Paul Bendich::  Hi, my name is Paul Bendich, class of 2001, and I currently live in Durham, North Carolina.
Chelsie Salvatera::  OK, so why did you come to Grinnell College and what is your first memory?
Paul Bendich::  Well, so I had an interesting high school experience where I did not complete high school, and so I was trying to get into colleges with good SAT scores and some very good grades and some very bad grades and a lack of a diploma. So Grinnell was one of two or three schools that admitted me. It was sort of weird. It was all kind of funky, good, liberal arts colleges that admitted me and then sort of standard, Ivys and state schools and things like that wouldn’t. And then Grinnell gave me a lot of money, which distinguished it from the others, and honestly that’s why I was. I really liked it on the visit, but the money was definitely very nice. I guess my first memory of the campus was mainly that, when I came to visit for the first time I was supposed to land at about 10PM in Des Moines and it was a snowstorm and we landed at about 2 in the morning, and the student volunteer admissions freshman or whatever who was supposed to pick me up was still there, and I thought that was very cool.
Chelsie Salvatera & Paul Bendich::  Was there a professor, student or staff member who was a particularly strong influence on your life?
Chelsie Salvatera & Paul Bendich::  A lot of ‘em actually. It’s interesting ‘cause I was a math and physics major, but I guess the ones I’m gonna talk about are all humanities, social science. John Mohan was my freshman tutorial. Yeah, he passed away a couple years after I graduated, sadly. But he was a wonderful man, really interesting, just sort of humanist values, really warm and really good at, I don’t know. There’s sort of a rumor, about eight to ten Grinnell freshman were all really smart and really good ideas and also just really arrogant and not good at listening and sort of stupid in a way that young, smart people can be and he was really good at just sort of molding it into a valuable conversation.
Chelsie Salvatera & Paul Bendich::  What was your tutorial?
Chelsie Salvatera & Paul Bendich::  Can Beauty Save the World?
Chelsie Salvatera & Paul Bendich::  Can Beauty Save the World? Want to tell a little bit about it?
Chelsie Salvatera & Paul Bendich::  Well, I think it was his shtick, mainly. I think he did a lot of, Russian literature was the main idea but the idea was sort of, you had all this amazing literature in Russia, in Germany, being put out in the midst of ghastly world events, and just sort of, what the redemption is, and so on and so forth. So there was a lot of poetry from the Holocaust and stuff from that, and.. I don’t know. He was, I think he was a pretty deep Catholic in addition to being a humanist, and so his answer was “yes.” I think most of our answers were “no,” but it was a very cool class.
Paul Bendich::  Who else? I guess, I had Victoria Brown for Immigration History. Yeah, and she was, I mean, yeah, 'cause I talked my way into that as a freshman. I was always very proud of myself for doing that, and yeah, she was just great. And honestly, Ira Strauber, who taught- he might’ve retired already. He was Political Theory in the Political Science department. He was very very different from all the other... He was just very good as a counterpoint to all my other professors ‘cause he was, I don’t know if he was actually conservative but he actually played being conservative, and he was just very sort of rigorous and analytical in the way he talked and didn’t wanna know about any of your feelings. Just wanted to know about what you thought, this line of- Yeah, I know. Wanted to know what you thought this line of Plato said, and that was very cool.
Chelsie Salvatera & Paul Bendich::  What are your best memories of your time at Grinnell College?
Chelsie Salvatera & Paul Bendich::  Honestly, the classes were certainly there, in general, and also just, I was on the cross country team, just running around town and in the cornfields. Yeah.
Chelsie Salvatera & Paul Bendich::  What did your dorm room look like? I guess the first one, 'cause all- y'know.
Chelsie Salvatera & Paul Bendich::  I was in Norris.
Chelsie Salvatera & Paul Bendich::  Norris, was that your first year?
Chelsie Salvatera & Paul Bendich::  Yeah. Sort of brutal.
Chelsie Salvatera & Paul Bendich::  Walls are thin there, huh?
Chelsie Salvatera & Paul Bendich::  Walls are thin, and it was- It had the air conditioning, I think that was the only advantage to it, but yeah, it wasn’t overly positive.
Chelsie Salvatera & Paul Bendich::  It's a community, I feel like, in Norris.
Chelsie Salvatera & Paul Bendich::  Yeah, you’re sort of in a refugee camp there.
Chelsie Salvatera & Paul Bendich::  Kinda like that. What kind of clothes did you wear every day as a Grinnell student, and on special occasions?
