SCARLET AND ILACK

 

On the New Court System -

A revision of the antiquated judicial structure at Grinnell is
imperative. Both the American Civil Liberties Union (1) and the
MUP (2) emphasize student freedoms and rights over disciplinary
proceedings of college or university administrators. The judicial
study group at Grinnell has been attempting to bring this college
out of the dark ages of dictatorial and secret procedure and into
the era of due process. Their proposal indicates they have gener-
Illy followed the important guidelines of the AAUP and ACLU.

Careful reading of their proposal, however, raises several
questions, two oi singular importance. in section 1 under “6. Re-
view" the proposal contains a “tacked on" statement giving the
president of the college the right to overrule the court not only
when he is appealed to by a student but also whenever he decides
to do so. President Leggett has stated that he might actually nverr
rule a court decision and impose a more stringent punishment.
This power is beyond the AAUP guidelines and jeopardizes every-
thing the Community Court stands for,

Secondly, the section on a separate policy-making body — al—
though good in concept —- is nebulous and wrongly organized as
stated What are its functions? We can only hypothesize that the
poli es set forth will have a great hearing on student life and will
determine the practices of the Community Court. if this is so why
is the committee dominated (a to a) by Administration and faculty?
It is plain to see that on matters where there is a fundamental dif-
ference of viewpoint, such as the separation of students from the
college for visitations violations, the administration-faculty wiu
continually overrule the student opinion. The result may easily be
worse than what we have now. Why not an equal voice on the
policy-making body for those most affected by its actions?

L Academic Freedom and Civil Liberties of Students in Colleges and
universities, November, 1961 (ACLU pamphlet)

2. Bulletin. American Association of University Professors, Detember,
loss

Those Locks on the Loggia—

The logic behind bureaucratic rationale has to do with some-
thing like "the stable maintenance of an institution," we suppose.
It is a peculiar kind of logic; slightly irrelevant to human con-
slderaiions.

Thus a college, building dormitories as a place in which stu—
dents may “live,” iinally views don'ns as a place in which students
are controlled. Proceeding from the premise of this twisted logic,
the college locks up its women students (in order to separate them
from the men at night) and, consequently, imprisons them within

a fire trap.

As if this is not enough, fire drills have been used as a further
means of periodically checking on the actual nightly presence of
women students in the dorm. Women students safely locked up
(away from the men on campus), the institution ceases to concern
itself with the welfare oi the men; lire drills are not planned ior
them.

The SKrB questioned the safety of Ihe locked dorms at Grin»
nell — wherein no allowance is made for free and unobstructed
egress so necessary during the panic state which often accompanies
n fire, A letter to the State Fire Marshal elicted a response with-
in a week stating the lowa Code “panic bar” requirement. it takes
out a week to find out if buildings are up to par, but Grinllell’s
Direclor of the Physical Plant, Evan H. Walden, (8&6) prefers a
policy of “wait and let them inspect us."

The “enlightened response” of bureaucratic minds to criticism
about Grinnell's inadequacies —— in this case, faulty fire safety pre-
tautions~is, as usual, one of defensive reaction. Walden maintains
that women students would be quite safe in the event of fire; they
may be locked in with the blaze but they could traverse the ioggia
a long way in either direction to escape or could jump through
ﬁrst ﬂoor windows. We tried to picture this blaze scene — smoke-
!illed loggia, hundreds of milling women (like a Sunday stroll?) —-—
but it escaped us.

Walden further argues that, indeed, the truly irrelevant think-
klg on this issue is in the minds of those who talk of savings lives
(to. by leaving the loggia unlocked) because the dorms are, in
fact, ﬁreproof. To this claim we would simply cite the example of
the recent conlllagration at “iireprooi McCormick Place conveerb
lion hall, Chicago. We would also cite the 1945 Haines Hall fire
which Walden seems to ignore. ‘

The college will probably take its allotted three months to
raise iire precautions at Grinnell to standard, thus timing the night—
time unlocking oi the loggia with the enactment of are “no hours
for women” proposal. Yet we cannot help but think that even bu-
reaucratic minds might be affected by the possibility of disaster in
the interim. Although human considerations may sometimes be
relegated to last place, college “image” considerations usually
are not.

