin short,
forced all of us to re-evnluate our lives
and ideas. The iruits oi permissiveness,
though not all good, were not all bad, either.

While that generation’s dreams live on,
in part at least, the manner of their im-
plementation is changing abruptly. Colleges
and universities everywhere are experiencing
a “new seriousness” in Student behavior,
while the whole country seems to be under-
going a deep nostalgia for the past. One can
only guess at the reasons for these shifts
in attitude: a predictable reaction to the ”“57
guided efforts of the late ‘sixties to deny
the relevance of the past tor the present;

belated response to over-pcrniissivcncss, ite
sell a by-prodnct of the revolution, grownig
awareness and fear of economic ll'zanls
facing the graduate. After freedom, i‘espollr
sibility. The old lesson has been or is being
relearned.

The same idealism which led Students to
rebel against restraints in their sociul and
political world now leads them to insist that
some restraints are necessary, and rightly
so. But we should tmvol softly this pendulum
path. Montaigne long ago noted that it is
easier to follow the Sides of the road than
to keep a straight line in the unmarked middle.
Many importnut gains of the past twenty
years may be lost ii the pendulum swings
too far,

Here at Grinnell our student EPC'S have
told some departments that their pi ogrnnis
lack rigor, that tougher assignments and
courses are needed, That is teaching the
instructors with a vengeancef Reminds one
of the medieval Bologna students who might
refuse to pay if their instructors did not
meet their standards, Other Students here
have complained that they are overworked
Not, 1 think, because tlle courses have sud-
denly changed, but because students are tak-
ing their assignments with great seriouSr
ness There is an enormous challenge and
opportunity here fol the college, faculty and
students alike, Students are flooding back
into the traditional Courses in humanities
and social studies. But the past they seek is
not the same we knew and taught |wentv or
thirty years ago, for the lessons sought
are different, and so are the very intelr
lectual tools now used,

Ave afque valerrlli’iil and farewell! To
the endless pursuit of knowledge every stu-
dent generation makes its own contributions.
Even as we watch seniors graduating we
anticipate the arrival of other minds, ideas,
challenges, iriendships, and hopes; though
some part of Our hopes remain with those
who leave. the hope that they will not leave
their idealism behind as a legacy where it
is little needed, but will expend it useiully
as they assume other roles in scoleiy,

American
Politics The
Decade Ahead

by Don Smith and David Jordan
Associate Professors of History

The attempted assassination last week of
Governor George Wallace forcefully carries
one's thoughts back to the politics of the
1960's rather than encouraging a specula»
tion of trends in the decade ahead, Once
again, the nation has experienced the re~
cnl'l‘ilig pattern of violence, with bullets
and not ballots shaping the future of
American politics,

Assassination attempts, a divided popu-
lace, and bitter feelings are again charac-
teristic oi a presidental campaign, and
there is little reason to expect these con-
ditions to disappear over the next eight
years The last quarter century has pros
duced a record of almost relentless failure,
belieing Daniel Eooi'stln’s pride in the
genius oi American politics," We have
failed to construct a new workable coali-
tion of Americans on the four baSiC issues
or our day: America’s role overseas, the
economy, race relations, and, increasingly,
the protection of our environment. A slubr
born stalemate has persisted for twentyr
five years since the breakup of the New
Deal coalition. only the atypical election of
1964 momentarily broke this deadlock of
democracy and gave a Presidenta workable
majority in both houses of Congress. Neither
party has been able to mold an eiiective
coalition, and Presidents have usually been
elected by a narrow plurality oi the popular
vote. it is this distrubing absence ofagree-
ment which Samuel Iaubell has recently
termed “the hidden crisis otAmerican poli-
tics,” and which will be the persistent
problem of the next decade

Campus politics have faithfully reflected

the national trends During the college ca-
reers of the Class of 1972, the once active

Young Democrats and Young Republicans
have gasped their last breaths, and the two
organizations were officially laid to rest
lzist winter. Students like other Americans
are embracing political interests which are
narrower than the traditional notion of a
political party. Rather than working with
people unlike themselves but sharing some
common ideas, most Americans prefer to
work only with others much like themselves
who share the same common ideas.

