Brenna Ross::  Start by saying - ...alright, it's going - your name, where you currently live and your class year.
Paul Pasquesi::  Paul Pasquesi, Oak Park Illinois, Grinnell class of 2001.
Brenna Ross::  All right, so I guess we’ll just start at the top. Why did you come to Grinnell?
Paul Pasquesi::  I came to Grinnell because they recruited me to run cross country for them. My junior of high school I went down state for cross country, finished 36th in the state, got invited to go to China on this like, running team. So they... Will Freeman tried to recruit me pretty heavily. There were a couple other schools I was looking at early on in the process. I decided I didn’t want to do D1, division one schools because I went Arizona and they were basically like, “Yeah, if you’ve got a test you don’t need to worry about,” and I was like, “So what, like I make it up later?” and they were like, “No, you just don’t have to take it.” I was like, “Really? You’re gonna fuck my education for cross country? I can’t imagine you sell that many short shorts and tank tops. That doesn’t seem reasonable.”
Paul Pasquesi::  So it came down to it and Grinnell, between the scholarships I got and some of the merit stuff and kind of padding this- for cross country, ‘cause they can’t officially give money, they pad. Sorry, this might have to get edited later. I only would’ve owed like five thousand, and I had another school that was gonna give me a full ride and I was talking to my dad about it. He said, “Well, Grinnell is a better rated school. Academically, it's more rigorous. If you go there and you decide you want to transfer, it'll be easier to make sure your credits transfer. If you start at this school which isn’t as rigorous, and then go to Grinnell, they might not transfer. So, start at Grinnell, see if you like it.” So that’s how I ended up here.
Brenna Ross::  So what was your first memory of being on campus?
Paul Pasquesi::  That was a prospective weekend. They stuck me with a runner who I guess was the top runner at the time, the year ahead of me, and he did not like me, and he ditched me while I was there. So, I got stuck with some other kids who were like Physics majors and I have no mathematical bones in my body. So I hung out with them for the weekend and they were really cool and I enjoyed talking with them and I was like, “Wow, these are people I would not normally hang out with and I get along with them this well, then this would probably be a fine school to go to.” But, yeah. So that’s my first memory on campus.
Brenna Ross::  That's a good memory. So, was there a professor or student, staff who particularly influenced you?
Paul Pasquesi::  Professor-wise, I think the ones I liked most were Kesho Scott, who at the time was American Studies and Sociology. I don’t even know if she’s still here, but she was phenomenal. She was just like this crazy, eclectic, awesome woman who had been, like, she was an ex-Black Panther; she had three PhDs and she’s dyslexic so the fact that she did three PhDs is even more amazing. She just made class kind of fun and in-your-face and she was very good at like, “multi-perspectivalism,” looking at things from multiple perspectives, so class was always kind of fun and interesting with her.
Paul Pasquesi::  Another one was Henry Rietz who was, he was my advisor for Religious Studies and I always enjoyed his classes. I thought he did a good job hearing other people’s viewpoints and kind of trying to get you to think about things in a couple other ways. He was a professor that didn’t kind of ram his own ideology on you. I felt like there were some teachers who it was kinda like, “It’s my class; this is what I believe and you’re also going to believe this or you’re going to fail. If you argue against any of my points on the test or in a paper, you will not succeed,” and I didn’t think Henry did that. I thought that was very cool that he was open to it as long as you can defend it. So, he was more looking at your method, your process rather than that. So, I think those two were probably my favorites.
Brenna Ross & Paul Pasquesi::  Very cool. So, what would you say is your best memory of Grinnell?
Brenna Ross & Paul Pasquesi::  I’d rather skip that question. I don’t think in terms of superlatives like ever, so, which is a superlative statement. I just don’t so, there’s a lot of very good memories, a lot of what I remember. I’ll probably get some of them further down on the list.
Brenna Ross::  All right, so, I guess, going to the next one, where did you live on campus and what was it like?
Paul Pasquesi::  I was in Norris fourth my freshman year and I don’t know if it’s still the case but Norris was like the pariah dorm that nobody wanted to venture up to. People were like, “It’s so far, it’s North campus!” So a bunch of us, ‘cause mainly freshman are in there because no upperclassmen want to live there unless it’s the only place they can get a single. So, we decided to throw a party to like, make people come up there and we just pimped the hell out of this party. We had like signs all over the place. We, like, chalked up the sidewalk. This guy Dan Hackbarth and I DJed it and it was the first time I DJed on campus and I became kind of one of the campus DJs so that by the time I was a junior, senior I was DJing a party almost every weekend.
