Alenka Figa::  Okay.
David Silverman & Alenka Figa::  Alright. My name is David Silverman. I currently live in Chicago, Illinois. I am a member of the Grinnell College class of ’93, 1993. And I should.. just, answer the questions?
David Silverman & Alenka Figa::  Or, any story you want to tell, anything you find meaningful. It’s up to you.
David Silverman::  OK, well, I came to the College in sort of an.. non-tradi- as a non-traditional student ‘cause I had transferred here after going to two previous colleges and I took a couple of years off before the second college, lived and worked in Chicago, and I knew a bunch of Grinnell people in Chicago who had recently graduated and I became acquainted through their stories about Grinnell and actually had some friend’s acquaintances who were here.
David Silverman::  I came as a prospective student and was sort of guided around by these people who I already knew. I remember the first night that I was here as a prospective student. I didn’t go on any of the College guided tours because I had my own friend who was guiding me around, and, you know, went to a party at Band-Aid House, Band-Aid House on Broad Street, which I don’t think is in existence anymore. But it was a student, a non-college owned student house. And, it was a big party with a lot of very Grinnell-like people, long hair, no shoes and I had a good time.
David Silverman::  But I remember walking back across Central campus and looking up at the sky, and I saw more stars than I had ever imagined seeing. And it was a very sort of, spiritual experience here in Grinnell. And, y'know, everything smelled different. I think alfalfa was being harvested at the time and I remember that very unique smell, looking at the stars and just feeling like, very warm and you know, part of the universe. And I’m not an overly spiritual person who has many feelings like that but it was a really good feeling.
David Silverman::  I had a great experience being here, and I came here as a transfer student when I was 22, so everybody was... everybody that was here during New Student days was 18, and I was much older. And I just remember the first night getting into all these really good conversations, long conversations with people who were much younger than I was.
David Silverman::  And... I guess I’ll jump ahead. Was there a professor, student or staff member who had a particularly strong influence in my life? There were a... I think two that did. But, the first... the one that had the strongest impact was my advisor, Philosophy professor, who came to Grinnell when I was already here, Johanna Meehan. And I just sat down and talked to her yesterday, but...
David Silverman::  I remember her coming to campus, and wanting to do an independent study in the area that she was an expert in. And, came to her office, she loaded me with books and I said, “So does that mean you're going to- does that mean you would agree to do it?” and she’s like, “Yeah, sure, yeah,” like it wasn’t even a question. She just sort of took me under her wing and was just very warm and a good friend. I babysat for her baby who I just learned graduated college last year. That was kind of a shock. She was, just a very good, influential person in my life.
David Silverman::  The other person was another Philosophy professor, Alan Schrift, who... just was... lit a spark and really talked to me and to other students on this level that brought us up... I just remembered writing good papers because I- you know, he wasn’t going to accept anything less than a really great paper. But, I was just really inspired by his courses and discussions in his classes.
David Silverman::  What are the best memories of time at Grinnell? It’s funny, being here for reunion weekend, I’ve had all these flashes and glimpses of memories that I have not thought of in a long, long time, but.... I don’t have like, the best memories, but I have these like, very... kind of flashes of very ordinary memories. Sitting in the Forum Grill, which is I guess no longer the Forum Grill. It was the Student Center and there was always a bunch of people there drinking coffee, smoking cigarettes, which wouldn’t happen these days.
David Silverman::  There was a woman who worked at the Forum Grill, an elderly woman named Twyla, and I remember her shouting. A lot of my memories are like, auditory memories that.... I remember hearing sounds and voices and noises and one of the auditory memories I have is Twyla yelling, “BAGEL!” for, you know, somebody that had ordered a bagel.
David Silverman & Alenka Figa::  And... Just ordinary things and strange things, like being in the Quad eating lunch, which, also, people won’t do anymore, and putting little slices of banana peels underneath the legs – the feet of the chair and sliding across the floor, which I never realized that you could do.
