::  Whenever you're ready.
::  Hi, my name is Mark W. Schumann. I currently live in Cleveland, Ohio, and I’m a member of the Grinnell College class of 1988. I graduated in ’88, started with the class of ’87 and dropped out halfway through. Took two years off after my second year and came back for a third year and actually piled on a ton of credits in, graduated in five years, on the three year program.
::  I’m looking here at the list of questions that the College thoughtfully provided. First one, why did you come to Grinnell College and first memory of the campus: those questions do not belong together for me because I’d already committed to being a student here. I’d already put down my deposit and made plans, before traveling anywhere west of about, y’know, the middle of Pennsylvania, which was pretty dumb on my part. Do not- I do not recommend signing up for a college sight-unseen; you should probably do a campus visit.
::  Circumstances were I couldn’t do that, and why I did come to Grinnell College was, in fact, because, a large part was, having grown up in Connecticut. I wanted to get out of Connecticut. All my family is there, and, you know, like a lot of Grinnell students I had some options on where to go to college. My uncle in particular was saying, “Go Ivy League. Apply to Yale. Be like me.” And I’m like, “Yeah, I don’t know if I want to go to college fifteen miles down the road from my parents,” and so that was, you know, anything in New England or, you know, mid-Atlantic was kind of excluded from my search.
::  And Grinnell was very competitive academically. I also got admitted to Carleton but they didn’t give as much financial aid, so of course I went to Grinnell.
::  They're not as good?
::  They're not as good, and then you’re stuck in Minnesota. Yeah. But actually, Carleton- I think there were a lot of students that I met at, you know, senior year high school gatherings, you know, summer gatherings where they said, “Yeah, I almost went to Carleton.” I said that to a Carleton student once and he said, “Yeah y’know what? Nobody says that at Carleton about Grinnell.” I’m just saying, “I almost went to"- Nobody says ‘I almost went to Grinnell.’ They just go.
::  Yeah, and basically, I was definitely thinking liberal arts. I was, in high school, I was one of the kids who was good at math but I was also good at writing and humanities stuff. A lot of friends went straight to engineering colleges and stuff and I’m like, “That’s not really for me,” even though I did end up doing some fairly technical work, I’m glad I went liberal arts.
::  I wanted liberal arts, I wanted to get out of New England, and was also looking for a small school. I didn’t want to get lost; I’d heard all the horror stories. My two older sisters had gone to the University of Connecticut and just, you know, overwhelmed. It’s just huge. And.. so I though,t yeah, this is working for me.
::  First memory of the campus. Wow, yeah, it’s very vivid. I was driving with my father. We drove from Wethersfield, Connecticut and took an overnight in Newton because we're- yeah. Yeah, I think we took an overnight in Newton, and it’s a 24 hour drive, and... from- at the time anyway, from Wethersfield. And so, I was driving a stick shift. I‘d just had my driver’s license like three months or something and I was driving the last leg. My father was finally tired; he can drive a long distance but, y’know.
::  And we got off- we got off I-80 at exit 182 and y’know, going down West Street and I frickin’ stalled that car a couple times on the way in because I’m going, “Wooooow. This place is awesome. I’m loving this town already. I’ve never seen, I’ve never been to Iowa before! I love this town!”
::  And it was distracting, and I ended up like, you know, stalling the car several times on 146, but I just remember being struck at how.. at how they didn’t lie. You know? You saw the pictures in the catalogue- yeah that’s real! Just, the feeling of being in a nice, removed, happy place where you can just study for four years, and.. That just felt very accurate. And so, I latched on very quickly and I keep thinking, boy, it’s a really really good thing I liked my first impression because I was stuck with that.
::  Yeah, what did my dorm room look like? They put me on Read 2nd. OK, I got a triple room. And it’s funny how people come here with such different experiences and expectations. You know, there’s a fair number of rich kids who go to Grinnell, and I realized you could tell by who gripes about how small the dorm rooms are. I was amazed because I’d never had my own room, and it was a triple with three separate rooms.
