Popping the Bubble | Spring 2013

Spring 2013

Popping the Bubble

the GUM

Table of Contents Page 4 Page 8 Page 10 Page 12 Page 14 Page 16 Page 19 Page 20 Page 22 Page 24 Page 26 Page 28 Page 30

Riding Solo: A Grinnell Memoir

By Solomon Miller Pause Before Endorsing a Cause

By Brian Silberberg Learning Takes Away (Social) Skills

By Hannah Quicksell Not a Normal Education

By Aaron Mendelson Break Through

By Nathan Forman Team Spirit and Varsity Blues

By Kirsten Nelson Third Down and Forever

By Ron Chiu What I Am Learning

By Geo Gomez Ally (as a Verb)

By Linda Beigel Cracked Plaster Walls

By Carl Sessions Freinds and Luverz

By Max Christiensen Somewhere Over the Rainbow

By Darwin Manning Grinnellian Gothic

By Amir Gorjifard

From the Staff of the GUM Dear Friend, to read as it was for us to produce. In our inaugural issue, we stated our intention to publish any content we deemed arbitrarily worthy. This issue certainly discusses a variety of topics conveyed traditional categorizations, if you think you can write, or if you have an idea that you want to turn into writing, we want you.

I love that we’re able to put assemble such an assortment of voices, but I think we can do better. Let me reiterate in this note: if you have a story to tell, if you want to report on something, if you feel

- Nathan

Nathan Forman

Linda Beigel

Joe Wlos

Solomon Miller

Editor-in-Chief

Editor

Editor

Editor

Nathan Forman is a majesty of mixed metaphor, and/or an archduke of alliteration from Bethesda, Maryland. A recently declare Political Science Major, when he’s not working, pretending to work, or hanging out with friends, he enjoys a long run and a bad joke. He also enjoys an ugly sweater (sweater? I just met her!).

Linda Beigel is a third-year GWSS and French major from Southern California. Her last name is pronounced like “beagle,” and yes, she does like bagels. She’s honored to serve as an editor of the GUM this semester, which has consisted of yelling at Solomon, making fun of Nathan, and having brief but respectful exchanges with Joe.

SPARC Chair Emeritus Joe Wlos knew that he would achieve great things

SGA troublemaker and former S&B editor-in-chief Solomon Miller started reporting so he could get to know the most interesting people on campus. Fueled by adrenaline, black coffee, and Bruce Springsteen grit, he’s spent more time in the JRC than any academic building and possibly even his own dorm rooms.

years ago. He truly believes that the GUM ny. Like Oprah, the GUM is diverse, dynamic, bold, and beautiful. He hopes that you enjoy the magazine and have a great break!

A special thanks to all of our writers: Linnea Hurst, Benji Zeledon, Brian Silberberg, Hannah Q u i ck s e l l , A a r o n M e n d e l s n o, K i r s t e n N e l s o n , Ro n Chiu, Geo Gomez, Carl Sessions, Max Christensen, Darwin Manning, and Amir Gorjifard for your exc e l l e n t s u b m i s s i o n s. Yo u r s t o r i e s w e r e s o e x c e l l e n t we had to cut the author bios page to include them all.

Thanks to Joey Brown and Joanna Silver man for taking many of the fantastic photos that appear throughout this issue, and a very special to Emma S i n a i - Y u n k e r w h o p r o v i d e d t h e p h o t o o f T a s o s ’s burning house as well as the drag photos from last i s s u e . Yo u ’r e a l l w o n d e r f u l !

2

By Benjamin Zeledon

It’s a full moon, I’m alone.

I’m sitting there alone.

Howling at an empty sun, Surrounded like a dog in a cage, Clothing torn asunder, My body ripped asunder, 21st century child left to fend for himself in his world gone mad.

Out. Out. Out Out grouped motherfucker.

DVDs piled along like golden white testaments To some hierarchy I have yet to understand.

3

An account of life on the 2nd Floor of the JRC: The successes, the failures, and a tantalizing taste of reality.

By Solomon Miller On May 20, my world will end. I am moving halfway across the country, from small town Iowa to Washington, DC. My time at Grinnell will be history. My knowledge of Grinnell—of the personalities, of our administration, of SGA—will no longer matter in my daily life, and it will no longer be useful to Grinnell.

When [2013] came to Grinnell, the student body was impassioned. The hate crime in Spring 2008 had riled up student activists to form AJust Grinnell and the No Limits Student Affairs in fall 2008 pit professors against administrators, publicly, as students watched or took sides. On issues such as supporting the SRC and building popularlysupported windmills to become more energy independent, administrators were not to be trusted.

As a reporter for the S&B as a student activist was marked by BiasMotivated Incidents: homophobic vandalism on white boards, racist vandalism of an SGA campaign poster, Cunnilingus. The SRC, SOL, and scores of young idealists like me fought back with all-campus forums and chalk and posters professing our values of welcoming diversity and creating a supportive, loving community. It felt like I had joined the ranks in a battle of good vs. mean, good vs. negligent.

On May 20, the students who entered my Grinnell will leave. Our problems, our politics, our understanding of self-gov (and all of those Grinnell buzzwords) will leave with us.

After watching three classes graduate before

4

us, I can comfortably say that the change we made as students will feel more like ripples than currents to next year’s freshmen. Our class personalities will live on as shadows, not monuments.

Not everything is worthy of the history books. I don’t expect much wisdom will be lost if future students never understand our [love] of brackets, once Facebook fully replaces [Plans]. If the SGA Constitution gets trashed for a new one, it’s probably for the best. And I don’t want to hear another word about windmills at Grinnell.

But I’ve got something to show for my four years here. In my manic pursuit of news for the S&B, political power to become SGA President, and the esteem of my classmates, I learned about how we, the Grinnell community, can learn to live with each other, and what we can get out of our four years here.

What follows are the lessons I think Grinnell should remember. _____ Do your homework.

I’m not talking about assignments for classes. Academics are important, and I wish I had spent more time on them, but that’s not my point. er was research. Before every big interview, I would learn as much as I could about the person I would soon meet. I wanted to know where they were coming from and who they knew that might be important to the story.

During our conversation, I could tailor my

questions to the subjects they could speak on with authority. When they heard me mention some relevant fact from their past, sources would feel comfortable that I knew what I was doing as a reporter, and they would open up to me.

The night before Dr. Raynard Kington was announced as our future college president, my editor got a hold of his name so I could prepare for the interview. I saw the impressed look on his face when I surprised him with a question about the social health issues he used to research. “Welcome to Grinnell,” I thought. “We do research here, too.”

President Kington settled in, and he started giving public speeches about his transition to Grinnell. I noticed a few times that he cited a book by the former President of Princeton as his starting point for understanding his new job. A friend in SGA told me he talked about it even more in private and kept the book on his desk.

That summer, I bought my own copy of dent. It’s still on my desk. It’s not a code book for predicting President Kington’s decisions, and he doesn’t always follow the author’s advice (the author opposes merit aid as socially unjust, for example). It did teach me how he thinks. It taught me how he makes decisions.

I recognized some of the language he used and some of the processes he set up. That understanding found its way into my articles.

It’s a good habit to keep. I don’t do much reporting anymore, but I still research people before professional meetings and always, always before anything that might turn into a

job interview.

Every student here got accepted to Grinnell and has something to offer the community.

I used to stay up late in the JRC talking to Gabe Schechter. He was the SGA President, and I was Co-Editor of the S&B. He’d brew a pot of coffee, and we would talk for hours about students, the Strategic Plan, and the drinking culture on campus.

One conversation sticks out in my mind.

Gabe had been mouthing off about athletics in the Grille, and an athlete who overheard him followed up with a long, angry email.

Athletics, in this context, meant the big three: football, basketball and baseball. It wasn’t uncommon then for Grinnellians to complain that these teams added nothing to our community, and attracted the wrong kind of student for the wrong reasons. Members of those teams had been tied recently to theft and rape. Their teammates didn’t (for some time) report the people involved. After the infamous Cunnilingus party, guilt by association seemed entirely fair. From the outside, it looked like team loyalty was more important to them than self-gov.

Gabe wanted Grinnell to be different from the rest of the world. He thought Grinnell should be a place where people can escape many of the problems of the rest of the world. He envisioned a Grinnell with very litmalicious intent. He thought we should recruit students who would work to realize that vision. He thought athletes threatened it.

I responded with a vision of Grinnell as a school that improved us, wherever we started. I wanted a Grinnell that could take any asshole in as a student and teach him to be more respectful, more responsible for his actions, and more empathic to the needs of the people around him. To do this, we need a critical mass of students who already hold those things as a goal, but nobody’s perfect.

Nobody comes out of high school fully ready to be part of a socially just community. Once Admissions makes their decision, we’re here, and we should focus on learning together, as a student community, not excluding the large percent of students we deem not good enough.

Grinnell should be a supportive community of its own making (a lesson I soon learned the hard way). Gabe was right that the great things about Grinnell (the relative lack of offensive jokes or vandalism compared to a state school, the relatively horizontal and open social structures that students form, etc.) inspire us to create communities

ance.

In our generation, student activism is selfserving (and that’s okay).

When de Toqueville toured America, he found it was local government that gave us our democratic spirit. Positions of power in state or federal government were too few to attract the ambitious masses. Local politics served to slice the pie thinner, so more people could take a slice. Townships “serve as a centre for the desire of public esteem, the want of exciting interests, and the taste for authority and popularity.” Just so with student activism at Grinnell.

This isn’t the sixties. Our friends aren’t being drafted. Our school accepts students of any gender or race and no longer locks up the women in South Campus at nightfall.

When students protest, no one sends in a riot squad to break us up. We have problems, yes, but the stakes of student activism are low.

I’m often cynical about how activism done at Grinnell, especially public protests. I often complain that issues aren’t well researched, that the tools used in protest aren’t the most effective, and that we really don’t need to be so paranoid that the administration doesn’t share our values.

But in some ways, that’s not the point.

With our extracurriculars, too, we’re here as students. We can do much more to improve the world when we’re not also full-time students. Our student groups, our student protests, have the power to make a small difference here. They have the power to make a tremendous difference on us. They teach us how to get involved. If we compromise effective activism for effectively teaching activism, that’s a good deal.

Self-governance is a philosophy we teach, not a residence life policy.

Self-gov is not asking someone down the hall to turn their music down so you can sleep. Self-gov is not taking care of drunk people. Self-gov is not campus bikes.

Self-gov is a philosophy that reminds us society is made up of people like us. Each of us will change the character of our community, for better or for worse. Therefore, each of us has a role to play to make things better for the people around us and to pave a path for anyone who should follow.

We practice leadership at Grinnell so that when we graduate, we take with us the skills we need to improve our communities. We learn how to identify inequity and correct for unfairness. We learn who to talk to to change

an institutional policy. We learn how information travels. And, yes, we learn how to take care of loud music, drunk people, and campus bikes. We learn the responsibility for the community rests on the self.

That’s the philosophy I love.

It’s bigger than you.

My most public mistake as reporter, News Editor, and Editor-in-Chief of the S&B was my refusal to print gender-neutral pronouns.

It started early my second year, when I was reporting on a minor hate crime. A student’s room was broken into and vandalized, and the perpetrator spray-painted a homophobic slur on the wall. The S&B denounced a set of student protests that formed in response, sent a casual email attacking their tactics.

I had been covering bias-motivated incidents since early on. My article about a series of homophobic scribbles left on white boards after parties was praised by the SRC. My article about a racist slur left on an SGA campaign poster connected me with some of the leaders of SOL, and it was picked up by the . When the football team was caught using sexist, racist, and ableist terms individually targeted at over 100 Grinnellians at the infamous Cunnilingus party, I worked harder than I ever had to write a fair, never once received a complaint about the content or the tone of these articles, and I was proud of that. Reporting was my way of helping people understand each other.

Our coverage of the hate crime was not so well received by the protesters who we called out in a staff editorial. They sent back a stream of letters in response, with a stream of complaints (all the way down to the trivial “the photo we used in the article was chosen to make them look aggressive instead of supportive”).

It was in that tense atmosphere that I got an email from one of the leaders of the protest asking to be referred to by the pronoun “ze” and possessive “zir” in future articles. I said no (as was our policy) and cited a number of sources, including the AP Stylebook and many newspapers, that did not use any nonstandard pronouns in news articles. Instead, I offered to refer to the subject only by last name in future articles to avoid imposing an identity. That angered some people, but in the chaos, didn’t become a big deal.

Half a year later, I was preparing to take over as Editor-in-Chief. My Co-Editor was studying abroad, so for the last few weeks of the school year, I was solely in charge. At

5

manded we publicly reverse the pronoun policy to print any pronoun that a subject identiTwo of them threatened to quit. I acquiesced, but at the time I wasn’t happy.