Paul Pasquesi::  It was awesome, and we had a corner where we had kegs. We also had hard liquor; we had made goodie bags for people with random tchotchke stuff we collected with people who like, brought it to college and then didn’t know what to do with it. So it was like, pins, patches and buttons and condoms and lollipops. We were like, “Do you think it might be a problem that some of the pins might puncture the condoms, in which case there might be a lot of conceptions that are our fault?” We kind of did this whole thing but we made it this extravaganza and it was very popular.
Paul Pasquesi::  It was cool because then we got offered more gigs to DJ or to throw parties which was kind of fun. So, that was like the Norris fourth, or actually the Norris freshman party. There were a lot of people on the third floor or the second floor, actually quite a lot of whom are here this weekend. So that was cool, and then later on I lived in Cleveland co-op and then off-campus housing.
Brenna Ross & Paul Pasquesi::  Very cool. So, what kind of clothes did you wear as an everyday Grinnell student?
Brenna Ross & Paul Pasquesi::  Oh God, when I was a student here, I had a Mohawk for most of the time I was here so it was like a Mohawk that was more like a dreadhawk so it was like dreadlocks, like, braids at the top of my head that were like a fin and then my head just shaved on the sides. So, there was that and then clothing-wise I was sort of known on campus for two things which both got mentioned in the Princeton Review, which was interesting one year, which was...
Paul Pasquesi::  I was... There were four of us named Paul that were my year and so they had to distinguish between us. So one of them was socialist-Jewish Paul, or stinky Paul, he went through a phase where he wore the same sweater for three months. One of the Pauls was hippie Paul, and then there was vegan Paul or tall Paul, and then I was naked Paul or pubic Paul because I dyed my pubes blue freshman year. Then, because I was frequently streaking it was evident that I was smurfy down-under to all, and I also cross-dressed a fair amount but not like, drag queen, more just like a guy in a dress with a Mohawk wearin’ fishnets, combat boots, in a dress. So that was kind of, I guess, my fashion, because I didn’t, I came from a family that didn’t have a lot of money so I would go to thrift stores and pick up like, Nancy Sinatra, these-boots-are-made-for-walkin’ kind of dresses because they were like a dollar.
Brenna Ross & Paul Pasquesi::  Very cool. So, what memories do you have of the town of Grinnell?
Brenna Ross & Paul Pasquesi::  Fairly positive. The Phoenix was always one of those places that you wanted to go eat but could not afford to go eat. My last semester here, the woman I was dating worked there so that was kinda cool. I got to eat there a couple times. The Pub was the bar that allowed college students. There was another place that, Main street, and they kind of got into this thing where they stopped letting college students in so then everyone started going to the Pub. And then, there was a pizza place in town.
Paul Pasquesi::  Oh, I remember a place that’s not there now was called The Longhorn and it was this phenomenal breakfast place on Sundays where they had this lumberjack special for five dollars. It was three pancakes, two sides of ham, one side of bacon, three eggs, any way you wanted ‘em, hash browns, a cup of coffee and a juice for five dollars, which was amazing. So, Sunday morning, it’s perfect, it was awesome, but they, I don’t know if they could sustain their business or not but they went out of business a couple times and reopened a couple times.
Paul Pasquesi & Brenna Ross::  The other thing in town that used to be there... There used to be a Greyhound for Chicago that would stop in Grinnell. I don’t know if it still does it again, but they stopped doing it for a while.
Paul Pasquesi & Brenna Ross::  I think it might.
Paul Pasquesi::  OK. It worked my freshman year and then sophomore, junior, senior year I could never take Greyhound again because it didn’t stop here. But, the town, I have fairly positive memories. I don’t remember ever having conflicts with townies or anything. People would be like, “Oh, the townies,” and I’d be like, “I don’t know, I think they’re all pretty cool people. I’ve never had a problem,” which is telling something because I would like walking around town with a dress on and like a dude with a Mohawk and no one was ever like, “Faggot!” No one ever said anything to me, they were always like, “Why are you wearing a dress?” “Oh, ‘cause I’ve got good legs,” and they were like, “Oh, all right. Fair point.” It was very funny.