::  Nice.
::  And I had my own room, and I was so excited.
::  You know, it’s still there, on Read 2nd, and I was so excited that I was, of the three roommates, I got there first. And so I just, you know, I figured, 'I’m here first, I’m going to grab the best room.' And the triples on that floor were a big, outer room that’s all the traffic and two little rooms off to the side, and to me the awesome room was the big one even though people were going through. You know, didn’t occur to me that people walked through my room all the time. I’m just like, 'I got more space.' And to me that was just like, incredibly awesome.
::  But, y’know, basically if you’re listening to oral history you probably have a fairly good idea what the dorm rooms are like here. They- they were antiquated in the 1980s and they haven’t really changed. Even- and East Campus! I’m staying now in an East Campus room and they gave me a single and it is the size of a... It’s an embarrassment as a walk-in closet. It’s not that big a room.
::  Yeah, there are some cubby singles that are really small. It's a lilttle sad.
::  Yeah! For what people pay here... I’m just sayin’. I’m just sayin'.
::  Oh, boy, what kind of clothes did I wear? Whatever was cheapest. I specifically remember one year, and you know the winters are great, and I spent all my money on tuition and books and travel, and so I think it was my second year, I think, my shoes- the only shoes I really had were... What are they called? Docker shoes or boat shoes or whatever? Yeah, you’re staring at me ‘cause that’s an eighties thing. And I wore them completely through and like, in the winter I’ve got holes in my shoes in Grinnell.
::  I just, but it was very t-shirts and jeans. I kind of hung out with the hippies and the Republicans. They had their own styles and I compromised and just wore classic, y’know, classic t-shirt and jeans like, what you’re looking at right now. Nothing fancy.
::  I’m just kind- kinda scanning the list here. One of the questions is how has Grinnell changed since you were a student? I don’t know. I’m not a student now, y’know? But, what I keep hearing from the other alums and people my class year is, just at brunch today, everybody is saying, “I couldn’t get into Grinnell, now.” Not me, but.
::  Yeah, that’s actually- That’s something I wonder. I just graduated, and if I was applying now instead of four years ago, I don’t know if I would’ve gotten in.
::  It’s gotten harder in four years?
::  Ye- Because admissions have gone up.
::  Yep.
::  There’s more people applying. The classes behind my class, and my class was fairly large, have been, like, more... like, enrollment, larger. So... I don’t’ know. It kind of worries me.
::  Well, it doesn't- it shouldn’t have to worry you ‘cause you’re already in. But, East Campus.. You know, you’ve expanded the size of the student body. That should, all other things being equal, make the college slightly less selective because they’ve got more seats to fill. Hm? Not really, no.
::  There’s actually been a bit of a housing problem and they’re discussing adding another dorm onto East Campus-
::  Mhm.
::  -or, I think there’s another option. They’re also talking about putting, like, connecting the lounges in South Campus so that you don't have to walk out into the loggia.
::  Okay.
::  There are a lot of weird things.
::  That is weird. I was always South Campus. First year- Well, South that I- I called it East Campus when you lived across the street from South Campus. So first year I was in Read, that’s what they gave me, and second year, my second and third year, spent in the Vegetarian House which both years was at 1130 East Street, which is- It’s basically- it’s across the street from South Campus. It’s across the street from James.
::  Yeah it’s- 1130 East Street is a block from where I live now. Lived, 'cause I moved.
::  And that was a great house! I loved the house. It was a co-op house and I wasn’t a vegetarian at the time but, gosh, I’m hearing myself repeating a theme. The awesome thing about living in the vegetarian project house was that, you know, we were off the meal plan, and we had a co-op to buy our food and we’d make a big, all the off-campus houses, and they probably still do this, make a giant order at the beginning of the semester from the Blooming Prairie Co-op in Iowa City and a truck comes, a couple weeks later, with- and a semi comes loaded with food for the semester for all the houses.