This isn’t a confession. I don’t want to reposition. I thought we should act like Grinnell was the real world. Real newspapers don’t bend the rules of grammar, and I wanted to emulate them. I wasn’t focused on change at the Grinnell level, I was focused on preparing Grinnell students to go make change after college. That means talking to reporters means interacting with the vast majority of people in the world who will never, in their lifetime, accept the idea of gender-neutrality.

I don’t know what it feels like to not identify with either gender, but neither do most people. Just as many Grinnellians found my position disrespectful, I found their surprise and expectation naive.

Looking back, what I really wanted was to learn, for myself, how to be an all-American, respectable reporter. I wanted to run a newspaper like any other. What I didn’t see is that the S&B was much more than my chance to run a newspaper. It was Grinnell’s newspaper, and the community had every right to shape it. It was more important to many people that we print gender-neutral pronouns, even though that position is radically liberal by outside standards, and even though it wasn’t the newspaper I wanted to run.

A full year after that, I declared my campaign for SGA President. Someone asked me on Plans to explain the original pronoun decision, and, arrogant enough to think I would win easily, I responded too honestly and too bluntly, explaining what my reasoning had been. My opinion was once again very unpopular.

My chief competitor, Colleen Osborne, won easily.

Use Grinnell to practice the skills you want to learn.

One of my ideas during my presidential campaign was to hire an Outreach Director.

That year’s cabinet had struggled to make students know or care about the strategic plan. They were simply to busy to do any real outreach. After I lost, I decided to push on to create the position anyway.

It was a popular idea in Joint Board, and Cabinet certainly wanted the extra help. The stance opposing the idea on the grounds

6

that she could do outreach herself (history proved her wrong). Even so, Joint Board seemed to overwhelmingly support the idea, because Senators believed that it would help bridge the information gap on campus.

I wanted to whip votes. I had decided to go into politics (in real life), and counting votes was a skill I wanted to practice. I created a spreadsheet with each Senator’s name and a line for Cabinet’s vote. I stayed late after Joint Board talking to Senators. I stopped them in the hallway. I corned them in the Grille. I talked to Gabe and other cabinet members. By the time the vote came, I knew I had at least 14 votes of the total 19. I only needed 13 (two thirds of the total). The resolution passed 16-2.

fying the budget procedure and listing each regular, paid SGA job in the by-laws.

They would also include changes to impeachment and succession procedure, lowering the bar to impeach and replacing executelection. The changes would be presented to Joint Board as a package, so there would be no public attention paid to the succession changes unless someone moved to consider it separately. It would pass without controversy.

My plot sprung into action. With a few terrible interviews and no clear plan for the year, Colleen had already started looking bad.

The S&B quickly took note. Unfortunately, the new staff on newspaper wouldn’t help me as directly as I hoped. (In an unfortunate bout of journalistic integrity, they went so far as to

Don’t give up on something you believe in.

Early last semester, I decided once again to be SGA President. The current leadership was in shambles. They had, effectively, set no goals for their tenure. Their ignorance of recent school policy discussions threatened SGA’s stature in the eyes of the administration. And after a source told me the administration might cut need-blind admissions, I feared they would whiff on their opportunity to shape the most important decision of our time at Grinnell with student values.

Unfortunately, I had already run for President and lost. I would have to act creatively.

It was time for a coup.

The basic plan was simple: impeach Colleen and win the election to replace her. The politics were more complicated. She would have to become so unpopular that people were willing to break the status quo and break social norms to impeach her, so unpopular that people cared about SGA. No one could know the full extent of my involvement. The tion by SGA, not a personal power grab.

Meanwhile, I would have to rehabilitate my image with those students I offended during my last run. I ran for Senator (and won easily). I would take up any pet projects I had time for to impress as many students as posWhile the public relations tracks moved forward, I would launch another campaign to change the rules of succession. The SGA Constitution clearly stated that the Vice President of Student Affairs would replace the President, should she, for any reason, step down. I would use my position as Reform tutional amendments. These would be noncontroversial improvements, such as codi-

Board). Still, I could trust them to (rightly) trash Cabinet when I needed them to.

As luck would have it, I found a easier method to impeach cabinet. I wouldn’t need to change the by-laws. Robert’s Rules of Order (which Joint Board follows) allow a body to censure, or reprimand, one of its members. A censure can include a punishment, including an impeachment. All it would take was a two thirds vote at Joint Board. No election necessary. It was starting to look realistic.

Plant a seed. Let it grow.

An opportunity arrived. A friend approached me with an axe to grind. Cabinet and STIFund had unilaterally decided not to put a student initiative on the ballot because it made a joke about hospitalizations for alcohol poisoning, which is, of course, a serious matter on campus. The initiative was entirely in jest, but its author had followed the procedure, collected the necessary signatures, and turned it in. When he voted on election day, it wasn’t on the ballot.

It wasn’t a big deal, but it was an opportunity. I could use this to introduce the idea of a censure to Joint Board. We moved to censure STIFund. As we hoped, Cabinet leapt to defend the decision. We could make them look bad without ourselves bringing them into the battle and making it personal.

I won’t recount the whole debate here.

It was painfully redundant and overplayed in the rumor mill. In the end, we lost in an 8-8 tie. But for my purposes, it was a success.

Joint Board knew what a censure was. In fact, long after I abandoned my plan, they would move to censure the ACE Chair for grossly over-allocating her budget. Once an idea takes hold, it’s easy to bring it back.

Accountability is a strong motivator.

Meanwhile, Reform Committe was sprinting to its goal. I collected friends and allies, all with SGA experience, all competent, and all where people “jokingly” called us the Coup Committee. we wanted to change, from typos and outdated references to serious Joint Board reform.

We decided (at my encouragement) to start by focusing on policies that could change meeting, but slipped it on to the list in the email I sent out that night.

We broke in subcommittees. A few people were put in charge of each the eight or so policy changes. They were sent off the meet tors, and anyone else with strong opinions.

We were preparing an overhaul of the SGA by-laws that would do the institution lasting good.

The policy I most wanted to pass (beside changing succession) was moving to instant runoff elections. I hate SGA runoffs. Everyone hates SGA runoffs. People don’t want to vote twice. Candidates don’t want to campaign twice. No one cares that much anyway.

Election Board Chair Peter Bautz is the reason we still have them. Peter didn’t defer to the majority opinion, not because he was understand that other people had different priorities. He though virtual run-offs would be too hard for Election Board to calculate would get harder. He wasn’t comfortable with the new election math (even though it is identical). For no other reason, he insistently fought against changing the system. This may be my most annoying memory of SGA. I learned, as Chair, that everyone was happy to do work, but no one was self-motivated by the thought of changing the SGA Constitution. I sent out more emails to the same people in those few weeks than I ever thought I’d need to. I emailed subcommittees to keep them working. I emailed cabinet members to make sure they were happy. I emailed my subcommittees to get our work done. I emailed the other ones again to remind them about the meetings they had scheduled. I emailed the whole group to update everyone on each other’s progress.

And it worked. As long as I sent emails, they delivered. Sadly, when I gave up my coup, none of the changes got implemented.

My successor on Reform Committee had no

such ambitions and no knowledge of the progress we made. But for a time, our committee smoothly, shockingly worked.

The good kind of politics requires the bad kind of politics.

Joint Board, and I learned something about politics.

SGA Senators aren’t corrupt. They don’t for their clusters. They don’t make backroom political deals to further each other’s interests. They don’t support their common interest as Senators over the interest of students at large. Discussions in Joint Board focus on policy and process.

They also don’t get anything done. They would rather not back down from their ideal stance than make a compromise. They can afford that luxury because no one depends on them. No one expects them to succeed as a student legislature. They’re not in anyone’s pocket, so they have no motivation to make a deal.

These features are two sides of the same coin. Politics works because we need it to work and we have faith enough in the process that we invest in winners. That forces lawmakers to get something done. Without force, they’d wait until a policy closer to their views gets popular support. It’s the same phenomenon that encourages pork barrel spending and what they used to call “honest grist.”

Take care of yourself.

Back to the plot. I was ready to march in to SGA like Hamlet claiming his throne, but my tragedy wasn’t Shakespearean. It was Greek. bad study habits, my inability to handle grief, and my status as a full time student.

I could have overcome my setbacks in Money Brawl and Reform Committee. The censure had entered the minds of Senators.

That was more important than the outcome of the vote to reprimand STIFund. At some point, I could ignore Peter and bring my ideas before the full Reform Committee for a vote.

I would win the vote. He might try to stir up trouble in Joint Board (not that I would invite him). If he did, it could actually work to my the necessary amendment: the change to succession.

Life caught up to me. I had already had a rough couple of years in my personal life (medical problems, problems with friends and so on), but senior year was the worst. Over the summer, my friend and former S&B col-

league Mando Montano died in Mexico City.

I was interning full time for the Elizabeth Warren campaign, in a fast paced environment with many new friends, so I never really processed my loss. Coming back to Grinnell, no longer living the exciting lifestyle of politics, no longer Editor-in-Chief of the S&B, and seeing Mando’s ghost around every corner, the grief ate at me. I became private and insular. I spend more and more time in my room, not really doing anything. I got behind in my classes.

Grinnell always enabled my worse habits. It’s too tempting and too easy to stay up all night working on a small campus with an endless amount to do. Too many of us are late or sleep through class for me to feel accountable when I miss something important.

I lost any sense of a sleep cycle, as I often have when I get busy here. I wasn’t eating much. I wasn’t doing any physical activity. I wasn’t partying, or socializing much at all. My mind wasn’t engaged by any big projects, except my ridiculous attempt to take over SGA. I lost my motivation. I lost my edge.

One night, sitting outside, thinking, well into the early morning, I called off the coup. that I could not, in my current state, be an effective SGA President. I would sleep through meetings. I would fail my classes. Once I admitted that, it was over.

I quit Joint Board the next day. I offered to stay on Reform Committee, but I stopped sending those emails out, and we didn’t put anything on paper by the end of the semester. I stopped caring about how the S&B covered SGA. My goal was to refocus on my classes as much as possible, and refocus on myself. I never committed to my academics as much as I wanted to. I’m really not the type. Despite some more setbacks, I did get my life back together. It wasn’t the senior year I expected, but I found ways to get a lot out of it.

I learned to take care of myself. _____ On May 20, my world will end. I’ll take the lessons I learned to DC for a couple years, then to law school and wherever else life takes me. It’s up to younger students to keep them here at Grinnell. It’s up to you to build your own community here, your own methods of student activism and your own goals, to face the problems that your generation of Grinnell students decides to face.

There are no limits to what you can try to do.

7

By Brian Silberberg 13 8

Throughout this school year, I have found a troubling trend developing among the Grinnell student body. There is an increasing rallying around what I would deem to be ‘questionable’ on-campus issues. I call these issues questionable not them to be problematic, but since it is literally a question whether or not they exist. Two issues in particular stand out to me: the concern over the possible discontinuation of needblind admissions to the school, and the concern that the College would end its relationship with the Posse program.

First off: need-blind admissions. It would certainly be terrifying if a school with as much of a history of social justice as Grinnell was forced to abandon its need-blind admissions policy when doing so is completely unnecessary and discriminatory. It is true that it was something under consideration by the school’s trustees in their attempt to rein in operational costs of the school. But I’d emphasize that this option was under consideration in much of the same way that the President of the United States technically always considers the option of sending atomic tipped warheads into a country when thinking about a war.

Sure it’s on the table, but it’s so unlikely to be the option taken that it’s rather absurd to take it all that seriously as a possibility.

Going back through my notes and the minutes of the meeting when Joe Bagnoli came to Joint Board to talk about the possibilities being considered to cut down on costs, cutting need blind admissions was under the last and most serious options considered, Approach C, which was brought up multiple times as being the least desirable and least likely course to be taken. As an option it serve to bring perspective to how much more desirable the other plans were. The hysteria

the issue inspired during the height of the debate over it was completely unwarranted in light of this. But hysteria it was.

There has also recently been a lot of talk about the future of Posse. While I can understand the fear that those invested in the program may feel to hear that it was being ‘re-evaluated,’ in reality it doesn’t really seem like the program was ever in danger. President Kington was brought in to make strong changes to the school and he has started on this path by reevaluating a plethora of programs and departments around the college. In fact, Posse unyears. In retrospect, and with multi-year deal being signed with Posse, I’d suspect that this re-evaluation was a good thing for the program; apparently after thinking abut the program more intimately than any other time save perhaps when the agreement between Posse and Grinnell was initially inked, the school has indeed decided that Posse is something it likes.