 

GRINNELL course

Scar-lei and Blue o........, t...

A weekly newspaper published Friday of the college year by unit.
neil Committee on Student Publications. irtprrscntcd for national ndver—
tislng_by National Adverilsmg Service, rnc., College Publishers Repre»
stntntivc, in East sort. Street, New York, 22, N.Y. Second class postage
paid lIK Grinncll, iowa. Subscription rule soon per rcnopl year. isoo paid
subscriptions.

EDITOR ..
nuerEss MANAGER
ASSOCIATE rnrron .

Kryrrytur Neumﬂn
.. snub wtu
Murine Gelber

Friday, Fohtuary M. l9”,

Faculty Comment

“On The Need for More Crazy Peep e”

By George Young
(Russian)

in preparing this essay I have, naturally, en-
gaged in considerable consultation and research.
1 have opened many books, I have heard many
opinions on every topic, both pro and con, both
solicited and unsolicited, both at home, at work
and at play, and after weighing all the issues
carefully, after meditating long on the complexi-
ties, subtleties, and priorities involved, 1 have
arrived at the unavoidable conclusion that we
need more crazy people at Grinnellr

True, we have John Crossett, Mac 'Nelson,
Ezra Mendelsohn, Arieti, and others; but who
else do we have? We are, nearly to a man (or
woman) good, serious, responsible, conscientious
students, janitors, teachers, housemothers, and
administrators, and this is fine, very fine, excel-
lent if you will. But we need more crazy people.

For instance, with no minclng words, when
was the last time a bull fight was held on the

central quad? When

did we last have a win-

ning, or losing, blad-

derball team? When

did we last graduate an

outstanding poet, or

even give him credit
for writing poetry?

True, it could be ar-

' gued that students at

a liberal arts college

in a cornfield should

study, not fight bulls.
should lose at loot-
Mr‘ Young ball and basketball.
not bladderball, should criticize and cate-
gorize poetry, not write it, And it could be argued
that instead of bullfights, bladderball games, and
poets what we really need are more committees,
committees on committees, more reports, more
proposals to foundations, more money, more
buildings, more medals, and all the other essen—
tials of higher education, And my only answer
would be: yes, but we also need more crazy
people.

Our problem is that the kind of crazy people
we need more of either never come here in the
first place, or they come here and Sniff around
and leave, or they settle in and gradually quit
being crazy, or they keep thinking alld acting
crazy and finally we just have to send them off
to lowa City.

To say it differently, a great college can be
small, but regardless of size it should be large
enough to accommodate the exceptional. And
while we are a good college, yea, even a very
fine college. we will never become the college we
could he, never even become the college our
catalog says we are, unless, despite all we say
we have done and are doing, we do more, much
more, to accommodate, even encourage, the ex-
ceptional.

As it is, we are turning out any number of
Rhodes scholar types, but no Rhodes scholars;
any number of beatnik types, but no zeal beats;
any number of people who write poetry, but no
poets; any number of good athletes, but no great
jocks.

Why? Every year, I understand, we admit
potential Rhodes scholars, potential anarchists,
potential poets, and potential jocks — but what
happens to them?

if we had a potentially brilliant poet, we would
probably do our best to turn him into a good
new critic, teach him to think analytically instead

of by analogy or worse. I don’t know what we
would do with a future Bill Russell, Churchill,
Einstein, or Malcom X. Try to make them more
like us, I suppose, and If that didn’t work, flunli
them out.

And I don’t know what we would do about
social regulations. if we had a female Wittgen-
stein would we let her live off campus? Or if we
had a Picasso wouldn’t we have to chase the fe-
male models out of his room and tell him to go
paint squirrels?