::  And we’d put together an order and our order from Veggie House was around probably $2,000 per semester, in the 80s, and we had like $1000 left in the pool to buy food through the semester. So, it was $3,000 for ten students to eat all semester. So my food bill was $300 a semester.
::  Wow.
::  Yes!
::  That’s awesome.
::  And the meal plan was, I don’t know, it was more than $1,000. So I’m going, you know, I’m like, I’m trying to save money here. I’m looking at the price tag in this College and going, “That’s crazy.” My family goes to State University, y’know I’m not- So that was my living space experience and the Veggie House was.. It was interesting. I learned how to cook. I learned how to cook vegetarian food, again, not being a vegetarian at the time but I actually converted later, and that is- that has been a very useful skill. Being able to cook vegetarian makes you a lot of friends.
::  Oh, boy. Favorite place on the campus. Probably the Darby computer lab.
::  Oh, that’s interesting. I haven’t heard that one yet.
::  Oh, OK. Wow, you’ve not-? Yeah, there was a social scene at the Darby computer lab. I mean ,you know, the nerds, you know, the old computer nerds. As you’ve probably heard from legend, we didn’t have, you know, this is just when the IBM PC was existing, and it was not a serious thing in an academic environment.
::  We had, essentially, one computer for the entire student body to use with- It was one gigantic timeshare computer, and there were a couple hundred terminals throughout the campus but you’re actually on one computer. And there was clusters of them in some of the dorm lounges and then Carnegie- y'know, first floor of Carnegie had a bunch of them and the library had a bunch. You didn’t have a computer in your room. That just, you know, wasn’t, there was nothing to connect it to.
::  But yeah, the computer lab in Darby, which was right... it was in a room where you could see through a glass window; you see the actual computer systems, you know, these refrigerator-sized... Y'know, that was the PDP 11 and there was a different computer for the admins that are take back. But y’know old movies where they’re in the war room and there’s the big computer that has the tape spinning kinds of like – that’s really what it looked like! And, it was open all night, and so, if you’re a real geek, you’d sleep in the evening so you could be up in the middle of the night when there were fewer people on the system and thus it was faster for you.
::  And... the nighttime operator was a guy named Ron, who would... The big fast printer was inside the glass room so Ron would always hand you your output in the middle of the night. That was like our... it was like a ritual. And then, after about 2 AM you’d go on the doughnut run because you could burn infinite carbs and come back and work some more. Yeah, it was awesome. That was my hangout, totally. I also had 8 AM classes a lot. I don’t know why I did that.
::  Sounds awful.
::  Yeah.
::  I had 8 AM classes with Professor Adelberg, and he just didn’t have a reputation as the most user-friendly Math professor. So, you’d come in at eight o’clock, you’re exhausted, you know, you crammed breakfast and you tanked up on coffee and you’ve got, you know, you've got an hour and forty minute class with Professor Adelberg. It was Linear Algebra and life was very difficult. I pulled a B in that class, I’m very happy.
::  What- oh, what would I have done differently during my time at Grinnell College? This is a perfect question, because I have 1 ½ kids in college now, and my oldest daughter is a student at Oberlin, and I am telling her, go to the concerts. I had no background in current music coming to Grinnell, and I’d see posters on campus advertising various acts that were coming for free that the College paid for.
::  The Office of Student Life had a huge budget, because it takes a lot of money to get people to come and play for 200 people in Iowa and, y’know, relatively speaking, and I didn’t go to- I hardly went to any shows at all and come to find later it’s like, "Oh, those were like huge huge bands of the 1980s!" Like, I didn’t go to Koko Taylor. I didn’t go to, I’m probably saying the name wrong, Sun Rain and his Electric Orchestra. He came for free! I didn’t come to Violent Femmes. Like, they were seminal in 80s punk and I just, "Oh, no. Oh what’s that?" Y’know. "I think I should read a book instead." No!