David Silverman & Alenka Figa::  I didn't even-
David Silverman & Alenka Figa::  Try it, it works.
David Silverman::  Nudity. [Alenka laughs.]
David Silverman::  Lots of nudity. Streaking, but also not streaking, like, I remember one of my first weeks here there were these guys playing Frisbee in Central campus Friday afternoon after all the classes had ended, naked. Building and grounds people came out to chase them away but they didn’t want to be chased away so they just kept playing Frisbee naked.
David Silverman & Alenka Figa::  And, naked dinner parties, which were oddly not erotic, and kind of... the kind of experiences that you don’t- you wouldn’t have outside of Grinnell- I haven’t had outside of Grinnell.
David Silverman & Alenka Figa::  Like, no naked dinner parties?
David Silverman & Alenka Figa::  No naked dinner parties, but you know, the rules were different when you’re in a college in the middle of Iowa. I was freer to do- everybody was freer to do those kinds of things.
David Silverman::  What did my dorm room look like? Well, because I was an older student, when I got here, I was assigned a single without ever having requested a single. It was the first floor of Loose and I just remember how bare and stark it was when I moved in. Just cold, hard linoleum floor, very simple bed frame, and... yeah, I really don’t think I put much more into it.
David Silverman & Alenka Figa::  I lived off-campus after that, in a house called Periphery House, which I don’t think is a student house anymore. It was at the end of Elm Street and it was just a dilapidated old house that students had lived, for maybe 20 years prior to that. And, as students left each year, they just sort of left things lying around, old couches, and it just.. it was grubby and falling apart, but it was really kind of fun to live with a bunch of people in a house, but I’m getting off-topic ‘cause that’s not my dorm room, but..
David Silverman & Alenka Figa::  It inclu- don't worry about it.
David Silverman & Alenka Figa::  What kind of clothes did you wear every day as a Grinnell student? On special occasions?
David Silverman & Alenka Figa::  I'd mention nudity so, it kinda counts.
David Silverman & Alenka Figa::  Well, yeah, nudity was a uniform but that wasn’t an everyday thing. I remember having a pair of like these Ikat, African woven pants that was very hippie-ish, and my girlfriend at the time kind of stole them and I was upset. I remember- you know, of course, I wore like, you know regular jeans and whatever. Birkenstocks, of course.
David Silverman::  But, there was a sale on campus of these Peruvian sweaters, like, handmade Peruvian sweaters that were like this coarse Alpaca wool, and they... You know, I bought one because they were- you know, they had come to campus selling these things and bought one. It was really heavy, heavy, very oily wool with these burrs and brambles still stuck in the wool from the Alpaca, and I had that for years. I don’t know what happened to it but I wore that all the time.
David Silverman::  I wore a lot of, kind of thrift store clothes that I had got in Chicago, like tweed jackets and flannel shirts. Very, I don’t know, typical college stuff. I- the only time I ever remember dressing nicely was to Waltz, and wore this vintage suit I had that you know, was kind of Mad Men era suit. Waltz was like the excuse one time a semester to dress up and some people did, some people didn’t. Some people made kind of a ironic joke about it and...
David Silverman & Alenka Figa::  I remember other people wearing, y’know, pajamas to class or going shoeless a lot of the time. There was a guy I remember that... he never put on a pair of shoes. Dead of winter, he was barefoot.
David Silverman & Alenka Figa::  Did he have wrinkle lines?
David Silverman & Alenka Figa::  Yeah.
David Silverman & Alenka Figa::  Let's see... What... book influenced you most in college.. Peer Gynt, by Henrik Ibsen. I read it as part of a seminar, Ibsen, Ginsberg and Chekov, taught by Ellen Mease.
David Silverman & Alenka Figa::  She’s still here.
David Silverman & Alenka Figa::  I just saw her yesterday. She left me a note saying she wanted to find me.