Paul Pasquesi::  So, I thought the.. I never had a perception of a negative relationship until our senior year. The school apparently backed a candidate for sheriff that lost. So the sheriff that came in that did not like the school, and there was a party going on at Harris where like the sound system had blown, so it actually wasn’t working when the party started and the cop showed up saying that there was a noise complaint. We were like, “Well, that’s interesting because the sound system’s out and it hasn’t worked all night, so there hasn’t’ been any sound coming from this.” Then he tried to arrest us for being disrespectful and I was like, “That’s not a crime. You came into Harris saying there was a problem that clearly did not exist. So if I showed up to your house and was like, ‘I’m doing a citizen’s arrest because you’re a terrorist,’ and you were like, ‘you can’t prove that,’ and I was like, ‘I don’t care I’m arresting you anyway,’ see? That’s just arrogant."
Paul Pasquesi::  So we have this interesting confrontation and there was just a series of these where they would just show up and be like, “We’re gonna card everybody here for alcohol and blah blah blah,” and it was like, “OK.” So then they card everyone, “You’re underage, you can’t have beer.” “Yes, I can. I can drink beer, I can have beer, I just can’t pay for beer or be sold beer if I’m underage.” So we had those legal conversations with them which was awesome because a lot of us got to bone up on the legalities of Iowa state law on alcohol and things like that, but that was only my senior year that that happened.
Brenna Ross & Paul Pasquesi::  Interesting. So, I guess how has Grinnell changed?
Brenna Ross & Paul Pasquesi::  I don’t know. The way some of my former students talk about it, I mean, it still sounds like it’s fairly similar. I think every generation of students is always like, “Oh, the new incoming kids are so conservative, or they’re so blah. They're so boring,” but I think that’s just, you wanna think you were the coolest ever so... I mean it sounds like they’re doing cool things. Like, one of my former students that’s here now does a lot of the Titular Head stuff and sounds like it’s still kind of as wonderfully absurd and fun as it was then. One of my students did a study abroad thing in Sri Lanka, just kind of cool experiences. So I think it sounds like it’s all still doing a lot of the same stuff.
Brenna Ross & Paul Pasquesi::  That sounds very cool. What activities, other than DJing, did you do when you were here?
Brenna Ross & Paul Pasquesi::  I ran cross-country. I worked for KDIC. That was kind of the main thing I did, or K-D-I-C, sorry. So I- I was a Music Format Manager for the station so I would be like soliciting radio, or like, labels to get stuff that we could use. I would do interviews of bands for the Creature, which was the music magazine we had at the time. They probably have some archives of them in the Library, but it discontinued my junior year. The guy who edited it graduated. No one really took it up.
Paul Pasquesi & Brenna Ross::  I used to have a two hour radio show every week that I often turned into a four hour radio show ‘cause I was DJing from midnight to like two in the morning and I would just keep going 'til like four. And then, some friends of mine and I started a number of organizations sort of for fun. So we did like a Rocky Horror Picture Show floorshow two years in a row, my junior year and my senior year. I was told it continued the year after I graduated.
Paul Pasquesi & Brenna Ross::  It’s still going.
Paul Pasquesi::  Sweet, alright. We started that. We just thought it’d be kind of fun and silly and absurd to do. I think the thing I was most proud of that we started was, and most of the emphasis goes to Christopher Rathjen, class of ’02, not me. We were drunk at a party and people were - I don’t know actually, how drunk we all were, but we were drinking - and someone joked about the fact that it’d be awesome if someone were to start an organization with some kind of basic premise where you get the school, then, to pay for mixer and then you could spend all the money you spend collecting for the party just on hard liquor which was always the problem ‘cause then you’d go door-to-door collecting, y’know if you were just gonna do a keg a party you’d like, get like, change and quarters and things like that but if you were doing a hard liquor party or it was a fun party or if it was a good themed party people would give you more money, like fives and tens.
Paul Pasquesi::  ‘Cause in Iowa at the time, I don’t know if the law’s changed now, but in Iowa at the time, if you were underage you could have liquor, you could drink liquor, you just couldn’t buy or sell so you couldn’t have money out at a party to collect or buy. But you could just have it there and be like, “We’re just all 900 friends in Harris and there’s no problem.” Like, that’s kinda how we did it, but you always wasted a lot of money, if you were doing a hard liquor party, on the mixer.
Paul Pasquesi::  So we were kind of joking about that ‘cause we were at some party where the mixer ran out, so people were drinking vodka straight and it’s like the bad, generic brand so it’s y’know like, Hawkeye vodka and Tortilla tequila ‘cause they're like 'What other Mexican word sounds...' y'know, 'tortillas', of course. So we’re drinking this stuff and we're like, “this is terrible to drink straight,” and Chris Rathjen said, "wouldn’t it be funny if we did some kind of organization against, like, scurvy and then we could get the school to pay for like vitamin c, like four to five beverages," and we were like "Oh, my God. You could do screwdrivers and you could mix it with like strawberries and tomatoes. Tomatoes have vitamin c so you could do, you know, Bloody Marys!" So we started this thing and I was like, “Oh, that’s funny," and maybe this'd be something we do.