This is a decision I wholeheartedly endorse. Posse brings in a plurality of students who are intelligent, engaging, thoughtful and unique to this campus.

But these two examples are worrisome because the problems people thought existed really didn’t. The brouhaha over need-blind was entirely for the process the trustees who were making the decision about what changes to bring about to cut the school’s expenses were quite uncomfortable with the idea of eliminating need-blind admissions. Similarly the review Posse underwent seems to have been rather routine in terms of how President Kington wants to look over the different nooks and crannies of Grinnell These problems are important for two reasons. First, we live in a world with enough

problems that we do not need to create any new ones. On this campus alone there are tons of pressing issues that demand our attention. Class is completely swept under the rug, and the our students are ignored and pressed into the shadows. I’ve met plenty of people, as I’m sure many of you have, who have juggled multiple jobs while working as a full time student to help support their family, or have stayed here during spring break and been reduced to eating cans of tuna for two weeks because that’s all that is available to them.

Another example: the ability of our community to encourage a responsible atmosphere for drinking and using drugs is laughable at best. Too often we hear stories of people going to the hospital multiple times and it makes one wonder why this isn’t something that we confront our friends and fellow students with. Where is the energy that got people so excited when they heard about need-blind or Posse when their friends are drinking themselves into oblivion the umpteenth week in a row? I’m not trying to say that people are ‘bad’ for trying to do good for the community when they might have thought that need-blind or Posse was getting the axe, but we do only have so much time to dedicate to things outside of our school work. When you could take a bit of your own this issues might have been, people get on the soapbox of self-righteousness to create straw-men villains that don’t really resemble their real world counterparts when there are enough actual demons in need of being purged on campus.

While it is convenient and easy to imagine the trustees as dickhead fat-cats smoking cigars lit with $100 bills while they laugh about screwing over the poor,

that doesn’t really look anything like reality. The same goes for the idea that Ray K is some heartless technocrat hell-bent on ruining everything about this school. We create these problems and create a cast of easy targets to hate on because it’s easy and puts us in a world of black and white. Our real problems are actually here, they are hard, and they ask more of us than our made up ones do.

Secondly, we waste our social capital with the administration when we get up in arms over problems that don’t really exist. If we act like an ill-informed and reactionary mob then we risk being treating like one. We all take social justice issues seriously, and we wanted to be treated like seriour causes. We need to be able to work with the administration to tackle problems that are troubling to us when we come across them. The way we cherry-pick and propagate these issues makes us look like fools to the administration, and we can’t afford to be thought of that way when we do need institutional support in tackling some of the serious issues which students care about and are impacted by.

I’m proud to be a part of a ate voices and critical thinkers who are willing to stand up for what they think is right. But we need to be careful about the causes we choose. We need to do our homework on just what the story is when it comes to a causes like removing needblind or re-evaluating Posse: who’s making the decisions?

Why? What are the other options? What is the precedent they are working under? These are the sorts of questions we need to ask before endorsing a cause. It is only by operating under this sort of framework that we as a community can to be problematic in our school and the world at large and that

9

S o c i al S t u d i e s: Ta k e s A w a y O u r

By Hannah Quicksell About a month ago, I found myself in the middle of a “townie” birthday party. It was everything I dreamed of, complete with shitty beer, hairspray that belonged in 2006, and a shirt that read, “Cool story babe/ now make me a sandwich.” I went with two female friends from the College and we were entirely out of our element. My friends engaged in a “girls vs. boys” beer pong game, while I, amused, kept quietly to myself. The girls closed in on the win, when one of them yelled something along the lines of, “Woo! Yeah!

The boobs win everything!” to which I quickly, and much too loudly, joked, “Except the patriarchy!” As soon as the words fell from my lips, I received some self-conscious, weak chuckles from my friends and rather confused looks from everyone else who heard me.

Now, let me clarify that if I had been surrounded entirely by my Grinnell friends, that joke would have received an uproariously large laugh, or at least a depressed chuckle. In that moment of being the worst-person-atthe-party though, I realized that I had not always been an academic prick.

Moreover, I used to be able to glide through many different professional and social atmospheres before college.

These days, the only moments when I am not sobered from feeling like the mutant elephant in the room are when I am with other attendees of in-themiddle-of-nowhere, bourgie colleges.

As I tuck more semesters under my philosophy major belt, Grinnell Col-

10

lege has slowly made me incapable of interacting with most people who are in existence. Furthermore, due to the intense nature of an education like Grinnell's, the amount of time spent absorbed academia has deprived many people the opportunity to learn basic, real-world skills. By the time each and everyone of us reaches our fourth year, intellectualism will instill the value of non-practical skills and life-goals, which will leave us, to some degree, lacking normal abilities and unable to socialize with the majority of humans.

Grinnellians pride themselves on their “quirks,” which are normally a quaint expression of a student's perceived individuality. However, many times the lack of normalcy results in a ripple effect of problems. Our own disabilities in common society hinder other people's quality of life. First of all, Claustrophobic, academic atmospheres encourage students to forget, or never learn, normal social skills. Intellectualism overpowers qualities like kindness or empathy, is our go to for impressing people, and worst of all, tends to make us believe we are always right when it comes to facts.

For example, I was spending time with a friend and a guy I’ll call Merle* (all of the names here were changed).

To impress my friend, Merle without provocation would always answer automatically translate himself into English. While it was impressive that he speaks Norwegian so well, it was enough for us to stop asking him ques-

tions altogether forever.

Another one of my personal favorite worst-person-ever stories was Gunther*, who just trying to make friends. In response to a friend saying his major was Russian, Gunther replied, whilst stroking his peach fuzz no less, “Hmm. ... Well I like to think that music is my second language.” Later, Gunther was describing how his local Midwestern, American Indian tribe had begun to accept him as one of their own, and he actually knew their traditions better than many of the tribe members his age. Desperate to throw this guy a rope, I strung together that they must be Lakota, because a lot of cultural knowledge was scattered when they were exiled from Minnesota. To this he starkly said, “No, you're wrong.

They're the Sioux.”

The examples given are extreme cases of young adults who have spent too much of their life dreaming of academia. However, there are smaller examples of socially frictional moments: 1. The terrible person asking longwinded, douchy questions when class ended two minutes ago.

2. The awful, road-bumpesque small talk that occurs far too often.

3. The fact that we, as a campus, have tried to be so socially just that we have become paranoid.

4. The little shit who opens the grill door, completely oblivious to the fact he or she exists among people.

There are degrees to which people start to live only in their heads. The occasional student is so practical that

H o w L e ar n i ng r (S o c i al) S k i ll s their obliviousness is barely noticeable.

The other issue with Grinnell is that it does not allow for people to learn real life skills. Most of us come straight from a home with some sort of parental/guardiantal care, where they may have cooked most our meals or did our laundry. Some of us did not even hold a job before college. After high school, most of us went straight to Grinnell, which takes care of almost everything for us: FM cleans our bathrooms, we initially have 20 pre-prepared meals per week, and Grinnell puts us in a sterilized environment where only human beings in their prime exist. Because of this, some people spend so much time only reading, writing, and doing experiments that they do not gain commonsense, general skills gained from normal life experiences.

One day, I was working the sandwich line at Dining Hall with Ethel*, job ever. I tried to be understanding and give her basic jobs, so I handed her a broom and dustpan. It soon became apparent that Ethel had no idea how like Disney's Cinderella and did everything but gather the dirt.

On another occasion, Chester*, who had earlier claimed that dogs were his favorite animal, had a dog up to him. Chester was excited at the presence of a dog, but then asked, “How do I pet the dog?” while his hand anxiously twitched to and fro.

From what my parents/maid-did-

everything-for-me-while-I-only-readbooks planet did you come from that you did not learn how to sweep? Or how about the fact that you have only spent time around super-educated humans that you do not know how to pet your favorite domestic animal? Again, these are extreme examples. But how ing at the dining hall that they did not know how to build a sandwich or saute a green pepper? I mean, come on. Take a gap year and pull yourself together.

In part, colleges like Grinnell produce such awkward individuals due to the fact that very few people actually become graduates of these types of schools. First off, it is a high quality, liberal arts college education. One third of the American population receives a Bachelor's Degree and most get theirs from a state school that is focused on job-preparation. Very few get a degree from a small, liberal arts institution that believes in education for the sake of education. Throw on top that the college is highly selective and in the middle of nowhere, and it becomes a constantly boiling, intellectual stew. Grinnell students have basically only have the college to provide their social lives, entertainment, and opportunities. Whether he or she likes it or not, every student is drowning in a sea of Grinnell intellectual principles with no means of escape.

While I have been critical of the Grinnell cultural effects on students, it should be said that I actually think highly of the way it molds people into

thoughtful, caring individuals. Many of us feel that it is worth developing Social Frictional Disorder (SFD) in return for the ability to see the world in many new and enlightening ways. Therefore, it is normally nothing to actually perspire or wallow over. At the same time, it is not a just personal problem when we are not capable of a basic skill or are interpersonally terrible; it almost always negatively affects a greater people. So, it is for those moments that we are actually the worst-person-at-theparty or incapable of sweeping that I am saying that we, as a community, have a problem. As an advocate for social happiness, I am asking for an end to the ignorance. I think it is wonderful to have so many thoughtful, motivated people in the middle of Iowa continuing there pursuit of theoretical knowledge. However, we need a balance. As Mark Twain says, “Don't let schooling interfere with your education.” Do not give up or avoid learning basic skills in order to get straight A's. From my lengthy studies of Twain, I believe he would advise us all to take advantage of your hometown culture, converse with people who are not on their path to getting PhD's, spend time among nature and animals, pick up a useful hobby, do not dislike or disregard someone because he is a straight white male, and pay close attention to your mannerisms and tone of voice when you speak. As a great philosopher once said, “Not everything has to be an issue of oppression. Sometimes you can just enjoy life. And not cite sources.”

11

Not a Normal Education Rigorous, excellent, and extensive. These are words that I personally think of when I consider what a Grinnell education is. I think most Grinnellians (minus the few of us that have yet to face the harsh realities that surround us) would agree with me.

However, there are unfortunate exceptions to this rule. There are a few professors who can fall short of our expectations for Grinnell. Many of us have had one of these professors, and if you haven’t, you are lucky.

Last semester I had one of these experiences, but it was probably quite unique, even for such a unique institution.

Grinnell’s administration is committed to the education of its students, and it goes to great lengths to ensure that the professors hired here are committed too. The entire process of hiring a professor can take up to an entire year, though the majority of the work gets done in the month after winter break. A department, such as Economics, Council—the SGA for faculty—detailing the reasons that the department needs another

12

tenure-track professor. If the proposal is approved, the department can start its formal process by forming a search committee,. The Economics Department often accompanies its search with job postings on networks such as the American Economics Association (AEA) and Job Openings for Economists (JOE).

Then, the department collects all the received applications and narrows them down to three promising candidates who are invited to visit the college. This visit typically occurs in late January or early February.

While at Grinnell, every potential tenuretrack professor must meet with the Executive Council. The hopefuls also present the and meet with students during lunch, a tour, and “Q and A” sessions coordinated by the SEPC. These visits and the applicants’ own references are all the department and administration have to base their recommendations and eventual hiring of a professor on. The College must trust that the applicants are being

truthful in their descriptions of themselves, just as the College must trust the institutions that gave the applicants their degrees. That trust should be familiar to students: it’s the Self-Gov (is Love!) way. When that trust is breached, the college should only be judged on how it deals with the unfortunate situation. This is the manner in which Brian Swart was chosen in 2011.

I transferred into ECN 262 Empirical Methods, which is basically a statistics class with a slight economic perspective. It started out as any other Grinnell class–the professor, Brian Swart, was quirky (perhaps a bit of a pushover), but he seemed to possess a comprehensive knowledge of the material.

Although it was an 8:30 a.m. class (goodbye nightlyfe), his eccentric charm made it All in all, although annoyingly timed, it was a pretty nice, relaxing class to have. As the semester went on, certain events would make this relatively happy period come to a close.

Around Parents Weekend, the students of

Professor Swart received an email from Dean of the College Paula Smith announcing the professor’s decision to leave the faculty of Grinnell College. The reasons that were not divulged to the student body for the sake of Professor Swart’s privacy. (Swart later wrote a personal email himself, which shed no light on the decision.)

And so the rumor mill started. Gossip and speculation streamed into our tight-knit populace. Whatever the as of yet unknown reason, Swart was gone and the college faced an immediate problem: Who would, if anyone, replace Swart in the classes he taught?

ters and PhD. Jones seemed like a fairly good choice, especially given the short time-span in which he was chosen. In our

professors at Grinnell work just as hard as their students to make sure the Grinnell experience is as engrossing, fun, and challenging as possible. For any of them to pick up another class would be unfair, especially for such a specialized class. There was the possibility of cancelling the class altogether, but Grinnell’s administration and professors say they are committed to their students, and this measure would only have been implemented if no other solutions could be found.

