The Grinncll Scarletand Black, August 29. lﬁTkp, 4

To n ' n g
'c's m

As is customary at the beginning of the college semester,
upperclassmen are busy warning the freshmen how “Grinnell
is going downhill.” “No one listens to the students.”
“Admissions is becoming less selective.” And ”The campus
is going back the days of booze and football games."

Grinnell, like all small schools, is going through a rough
time, it is true. But, perhaps these criticisms are over-
gencralized. Grinnell’s 130th year has possibilities for being ,
a progressive rather than regressive one, if the community
can keep certain objectives in mind and then operate on these
objectives. V

The Scarlet and Black offers these thoughts, goals,
musings, etc. for those Grinnell optimists who believe that
personal involvement is still beneficial.

1. Creativity on campus has to make an upswing. In an
academic jungle of pre-med, pre-law, and pre-business, ar-
tistic abandon is a sheer necessity, Where are student
bands, tart presentations? And, most puzzling, why is there .
no creative writing for the paltry literary magazine'.7

2, Ecological interest has faded like student demon-
strations, Why are we throwing away beer cans instead of
recycling them? How about newspaper reclaimation‘? Has
ISPIRG died?

3. Political happenings of campus are not only for SGA
members. There is a considerable amount of squawking when
students find out where their student activity fee is being
spent, but no one bothers to find out where', the budget
meetings are and how budget determinations are made.

4. Faculty hirings and firings are often made after con-
sultation with EPC members Fortunately there has been a
resurgence of interest in the departmental EPC's. This sort
of student power should be exercised—and strongly.

5. And finally, the easy access to President Turner’s and
Executive Vice~President Walker’s office should be taken
advantage of. This relatively new development, which
seems to have originated with the arrival of Turner, is
beginning to bring a relaxed and healthy feeling to student
and administrative relations.

If Grinnell College students can remember that there is
more to their education than the daily Library, Forum, Pub

round, we may have occasion to revise those cynical
statements this year’s freshmen had to deal with.

nun. lwl .

 

by JeffMillei

When someone mentions the
subject of children's television to
me, I immediately think ol my ten

day of this behavior, Aunt Jens
nifer, who feared that he had
become a Rosicrucian, shouted
“Look out, Pat, it’s the

year old cousin Pat. Pat is one of
those children weaned on
Chromocolor, who, due either to a
lack of stimulating environs (in
this case provided by Uncle Alan
and Aunt Jennifer Van Akin, both
of whom are nice guys who like
whiskey sours, tennis, and Bars
bara Streisand), or a mild brain
dysfunction (which is, i suspect,
the case) finds the Worlds of
television more interesting to live
in than the Real World,

His condition was first
discovered at the age of three,
when, after four months of inc
lenslve viewing of Captain
Kangaroo, he found out that he was
not really Pat Van Akin. but a
personification of Mr. Grandfather
Clock. This caused a radical
change in his behavior which was
evidenced by him standing in the
middle of theliving room, swinging
his arms back and forth like a
pendulum and snoring loudly. He
would maintain this posture from
9:00 a.m. until sometime around,
3:00 pm, when he. Would actually 3
fall asleep and down. On the fifth

apocalypse!” and hit him with a
wairle iron. Needless to say, he
never again thought he was Mr.
Grandfather Clock.

This was, however, only the
beginning of his fantasies. He
proceeded to “Sesame Street,"
living the life of Oscar the Grouch,
making his home in a garbage can,
and yelling “Poop on youl" at all
passersby. This ended when Uncle
Alan ironically dumped him in the
compost pile behind the garage

Somewhat alright alter this
incident, Pat decided to choose
more sedate roles, a decision
which led him to “Leave It to
Beaver” and the realization that he
was Lumpy Rutherford. Aside
from an inordinate amount of
drooling, this role proved to he no
problem until one night when he
announced that he was “going out
to see Eddie Haskell," climbed into
the car, and promptly backed into
Aunt Jennifer's dahlia bed.

