loge Two 1

Jim Jim, pad}.

By WAYNE STENGEL

It was spring on the Grinnell
College campus. The sun warmly
bathed the faces and backs ot
coeds hurrying to class. Then aud-
denly, with the tyrannical swift-
ness and efficiency of unadulter-
ated power, the omnipresent Grin-
nell administration outlawed the
lunbacked dress on campus.

The 5&8, as always the mouth-
piece of student liberty, leaped to
the defense of its “proletarietle”
with vehement eloquence in a
May 19, I934, editorial sarcastical~
Iy entitled, “1734 or 1934?” “Why
is an expanse of feminine back
bordered by pique or seersucker
immodest, when a border of silk
crepe or crepe cle chine brings
the same object within the bounds
of decency? There is no apparent
explanation; but surely there must
be one, or why the recent decree
torbidding Iun»back dresses on the
Grihnell campus? At I schml
which provides a special smoking
room for its coeds (quite possibly
the first school west of the Missis»
aippi to do so) and allows them
12 o'clock hours on dance nights,
such a puritanical regulation ap-
pears not a little ridiculous. . ,The
instigators of the new ruling would
apparently have {me believe that
the informal low-backed dress is
an invention of the devil and that
only a ‘hussy' would be seen in
one. The average Grinnell coed is
completely capable of judging
what ittirs is in good tnste and
within the bounds of modesty. To
forbid her the right to exercise
this judgment is but to invite the
fiance." (Indeed, Grinnell girls
might start wearing blue jeans all
over campus.)

 

Earlier in that month, May 2,
1934, Wayne Morse, then dean oi
the University of Oregon law
school, addressed Grinnell stll~
dents in a speech at Herrick Chap
el. His analysis of the five types
of college students, though heav-
ily tinged with the social discon-
tent ol the 30’s, is amazingly ap-
plicable to Grinnell students of the
1960’s:

“Five types of students enter
the halls or learning. The tirst type
includes the student who is just
plain indifferent. He goes to col-
lege without knowing why; his
folks foot the bill. He seldom ques-
tions what his professors put forth.

“The constitutional conservative
ialls into the second group. he
finds comfort in the status quo;
why should he argue and dream
and plan and strive tor change?
The here and now is its own der
tense and justification.

“Third in the list is the hedo-
nist, unconsciously so, for he
does not know hedonism is s phi-
losophy. He knows “pleasure and
pain” as the leading motives or
life. He seeks the me and avoids
the other. It is he who gives the
administration occasional trouble
and must be'reprimanded or sent
to another environment.

"The fourth group is the ideal-
ist and crusader. He is the most
forceful of college students. He is
the leader of leagues and protest
movements. l-le embraces the
cause of freedom and justice.

"And lastly, there is the critical
realist. He is the doubter and
skeptic, the eternal usher ot ques-
tions. He has die courage .to dis-
agree, the energy and mental dis-
cipline necessary for practical hf-
fairs."

 

Kent Unsure of ’North Campus Prohlem,’
Asks Whether Hull System Is at Fault

To the Editor:

I tind the whole recent debate conceming the hall system dis-
turbing. it is disturbing because all discussion has been based on
assumptions which have neither been clearly asserted not proved to

be tnle.

The assumptions are (I) that there is a “North Campus problem"

and (2) that it is the result of the present hall system.

I cannot say

that there isn’t a “North Campus problem". Nor can I say that if
there is one it isn’t rooted in the present hnll setup. 1 don’t know and
i don't think anyone else really knows either. Thererore, before pro
posing any more solutions to the “North Campus problem" let us ask
first if such a problem actually exists. Then, if we ﬁnd that_lt does,
let us detinc it clearly Ind publicly and, while we Ire at it, let's also
attempt to define just what both ideally and realistically we wish our

residence system to accomplish,

Personally I have no particular gripes with the

resent hall sys~

tem and think there is much to recommend it. But 1 at is irrelevant.
The residence situation, at best, is only partially related in the real

campus problems of irresponsible

conduct and academic apathy on

the part of a significant portion of the student body. Imaginative sug-
gestions are Certainly in order but let's not conﬁne them to the hall
system which may or may not be ll part ol llrger problems.

Steve Kent

Scarlet and Black

‘IINNELL COLLI‘I

61mm" on . .

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tarts

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at crinoell, in i. subscription Ynte ram oer
rtlioal y ar. lam pald subscriptions.

ausmcss MANAGER

It can: EDITOR
spears rmroa

Good-by: tor nit-hue. srr.
ELAI'URE eolron
CIRCULATION MANAGER
Lulu: or CHICAGO BUREAU
PtluloerﬂLnS ,
IiEPURFERS

aradley.

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SCARLET AND BLACK

 

Doug McCormac

Friday. October 0. "MI

The Grudge Pot

The professor glumly crossed ltis legs in the
”English hang,” and his pointed tnot swung regu-
larly like the pendulum of an antique clock.

"Today, class, we discuss . . .." he began, mut-
tering soitly toward the sheaf of papers on his desk.
But the tick cf the clock on the wall, sounding ex<
actly with the monotone of his Voice, made indiS«
tingllishable his words.

As he looked across the desert — the wasteland
of a classroom, gazing on the cactus stumps called
students and hoping fora response — he seemed
to see the tongues of several students ~ perhaps,
all of them - falling from their mouths and drop-
ping cn the desks.