They chose to bring in outside help. The head of the Economics Department, Keith Brouhle, solicited many professors and other academics from the surrounding area and beyond using AEA and JOE as well as tapping into the Economics Department’s network of retired professors and other younger professors (given recent revelations, it can be understood why they may have been wary of the latter).

Most lived too far away for a reasonable

but this could be easily explained.

It’s one thing to teach at a community college and a whole other to teach at Grinnell. It must have been quite intimidating. He had also just received the textbook the Saturday before that Monday’s class, so it was understandable for him

teacher at the local community college.

Mr. Jones noticed a message on his phone asking him if Brouhle could speak with him in the near future. During their talks, Brouhle made Jones privy to the urgency of the situation the college had been put in because of Swart and implored him to take the temporary position. Jones initially refused, giving the legitimate excuse of there being an taught at the community college and the end of the 8:30 - 10:00 a.m. class on Mondays and Wednesdays. Empirical Methods was thus shortened by a half-hour, extended to Friday, and started a half-hour earlier to accommodate Jones’ schedule. This was acceptable to Jones and he agreed to take on the extra load.

A Grinnellian himself, he graduated in 2003 with a bachelors in mathematics. He went on to attend Iowa State to work on his Mas-

seemed a little ping over his own words and going on super-

other classes he taught at the community colthe way the class would proceed.

From that class on, the lectures that were given to us degraded in quality and content to the point where I felt we were taking a class in high school or, perhaps, a community college. It became obvious that with all his other commitments, Jones could not teach at the level that students had hoped for. While were logical (it was usually clear when he moved to a new topic), the lectures themdetails and tangents that it became hard for most students to pick out the useful information from the barrage of useless garbage.

Mr. Jones acknowledges his shortcomings, saying he never felt prepared for more than one class ahead of time and, because of his already busy schedule, was not able to prepare as adequately as he’d like for each class.

The class had become a joke, and not the kind you want to take. The only students who could follow along with what was being taught were the ones who already had a background in statistics. The rest were left to struggle their way through the few assignments and exams we had and poor grades were a common characteristic for all.

By the end of December, the class was over. Break ensued and then ushered in a new Then, less than a month into the new semester, we learned the truth about why Swart left.

Plagiarism. The majority of his dissertation.

I had never heard of such rampant abuse of the education system. Swart was supposed to evaluate our academic work, but he couldn’t had it in him, and I doubt anyone did.

In any case, Grinnell’s administration was diculous situation in its strange, unfortunate entirety, but others were not so pleased. The victim of Swart’s plagiarism, another professor, felt Grinnell was too passive, and one student who withdrew from the empirical analysis course met an exorbitant amount of circumstances.

They could have been much more accommodating to all who were affected by Swart’s deceitful actions, and their lack of empathy for the victims is strikingly un-Grinnellian.

Empirical Methods by far takes the prize for “Worst Class of My Personal Grinnell Experience So Far,” as I’m sure it does for many of my classmates. Ben Jones is again teaching the class this semester, while the Economics Department searches for a onea full time replacement next year. Jones is optimistic about the rest of his semester and says that he is prepared at least a week in advance, with lecture notes on P-Web and has been able to give the course the structure it lacked last semester. He also says that his current students are responding much better this time around.

While Jones may have failed to live up to the elevated expectations of professors last semester, he was given another chance. He tried his best under extreme and extenuating circumstances and should be commended for it. But most of all he did not betray the sacred trust between teacher and student, a tie that is stressed from the Mishnah to Oxford, to our own attitude of Self-Gov.

13

Break on Through...

By Nathan Forman

14

The other side: a different set of dorms with a different aesthetic inhabited, as is so often the case, by unfamiliar faces. 8th

stereotypes I encountered when investigating the campus divide was that north campus is where athletes live. I lived in Norris my

the transition from the residence hall to the classroom; for many students, 8th Ave separates north (and east) from south.

Events in Loose lounge and Gardner can do only so much to bring students together in a selfselecting community. For Garin Kessler ’15 who lives in Loose, geographic estrangement only exacerbates the discordance between north and south.

“Hard to break north. There’s two different communities and you’re with people in one or with people in the other,” Kessler said.

“The campus divide is fucked.”

Kessler paints a picture of parallel universes: equally nuanced communities where insularity is de rigueur. If you’ve ever heard characterizations of “north people” or “south people,” those too share in Kessler’s sentiment.

One of the most prominent

least one football player lived on and Dibble, so I was intrigued when I found out that Daniel Ryerson and Daniel Reynolds, both running backs and both class of 2015, chose to live in Cleveland this year. Thankfully, these two Dan’s were more than happy to sit down and share their thoughts about campus culture and athletics.

Ryerson and I met in the Grill on April 23rd. At 5’10, 223 pounds, he carried himself with a peaceful swagger and looked a few workouts away from hulking. He could have moved boulders for a living. Ryerson lived and was eager to live there again with more of his friends from the team.

“We were trying to do a six room draw and Cleveland was one of the options. I sort of talk-

ed it up a lot tried to really get it in their heads.” Ryerson said.

I talked to Danny Reynolds a week later, although notably smaller than Ryerson at 5’7, Reynolds amicably answered my questions, conversing with cockchoosing to live in Cleveland came with complications.

“One of us couldn’t live on campus this year, but we managed to stay in Cleveland,” Reynolds said.

Although their group draw wasn’t realized, Reynolds nonetheless enjoys living on south.

“I love south campus. I think it’s got a lot of personality, it’s got a lot of spirit. The people living here are nice, I don’t have to worry locking my door. It’s just a nice, calm when it needs to be, energetic when it needs to be kind of place.”

While neither Dan complained much about living in Cleveland, team responsibilities hindered their immersion into one of South Campus’s most notorious dormitories. Perhaps

most damning–especially when living in Cleveland–they signed an agreement saying that they would not drink or smoke during the season.

“We can’t smoke [non-tobacco] things. That’s just not something football team likes to associate with. It doesn’t mean I don’t have friends who do it; it doesn’t mean I disrespect anyone who does it. I’m not going to think any differently of anyone who does do that, it’s just something I try not to get in trouble with.”

Ryerson said. in not participating when Cleveland smokes.

“We sign a contract at the beginning of every season saying that we won’t, and so it’s breaking just fundamental team rules, it’s a big insult to the team.”

However, abstaining from smoking is also imperative, because even smoking one joint at the wrong time can have real consequences.

“There are some guys who would give you a really hard time

...To the Other Side

or talk to a coach if they found out [you were smoking],” Reynolds said. “We lost our starting quarterback this fall before the season ever started because he got caught. Right after the season we lost two more players because they got caught. The quarterback was recognized by security. The other players might have been partially [revealed] by teammates, but there was a knowledge that these kids were smoking.”

Practices consume a lot of time that the Ryerson and Reynolds could spend working on other projects. During the season, the team conducts morning meetings and afternoon practices, while meeting and practice times rotate in the offseason.

“I don’t have as much free time as I like and that results in me staying up later, not managing my time as well,” Ryerson said.

Reynolds, a physics major, balances his practice schedule with his work as a tutor at the Math Lab. Despite the obstacles that

restrict their time and social interaction, Reynolds and Ryerson managed to connect with the residents of Cleve 2nd and create a strong community.

“We introduced a beer pong just started hanging out and we became a really good group of guys and girls.” Ryerson said. “I really don’t mind hipsters. That’s always been part of the gig.”

While Reynolds agrees that the beer pong table has been instill hears a calling to spend time on the weekends with other football players on North Campus.

“Sometimes we bring football players to Cleveland, but usually we go up North to hang out with other teammates. We don’t really want to isolate ourselves too much. There’s only one other football player who lives on South Campus,” Reynolds said.

However, Reynolds and Ryto South Campus. Reynolds outlined the logistics of their weekend excursions, through which

themselves on their feet.

“We’ll start in Cleveland, and then we’ll go north and meet up with some other teammates. If there’s a Harris we’ll hang out in Harris for a little bit and then go down to Gardner and head to high street,” Reynolds said.

Sometimes, the football players bring Clevalanders who aren’t a part of the team north with them.

“We brought a friend of ours Track team to a football gathering. We taught him a new game.

Some of his friends showed up and played with us.” Reynolds said. “Honestly, it’s funny, but alcohol is a real glue between people to keep them friends and keep them socialized.”

Some might argue that Ryerson and Reynolds assimilated cision to live in Cleveland didn’t come without reproach from a few football team members.

“Some of my teammates were like ‘why are you living there?

Live on north. It’s closer to us!’”

Ryerson said.

Over the past few years, some members have felt defensive about the football team. After Cunnilingus, some students discussed the need to disestablish the football team because of its apparent discordance with campus culture. Last year, an S&B Editorial argued that Grinnell should not have a football team because of concussions.

This year, however, Ryerson and Reynolds have experienced more criticism for their choice of residence than from residents of Cleveland themselves.

“I haven’t felt as attacked this year as a member of the team.

We’re told to brush it off and let it run its course, it all blows over anyways,” Reynolds said. “People will make sweeping generalizations about the team and if I can successfully hide the fact that I’m a football player, and then introduce myself as a football player impression it doesn’t affect my relationship with people.”

15

Team Spirit & Varsity Blues

By Kirsten Nelson

13 16

In a lot of ways, this ar ticle is a love letter to my [stickies], although we’re going to get a little t h e S t i c k y To n g u e F r o g s a r e G r i n n e l l ’ s Wo m e n ’ s U l t i m a t e t e a m , a club team made up of anyone and ever yone who has decided to commit their time and energy to lear ning, playing, and ideally perfecting the game of Ultimate Frisbee.

Let me start this off by saying that for better or for worse, I have played many different varieties of sports. One side-effect of being an energetic child is that your to throw you onto a field, in a

pool, a rink, a dojo, or anywhere that their tired minds aren’t the ones responsible for finding some way to channel all of that raw energy for a few hours. My mom would come home and say “C’mon, Kirsten, we signed you up for a fencing day camp, time to go,” and off I went. I sprinted, skated and tumbled my way through a majority of my childhood, but the spor t that stuck close to my bones like a magnet was always, a l wa y s s o c c e r. Fr o m a ve r y yo u n g age, the soccer field was my battlefield. Ever y game day I had my routine, listening to Queen with my dad and putting on my shing u a r d s , i m a g i n i n g t h e m a s a r m o r.

17

It was me and my girls against an army of players who are just as set on that ball hitting the back of our net as we are set on placing it neatly in theirs. My value as a player was easily measured. Am I running hard enough, running fast enough, running smart enough to beat the other team at a game we had both been playing since we could walk? Soccer was my life.

I reffed it, coached it, played on three teams a season just to get more touches on the ball and more time on the field.

In this time, I had no idea Ultimate was a nationally competitive entity. My high school had an informal Ultimate team, but they were the kids who didn’t play “real” sports, who didn’t understand “real” teams. At my highly competitive athletic school, I’m ashamed to admit I looked down on them as much as anyone else did for their “inferior” sport.

Senior year. A bad coach, a decent year of play, but suddenly I was questioning my love for soccer. I gave it 14 years of work, scars, bruises and broken bones, and still felt like I didn’t know the game the way some girls did. I wasn’t in love anymore. I wanted to try other things, have new experiences. So I made the decision not to play varsity soccer in college. Cut to me walking around the activities fair on Mac field as a lost little first year. I put my name on the email list for anything and everything I assumed I could possibly have an interest in. Ultimate was not included in that category.

Then, one fortuitous Friday, three guys on my floor came and knocked on my door. They asked if I wanted to come play frisbee at an informal practice out on Mac Field. “It’s a beautiful day,” they argued, “just come outside, you don’t have to know how to play”. And just like that, I had a new love in my life. Love for a sport and a team that, without the gentle encouragement of three of the 10 people I happened to know on campus that first week, I would probably never have given a second thought.

Why do I love Ultimate, you ask? Is it the extra half a second of hang-time between the disc and the ground which allows you to throw yourself after a thin rim of plastic and snag it at the very last moment? Is it that if you pull off a sweet layout grab, the girl guarding you will probably give you just as much credit as your teammates do? Is it that we play in the snow, rain, wind, and any

18

possible combination of them? Is it that we play to win, but value the sideline as much as a player?

Because the only reason to play Ultimate Frisbee is for the love of the game.