Chelsie Salvatera & Paul Bendich::  I think I was mainly just a mess. I dressed mostly from the Second Mile, is that still open? That’s a thrift store in town. I had a- I had a sort of floor-length women’s coat with a fur ruff that I liked ‘cause it was warm, that I got for 25 cents there. That’s about all I remember. I don’t, I don’t think there were special occasions.
Chelsie Salvatera & Paul Bendich::  Any special occasions like Harrises or waltz or anything fancy like that?
Chelsie Salvatera & Paul Bendich::  No.
Chelsie Salvatera & Paul Bendich::  OK, Grinnellian. What book influenced you most in college, if you can recall?
Chelsie Salvatera & Paul Bendich::  Not one book in particular. I guess, maybe some of the math.
Chelsie Salvatera & Paul Bendich::  But you read books?
Chelsie Salvatera & Paul Bendich::  I did read books, yeah.
Chelsie Salvatera & Paul Bendich::  Just making sure. OK, what memories or images do you have of the town of Grinnell?
Chelsie Salvatera & Paul Bendich::  The water tower. I mean, a lot of it was just from running ‘cause you’d see stuff and the water tower was always really pretty, especially at dusk. That little gazebo park down by Fourth Avenue or whatever it is, there was always a concert there. I guess Jimbo’s and the Pub, which are both closed now, sadly.
Chelsie Salvatera & Paul Bendich::  How has Grinnell changed since you were a student?
Chelsie Salvatera & Paul Bendich::  I guess I- I can’t really say much about culturally ‘cause I would be talking nonsense ‘cause I don’t really know today’s students, but I mean the Rosenfield Center is definitely large and flashy. I’m not sure I like it. There’s a lot of, architecturally there’s a little bit too much slickness now, but there wasn’t before. I don’t quite get why they had to knock down the old buildings. I, yeah that’s about it.
Chelsie Salvatera & Paul Bendich::  Describe something that is no longer available on campus but was meaningful to you: buildings, programs, activities?
Chelsie Salvatera & Paul Bendich::  I don’t really know enough about what’s here. Yeah, I’ll pass on that one.
Chelsie Salvatera::  Okay. Describe your favorite academic experience or class at Grinnell.
Paul Bendich::  I guess there’s two. There’s a couple of ‘em, actually. Freshman tutorial was a really really big deal to me. Like that was just, I don’t know, opening up as an intellectual, which sounds pompous and pretentious but that’s definitely what it was. Sort of, learning how to talk in a way that made sense. I took a Topology course junior year with Professor Gene Herman, which was sort of, it was the old Moore method, so you basically have five students and you... There wasn’t a textbook or lectures. They basically gave you a whole bunch of materials that were true about the subject and you kind of had to prove them in front of everyone as you went along, which was very, a very Grinnell way to teach the subject but also, I went to grad school in math and when I went to grad school I sort of felt I owned that material a lot more than people who had it otherwise. Oh, and also the Tocqueville seminar with Don Smith that I took senior year. That was, I think he’s senior faculty now or something.
Chelsie Salvatera & Paul Bendich::  What was his name?
Chelsie Salvatera & Paul Bendich::  Don Smith? Yeah, that was, that was really nice.
Chelsie Salvatera & Paul Bendich::  Describe your favorite place on campus.
Chelsie Salvatera & Paul Bendich::  That would be a toss-up between Bob’s Underground, which, they haven’t managed to close that down? Yeah. It seems like- I don't know, it seems like there’s been a dance every year since I’ve been here and after that where they decide that it needs to make a profit and they threaten to close it down and then everyone screams about it and they don’t, and I feel like they must waste a lot of energy on that, I wish they would just not.
Chelsie Salvatera & Paul Bendich::  Right. Yeah, exactly.
Chelsie Salvatera & Paul Bendich::  Yeah, and Burling.
Chelsie Salvatera & Paul Bendich::  OK, lots of studying in Burling?
Chelsie Salvatera & Paul Bendich::  Yeah, I worked at- I guess I worked at Burling a lot and then I... I worked at Saint’s Rest when it opened and I worked at Bob’s but I just like the physical space of Burling. Like it’s really... I don't know, I think I heard from some professors they’re thinking of maybe knocking it down ‘just cause they need more space, or...
Chelsie Salvatera & Paul Bendich::  No!
Chelsie Salvatera & Paul Bendich::  Yeah, I really like that building.