::  There were all these amazing free shows that, if you were in the civilian world would be costing you today, 40 buck tickets, if you could get them and I’m like, I cannot believe I missed all that stuff. So- [Phone rings. ] Good lord. So I tell current students... I tell current students that, yeah, go to the shows. The music scene is amazing. Yeah. What else? What’s an interesting one for me to answer here from the list?
::  I just don’t know what’s on the list.
::  Okay, here. Take a look.
::  I don't know. So you’re the class of ’88.
::  Yeah.
::  What are- so we have a lot very specific Grinnell traditions. I’ve heard people talking about Alice. I don’t know how old Block Party is. Was Block Party a thing? Or we have certain, like, the Mary B. James party, things like that.
::  Yeah.
::  So, favorite like, traditions?
::  Yeah, let’s see, do you still have the Fertility Ritual around the Zirkle Monument?
::  No! What is that?
::  I don’t know. There was just a Fertility Ritual around the Zirkle Monument.
::  What’s the Circle… is that the sundial?
::  No, it’s next to the sundial, it’s the rusty… It used to-
::  Oh!
::  Yes!
::  In front of Noyce, OK, yeah.
::  Yes, yeah.
::  That’s a ritual. Let’s see…
::  What does it... entail? What do you do?
::  You don't- If you have to ask you will never understand.
::  I’ve never even heard of it. I don’t think we do that anymore.
::  Yeah, that’s- well that’s probably why there’s so much less fertility now.
::  ...Okay. I don't re- I don't-
::  That just turned really weird.
::  Yeah.
::  Yeah, they edit these, don’t they?
::  I don’t know. We might not, but...
::  Yeah, that strange, vaguely phallic sculpture in the middle that nobody really knows- y’know. Professor Zirkle made it, but I don’t know if anybody.. you know. It's art. You don’t explain what it is.
::  Yeah.
::  It’s just there. And so some students decided to, you know, for a time period, just as a- because it seemed like the right thing to do is they’d, you know, hold hands and dance around it and.. you know, praise the pagan goddesses and kinda make a thing out of it. That, y’know, is a regular thing.
::  Let's see. There was always the- there was a big party on South Campus every year called the- It was called the James Gang Bang and people realized that was just not a good name.
::  No.
::  No, and it turned the James… I think it just turned into the James Hall Ball, I think. But it was- the Alice in Wonderland party was a regular thing. Oh, Relays!
::  Yeah.
::  Yes, and of course, I- Before coming to reunion this year I had, the night before coming to reunion, I had dinner with three friends who, in Cleveland, who told me collectively that I am the squarest person they know.
::  OK.
::  OK.
::  So, jumping back 25 years, I was not a person who went to a lot of the parties and my idea of what was awesome about Relays, when everybody else is getting hammered on really bad beer, is back to the timesharing computer system. Man, nobody was on the VAX in those days, and it was fast. So, Relays weekend was awesome ‘cause you get like, a lot more work done on the computer. Yeah, so this is me and Grinnell traditions... Yeah, I don’t know a lot of other ones. Try another one on me.
::  Let me think. Mary B James is the cross dressing party we have now. Was that-?
::  Yeah! Yeah, yup. Yup, that’s right. Yes, that was a good one.
::  We also have- well- we have a disco party. I don’t know if that's something you would have done in the 80s.
::  Yeah, we wouldn’t have bothered with a disco party. It would’ve been redundant.
::  I feel like, by '80, is disco something you were like, “Oh, we don’t want that?”
::  Really, it was talked about as something that was past and, yeah, we were not a disco crowd. House music was pretty big.
::  The- I forget the exact name- the, whatever the name was of the black students’ organization was actually known for putting on really good parties and they put on the best dance parties, and I think they were usually in Gardner lounge, you know, under Main Hall, and everybody came to those. And that was, you know, that was where it was good dancing, good music. I don’t know if they still do it this way but you can’t use student fees to buy alcohol?
::  No, you can’t.
::  So the day before a party…
::  Collecting?
::  They just go collecting, so yeah, that was the thing. That’s how you got the beer and good God that was terrible beer. The drinking age was 19.