There is no glory in Frisbee, except in the props of your teammates and opponents. There are no referees. There are rarely coaches. Ultimate operates on a system much like self-gov which we call the “spirit of the game.” Theres no point in cheating or taking a dirty shot at an opponent. That ruins the game for everyone. You are your own opponent.

The only thing keeping you from grabbing that disc is your own physical limitations.

Now, last year at DIII Nationals a bunch of committed Ultimate players representing Grinnell College came in 2nd place, nationally, by one point. This year, because of a huge influx of new girls and a relatively insufficient number of experienced players to teach them the game, we were unsure whether or not we would be making a Nationals appearance again. There seems to be a very common misconception that because we allow anyone to play, because many of us are learning Ultimate for the first time as adults, because we have “club team” status and practice 3 times a week instead of 6, that we are not competitive.

It’s true, commitment to Frisbee is much more lax than a true varsity sport. However, Ultimate is a year-round sport at this school. Our fall season is mostly spent teaching new players the game and increasing team cohesion. Then we come to winter season, and our time is spent indoors at the Bear, doing conditioning and fundamentals from 9-11 p.m., because as a club team we don’t get priority in the field house at a more reasonable hour of the day. There have been multiple occasions when everyone showed up to practice only to find that no one bothered to inform us our practice space was taken over by a varsity team with higher priority and we will have to attempt to find a time to reschedule. We also add lifting three times a week and throwing outside of practice to our three practice schedule. Enter spring season and we’ve got a team of moderately competitive Frisbee players who just need a little more game experience to truly grasp the game. Getting that game experience in before Conference is a crush of weekends away from

campus, exhausted Sunday-night homework and soaking, windy practices. The formula yields results. This past weekend the Sticky Tongue Frogs qualified for DIII Nationals for the 4th year running.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m proud to be representing my school at a national tournament. I’m proud of my teammates for the mountain of work they’ve put into this team and our goals of competitive success. Now I’m asking the Grinnell community to be just as proud to have us represent them, and give us the resources we need to continue that success. Ultimate Frisbee players drive personal cars to Frisbee tournaments, some of which have put on hundreds of miles as a result. Cars have broken down and had to be rescued from the middle of snowstorms and cornfields. Mac Field is an uneven and unsafe athletic surface, and both teams have had injuries occur simply due to practicing on uneven, bare ground.

Ultimate players also have no access to trainers when we are injured. Nonvarsity players are forced to beg the varsity athletes on the team to grab ice from the trainer’s cooler, many times before having been told we aren’t considered the right kind of “athlete” to have access to a plastic bag of frozen water, courtesy of the school. This may seem overdramatic, but I’ve seen too many of my teammates sitting holding ankles or knees or shoulders, looking hurt and scared and only being asked, “Is it bad enough to go the ER?” When the health center is closed and we can’t go to the trainer, the choice for an injured ultimate player is hospital bills or tough it out and hope for the best. I understand there are legal issues at stake, but I don’t think you’d have much protest from players if they had to sign a waiver to have access to the trainer. It is the obligation of this school to protect its students, and I would like to think that as a group that routinely acts as an ambassador from Grinnell to other schools, that Ultimate especially would qualify for the resources Grinnell has to offer.

Whatever the future holds for Grinnell Ultimate Frisbee, I’ve got love for [stickies] and lust for plastic. I’m honored to wear that baby blue jersey and represent this college. I just wish that bureaucracy didn’t make it so hard to play the sport I love.

3rd Down And Forever...

By Ron Chiu It begins with a simple snap.

The ball shoots backwards. The tough leather of the hide greets the hands of one towering behind the lines of war. His eyes survey the jagged hellscape of MacEachron Field. For a moment, the world halts and waits for him to strike. In his hands, rests the fate of his team—the quarterback must make a decision leading to life or eliminapoints towards the heavens. A spear of lightning strikes across the Iowan sky. The ball hangs in the sky for an eternity before it tumbles into the outstretched hands of a receiver. There is life.

The weary runner’s arms collapse into a cradle as he runs towards the elusive land of the end zone. His lungs scorch and his legs across his shorts in a blur of tantalizing scarlet, waiting to be ripped unceremoniously by pursuing defenders. He does not look back.

Five yards to go. The screams and shouts and mind become numb. One yard to go.

His eyes stream with tears of unadulterated I have dreamed of this moment so many times: the moment that my football team wins the Intramurals Football Championship. It has replayed in my mind the last few years with a powerful exactness and clarity—playing right before the crushing, bitter realization that the dream is not a reality. Yes, my team, Ron Chiu and the Merry Chiusters—one of the oldest and most cellege—has never won the big game. athlete. I started playing catch in high school when my parents suggested that I start taking an extracurricular activity. It was not long before I gained some local recognition for playing catch a lot. The fame was nice,

but I had bigger dreams. less. It turned that many teams found my determination and my lunch money were attractive assets to their rosters. Less than four days after I signed with the Voltage Bandits, we appeared in the Andrew High School Parking Lot Classic and took home the title.

In that memorable game, I played a crucial role for my team by “not getting in the way.”

It was a great disappointment when I realized that no Division I schools were offercoach enthusiastically mailed my training videos to the likes of Notre Dame, Texas, and Carleton, but not one school ever offered me a spot. I couldn’t understand why. I possessed the ideal absence of physical size and athletic gift. My teammates praised me I had to swallow my pride and go to a Division III school. Fighting back tears on the phone, I choked and accepted Grinnell’s offer to start my own team. That is how Grinnell became my home.

After three years, Ron Chiu and the Merry Chiusters has evolved into a fantastic organization. Our loyal fan-base stretches all the way from North Campus to South Campus and we have actively recruited from all corners of the dining hall. The “Chiusters” as we are affectionately known by our fans, have a successful record of winning at least one game per season. Sometimes teams are so intimidated by us that they refuse to show up to the game and the intramural directors are forced to award us with a win. Our regular season success has guaranteed us three straight total playoff appearances.

I am often asked the question “What makes a Chiuster?” and I always answer equivocally that it is passion that makes a Chiuster. Flag football is simply not an enterprise suited for everyone, but is certainly for that rare breed of people who call them-

selves Chiusters. not even provide members with work out schedules and instructions. The consumwork out, if it happens at all. I have resigned myself to only consuming junk food in the coming weeks in order to prevent any uning may cause. I wake up early every morning in the season to go to the computer lab to study YouTube videos of people playing NFL Madden for hours in order to draw up gameplans. Sometimes I don’t leave the ofWe start this year with a must-win game against the Women’s Frisbee Team. I say “must-win,” because the rest of our opponents will almost certainly destroy us. We then play the Loony Toons, a tough opponent. The second half of our season will be brutal. We play the football team, then squad of bros, “Country and Beer.” We don’t stand a chance.

With only four teams, we are assured a spot in the playoffs. Since we expect to come the football team. Our best hope is to trick them into not showing up. We can tell them the game was rescheduled, and invite them to a Taylor Swift party instead. We’ll show it-out football in the mud. I can’t disclose our strategy here—it’s too public. But I can say how the game will end. Our quarterback star receiver will grab it out of the air. With one yard to go, his body and mind will become numb. His eyes will stream with tears of unadulterated joy. He’ll have salvation at

19

“Po-co?” I asked.

What I Am Learning

By Geo Gomez “I DON’T BELIEVE IN CHARITY. I BELIEVE IN SOLIDARITY. CHARITY IS VERTICAL, SO IT’S HUMILIATING. IT GOES FROM THE TOP TO THE BOTTOM. SOLIDARITY IS HORIZONTAL. IT RESPECTS THE OTHER AND LEARNS FROM THE OTHER. I HAVE A LOT TO LEARN FROM OTHER PEOPLE.” For me, getting to Grinnell was somewhat of a long-shot. My mother met my dad at a Latino Students meeting, went to prom with him, then had my sister shortly after. I came a year after that. My parents joined in what would grow to be a ramshackle marriage. Both were in their late teens, both My mother, a buoyant and petite beauty, seemed to have all the answers. As a high school dropout with two kids, she had to get her shit together pretty quickly, even when things were messy. She quietly endured verbal lashings from my father and, after he had left the room, would tell my sister and I that they were just teasing each other. After she left my father, we spent two weeks living in a motel. At the time, it wasn’t homelessness, it was a vacation: a queen-sized bed with huge covers, a bathroom we didn’t have to share with other family, and a TV with cable. My mother managed to veil the situation, to help us maintain some sense of comfort through it all. How she did it, I’m still not sure. Her education wasn’t classroom based. She had to learn how to become a mother, become her own person, and still maintain some sort of dignity through it all. nursing program. She calls me and I walk her through math problems, which I was never even good at. At times, I feel my patience wearing away. The list of things I have to do grind against my mind and build a sawdust pile of anxiety while I explain over the phone what it means to divide 25 from both sides of the equation.

Around the same time, I started volunteering with the Prison Program at the Iowa Women’s Correctional Institution in Mitchellville. I walk incarcerated women hrough their practice GED tests, ranging in age from their mid 20’s to a charming grandmother who once called me a “young buck.”

At times, the women are reserved. They will sometimes defeat themselves before they even try a problem, perhaps all too used to being dismissed as moronic, or just hesitant to try something they may fail at. More than once I’ve seen a pencil put down on the table, followed by, “See, these problems I just freeze up on, I can’t do them.”

There’s Heaven, a Native American woman who once pointed out her tribe on a map of Indian reservations, letting me know that Omaha is

you stay. I must sashay away,” and she busted out laughing.

For some reason, I am never frustrated with the women at the prison. Yet, for the longest time, I would get fed up with my mother. My comments were brisk, my tone short, and my exasperation evident. She even said once that she didn’t want my help because I made her feel stupid. tonic claims and responses, language attitudes and ideologies, the tropes of slave narrative, courtship and love in 17th century English. It was beyond

20

“Post-Colonialism.” what I was helping my mother with, and I was being a dick about it.

Maybe it was the fact that I’m so close to my mother that wore my patience thin. I let her see how easily frustrated I get, how stressed I am from everything I have to do, even the melancholy of trying to communicate with her over the phone when tutoring would be so much easier in person. My education had made me unrelatable, who had the patience to tutor strangers at the prison, but not his own mother.

Education is a strange thing. Once people attain it, it can be hard to connect to a world apart from it. How many students at Grinnell come from college educated families, from parents that are doctors or college professors?

Education is a privilege There are occasional Alt Break trips to Atlanta to help “underprivileged” communities, but this is more of a stooping down to help people “in need.” I’m not knocking Alt Break trips, I think they’re great. But how many people who go on the trips actually take the opportunity to learn from it as a step into a life of mutual dignity and respect, besides a few weeks where they can feel good about themselves?

A lesson in privilege came to me in the form of Natasha Trethaway, National Poet Laureate of 2012-2013. standing at the front of a crowded JRC 101. My advisor, Shanna Benjamin, introduced Trethaway in a soft, milky voice, caressing her poetic abilities, and ended with “Trethaway is the truth.” After extended applause, Trethaway took the stage. Her voice didn’t sound like that of a nationally recognized poet. Her vocal chords didn’t pound like war ing fun at Dean Bakopolous.

But her poems swam in a sea of themes: the racial legacy of Louisiana, an inner and outer self, a girl’s alternating desire for and fear of an absent father, and a winged poem about how her mother (a black female) got mistaken for Trethaway’s maid when she was young and had coins pressed into her palm by pitying strangers who mistook the woman as destitute. She let her humanity write her poems for her, and her poems write out her humanity. She was enchanting.

Walking out, I approached two well-read upperclassmen in the mailroom.

“What’d you guys think? Wasn’t that awesome?” I nearly shouted.

“I actually wasn’t that impressed.” One of the them replied, his horn rimmed glasses crouching beneath his furrowed brows. “I thought the language was trite and the themes

were so explicit that I didn’t have to do any work as a reader. It didn’t do anything new for poetry.”

“I agree.” The other one said, broad shouldered and nearly stooping to talk to the two of us, his eyes darting back to Glasses between every word. “She just spoon-fed me po-co.”

“Po-co?” I said. Tha fuck? I thought.

They both looked at each other, then back to me, and then simultaneously recited, “Postcolonialism.” The look exchanged between them, the self-assured and delighted chance to reveal the meaning of what was essentially an emoticon for a school of literary criticism, was enough to make a librarian hot and heavy, to give an 11th grader picking up Nietzsche for the My mind blanked. I couldn’t work up a response, or even feel indignation. I felt my face drop, and I guess they must have seen this because they instantly began defending what they had just said.

“Yeah I feel like you’re not allowed to say this stuff because people think you’re an asshole but I mean, yeah,” Shoulders said. It was one of those times when you qualify a comment by distancing yourself from exactly what the comment reveals about you, like I’m not racist but, or I’m not trying to be a bitch but, (one I personally use all the time), in an effort to deny that you are indeed racist, a bitch, or an asshole.