Paul Pasquesi::  Three days later Chris had written a manifesto that he sent to the school newspaper and it got published, and then people were like writing against it. “You’re mocking real manifestos and real nutritional issues,” and he was like, “No, this is a serious nutritional issue,” and he was just deadpan, played it straight like this was a real, vital issue. He’s like, “Undoubtedly, dozens of people suffer from scurvy every year in the United States and it’s not just a sailor’s disease anymore.” He just went off, it was brilliant and we got approved! So we would go around to solicit for this party but we also had to do things during Prospie weekends and stuff to make us a legitimate organization.
Paul Pasquesi::  So during midsems and finals, we would get dressed up and run around campus distributing fruit wedges and vitamin c fortified supplements and things. He would dress up as the Citrus Beaver. So he had like this orange pair of underwear, like, tightie-whities that had been dyed neon-orange and he’d put them on the outside of his pants, an orange cape and like a beaver mask and I was the Citrus Fairy so I had this like, little glittery disco dress and I would just put glitter all over myself, and little wings and we would run around through the Library and distribute strawberries and oranges and like, “Here’s a lime!” and y’know, do that.
Paul Pasquesi::  And then during the Prospie weekends we would do scurvy screenings where we would basically check people’s gums. We’d have like, gloves on and we’d like, stick our hands in people’s mouths and like rub their gums and we'd like slap people to see if they bruised easily, and people were like, “This is amazing!” Y'know, parents were like dragging their kids over and their kids were like, “I don’t want this person touching me,” and their parent's like, “This is amazing!” So we would do these, but then we’d put on these parties and the parties got a really good reputation so when we’d go around and be like, “Yes, we’re collecting for a GSAS party,” Grinnell Students Against Scurvy, GSAS, “we’re collecting for a GSAS party;” people would give us like ten, fifteen bucks. It was awesome.
Paul Pasquesi::  So we had these like phenomenal drinks we woud make up, and one that we concocted was called The Scurvy, which had strawberry juice, pineapple juice, orange juice, rum, vodka, and a little bit of Jaeger. If you did too much Jaeger it just, it tasted like vomit. But a little bit of Jaeger, and it was pretty phenomenal. It was kind of a hit drink that we did then at every other party we did thereafter.
Paul Pasquesi & Brenna Ross::  The other thing we started doing was the “I Wanna be a Homosexual” Party, which was a Screeching Weasel’s song, and it was a way to do a party in winter. We were like, “We’ve got, y’know Pride is in the fall, or the coming out party is in the fall and you’ve got Pride in the spring but there’s nothing in the winter. We should do something in the winter,” so we did the "I Wanna Be a Homosexual Party," and we used to do it in the Loose Lounge. So there were things like that. I was very proud of those kinds of things, where I got people to relax, 'cause I think it was a very high-stress environment. A lot of people would get really burnt out, and it was kind of a fun, absurd way to get out the tension.
Paul Pasquesi & Brenna Ross::  That sounds like a lot of fun.
Paul Pasquesi::  Well, like, you guys still do Mary B. James and fetish parties and stuff, yeah. It was like that. But we’d do like, parties on the side of like, Pimp Daddy where people get dressed out in like 70’s attire. Disco was a huge huge party. We used to call it the all-Iowa party ‘cause we’d have like 2,000 people on campus for it. Kids would come from Iowa City and Des Moines and Drake and Iowa… State, is Ames? So people would come from all over for it and it was just a huge, huge party. So yeah.
Brenna Ross & Paul Pasquesi::  Which was your favorite party?
Brenna Ross & Paul Pasquesi::  My favorite was, we used to do a rave and it was a progressive party. So you’d have, the Harris part would go from 9 until 1, I think is when we had to shut down Harris? 1 or 1:30.
Brenna Ross & Paul Pasquesi::  Yeah, I think it’s 1.
Paul Pasquesi::  And then we would move to a lounge. So, we’d usually have like three or four DJs who would each do like a two hour hunk, and then whoever was doing the post party would start and usually one of the other earlier DJs would help them finish off and you’d just go 'til people left the party. Those were really fun, and we were usually able to get funding from Student Government for like glowsticks and things, so people had like glowsticks and we’d paint boards with stuff that would glow under blacklight and stuff like that and have it all over the place. We’d hook up Harris with blacklights all over, and it was a lot of fun.