David Silverman::  And, it’s kind of especially appropriate for this weekend, because Peer Gynt told the story of this.. kind of happy-go-lucky guy who went on... He saw his life as a big adventure so he went from place-to-place doing things and always just left the last thing behind without any sort of need- desire to... of any sort of continuity. He came to a point in his life that, this realization, that his life had become dissolute. That there was no sense of self he had because he never connected his present with his past.
David Silverman::  And... I think I have struggled through, since then, with not being a Peer Gynt and trying to maintain contact with people I knew and experiences I had, and not just moving on aimlessly through life without looking back and tying- putting myself into the fabric of my life. And Reunion has been very valuable to me because I realize that this is still a part of my life. These people are still a part of my life. I don’t want to ever, you know, lose touch with that.. you know, lose touch with what this experience, being here for four years or not even four years, but being here, meant to me and continues to mean to me, even as I go and do the next thing in life. So, Peer Gynt, Henrik Ibsen.
David Silverman::  Memories or images you have of the town of Grinnell. McNally’s Grocery store, the Longhorn- which was a diner that I understand doesn’t exist any longer. It wasn’t a- you know, it wasn't good, place to eat but it was the kind of place that had a lunch counter. Townspeople would regularly line up at the lunch counter and talk about the weather, talk about sports, talk about whatever topics of the day. I always had a friendly experience there, a friendly welcome there and people were interested. Town people were interested in knowing what.. you know, who I was and what I was interested in, and...
David Silverman & Alenka Figa::  I don’t think I ever went on a bakery run, my time here. I know that was like a... standard thing to do, but I... didn’t really do that.
David Silverman & Alenka Figa::  Yeah. You could, if you ever get a chance.
David Silverman & Alenka Figa::  Yeah... The- I worked at a couple jobs in town. I worked at Montessori School preschool, and I forget what road it’s on. It’s on the road towards Rock Creek State Park. I don’t know if it’s there anymore but it’s in the little house, run by two elderly women, who I hope are still around.
David Silverman & Alenka Figa::  I worked at The Last Egyptian, which was a restaurant that Kamal opened, and I just ran into him a couple of days ago. He’s now the owner of Relish. I remember working The Last Egyptian and he would- Kamal always made homemade baklava, and...
David Silverman & Alenka Figa::  What was that? David|And he... I remember him saying, “We need to sell some of that. Save some for the customers.”
David Silverman::  I remember the churches in town and the carillon bells of the churches. And, y’know, I lived off-campus for a large part of my time here, so I... you know, lived in town. And, I should say that I had some very difficult patches when I was here, emotionally, and I availed myself of the Poweshiek County Mental Health Center... which was... memorable. It sort of made me f- gave me the impulse- impetus to look for healing in different ways since then... And I was glad that that facility existed, that that place existed in town.
David Silverman::  How has Grinnell changed since I was a student? Well, when I- I haven’t been here for nineteen years. Until Thursday I had not come here since graduation day. It was really... stark to pull up and see a campus that looked so different than it did when I was here. And I tri- I talked to myself to say that I- you know, I couldn’t expect that, I haven’t been here for twenty years, and that everything should look the same. It looks so much different. There is so much new... aspects to the landscape here.
David Silverman::  I liked how it looked when I was here, more than I do now. South Campus was a field that... or not South Campus, East Campus was a field that I- I had a boomerang, I used to go and throw my boomerang out in that field. It was just an empty, empty field, lined with tall pine trees. There was a lot less parking... fewer parking lots. The Bucksbaum Center was just the... much- it was the Fine Arts building. It was much smaller, and as you looked out the back window of Burling Library toward Sixth Avenue, it was just an open field of trees and boulders and it was a very serene, placid scene, when you were studying, looking out south from Burling Library.
David Silverman::  I don’t know how it’s changed in the sense of what this campus feels like when there are students here, and how different the vibe or the ethos is. You know, I couldn’t comment on that. There are many more students here than when I was here. But, I think a lot of what I really enjoyed about, appreciated about the beauty of the physical surroundings was the starkness, the shabbiness of some things... the emptiness of spaces, that I think has diminished in the past twenty years.