Undaunted by this incident and
the resultant ﬂogging (one of Uncle
Alan‘s fault's).h'e'proceeded'to live
out lives in “Batman”,

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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oil/79‘ ‘1

Intro to economics

Foster digs
garden

To the Editor:

This summer, with the
gracious permission of Ralph
Pomerank, several students were
able to cultivate gardens on
college property. i saw tomatoes,
sweet corn, eggplants, squash.
tomatoes, sunﬂowers, mellons,
peppers, beans, tomatoes,
cucumbers, and weeds, aplenty.
Although this small scale harvest
may seem like a meaningless act,
still, it was an ecological, cons
scientious, and sensible thing for
the college to do. And, i have yet
to taste sweet corn like the sweet
corn I grew. 1 encourage the
college to continue in its
enlightened state, and would
especially like to thank Mr.
Pomerank, for he was very
helpful.

Sincerely,
Philip Foster

“Stingray." and “Star TrckLin
which he was Dr, McCoy and would
reply to any question put to him by
anyone with either “I’m a doctor,
not an engineer!" or “He’s dead,
lim ” Uncle Alan stopped this
when he walked in as Pat was
attempting delicate surgery on
Aunt Jennie's cat, Whiskers, using
an icepick and a saltshaker.
Perhaps his most interesting
alter ego occurred iollowing
repeated viewmgs of reruns of
“The Untouchables” and seeing,
more than once, Eliot Ness and the
boys barrel into a warehouse and
smash up the stills inside with this
inspiration, Pat went out one
morning, tied a shovel to the tront
of his bicycle, and rode around the
neighborhood until he found
someone with glass porchdoors, at
which point, with the Shovel acting
as a battering ram, he rode
through the doors screaming “0K,
Bonrigglio—thc jig’s up!" He thcn
picked up the nearest blunt object
(usually a poker) and smashed the
nearest stillrlike container (usually
a fishtank), shouted “Get the
message, Johnny?” and then left
(usually quickly). He was actually
able to do this for a couple or weeks
before Uncle Alan found out,

The
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Er Black

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Paul

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Don’t Touch That Dial!

which, of course, ended all the fun.

Pat presently watches a good bit
of baseball on TV, and so believes
that he is Joe Garagiola, thus
rendering him merely inane and
boring, and Uncle Alan and Aunt
Jennie for “Curt and Tony,” as Pat
cails them) merely calm and
collected

This airing of family linen has
served no real purpose but to plop
us (somewhat circuitouslyl on the
doorstep oi television in general,
and children’s television in par
ticular. Every Saturday morning
at least, and now usually every
day, Children are treated to talking
ostriches, idiotic teen-age rock
groups, terrible monsters, and [he
everrpresent lovable mangy
bowser, all doing everything irom
blowing up hclpless coyotes, to
saving democracy in India, to
inaligning the Pope,

While children may not have
terribly developed minds, they
certainly deserve better than most
of the plots and characters
presented in children's
programming. Perhaps the most
hideous example of this problem
occurred on a Show I saw this
summer—an i'otic but lovable
(and cute, girlsl) teenage rock

star named Gregg, meets a
beautiful singer, and it’s love at
first sight. She cures him of sever '
annoying habits, including hi
peccadillo of putting his face in
plates of spaghetti, and so they get
married, But, two days after the
wedding, Gregg realizes that his
habits are more important to him
than his girlfriend, so he takes his
lovable but mangy dog, Duane, and
leaves for a friend’s house. The
show ends with Gregg and his
girlfriend (reunited) singing some
drivel called “I've Got You Babe,”

Only on children’s television can
one find such [rite charac-
terizaiions and such absurd plot.
not to mention the inane dialogue
and hackncyed music, Yet the
networks refuse to change their
preconception that children are so
stupid as to buy this pap '

Recently, I received Official
Blurbs from the networks, telling
of children’s shows now in the
works. For the next two weeks, we
will examine some of these shows,
including NBC’s “Star Trek II"
and “Valley of the Dolls,” CBS’s
“Kubrick for Kids,” and ABC's
“Jerry andthe oratclul Dead." So
don’t go away—we’ll be right ' . i
with more fun with Uncle Su‘

 