::  Yeah, I’ve heard that. That’s insane.
::  Is that crazy?
::  That’s insane to me.
::  Yeah. I’m not sure I agree it should be 21, but-
::  I don't either.
::  It’s weird. It’s weird that- you know, it's weird that it was 19, and so most students could drink legally and they weren’t that big on enforcing it for the 18 year olds.
::  Yeah. It's still a...
::  I guess the big tradition that I have heard about and I think is one of the older ones at Grinnell is Titular Head?
::  Oh, God, yes. That was actually, to me, that was actually pretty unpleasant to go to. Yeah, I mean- no.
::  I’ve actually, yeah, had some unpleasant Titular Head experiences.
::  Yeah. I didn’t think it was that much fun. God, I sound square.... Loud, hard to get in position to see much of the show. I had a table fall on my foot once. I'm just, eh, it just didn’t... I'm not punk enough to appreciate it.
::  I guess, the interesting thing to me is that there was an alum in here who said that Titular Head used to have live performances?
::  Yes!
::  Yeah, which we- that isn’t a thing anymore.
::  Really?
::  We have two MCs, one or two, generally, who try to be funny and fail to be funny-
::  Yep.
::  -and try to control the crowd and fail.
::  Which fails.
::  Yeah.
::  And then, people run up on stage and make out with them and that’s it.... Otherwise it’s films. It’s a film festival.
::  Oh, and films! I mean, I thought, "That sounds really weird without the films!"
::  Oh, sorry! I thought that part was assumed. I'm sorry, yeah, it’s a film festival.
::  Oh, OK.
::  Yeah, it was live- it was live performances with whatever kind of stupid stuff you could come up with and it might be actually- you know, you kind of didn’t want to waste good music or a good theater piece or anything on Titular Head because it was Titular Head, but- yeah, yeah. But, sometimes really hard to hear and I don’t do well with background noise. So I just, eh, you know, I went a couple times, like, "Eh, it was kinda cute." Kinda cute, not my thing, y'know?
::  Yeah. I don't know. Think that's good?
::  Let’s take- we can take one more for fun, here. Yeah, I think, actually, we’ve covered most of the…
::  Maybe, was there a professor who was really influential on you? Or a certain class?
::  Oh, yeah, I had a few. One that was- I think- it’s the funniest thing, sometimes it's one thing that’s said. Professor Adelberg, who again did not have a fabulous reputation as being really easy to work with. But, y’know you come to office hours and he’s really, really helpful, you know, and I, as a Math major, I still struggled with his classes a lot of the time. I took like, I think three of his classes.
::  And I just remember the dumbest thing where I’d go into office hours and I’m working on a proof in something in Complex Analysis, y’know, a senior level class, and I’m doing this proof that’s like out to- no, it was a 200-level class, previously. And I got this proof that’s going on seven pages, and he just looks at me and he says, “It’s a 200-level class. There are no seven page proofs in the 200.” You know? "If you find yourself taking up more than two sheets of paper on a proof in a 200 level class, you know you’re wrong." And I was like, “That’s actually kind of profound.” There’s a lot of times when your solution to a problem is way more complicated than the context. And I go, “Oh, that’s,” and I use that a lot. I actually use that a lot. Yeah.
::  Another big one was Dennis Haas who was the Chaplin and the Religious Studies professor. I only took one Religious Studies class and he was the faculty member, but also he was the faculty advisor for the student anti-war group at that time, and we did some pretty intense activism for the time and it was a really amazing bonding experience with some of the other people in that group who I still hang with. So that’s pretty amazing.
::  And also, I just- I found the Math department in general very welcoming. You know, they’re teaching stuff that for me was very interesting but also very challenging, and I felt like they.... they were very disposed to help everyone succeed and I just really appreciated that.
::  Sounds good.
::  Yeah, I love the Math department, yes.
::  That's good.
::  Yes. So thank you!
::  Oh! Thanks!
::  This has been great!
::  Yeah.