One hay, conspicuously stupid-looking, had an
abnormally large and lazy tongue that dripped
saliva as it lay quivering on in wooden table.

The boy's eyes were swollen and half closed. an
it he knew that he was especially useless to this
class. The boy remained motionless when the pro
fessor asked who was Albee.

“Are you bored, class?” the scholar wondered
out loud.

“Are you just plain bored? It's a crime against
nature to be bored. Please, don't be bored. Be any-
thing but bored."

“l'm a duck," said a young man in the front
row, who happened to overhear. "Quack, quack,

quack." He jumped about the room in a squat posir
tion, his arms flapping like wings; but everyone
else seemed too bored to notice.

"You're not a duck. No one even thinks you're
a duck," said the proiessor, pointing to the passive
classroom as proof.

"Why don’t you shut up and cut the quackin’,"
shunted another student from the hack of the room.
“Let the prof do the talkin’. He knows who's a duck
and who isn't.”

"Yeah," said a tough-looking girl. “I've had dates
with guys like you. if it's not a duck, it's some-
thin’ else."

“You stink, fella," A large athlete said, rising
and pushing down the duckrmimic with a dirty en-
gineer boot. "The phonics are worst of all.”

“We do not seem to be advancing in our les-
sons," interrupted the professor, nervously avoid»
ing the sight of the prostrate youth.

"We don’t need you, either, prof.” said the
athlete, 3nd he smashed the podium with a side
lung kick of his boot, “Why don't you go back to
your room and have a martini land read I book?"

"Good idea!" exclaimed the scholar, hurriedly
departing. “And no class next week. 1 have a con-
ference in Hoboken.”

"Stoke the times while you’re leavin', prof,"
the athlete shouted down the hallway. "It‘s freeiin'
in here. X can almost see your breath!" The clasl
responded with a sharp, short burst of laughter.

 

David Lighthourne
trains and rivers

It didn’t take the SGA Ad-
visory Council very long Wednes-
day night to decide against mak-
ing monthly contributions to l
Des Moines civil rights project.
The idea of allocating student
funds was alien to most minds,
too big a responsibility for some,
and there was even talk of a
sizable opposition to such action
on the part of the body politic
being represented.

Keeping in mind that this is the
college generation becoming no
torious tor its political and social
conscience, supposedly ready to
take on any toe in its morally
resolute regard for minority
rights, and you have the strange
specter of liberal-arts Grinnell as
a blind island in a sea of student
awareness, an illiberal pocket of
nonsophisticates out in the prov~
inces who haven’t heard yet that
it's 1965. if you don’t want to go
that far, you can simply agree
that student apathy here even
cuts across threads of allegiance
running through the psychologi-
cal cloth of the entire genera-
tldn. SGA people, repmentstivss
for us all, apparently don't give
a lcatological expression Iboul
civil rights. it least not openly.
Paul Thurston was hinting at this
when he puzzled over the idea of
allocating all that money. for
damage bills every year and
then not being able to ﬁnd 350

“RIDDLE: How can you tell

. Great Society man 1mm

an old logeyPAnswer: Ask

him to identity'us. Granl.’

If the answer is‘a Civil War

genersr he’s a certified at -

if he says 'a lederal sub-

“dy’ he 3 For wimpy it it»;
n .. .t Ni.

no AllEVlEW,wm-
on, ii“ 2.

a month to spend on an ironlcal-
ly constructive effort.

The other side of the coin,
though, has it that somebody has
the generation all wrong, and
that political militants among us
are only the freakish party fa-
vors of a middle class society so
strong that it can undenvrite sur-
realist and orgiastic rituals of
seltincrimination at no expense
whenever it becomes either over-
ly bored or overly guilt-ridden,
In this view, disaffectit‘m with
the parent society has produced
a malaise so thorough and pro
found that most people don‘t
even bother with the symbolic
working out of their bitterness
as represented in things like
eccentricities of dress, experi-
mentation w i t h hallucinatory
drugs. or commitment to radical
causes, It simply does no good.
This kind of behavior is, instead.
increasingly restricted to young-
ti- and younger adherents, those
people not yet hip to their own
psychologies. A close examina-
tion of current high school fad!
will bear this out.

Accordingly, it was only the

'conjunction of the Negro's‘ in-

creased political aspirations with
a growing alienation trorn ordi-
nary instltutiona that allows
young radicals the respectability
they newly possess. The (act that
this genention‘s polities speaks

for no thorough ideology attests
to its inability to relate to ordie
nary channels of action and
change.

it this is in unusuauy black
portrait, it iii possibly because I
have gotten tired of loaklng at
gray ones for so long. This belies
a certain impatience on my part
with people who don‘t appreciate
the full significance of wide-
: p r e a d boredom. Admittedly,
there is a certain mood afoot in
the civil rights movement that
wants to shift emphasis 1mm
demonstrations to politics. and
there is certainly a strain ot
idealism somewhere along all
those people singing “We Shall
Overcome." There is more ideal-
ism, anyway, in singing tor the
sake of song when you could be
out voting against Des Moines
projects. in a curiously legslls
tic and ostensibly wholesome
way, the son has done its small
part in speaking for us all.

PHOTO CREDITS

pir- l: non Hodteme
aub nodlerns
aob ltodlei-ns
Steve Shanda

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