Paul Pasquesi::  I think the fourth one we did, we named each one of ‘em so it was like, “Rave ‘till 1 part 2,” y'know, whatever, and we had, episode 4 was “The Ecstasy Strikes Back.” So it was the fourth time we did it, or it was the fifth one we did ‘cause it was- 'The Empire Strikes Back' is Star Wars Episode 9. So we did “The Ecstasy Strikes Back” and they made us go around and tear out the word “ecstasy” from all the posters because they were afraid the cops were gonna show up because it would make it sound like we were distributing ecstasy at the party. We were like, “No, we’re not distributing drugs. No one’s a drug dealer. No one has a lab on campus. There's nothing.”
Paul Pasquesi::  So anyway we had to change the signs, because of that, but that was a pretty good turnout. We had passed the fire limit. I think we had like 900-something people in there, and it was an excellent party. It was just a lot of fun dancing and people had a really good time.
Brenna Ross & Paul Pasquesi::  What was your favorite place to be on campus?
Brenna Ross & Paul Pasquesi::  That’s a good question. I think my favorite thing was, outside the ARH by the North entrance there was like a, not a security, an electrical tunnel hatch. If you could pull, pry that open, which sometimes required a crowbar, you could go down and there’s the tunnel that has the electrical stuff, right, so it’s not like a sewer opening, but you’d think it would be. You could sneak in then, into ARH at night, come up the third floor men’s bathroom where, with just a key card, you could jimmy the lock on the door and there’s a ladder that goes up to the roof. So we would go up to the roof and hang out on the roof of ARH.
Paul Pasquesi::  Or you could climb over to Steiner, and then you go into Steiner and Steiner has the creepiest attic. It looks like something out of a horror movie. That's- this phenomenal upper floor that I guess they just don’t use, and you get in there and it’s this massive space and it’s very very creepy. But I used to love just sitting on the roof of ARH and laying out there and kind of relaxing, or Steiner, and then sometimes going into the Steiner attic area. I think that was kind of my favorite space because it was usually kind of quiet; you could see the stars really well; you just kind of lay on your back and relax or read a book by the moonlight which was cool. I could not do that - I grew up near Chicago and definitely could not read anything by moonlight. So, yeah.
Brenna Ross & Paul Pasquesi::  Knowing what you know now what, if anything, would you do differently?
Brenna Ross & Paul Pasquesi::  I probably would have taken school more seriously. I think while I was here, school was fun and I enjoyed it but I was more focused on helping other people have a good time. I kind of put more focus on- I definitely put more focus on teaching things like that than I did on my academics. I did OK, I didn’t think... I failed one class. That was my freshman year. But, other than that, I did well, but I think I just didn’t have an academic focus enough and I had no idea what I wanted to do post-college.
Paul Pasquesi::  I think some of it was I had a weird sense of mortality. I had a lot of friends from high school that had died my freshman year here, all from different things. It wasn’t like Final Destination where they all die on like one roller coaster or something. So I was just kind of convinced, until I was about 25, that I would be dead by like my mid-twenties, so I just didn’t care. So, yeah, I think I would kind of readjust that.
Brenna Ross & Paul Pasquesi::  So, how can you describe kind of the dating, social scene?
Brenna Ross & Paul Pasquesi::  Oh, awkward, and horrible. I- it was weird because I came into this and there were a lot of people I met who had never had a boyfriend or girlfriend. They were like the nerds of their school and like very focused and so, some were very awkward about dating and didn’t know what to do. Some people were very lonely, like this was their first time they’d ever been away from home.
Paul Pasquesi::  I remember in my dorm, there was a guy and a girl and I’m not gonna say their names but they, the first day they gather all the freshman and we’re in and we’re talking and they’re like, y’know cuddling and very cutesy with each other and I was like, “Oh, that’s so cool. Did you guys apply here together and decide to come here?” and they're like, “No, we just met today!” and I was like, “Whoa. Whoa.” So they were like married, day one, and by the end of first semester they couldn’t stand each other, yet they didn’t know anybody else because they’d sort of excluded everybody by latching onto each other, and did not break up until their junior year.
Paul Pasquesi::  It was just sad and I just felt bad for them, whereas I think for me, my older siblings had warned me, “When you go to college, the first three weeks, everyone’s very friendly and very open but after three weeks everyone sort of sucks into their little cliques that they’ve formed. So the more people you’ve met, the less tied you are, then, to a clique after those three weeks,” so I was like “OK.” So when I got here I would just smile at everybody. I would hold doors for people. I’d talk to people. I’d sit with different people every single day when I went in for the lunch hours, and it worked out really nicely.