The recent local Democratic Party
caucuses are a case in point. Few of the
students who participated did so with a
commitment to the Democratic Party They
their hostility to President Nixon and the
apparent opportunity to affect the choice of
an opposition candidate: there is nothing
wrong with that. what one missed, how-
ever, was a conception of a commitment
to the Democratic Party itself as a vehicle
ior harmonizing and iurthering the poli-
tical objectives of a heterogeneous society.
it is hard to envisage how such onercandi-
date or one-issue orientations will con-
tribute to fashioning a necessary new ma»
jority in the coming years.

Politically motivated groups see them-
selves less as Democrats or Republicans
and more as a Youth Movement, Black
Power or Women’s Libbers. Too exclu-
sive a Self regard weakens the pol 'cal
impact and effect which such groups might
have; more importantly, such a conscious-
ness often ignores local and grassroots
politics in an identification with one’s com-
rades elsewhere. The recent antiwar dem-
onstrations showed Grinnell students once
again torn between a self conception as
students or as members of the local com-
munity. Hearing or a student rally in Des
Moines, many were immediately willing to
cancel the Thursday town march, abandon
the previously agreed upon local cooper»
tive effort, and dash off to the capital.
Nor was there any apparent thought during
the week to Starting or ending the Grinnell
marches at any place other than central
campus, Let the townspeople come to our
march. Let us be off to Nebraska or
Michigan or California with fellow students
rather than work in our hometowns witha
cross—section of the populace. New coali-
lions and majorities are not built in that
manner,

The American political scene carries into
the 1970's an overly strong dependence on
absolutes. Beyond absolute positions for or
against candidates, there are stridentposi-
tions on solutions to the primary issues
Currently, for example, the centralized
state is the bogeyman and culprit; Neil
Sheehan described for us a callous, insen-
sitive collection of mandarins. His per-
ceptive indictment of the federal bureau~
cracy centered almost exclusively on the
arena of foreign affairs; he made no men-
tion of the centralized government which
brought the major victories in the struggle
[or civil rights or the fight against poverty.
Decentralization is the new cry, but are we
willing to allow local autonomy in Pontiac,
Michigan, Prince George’s County, Vir-
ginia and Orange County, Caliiorniav

The chasm will likely widen by 1930
between the role or the masses-«people
without the time, energy or taste for day»
to-day attentiveness to. politics-and the
concerned participants, be they pro—
fessional politicians or the “educated
elite." The latter group, caught up pres-
ently in particular issues, often prefers
to get its way not so much by educating
the masses and carrying the issues to the
Democracy as by circumventing the Dem-
ocracy in an intensive lobbying campaign,
a’ in Common Cause. Where are lines to
be drawn between government by lobbying
(be it by proponents or child care centers
or withdrawel from Vietnam or opponents
oi gun control or legalized abortion) and
government by the majority? What Ameri-
ca most needs in the decade ahead are citi-
zens dedicated to the principle of an
educated, thoughtful Democracy.

For too long, the by-word oi political
activists has been the credo of Lyndon
Baines Johnson, "Come let us reason
together-us long as you see things my
way." We have been too confident that
others would automatically come to accept
the lightness of our position if we could just
get hold of them, present the "facts,”
and obliterate the malign influences of a
wicked minority, The issues which divide
us, however, are not so easily resolved.
Perhaps what we hold to be absolutes may
sometimes be provisionnlsi OliverCrom-
well, who can scarcely be regarded asa man
paralyzed by Self-doubts and reservations,
may remind us, as he did his Scottish
allies, “l beseech you, in the bowels oi
Christ, think it possible you may be mis~
taken ”

 