David Silverman::  I think Harris- Harris was the first building that was built when I was here that was new, modern looking, and people called it The Mall, and... It was- it was itself an imposition in Mac Field and surrounding areas, but... It’s less empty, which I think is less good.
David Silverman::  Some things that are no longer available on campus but were meaningful to you: buildings, programs, activities- Well, you know, continuing on the same theme, I was walking around Friday morning just by myself. My wife is here. She didn’t go to Grinnell. And I just... she was taking a nap and I just took a walk around and I walked down the Loggia of South Campus where I spent my first year and tried to peek into Quad and I couldn’t really see in. I really... Quad was very meaningful to me and I, you know, that was sort of my home base.
David Silverman::  The Forum was another place that I walked into and... there were ghosts. I mean it was- I- like, in my memory I heard all the commotion and people and doors opening and closing and... but yet, it was empty. And there were- there was a sort of creative computing area set up that was very like, kind of, haphazard and makeshift, boxes strewn around. The room that was between the Grill and North Lounge of the Forum was this room you walked up a couple steps and there used to be a pool table and some pinball machines. I spent way too much time procrastinating, feeding quarters in the pinball machines there and playing pool.
David Silverman::  And I just remember sitting in the Bertoia chairs inside the Forum Grill, or taking naps in there, or in North Lounge, or in South Lounge. And.. I really wanted to see it. I mean, I really wa- I really had hoped that I’d come back and it would just be filled with people and filled with students and, you know, JRC has replaced that, and I don’t have any emotional connection with that. I know that students here do because it’s their Student Center, but to me it’s just a new building. So I really.. I do miss- did miss that.
David Silverman::  Burling Library looks more or less the same and that’s the other place that I spent most of my time and some of my DNA is still somewhere in there. I spent a lot of time in Burling because I was always behind in my reading and workload, and I knew people that were always on top of things and I was never one of those people. I remember closing Burling many nights at one or two AM, whenever it closed.
David Silverman & Alenka Figa::  If you knew then what you know now, what would you have done differently during your time at Grinnell College? I wouldn’t have worried so much about studying.
David Silverman & Alenka Figa::  Really?
David Silverman & Alenka Figa::  Yeah. You know, I was always stressed about reading everything and writing every paper, and... people would say “Oh, you do you wanna do this? You wanna come do this?” I'm like, “No, I gotta study.” You know, and whether I got an A or a B on the paper now wouldn’t have mattered. And... I’ve learned in the time since then to take a long view of things, not to get too stressed about the minutia and about doing everything perfectly and exactly and sacrificing good experiences to get things done because you felt an overwhelming sense of responsibility.
David Silverman::  So, I would have not worked as hard and paid more attention and devoted more time towards social things: hanging out with people and singing and listening to music. I know there was always people with guitars around, singing songs and I would like to have had more memories of doing that than I have. If you met your spouse/partner at Grinnell, describe how you met or fell in love. Not applicable.
David Silverman & Alenka Figa::  How would you compare the students of today with your classmates? I don’t know. I didn't- I think you’re the student that I’ve seen more, other than the people who registered me, but...
David Silverman & Alenka Figa::  I don’t know how good a sample we are of our class, too. We got hired to work reunion for whatever skills- or whatever...
David Silverman & Alenka Figa::  Yeah, I mean, students then were different, you know, depending who you talked to. But, I can say what I hope is that, the degree of confidence and iconoclasm, doing things not according to any sort of template, still exists.
Alenka Figa & David Silverman::  I'm very confident. I’m the class of 2012 and we are a very confident class.
Alenka Figa & David Silverman::  Yeah, but I know- I don’t know the students here but I know young people have this confidence today that is a different kind of confidence that... You know, I don’t wanna be like, an insulting, curmudgeonly old man that.... But they- younger people today have a lot more that they sort of expect and demand... and I don’t think we did, as much.