I got my mouth to work again. “Well I thought her language was unassuming, but I don’t think that means it was trite. I think it helped her tell her stories.”

“But come on, she’s the National Poet Laureate. I expected a little more.” Glasses said as we opened the door out of the mailroom and towards the loggia. I was shaking my head as the conversation drifted.

But in my mind, the conversation was already over. I recognized a belief that, unless they were some postmodern genius, writers of color are simply trying to draw out a tale of struggle and disenfranchisement that reveals their oppression on a life-long journey dedicated to taking down “the white man.” Which to some extent, we are. But come on. These boys had conveniently forgotten poems that had nothing to do with po-co, like a poem that portrayed the memory of her mother dying as a recurring nightmare/reunion.

Nearly at the loggia, Glasses brought the point back up, claiming that my opinion was “legit,” and to his credit, Trethaway’s poetry wasn’t exactly groundbreaking. I said that the

two of them probably weren’t her target audience.

“Well come on that’s not fair. I don’t wanna just read old dead white men.” Glasses said. I shrugged my shoulders and left them to enter my dorm. Reaching my room, I reiterated the entire exchange to my roommate.

After explicating, the realization emerged from behind my consciousness: it wasn’t my job to school these white boys. My silence hadn’t been so much a surrender to their beliefs as an unconscious understanding that the conversation was going nowhere. How was I supposed to teach them, in the span of a three minutes walk, why a poet, simply because she was biracial and wrote about racial legacy, couldn’t be watered down to “po-co.” God forbid Trethaway was a poet that was exploring human qualities. Relegating her to an abbreviation of a genre was a way for them to be comfortable with their white identity. Nah, unless we’re in class or I’m on my Facebook, ain’t nobody got time for that.

Shortly after, I called my mother to tell her what had happened. I stomped around the room, steaming, shouting out how frustrating it was.

“Some people are just book smart.” She said. “And you know why they said that? Because some people are comfortable in what they think they know, and are afraid to let something else in.”

Maybe this education is just another layer we’re applying to our egos, a defense mechaHow separated are we from understanding and appreciating the things we learn in class as knowledge, and not just supporting evidence for a paper or ways to sound smart at the dinner table? The connections not easy to make, but not making it is like keeping a horse in a stable. You take it out when you need it, then put it back when you don’t, so when it’s time to try and take it out when it’s not racetime, your horse is so eager to get out its running so fast you can’t make sense of anything passing you but you and your horse.

Our professors are people too, and maybe they can laugh at a fart joke. Our classmates aren’t rivals, and your papers aren’t a judgment before Anubis. We’re learning, and learning should be pleasurable. It should get you closer to, not into, yourself. Learning how to write this, even, is a learning process itself. It’s one worth learning, because nobody wants to sound like an asshole, nobody wants to feel threatened, and nobody wants to feel stupid. We’re not here for that.

21

Ally as a verb

We talk about social justice. We talk about being “allies.” We talk, and talk, and talk. But how do we actually DO down to... well... listening.

I spoke ists about how to be a better ally, and I proudly present their helpful hints to you, the aspiring Grinnellian social justice ally and activist.

ON ALLYSHIP: One theme came up again and again with each of the students I interviewed: the most important thing an ally can do is to just listen.

As one of my interview subjects put it, “if you’re talking, someone else isn’t.” It can be tempting to jump in with your own ideas, theories, and experiences, but don’t forget that as an ally you’re in a supporting role. Accept that you don’t know everything, and be open to new and uncomfortable ideas. Respect the value of lived experience: for example, a person of color has learned about racism by living as a minority in a racist society, while a white ally can only learn about racism secondhand. Be ready to challenge yourself, and to reevaluate even your most basic assumptions. And know that it’s not enough to proclaim yourself an ally; you have to actually do something about the issue, too. Try to think of “ally” as a verb, and not a noun. So, go to meetings. Read blogs. Show up at events.

Ask the community what you can do, and then follow through.

Here’s the bad news: no matter how good your intentions, at some point, as an ally, you are going to fuck up. It sucks—it really sucks—but, as a more privileged person working with a less privileged group of people, at some point or another, you are going to accidentally say something that hurts the

22

people you are trying to support. You might get called out, and you might even get some people seriously pissed at you. And—I can’t stress this enough—it is going to suck. But you’ll recover, and you might even be able to handle it with grace. Here are a few tips from my student activist experts: • Take it as a compliment. You know the expression that some people are “beyond saving”? Well, if you’ve been called out, then you’re not one of those people. The fact that someone has taken the time to point out a mistake means that they think you are mature enough to handle the criticism. Obviously taking criticism as a compliment is easier said than done… but it’s worth keeping in mind.

• Remember: nobody’s perfect. No one, anywhere, has reached total social justice enlightenment; we’re all walking this path together, and while some of us are farther along than others, no one has arrived. So you’re in good company.

• Own up to your mistakes. If you think there’s been a genuine misunderstanding between what you said and what was heard, then by all means defend yourself!

Most of the time, however, the misunderstanding is on your end: you said something hurtful without realizing its harmful potential. Don’t try to explain to someone why what you said was not actually offensive, but take their offense seriously and apologize.

• You are not owed an explanation.

As frustrating as it can be to hear that you said or did something wrong, and have no idea what exactly about it was wrong, remember that marginalized people are not obligated to spend their time and energy educating you.

As an adult living in a self-governing community, you’re perfectly capable of seeking that information out on your own. Where? On the Internet, of course! With the magic of

By Linda Beigel Google you can learn just about anything you want to learn about microaggressions, intersectionality, and everything else on your own time in a stress-free environment.

• Don’t make it about you. It can yourself embarrassed, uncomfortable, and apologizing profusely, but in focusing excessively on YOUR feelings of embarrassment, you are effectively minimizing the other person’s feelings. You might be craving some acknowledgment that you’re still a good person, and that you get points for trying, but remember that the person you have hurt doesn’t owe you their forgiveness. Just apologize, and promise yourself to do better.

Hopefully this has been a good (if basic) introduction to allyship for Grinnellians interested in getting involved with activism on our campus. I encourage you to look into taking sociology or GWSS classes for more in-depth discussions of these issues, or to attend an activist meeting or two. On the College website there’s a list of all registered organizations, and you can email any activabout their mission statements, meeting times, and how you can get involved. And, silly as it sounds, I can’t stress the Internet enough as an awesome source of information and networking—whatever your interest, help you become more familiar with the material. Seriously, just google “racism 101” or “trans 101” or anything else, and marvel at the abundance of resources at your disposal.

This is also great because it allows you to educate yourself at your own pace, and spares marginalized people the burden of having to explain the basics of their oppression to every privileged person they meet. The infor-

identities.

Huge thanks to student activists: Joel Coats, Amy Flores, Javon Garcia, Tess Given, Clare Mao, Taylor Nys, Sivan Philo, Devyn Shea, and Qianning Zhang, for sharing their time and wisdom with me.

One of the most important things to keep in mind is that social justice has its own specialized vocabulary— one which can be incredibly alienating to people unfamiliar with it.

I’ve included a quick refresher on social justice terms in this article as a reference point, but remember to know your audience. Think of how you’d talk to your friends back home, or your parents (if they’re anything like “patriarchy” and “microaggression” could make your conversational partner feel like you’re speaking a different language, and no matter how well-reasoned your argument might be, your point will be lost.

Microaggressions: From “Racial Microaggressions in Everyday Life”: they’re “brief and commonplace daily verbal, behavioral, or environmental indignities, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative … slights and insults towards [marginalized people].” Basically, a microaggression is a reminder to a marginalized person that clude asking a person of color where they’re “really” from, or asking a feman in the relationship?”

Privilege: Unearned benefits that a dominant group receives auto-

normal assumptions and practices that often lead to unequal treatment of people with apparent or assumed physical, intellectual or behavioral

straight people have the privilege of

someone whose gender identity is

and sociological circles, racism refers

orientation portrayed frequently and positively in the media, while queer individuals do not.

people of color. It’s often said that a person who was labeled male at birth and self-identifies as a man is beliefs and social structures that afof transgender identity.

Classism: From the succinctly named classism.com, it’s “differential treatment based on social class or perceived social class, the systematic oppression of subordinated class groups to advantage and strengthen the dominant class groups, [and] the systematic assignment of characteristics of worth and ability based on sism is the assumption that people receiving welfare benefits are lazy or stupid. liefs and social structures that affirm

positions of power are held by white people, many of whom, whether consciously or unconsciously, have internalized racial biases. This means that the laws that get passed, the curriculum that’s taught in schools, the shows produced for TV, and more, tend to be made by white people for the benefit of white people. So, while individual people of color can hold anti-white racial prejudice, reverse racism is not a thing. logical definition is different from the one you may have been taught. against women. Most positions of power are held by men, so society is constructed and functions in ways that benefit men and disadvantage can be prejudiced against men, re-

and identities. It delegitimizes and

23

Conversations from the Couch

By Carl Sessions It was the first snow of the season and we were at Graham’s again, all cracked plaster walls, sticky wooden floors and muted jazz. Liz and Dan sat on the couch in the corner. Dan leaned forward and ash from his cigarette lofted down onto the overstuffed cushion. He picked at the loose threads mindlessly and directed his attention to Liz as she spoke. The ash stained the paint-flecked surface grey and wispy.

“So now I’m not sure what to do. If I move back to Iowa City I’ll try and find a job, but nobody else has any luck.”

Liz was finishing explaining why she wanted to drop out of Stanford.

“Yeah, yeah, but this summer when the students leave a ton of jobs will open up,” Dan offered.

“But I can’t bank on that, Dan. If I can’t find a job I’m out—not everybody’s parents are professors.”

“Hey now, don’t be heavy handed. I’m not on the Daily Iowan staff anymore.”

“But you still have a safety net.”

“I guess, but they’re upset I stopped writing, they might stop subsidizing my lease and I’ll have to move back to Cedar Rapids.”

I had heard this exact conversation last night when he lamented to Wyatt. While they spoke

“Rent’s gone up in Iowa City, and I have to make choices.”

24

I amused myself with imagined newspaper headlines announcing Dan’s return to his childhood home; Dan Returns to Cedar Rapids, City of Molten Quaker Oats and FloodRavaged Neighborhoods, Sleeping in Childhood Bed Steal Punk Cred.

“Anyways, Liz, if you do move back you should live here, I know there’s a vacant room right upstairs.”

During the conversation Liz’s countenance had shifted from mild annoyance to resigned distress. I told her that college was a privilege and her lips morphed into a sneer.

She replied hurriedly as she pulled another cigarette from her tight cotton pants.

“Exactly! I’m not content anymore to just sit in my dorm reading Jstor articles all day. A girl’s gotta get out of the ivory tower.”

In high school Liz had been adamantly anti-nicotine—she thought it was a social crutch and gave you bad breath—but the refined liberality of the West Coast, that Pacific-borne malaise, had given her space for self-discovery, evidenced by her shaved head and recently discovered veganism.

Earlier Liz had referenced Sartre and I both dug the reference and wanted to get an idea of the scope of her recent Leftist leanings. I asked if she had been reading the Partisan Review, like the rest of these vagabonds.

“Call me a young Trotsky but it stirs my mind unlike anything else.”

“Yeah, yeah, seems like a lot of the Linn Street crowd are Trotskyites.”

She moved on the couch quickly and the patterns on the overstuffed couch shifted into a koi pond.

“I mean, my social movements class, it’s not like you can just read about it, you gotta live it!”

Her voice was genuinely

confident as she stared me down. I was swept by an urge to argue further, but before I could, Jason burst right through the house’s front door.

I hadn’t heard from Jason all year, but I knew he rescued a wayward youth from the woods last month. The dude had been tripping on ’shrooms and fled to a place he called ‘Dante’s Woods.’ Jason had to search in the dark oaks for three hours before he found him in the fetal position next to a dilapidated concrete dam.

He called Jason his personal Virgil, a paranoid schizoid with angel tendencies.

Jason entered with wild ambition and chutzpah, red hair wet from the snow outside.

“Carl, you bastard! When did you get back?”

“Last week.”

“You should’ve called.”

“I did.”

“Oh. I stopped paying my phone bill.”

If anyone ought to be reading Trotsky it would be the chronically-underemployed Jason.

Liz chimed in, “I gave up my phone as well! I just can’t afford it with my student budget.”

Jason and I ignored her and she turned away to talk to Dan. When I left Iowa City, Jason had been making pizza at Falbos, saving up money for his band’s upcoming trip to Florida.