Paul Pasquesi::  Like, I had a lot of people I knew but I was never part of a clique and dating-wise, there was always like… A friend of mine was kind of like the queen bee on campus, like he was like the head gay male on campus, and he was a year ahead of me. Every semester he had a stalker, and every semester I had a stalker and it was weird. It was like, people who would like show up at your door at like four in the morning and be like, “No, just let me in, just let me in.” "No! It’s four in the morning and I don’t know you, go away."
Paul Pasquesi::  But I think, you know everybody, so when you do date everybody it’s kind of like everybody knows your business. So, like I remember, senior year I started seeing this one girl and we, we had two classes together. The two classes were four hours apart, and neither of us had a class in the middle. So we started going to lunch together. We’d talk.  We'd, whatever. The way we met, I still feel bad about this. The way we met was, she was talking to a friend of mine and I was walking up from a distance and I was like, “Hey, how’s it going,” I didn’t know this girl and I was talking to my friend for a second. I turned around and I said, “Oh I just wanted to say, I thought your white fishnets were kind of a cool idea, you don’t see those a lot,” and she goes, “I’m not wearing white fishnets,” and I looked at her legs and I was like, “Sorry.” They were just really pale. So I felt really bad. I was like, "I’m sorry".
Paul Pasquesi::  But we gradually started kind of like making out and then having sex and within like a week everybody was like, “Oh, so, you’re dating now.” I was like, “Are we? I wasn’t aware of this.” It was impossible to have casual relationships, is what I found. Y’know, I think it- Some people, like there are so many people from my class that met, started dating, and are now married which I think is very cool. So, there were positives and negatives to everyone kind of knowing what’s going on. ‘Cause I think people were supportive of people who were couples, like, “Oh, that’s really cute. You’re a good couple, go for that.”
Paul Pasquesi::  Dating-wise... Dating is awkward because in the real world, when you’re post-college, you go out when you date, but when you’re in college there’s nowhere to go out, so it’s not like you go out for dinner a lot or things like that. You might make them food in your kitchen or things like that, so we did a lot of that. And then like, go to parties. I think the ones I always felt bad for were when, you’d see different couples where clearly one partner was a raging alcoholic and there’d always be that point in the night where you’d see their significant other holding their head while they’re just puking their guts out soemwhere and you just felt bad for them, and they’re just looking at this person lovingly as like, spittle is coming out of their mouth and you’re like, "I don’t know if that’s healthy."
Paul Pasquesi::  But yeah, there were a lot of very cute couples and a lot of people that stayed together, but I do think it was a very weird kind of scene for some. Yeah. Nothing so bad, though, that it was like herpes outbreaks or anything where it was like, you could tell who slept with who because of that. It wasn’t that small and incestuous, but it was still small.
Brenna Ross & Paul Pasquesi::  So how would you compare the students of today with the students of your class?
Brenna Ross & Paul Pasquesi::  That’s a tough one. I mean, my only basis of comparison would be... my former students that I taught in high school go here. I’d say some of ‘em seem more conservative, I think, than we were, but part of that I think is being raised in a post 911 world, where everything was about terror. I think, it was interesting like, on my Facebook page when Osama Bin Laden got killed. Most of the people over 25 were just kinda like, “Oh, good.” Everyone under 25 lost their shit completely, and were like “Yeah!” like they killed the boogeyman. It was that, it was a huge deal. I think it was just kind of a different mindset of things.
Paul Pasquesi::  I think there’s more of a sense of, at least for my students, not rocking the boat. You don’t want to draw attention to yourself. You don’t want to shake things up because we all need to stick together because we’re in this war on terror. Sort of like, I don’t know that any of them would articulate it that way, but that seems kind of like their mindset. So if the government says something, they’re much less willing to question it, or if they do they question it in non-rational ways, like tea party sort of like, “Well he’s other, therefore he’s not trustworthy.” That’s not a rational argument. If you dislike the President that’s fine, but like have a reason other than he’s foreign. That’s A, not true and B, sort of racist ‘cause really that's what you’re going for. “He doesn’t look like the other Presidents.” (Whispered: Yeah, ‘cause he’s Black.) I get that sense from some of them.