I am not suggesting that every rule-breaker is
a future Picasso, nor am 1 suggesting that we
should fill our campus with poets, nor am I even
suggesting that we need fewer normal, sane, re-
sponsible people. i just think that to give better
balance to our campus population we need a few
more unbalanced people. And, I think, one of the
reasons we don’t have a decent number of crazy
people, and one of the reasons we can’t keep
the few we do get is that we make it too difficult
to be crazy here; we have too many written and
unwritten rules against being crazy.

In one way or another, we rule out drunken<
ness, idleness, over-specialization, fornication,
under-specialization, nudity, prostitution, privacy,
obscenity, gluttony, bludgery, creativity, non-cre-
ativity, pettifoggery, and, alas, even motherhood.

Now as a student and teacher of language, 1
respect rules and regulations. I realize that with
out rules no one could live, work, or even write
a coherent sentence. but one of the maddening
problems which every already overworked and
underpaid modern language teacher must face
is that of the constant discrepancy between rules
and usage. When should the rule determine the
usage and when should the usage detennine the
mle? And no matter how many scholars work
at breakneck speed to turn out the latest and
most comprehensive grammars, the rules in
those grammars are always at least one step
behind the changes in the living language. Then,
even worse, once one has formulated the rules
which are not subject to change, he still has to
deal with the exceptions to those rules, and even
with the exceptions to the exceptions. And,
worst of all, it usually turns out that no matter
how good and important the rule, the exceptions
are even more important. For instance, in every
language I have studied, the verb “to be" is ir-
regular; and no matter how many or beautiful
the conjugation patterns, and no matter how es
sential these patterns are to the rest of the lan-
guage, the verb “to be” will just not fit in. In
fact in Russian, the verb "to be" was so irregu-
lar that the Russians, thinking they ought to be
more ciVllized and orderly, booted the present
tense of “to be" right out of their language.
That, I suppose, is one way to handle the prob-
lem oi irregularities and exceptions; only now,
no Russian in the world. unless he transfers to
another language, can say to himself or to any-
one else: “Look, here l am.” He has to say:
“Look, here I."

In conclusion, i won't draw any analogies or
propose any solutions. Hi just say that l eagerly
look forward to the day when bulliights are held
on the central quad, when bladderhall scores are
recorded in the 5!er ('1’), and most of all I look
forward to the day when Grinnell can grant to
poets and all kinds of crazy people not only honor-
ary degrees but even regular ones.

Nietzsche once had Zarathustra say: “I say
unto you: one must still have chaos in oneself
to be able to give birth to a danClng star.” I
know that as a serious little college in a corn-
field, we’re not in the dancing star business, but
still, maybe a little more chaos would be nice.

JllIIIlllllllllllllHillllllllllllllllllllllilllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllilllillllllllillllllllllIIllllllllllillllllllllllilllllUIIHHimlilllllllllillllllllllllllHIIIHllllllllllmllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllilllll IillllllilUlllllllllllllllllllllllllllillllll

tellers . . .

Defending the

P. E. Complex
To the Editor:

In the editorial stating the
case against the P. a. com.
plex Krys Neumon proposed
that the extravagant P. E, fa.
cilities be significantly modi-
fied. She neglected to point
out how tho modifications

could be made. We would like
to examine the supposedly ex~
travagant P. a. complex in
depth.

Miss Ncuman mentioned dis»
pleasure at being left in the
dark concerning decisions about
the P. E. complex. it is difficult
to avoid lack of information be-
cause the P. E. department
knows what facilities are re-
quired in a complex of this
nature and only the architects
are qualified to design the
structure. The p. E, building
committee was by no means

meeting behind closed doors.
Nantes of the student repre-
sentatives on this committee
were presented to the Senate.
The P. E. staff told the archi»
tects what facilities would be
needed and the architects de-
signed the complex around
these specifications. The fol-
lowing are the )ustlfications
tor the facilities which you see
as so expensive.
[nadequacies
(l) Darby gym is inadequato

See Lessons on page a

 