Chelsie Salvatera & Paul Bendich::  When I go there I know I’m gonna study. OK, if you knew then what you know now, what would you have done differently during your time at Grinnell?
Chelsie Salvatera & Paul Bendich::  Probably would’ve taken... probably would’ve taken Russian just ‘cause it was such a good Russian department here and I.. I don’t know, I feel like I lost an opportunity doing that. Other than that, it was a really just, good college experience and I think I played it well. But...
Chelsie Salvatera & Paul Bendich::  Okay. So I know you met your spouse at Grinnell. That's good. How would you compare the students of today with your classmates? I guess you don’t really know the students of today.
Chelsie Salvatera & Paul Bendich::  Yeah, I’m friends with a lot of people from, like, the younger... So, through the cross country team I guess I know a lot of people from like ’05 and even ’06, just ‘cause we’d meet through events, and maybe even ’07, so people that I shouldn’t have known at Grinnell. But, they seemed like basically the same people, maybe a little wilder but that might just be because they’re younger. But, I don’t know. There’s probably some banal things about the internet generation that could be said and probably shouldn’t be, but I’m sure other people will.
Chelsie Salvatera::  Describe student and campus life as you experienced it during your time at Grinnell.
Paul Bendich::  That’s, mainly just good, like, it was kind of in a- it sort of really was a bubble, but in a sort of good way. It just, I don’t know, it didn’t feel very socially stratified the way lots of university experiences are. Like I’m now- I’m faculty at Duke and it’s a very different, y’know... It seemed like almost everyone was sort of welcome in large portions of the social space, and there wasn’t, I don’t know. There wasn’t that much devoted to making people feel bad about themselves, which seems to be the favorite sport in a lot of places. That was, people were caring and more, y’know it was good. The general professor attitude... I’m very much a patriot for liberal arts colleges. The professors interacting with students and seeing that as their main job and so forth. That’s good.
Chelsie Salvatera & Paul Bendich::  If you were writing a history of Grinnell College, what would you include from your four years here?
Chelsie Salvatera & Paul Bendich::  Hm, trying to see.. exactly, yeah, no. I had this idea that I would come in here and just talk about how in my time there were dragons, but see how long it would take them to turn off the radio. But, yeah, I don’t know what... No, nothing concrete to say for that.
Chelsie Salvatera & Paul Bendich::  Did you have anything else to say, any additional comments? Talk about a crazy time, y'know, or...? Something that was like, 'Oh...'
Chelsie Salvatera & Paul Bendich::  I do, yeah.
Chelsie Salvatera & Paul Bendich::  Just don't hold back from me now!
Chelsie Salvatera & Paul Bendich::  It’s just a very good place, like it seemed like, I don’t know, like compared to lots of other even just liberal arts colleges it seemed like it had the right grounding. It was sort of, very smart but not... but still pragmatic. And, y’know, even stuff like, y’know, people drank a lot but not many people died, which is a very big thing and like a social thing and people actually took care of each other. In fact, I think no one died during my time here, from alcohol poisoning which does not happen at many other schools. And just... and that was good.
Paul Bendich::  I think it struggled at lot, with like... y'know, at any other school like this, not being all rich kids and all white kids and so on and so forth, but I think it did a better job of that in a lot of other places, and, I don’t know. I always felt that there were at least enough people here who saw that as a goal, that they were always gonna keep giving financial aid and so on and so forth, and that was valuable.
Chelsie Salvatera & Paul Bendich::  Does Grinnell still feel like home to you, or...?
Chelsie Salvatera & Paul Bendich::  Yeah, it’s weird ‘cause it’s, it’s always felt very present in my life and it’s always like, y'know, I still have lots of Grinnell friends from, even in the triangle down in Durham, like there’s lots of Grinnell people in my circle. It seems like anywhere that’s centered around an academic place is gonna have a lot of Grinnell people ‘cause that’s where we go. But, it’s, so yeah, totally feels like home and now coming back it’s like, I realize it’s been so long. It's like everything is very familiar and yet totally alien. It’s very strange, and just little subtle changes in the buildings are totally throwing me.
Chelsie Salvatera & Paul Bendich::  'What is this JRC?'
Chelsie Salvatera & Paul Bendich::  Exactly.
Chelsie Salvatera & Paul Bendich::  Well I’m glad you could come back here again.
Chelsie Salvatera & Paul Bendich::  Thank you.
Chelsie Salvatera & Paul Bendich::  Thank you so much.