Paul Pasquesi::  Like, there’s this, yeah, the conspiracy theory thing seems much more rampant than I remember, ever, when we were there. We had the Monica Lewinski scandal, y’know, with Clinton. And that was kinda like, “Really? He had to get a blowjob while talking to the Russian president on the phone? That’s a hardworking man.” I mean, it’s unfaithful but who cares? That's not our business. That was the kind of stuff we were doing. We were just like, "That’s stupid." At the same time, we thought it was funny every time another Republican got busted for having an affair because they were so down on Clinton for being immoral. Then, you’d have Newt Gingrich cheating on his wife while she had cancer, with an intern. And you’re calling Bill Clinton- you’re saying Bill Clinton is treasonous for doing this and you did this to your wife with cancer so what are you, a treason who’s also an asshole? Like, c’mon.
Paul Pasquesi::  I think there was that sensitive like, hypocrisy when we were here, being interested in politics. But I think a lot of us thought politics were more of a force for social change. I mean, I know a lot of people from my class that have gone off to do like, service work around the world and have done very cool start-ups and things like that that are meant to empower other people. Some of my students that are in Grinnell, their focus is more like, "Oh, I'd like to get a job and work in finance." That’s cool, but like, do you- what will you do with finance? “Oh, make money, get a house, do that.” So that’s kind of a different mindset of like, 'I’d like whatever I do to benefit other people, too,' than, 'Eh, I’d like to just get by.' I think that’s kind of different, but I don’t know how widespread that is. Again, I only know from the students I’ve got.
Brenna Ross & Paul Pasquesi::  So, if you were writing a history of Grinnell College, what would you include from your years?
Brenna Ross & Paul Pasquesi::  Oh, my God, um, I think it’d be interesting to talk about the gender roles and the gender studies of the time. I think there were a lot of cool stuff going on with StoneCo, and a lot of the GLBTQ stuff was like, you still really had to fight for some of it. I think that was a good thing because it made people more aware of like, and more sympathetic to some of the issues and things like that that, I think that a lot of people, especially a weird number of people from Utah who were not necessarily themselves LDS but from that background who were very awkward about sexuality and homosexuality and alternative sexualities.
Paul Pasquesi & Brenna Ross::  I think it was cool that people still had to like.. We used to do these forum, kind of symposium things where people would debate topics. I remember people having to debate topics of like, sexuality and is it, y'know, and alternative genders. I think that was cool because it brought people together in a rational dialogue instead of just yelling at each other and making up facts like a Glenn Beck, or something. I think that would include, as well, Russell K. coming in as president. I don’t know how he was viewed by y’all, but.
Paul Pasquesi & Brenna Ross::  We liked him.
Paul Pasquesi & Brenna Ross::  Yeah. I liked him. At first people did not; there were a lot of jokes about how he looked like Mr. Burns from the Simpsons.
Paul Pasquesi & Brenna Ross::  Yeah.
Paul Pasquesi::  Yeah, but he had a nice kind of dry sense of humor and he was brought in by the board to do particular things, like, East campus was not there. Whatever you call the big food center in the Central Campus, that wasn’t there. That was Darby Gym which was where KDIC was, like the studios. It’s where the basketball team played. We ate in Quad or in Cowles. The whole Athletic Center in the north was not there. The Athletic Center we had sucked. It was terrible. It’s phenomenal what he accomplished, but that’s what he was hired to do, to make sure this got done. So I could respect that.
Paul Pasquesi::  So, I think you’d have to talk about the transition from Pam to him. Pam Ferguson was the one before him. She was incredibly generous and very nice. I got this opportunity to go to England on a running team and I didn’t have the money for it and she just wrote me a check. I got offered a thing to do a dig in China, an archeological dig in China, and she also just wrote me a check and was like, “Here, go.” “Don’t I have to like, sign?” “No, just enjoy.” She was just very generous that way.
Paul Pasquesi & Brenna Ross::  Russell was generous in other ways. Like, we’d have conversations with him about some of the parties and the legality of certain things and it was very interesting to have these conversations with him about, “Well, no, it’s this and this and this and if you look at paragraph five of this law, it says,” and he was like, “Oh, well you’ve done your study all right then.” Y’know, “Go on children, enjoy.” I think, some of the professors that came in during that period... There were some new hires that were, I thought very good additions to the body of professors of the school… I think, do you guys still do ExCo?
Paul Pasquesi & Brenna Ross::  Yeah.
Paul Pasquesi::  Experimental College, yeah. I think there were some brilliant classes people did for that. That would be fun to kind of chronicle, like, they started out being sort of random like, “Here’s how to build a birdhouse.” Nothing quite that lame, but like that. And then it got very very cool, very creative things, where people were doing stuff with music theory and history and people doing things with the history of wines and cheeses. It was this very kind of funny but cool stuff, that were pretty interesting. It was a cool way to bring the town and the College together ‘cause you had a lot of people from the town who were teaching some of the classes, and it was awesome.