Jason took his spot on the couch, and the koi pond morphed back into random paint splatters.

“I am becoming more and more convinced that this couch came from Jackson Pollock’s yard sale.” He shrugged.

I changed the subject.

“I heard about you and Taria, man. Things are heating up?”

David’s hue changed to

match his hair.

“You could say that, yeah.

She’s living with me right now.”

“How’s Whole Lotta Led?” Jason played in a Led Zeppelin/Jefferson Airplane tribute band.

“Shitty question, man.

We haven’t played for over a month. Cody’s been in the dumps lately ’cause he knocked his girlfriend up.”

His hands danced a melody on worn-out jeans like he did whenever he got nervous.

“Well fuck, man.”

He shrugged absentmindedly.

“What about you?” He asked.

“What?” I replied a little surprised, never before having discussed birth control with Jason.

“How do you prevent that?”

“Oh, yeah, we use the pill, it’s just the easiest,” I said.

“Woah, for real?

That shit’s so expensive.”

“Not as much as an abortion.”

“True, but still. Rent’s gone up in Iowa City and I have to make choices.

I nodded in agreement and looked at Liz and Dan talking on the couch. I couldn’t tell what their conversation was about, but I heard “pedagogy of the oppressed” and “disruption.” Liz smiled emphatically.

Jason looked at them, expression neutral. Then turned to me.

“They don’t know what they’re talking about,” Jason said quietly.

Jason and I had first met in 9th grade English with Ms. Davis. We sat in the back of the class and spent our time playing paper football, shooting spitballs and laughing at our own stupid jokes. I introduced him to Graham and the three of us made a movie, a Jackass imitation filmed with

a smart cam I stole from the journalism department.

In 10th grade he was diagnosed with ADHD but didn’t like taking the pills because he thought they were a crutch.

He sold them to pay for a new drumset. At night we played basketball behind the Burge dormitory. The University of Iowa kids were studying, leaving the shadow-lined courts to just us.

In 11th grade Graham told me Jason’s dad had left his mom and kicked off to Cleveland. I never asked him about it because I wasn’t sure what to say.

When senior year rolled around we were still playing ball, but the unspoken realization had hit us both that we were facing very different lives after graduation. We looked grimly ahead to the impending drop-off. But things always look more dramatic before they happen. Jason and I stayed friends.

Jason looked at me bemusedly and announced, “I’m gonna go for a run.” It was 11:00 p.m. and snowing. He had been inside for approximately seven minutes.

“Okay,” I said.

Since he had stopped smoking, he now ran to control his urges.

“Are we still playing basketball tomorrow?” Jason asked, a smile creeping across his face.

“Yeah, man. We can play at the rec,” I ventured.

“I don’t have a car,” Jason said.

“I’ll pick you up around one,” I replied.

“Sounds good.”

He left quickly and I saw him run down the porch. After a moment I stood.

“I gotta bounce too, guys.

I’ll see you later.”

Liz and Dan smiled goodbye and I opened the door.

I had a philosophy paper to write.

25

Freinds & Luvers

i have seen atrocities. i’ve seen pictures of lattes uploaded to instagram and labeled as ‘art’. i saw a red rectangle titled ‘Red’ in a museum and read an incomprehensible run-on sentence for Spanish. all of these are ‘art’ and are ‘artistic’ works made by ‘artists’. so, illogically, i have declarifyed myself to be an artist too. therefor everything i to create is art, for i am a creative and artistical artiste. i have thenceforth (whoa spellcheck says that’s a real word!) decided to make an Art and this Art is to be a story. this could very well be the greatest story ever written. it could also be a piece of shit but then you and the story would have a lot in common! of this to be the story that is to introduce the protagonist to you! from now on the protagonist’s name shall be seth mcfarzlbars and if you cant pronounce that in your head than just stop. if you’re still with me, +1 for you! also -1 for procrastinating which is what you’re probably doing. go do your homework. anyway wear was i? oh yes, seth mcfarzlbars have a freind name clar piraten, who is dread. and dreaded. and dreadlocked. her full title is lady clar piraten

26

the dred. scott is also a person, but he is not important and you should ignore. *Are you hungry? Go eat something.* back to storytime. wella clar come to room of the seth and to seth she speak playfully, “mothafucka wham bam whatchu up to mcseth?” “tumblar” seth respond “what diligent discourse” acomment clar. “yo clar i hella got something of to say” seth speak nervously of. clar to look in iris. “what troubling you mr mcfarzlbars?” she sez in a most serious tone. seth is to take deep of breath and sez “clar i gots ta tel ya i thinks im str8.” *long pause* “i am 100% serious”, said seth mcfarzlbars. clar the dred piraten offer comforting words and pat seth on back. “im so prod of u seth. beside, pussy is grate!” desfortunadamente afuera the doorframe stands Beanbag Ill, the menacing menace of this storyplot. and he is to know many peeps! he is of looking to smoke marijuana with seth. but seth is already high as balls and partake of no interest in partak-

ing. “juana smoke?” prods beanbag (lol) seth frown and say “nah brah” but that damage is done, for with smartfone mr ill hath already tolden the hole school. damn that rumor mill, millin’ out rumors like nobody’s business! from cross valhalla ring out voice of Grin: “I’M JOHANNES KEPLER, I’M MADE OF SEMEN” which totally did happen in real life im not even kidding. Grin, who is not Johannes Kepler, is come up and propositionar a mr mcfarzlbars for hot steamy skex! but seth inform Grin that, alas, he is the cabinet. “wait ur str8? brooooo” lol’ed Grin. “sorry bro,” respond seth. “you cant cahoose yuor cloor, man. im just down for that wet wet kit kat and other euphamisms of exclusively heterosexual nature.” “ew gross yeer wired” to say Grin, “maybs it’s a faze.” “idk bro,” say seth. “sorry if i cannot to be part of your 80/20 Experience.” *Did you know that you can cut plastic with a tablesaw?* -

guistics class of! to be excited is he! there exist cute girlz in his class! oh boy! but he must keep his longings a secret, for in the environ of Grinnell Kawledj to be a [h]omosexual bears grate social capital!!! relinquishing that social capital to be a bisex is bad enough and is to induce much naïve questioning, but to admit being a str8 persona who has come out of the cabinet is practically a disgrace! not to mention to the parentals! oh, tsk tsk, they just wouldn’t understand. in fact, they might even kick you out the of house; since issues such as overtpopulation threaten da planet, being str8 is, well, dane jeross! well its linguistsics class. ala noraweigian waterfossen in beauteous cascade from headtop onto shoulder, seth is to have no problem focusing en clase, for linguisticalisms are to fascinate him! teacher climb atop countertop in front of classroom. teacher is a mere toddlar but has attained professor status through coolness. todays lesson is be on Syntax. in stereotypic british accent, the toddlar teachar speak.

the class murmur agreement in. repeat teachor, “Waterfall. lightenment! the class now understands the rules of Syntax. from back of class a voice come. it does not form coherent sentence: “but what about of that which for not so yet feeling with denigrate alohamora jambolaya playa have not with which has?” man, that hurts just to read! its like Miss Teen South Carolina up in this bitch. the teacher try best to answer, but stupid the be question. the voice babble again, and silently the class rage. ohhhhh they rage. silently. shh don’t tell. later, while seth and Grin and clar sit together, seth is to receive a most message peculiar! on the Book of Face, receive a poke!

FROM A GIRL?!!? well most obviousamente if one is to recibir a poke from a girl, well that CLEARLY indicate a desire for a noche de hot sexo! but who is this girl? WHY HOLY FUCK IT IS SETHS UNITORN NALA! damn, she the baddest of bitches, and she complimented seth on his titration last week! could this be love?!?! seth considers…pokes back. seconds pass and she back poke him again! “HOLY SHIT CLAR WE HELLA GON FUK, OH SHIT PANIC IS ThIS REAL” clar face smack seth. “calm your shit seth. you’re a fucktard” well that noche he pay visit to Nala! she is tall and olive and her skin glows in soft yellow light. seth feel less hot than Nala and ask, “porque yo?”

Nala deja de besar a seth para decir “that Beanbag Ill tell me that you are to liek grilles and im

maybe Beanbag isn’t as bad as previously believed.

Grin to ask seth, “is that how all str8 relaciones start, with simple something as a pokey on the Book of Face?” “wella Grin i guesses so,” sez seth mcfarzlbars, who postsmoke is to think of the olive skeen of Nala which is so soft and smooth…damn. seth fall into dreamworld of outer space and Nala body. seth sit in linguistics class.

in real life, shiver seth. When shiver, seth snap back and see that in reality, he be in linguistics class. toddlar teacher is not at board, but instead on roomfront countertop again. she is teaching semantics. “goo goo, gaa, goo goo gaa gaa” speak the teachar. the class instantaneously understands the complexities of semantics. seth begins reloading the sexy daydream of Nala’s caress but pausa, he feels something

moderately incredible is about to happen. toddlar teachir look direct in irises of seth mcfarzlbars and a powerful, gentle, omnipresent the voice speaks The Word. suddenly, seth understands meaning of life. meaning of life is bacon. in a glow of brilliant golden light, seth transcend into heaven, where everyone is straight, and therefor obviously likes bacon. thank goodness

vision, his palm on the back of Nala’s head, and through gers his. Fingers of Nala with length-medium nails trace his gernailtips touch the hairs on arm that are translucently cleargold in the small amount of morning light that come in of through the blinds. The sensation is so light and so slight in perfect imagination that, back

and wella seth feel hella lucky.

27

Somewhere Over the Rainbow

By Darwin Manning a unique position in small town Iowa. It’s a top-notch liberal arts school, arguably the best in the State. While there are several Colleges that have similar small campus-town combinations, there are perhaps none that face such limiting geographic charan hour from two of the major cities in Iowa, Des Moines and Chicago, Kansas City, St. Louis and Minneapolis, yet it takes a car to get to all these places.

Given this distance, that majority of students will rarely leave the town of Grinnell and with this composition one might think there is a close unity between the town and College. Yet this notion is hardly the case, though there is plenty of cohesion there is also plenty of division and a deep history of misunderstanding and frustration. As a Grinnell expert said on multiple occasions at the Prairie Studies meetings, it is shame but you will often hear students tell their parents how unusual it was for them to venture into town during commencement weekend. This is disheartening to know that for many members of the campus there is very little appreciation felt for the town until they are on the door out if any at all. As this phenomenon became apparent to me I went on a quest for how we could potentially draw the town and campus closer together and imagine a new future for this symbiotic relationship.

One of the older town residents representing the quaint

28

dramatically when he came to Grinnell after working a long time as a factory worker for Maytag in Newton. Bob, always brimming with a smile and his Jewel of the Prairie cap on, sat down by the warm glass windows of Saints Rest to discuss his time in Grinnell. He points to the cultural opportunities that the College offers the community that are both entertaining and educational. Bob lived for awhile out at Rock Creek Lake where many College Professors were his neighbors such as Wayne Moyer and Paul Munyon, and he gained a strong sense for how the faculty and staff are really interspersed with the community. Five years community and revealed that his neighbors and himself are constantly going to events at the identity to having such a vibrant College. Having traversed much of the State at work on various architectural projects, he speaks from experience when revealing that it is truly unique amongst the other smaller towns of Iowa.

“Some of the towns in Southern Iowa look very run-down, abandoned and there are very few downtown stores open if there are any, some towns I have been in are a little better, but Grinnell stands out because it seems to have a nice diversity between commerce and the College,” Bob said.

There are also other long time residents who believe that

the relationship is very useful in the capacity to which the College serves the town. Doris who is often seen in your nifty wheel chair skirting around the Farmer’s Market to greet College students believes that perhaps the greatest gift the college offers the town is through the service work that many students complete.

This can vary from the Adopta-grandparent program to the PALS program to the Big-Brothers, Big-Sisters program, to the Framers’ Market to MICA to the Community Meal every Tuesday at Davis Elementary. She also rethe College sported an ice-skating rink open to the town.

Although Doris–always with a heart as warm as a Sunday apple pie–believes that there are wonderful things the College offers the town, she points to some more contentious periods in this relationship. Many will hear or maybe at times be accosted by some of level of bigotry that is directed towards the College, but perhaps this was never as apparent as during the anti-Vietnam War movement period. Another expert on the town, who I have had the distinct honor to coteach a class at Newton Correctional, has mentioned the contention that was felt by town members who found the College’s anti-war movement very disrespectful. Tensions may have escalated to violence at a point. on how heated things appeared at one point.

“There used to be a riot up

there at the College one time and it lasted for a year and half. Some people thought they weren’t being treated right, the government said they couldn’t do it and it was a big mess,” Doris said.