David Silverman::  I don’t think anybody felt entitled to anything, but at the same time, there was this audacity that I think typified Grinnell students. That- you know, going back to naked Frisbee on the lawn, or just going off to do- pursue strange ideas, plot... plot our own courses, and be very challenging, and I think that was a Grinnell thing. I don’t think that twenty years ago other places had as much of that as did Grinnell.
David Silverman::  But, at the same time we were very, like, rigorous and worked hard to do things the right way. And I know I’m idealizing. Some people didn’t work hard, but I think- you know, some people screwed around, but there were a lot of hardworking people when I was here, and, you know, I really felt kind of that pressure too, like, I have a lot to live up to because these other people are doing these, you know, fantastic things, creative things. I have to be something. I have to do something with my life that is that special. And it’s harder when, having left here, and getting thrust back into the world where... you don’t have that freedom, and you have to take jobs that are just stupid jobs that- people want you to do stupid things. Grinnell, it was, you didn’t have any of that.
David Silverman & Alenka Figa::  Describe students, campus life as you experienced it during your time at Grinnell. I think I just have....
David Silverman & Alenka Figa::  Yeah, there might be a lot of repetition in the questions.
David Silverman & Alenka Figa::  Okay. If you were writing a history of Grinnell College, what would you include from your years here? Well, there was something that I think- that was important to me that happened at Grinnell that, I don’t know if anybody else remembers, or.... But, there was a week-long symposium that was part of the Rosenfield Program on Civil Rights, and as part of the symposium there was a speaker invited to campus from the Nation of Islam. And... this person was a devotee of Louis Farrakhan, and I was active in the Jewish student group Chalutzim, and.. he gave a couple talks on campus.
David Silverman::  One was in front of a larger audience in South Lounge, of the Forum, and he said a lot of very incendiary and very troubling and very racist things that everybody accepted because- well, not everybody, but was largely accepted. Nobody was really keen to speak out and I think that if somebody else, a white person, had said something similar, it would have crazed a big stir, a furor. People accepted it because it was couched as part of a Civil Rights symposium and he was from the Nation of Islam, and he was African American.
David Silverman::  And it was troubling to me because a lot of things were kind of coded, but a lot of things were very overt. He gave another talk elsewhere on campus, in the Black Cultural Center, that was not coded and it was very hateful. And... some Jewish students – and they were hateful towards women, hateful towards non-black Muslims, hateful towards Jews - and so I spoke out in the S&B, I and a couple other Jewish students spoke out about the decision to invite somebody and the lack of any critical response to him. There were no critical questions asked about some of the things he said. He was given so much more polite reception than he deserved, I felt.
David Silverman::  And in the aftermath of that there was a big controversy. Things got out of.. were taken out of context about Jewish student groups wanting to disallow black speakers coming to campus, and as a result of that there was a few meetings between some representatives of the Jewish student group and some of the representatives of the Black Cultural Center and the African American community in Grinnell, and it was decided to sort of open up the discussion between larger audiences and it was very kind of cathartic, painful. I ended up remaining friends with one of the black students who was... had an adversarial relationship, at the beginning, and we’re, y’know, Facebook friends now.
David Silverman::  It was a good experience in conflicting worldviews and conflicts that arise from them, and resolving... issues that are- that were emotional and emotionally charged, when people come from completely different worldviews. So, I think more than anything else, that I learned a lot about- it was a good Grinnell experience that I had.
David Silverman & Alenka Figa::  But, the next year Julius Lester came to campus and I remember meeting him and asking him if he would come to Grinnell, and he did. Julius Lester was a professor of History at University of Massachusetts in Amherst and he was an... African American social activist during the sixties, a folk singer and scholar, and he wrote a book called Lovesong where he talked about his conversion to Judaism. So, he had.. combined worldviews and it was a, I think, productive episode at Grinnell that I was in the middle of.
David Silverman & Alenka Figa::  OK, thank you.
David Silverman & Alenka Figa::  Probably had the longest interview of any...
David Silverman & Alenka Figa::  No, it's alright.