Paul Pasquesi::  I think I would also talk about some of the study abroad stuff. This school is phenomenal at helping people to study abroad, make sure their financial aid and everything transferred so they could afford to travel when they got done. Yeah. But I can’t think of any single event that was earth-shattering, or whatever. The last semester I was here, I had an extra semester because I, as I mentioned earlier one of my friends died back home. I kind of emotionally was a wreck, so first semester sophomore year I took off and just backpacked around Europe, the Middle East and North Africa on my own. Came back, so I had a semester to make up and that’s when 911 happened. That was interesting, kinda how the campus sort of dealt with it. But I remember coming in to ARH in the morning for a poetry seminar I was in, and they were projecting the footage on the wall and the first tower had already been hit and while we were watching the second tower got hit and it was just surreal.
Paul Pasquesi::  But that’s the only major event that I remember. I remember people being pissed off about the election in 2000, like feeling like that got stolen, and just being like, “Why don’t we get a recount?” And, yeah, there was that kind of stuff, politically, but campus-wise, I think the biggest event was Russ K. coming in as president and kinda starting the whole, whatever they call this, the five year plan. Maybe that’s too Soviet but whatever they were doing, whatever they called it, starting that process.
Brenna Ross & Paul Pasquesi::  Is there anything else you’d like to add?
Brenna Ross & Paul Pasquesi::  I don’t think so, I think I covered most of the stuff that I was thinking of. But yeah, I think.. Grinnell, I think was just kind of a unique environment. When I would go visit my friends at other schools, and I don’t know if you’ve gone to…
Brenna Ross & Paul Pasquesi::  Yeah, a little bit.
Paul Pasquesi::  It’s a very different kind of vibe at other schools, and I’ve noticed that even at other liberal arts schools. Like, I’d never heard of Macalester or Carleton before coming here, sorry, just hadn’t. Not from Minnesota. Didn't- just, never heard- But I went to visit friends up there and they were, I don’t understand why people kept comparing them because they don’t seem the same. They’re much stodgier and much less relaxed environment. And state schools, like y’know, you could go to University of Illinois and sit in the armory and have a seminar with 1500 people and you will never meet your professors and you will never do whatever and I had professors would like, invite us to their house.
Paul Pasquesi::  We would have class there. I had a professor, Tully Vishevsky, I don’t know if he’s still here but he was a Russian literature prof. He’d have us over at his house and he’d make Russian sweetbread and we’d drink vodka and we’d discuss Dr. Zhivago or whatever book we were reading, y'know. It was very cool. I had other professors that would be like, “Oh, yeah, come on over to the house. I have a bunch of dead animals in my freezer and we’ll butcher them up for an archeological analysis.” "Why do you- Wait, you collect dead animals and keep them in your freezer?" “Yeah!” So that was John Whittaker and he was like, “Oh, I just collect road kill and I keep it in my meat locker in the basement.”
Paul Pasquesi::  And then one time the meat lock- like, he lost electricity in the basement or the meat locker went out and he’s like, “All right, we’re gonna have class over there for field methods and we’re just gonna butcher some stuff up and try out some different weaponry and see what kinda marks it leaves ‘cause it’s all gonna go bad.” It was just, y’know, you would not have that at some of these other schools. I even remember early on, I think Russ put in a rule that professors and students couldn’t drink together anymore after a certain point, but senior year we had some classes that were small seminars with like four or five kids, “Oh, just meet at the Pub. We’ll have class over a beer.” Awesome.
Paul Pasquesi::  Freshman year though, I do remember getting in some arguments with professors while drunk. It was kinda funny. There was a Political Science professor who threatened to crush me with his intellect and I was like, “I don’t know, dude.” He was making fun of me for majoring in Religious Studies and he was like, “That’s a bullshit discipline,” blah blah blah. I was like, "I'm sorry. You teach Political science," like, "I’m sorry. So, you don’t do politics, you just commentate on the biggest assholes on the planet. Fantastic." And he was like, “I can crush you with my intellect.” and we just- It went downhill from there, but it was funny, and it was still like, a very human interaction which was cool. I’ve been to schools now in Europe where professors are like godlike beings that you’re not allowed to really directly discuss, talk to things. They lecture. You listen. You write it down. You regurgitate. That’s kind of it, and that sucks. I liked the dialogue here because I thought it was much more of an impetus to think critically. So yeah.
Brenna Ross & Paul Pasquesi::  Cool, well, thank you!
Brenna Ross & Paul Pasquesi::  Yeah.