Certain individuals take far more advantage of the many events that are constantly open to the public than others; one person in particular who enjoys them all is Mr. William Crosby. He is know to many as the friendly face always with a book at arms length, in the production of Billy the Kid at the Arts Center he was the ‘reader’ and always ready to chime in with some wisdom. His recently groomed Santa Claus beard and cowboy attire can be found checking out books at Drake Library or consuming literature at Saints Rest. He able attends many of the College events, and this through his astute attention to postings on the second page of the Herald Register. He explained to me that he hospitable, despite inconsistent attendance from town residents.

“Sometimes I go to events and I don’t see very many town Program I almost always see towns people at that. Even with the food I feel very welcoming, it’s not just separate for the College students,” Crosby said. ing the primary contributor to the events that he attends. He contends that not all of these speakers are worthwhile or live up to the description given for their event, however will and

those he remembers fondly. One in particular took place awhile back and was about the ethnic clashes in Ireland and ended in a 1998 peace agreement.

“There was supposed to be a panel discussion between the different sides from the Ireland cultural clash, and the people from Northern Ireland refused to sit at the same table, so there ended up not being a panel,” he said.

Several of the individuals spoken with revealed that the College has a very strong economic of the restaurants and shops have student e m p l o y e e s, for instance at Prairie Canar y–where I work–employs nearly all College students.

Saints Rest is another one of these shops strongly tied to the College, both through employees and patrons. The new owner as of January, Sam, shared with me her love for the many diverse ences from the College. One can tell her level of comfort with the town and her awareness of many of the activities around town through her eager conversation and acute ability to always know what drink you will have before you place your order.

She grew up in Grinnell where she saw college students as her peers and friends, yet this relationship has now been transformed to employees and customers. Her partnership with the that there is a mutual sharing of wisdom and experience that oc-

curs between the students that she interacts with. One piece of advice that she stands behind decide on their own they want to go out an explore the town in the same way in which later in life they will need to decide how to break free of the bubble the have created.

“It’s so important for me to make sure that the young kids need to experience life, take every opportunity to go out and experience life, you know. Don’t get tied down into what the world expects you to do,” Sam said.

drinks the view of the College as sitting on a podium and limited by their geographic characteristic that squarely (literally) divides it from the town.

He spoke on behalf of many of the other town residents that there is a frustration with the College community that they perceive as pompous. During the discussion one of the more colorful town residents, not the one that can be seen at Lonski’s with the Monster tattoo on his face, but the elder gentleman with a few teeth missing with a withered appearance, chimed in.

While, there are many shared responses of the positive aspect of the cohesion between the College and the town, there are çade of peaceful co-existence.

Joe Lascina appearing like a youthful Robert Redford, the son of Lascina who owns the Grin City Art Residency, has found that while he felt accepted by the College, because of his involvement with the Art Department during his high school tenure, there is a lot that is missing within what could be a very strong bond. He revealed over

Grandfather Grinnell told me that he doesn’t care what takes place up at the College and that in his mind the town would do very well without the high-frills above sixth-avenue. Lascina quickly countered in explaining that while there are hurdles, the misunderstanding could be dealt with through several changes to the culture. One idea he presented was the College in staying true to their love of building, could show some cohesion with the town if they place a campus building in the downtown area.

This could be a second student

union, which all students would be pleased to frequent, but have far less of an abrasive feeling for town residents that the JRC holds. He believes that the location of this building would be critical, and that it would be best if not directly on campus so that it felt more inclusive.

Now to speak from the student perspective, which I believe I can only do because I have been here four years and interacted with such a wide range of groups on campus. The comments that Menner offer about a lack of students immersing themselves in town appears very accurate, or at least this doesn’t unfold until they are upperclassmen.

Having had the chance to speak with a diverse range of folks, specifically Eldwin, one of the campus drivers, I have come to the realization that this has perhaps increased in recent years.

On the many trips that we have taken together he revealed how close Grinnell once felt between the town and College. He reminisced about the diner that attracted everyone with their sloppy burgers on sixth avenue. My hope is that the clash would end between the two populations of Grinnell and that a new future could be imagined.

As I have come to terms with how so many members of this community remind me of people from my own childhood, I have come to truly love the town of Grinnell and seen the honesty in the slogan it owns, ‘Jewel of the Prairie.’

29

Grinnellian Gothic: Learning How We Live

30

We live in a day and age where everything is calculated and quantified. We have set goals for a future laid out for us: doctor, lawyer, and scientist. Where is the individuality in that?

How do we find ourselves truly dreaming of a life based not on money but on the hopes of being happy?

Our understanding of ourselves through maturity is something that we all strive for but are rarely aware of.

Sometimes we need a lifechanging event to push us to really reflect upon our life and create goals that our based not on what makes us wealthy but instead what makes us happy. ous future causes us to lose ourselves in our minds and go through thought processes that lead to nothing but confusion and passivity. We feel alone in our dreams, and our fears of accomplishing them cannot be pacified if we face them alone.

The story of my life at home this past semester is not meant to bring any new insight into life that will change the way you see it and face it. The story will instead remind you that you are not alone in your fear and uncertainty of reaching the life that will make you truly happy.

Family issues affected my school life, and I inevitably had to stay home from Grinnell this fall semester. I was profoundly pissed about my situation and went through an introspective Jack Kerouac-esque journey where I would read random classic literature by a creek. Granted, the creek was man-made and it was near a bougieshopping plaza. It was the kind of bougieness that was

another Starbucks inside it.

By the creek, I read and read until I realized what I was reading was getting me depressed, and I nearly crisis. I wasn’t reading because I actually enjoyed it.

I was reading instead to feel a level of intellectual importance that made me feel special.

My elderly neighbor thankfully prevented me from reaching the unstable stage of walking a thousweet elderly woman with a warm smile and short hair.

She spent her days painting, reading, and listening to smooth jazz with a glass of wine and a can of Diet Coke by her side. Sometimes she would take random classes at a local community college and say that her reason was, “I got bored.”

During my crisis she started casually offering me housework jobs. I pulled out the weeds in her garden and took off the wallpaper in her bedroom very well knowing I had no idea what every day’s work, she and I would drink Diet Cokes and she would tell me college stories about drinking Sangria, smoking grass, and critiquing Kurt Vonnegut with her closest friends. She and gave me a Kindle and a flash drive of two thousand books, because, according to her, “I got the Kindle Fire and I don’t think Ill be able to make more than 20 dollars selling this one (which only came out 9 months be immensely more profitable if I gave it to someone with the full confidence that they would cherish it.”

I realized that I had

nothing else to with my time so I might as well gain some pride from getting into reading books without Sparknotes or pictures.

I went into her reading list and at first, I was reading about twenty pages every of weeks, I was reading wherever I went and kept time I reached an intensely climactic point.

I would continue to knock periodically on her what I read, and she would give me her two cents. She eventually told me about her own crisis she had during her college years in the late 60’s. She would casually discuss how she almost reached a breakdown when she realized that she didn’t know who she was or what she wanted from life. Fortune struck her with full force, when the last couple of weeks of school before finals, right when she was about to drop out, there was a police drug raid all across campus. The school subsequently canceled finals for that semester, giving and enjoy the present with her friends.

Wild nights and heart-toheart conversations filled her last couple of weeks of ed break, she found herself finally at ease. She stopped stressing about the present and took the opportunity to truly appreciate it. School taught her discipline and knowledge to plan out her future, but what she holds higher are the relationships she created. life’s future reaching a content state, after my semester home was drawing to a close, I started reading

Mark Twain’s works, and when she found out, she chuckled and told my confused self that one of her favorite quotes from him is, “I will never let school get in the way of my education.”

Her presence in my life last semester was a glowing reminder that being happy with your life at its finish is possible. However, being perience. I was set back to people, same parties, same conversations. But something was not the same: me.

It didn’t feel like I changed location from Grinnell. It felt like I was going back to the past. College felt like and home felt like revisiting a dry chrysalis.

Old friends in high school who were still around seemed distant.

One of them was a waiter at a local restaurant. Bless his heart, he was one of the funniest people I knew and one of the most down to earth people you could ever meet. Something felt different, though. He talked the same way we did in high school. He had the same naïve opinions about girls and people, and he had the same mentality of acting cool to climb a social ladder graduation. He told me a easily shit gets real in life.

He started hooking up with a waitress at the restaurant he worked at. That was casual for a month, until he got her pregnant. They agreed that having the baby was a bad idea and schedthey continued hooking up and here is where the story tion, they continued to hook up for a couple months

31

“Seeing the present in his disillusioned eyes while remembering the past...” more, until one day he realized that she was not taking birth control and not having her period. He brought this up with her and she admitted that she never got the abortion because her parents would not let her. quired 18 and above employees, so with that in place, she lied on her application and stated that she was 20 when she was actually 16. She needed parental permission.She told him that her parents wanted to talk to him because they, as her guardians, are requiring him to be there for the child or they will file statutory his life took a turn for the worse.

He gained a lot of weight and got heavily addicted to painkillers and cigarettes.

Seeing that version of him when the last one was he back in his prime. Hearing his story hit me with some intense perspective. Seeing the present in his disillusioned eyes while remembering the past, I realized how life could change so quickly and the way you see

32

the world one year can comComing back to Grinnell was blissful. Being back really reminded me of the sort of friendships and relationships I made and how they still feel intact after such a long period of time apart. Everyone in my year seemed so much more content and confident with Grinnell. People had their friend groups, but for some reason when it came down to important nights and lazy days, we all seamlessly converge.

That did not come without its troubles, though. I noticed every one of my friends is going through some form of shit. Every party I was at always included an outside slurred conversation with a friend who would just let out their heart and problems to me. day and always think about what he or she had told me.

They would remember too, and we began having talks about life during the week.

Somehow I started realizing that confiding in people

was transforming into the very motivational support I needed to pursue the fulfilled life that I want. the best way to convey something that comes from the heart. For the best result, I want you to imagine these words coming from the mouth of your friend during one of those wellknown drunken heart-to heart conversations. Those conversations of pure uninhibition bring out our true selves, where we are ready to spill our guts to ments when you realize that you may not be alone with your thoughts of the world when you realize that everyone has a story to tell and that though no one knows everything, everyone has something to learn and everyone has something to when you realize that everyone is going through some form of shit. I recently had moments when I looked back to the past and tried to look into my future. I was left with one conclusion:

humans can learn from each other in ways infinitely better than a grade.

Though it may be hard to maintain your sense of self with the possibility of judgthat there are seven billion people in this world—the only thing that makes you distinct is the journey you take to discover what kind of person you are and what kind of person you want to you are not the center of the world. Every face you see in the classroom, streets, and home is the main character of their own hero’s journey, where you are a cameo or, if you’re lucky, a supporting role.

So as we stand outside of a party, arms around each other’s shoulders, we remind ourselves of our similarities and distinctions ,and that to me is one of the greatest things Grinnell has to offer. Get out of your head and appreciate getting into someone else’s. Once we realize that everyone’s life involves going through some kind of shit, shit gets less shitty.

Bison pride by

reaching Dirvana

By Darwin Manning Obser ving the natural environment as the path to enlightening oneself and stepping outside the confines of cultural facades and constr ucts. One must become attune with the prairie, savannah, canals, mountainous ranges, plains, volcanoes, oceans and ever ything in between. As a North American population and a microcosm of this land of the free and home of the brave we must as a Grinnellian community step into our innate qualities.

We shall view freeing the bison as a most necessar y step for reaching Darvana, the nar rator’s stance in this column is to guide us into this earthly realm.

Reaching Dar vana is a deed that we

must work at and cannot hope us to slide into, yet know that it is definitely achievable and well wor th the journey. One must step outside the social constr ucts, the blasphemy of political stagnation and prejudice, let us include the snakes, bison and tigers in our teachings. One should know that there indeed exists the veil of darkness in the lightness of possibility.

Let us strive to walk, prowl, r un, and skip as our forefathers so wanted us to. By practicing what we preach and yearning what we learn, the steps of Dar vana will lead us from oppression to freedom.

As many a g reat bison protector must be aware there comes a time

when chaos can no longer ensue and we must hope that what we can reach is a tr ue state of the Age of Aquarius.

There is now a time for violence to cease and for a lasting peace as of the essence of the bison to be obtained.

Well, they should look upon fellow bison and know they are in control of only so much and can only touch those they are sur rounded by. There should be the ability for all to live in a democratic tranquility, where the peasants, bison and intellects show kindness, friendship and war mth with all. Therefore, let us reveal a glistening model for unbridled har monious intuition and let thou cast out a shining light for all bison to prosper.

r e d n u d n u org m a g a z i n e

the grinnell

Interested in popping the bubble? [gum]