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Scarlet & Black May 4, 2018 • Grinnell, Iowa
Volume 134, Issue 24
Student activists react to Task Force decision against divestment
Bias-motivated incident prompts discussion
>> See English department, page 3
Fulbright Grant finalists announced
By Mayo Sueta suetamay@grinnell.edu
By Candace Mettle mettleca@grinnell.edu Following a bias-related incident report filed over the weekend, Tuesday’s Community Hour discussed race relations on campus. Originally, the scheduled topic was on mental health and wellness, but the Student Government Association (SGA) and the administration, represented at Community Hour by Dean of Students Mike Latham, Vice President of Student Affairs Andrea Conner, Chief Diversity Officer Lakeisha Johnson and Director of Intercultural Affairs Maure Smith-Benanti believed addressing racism and its effect on the community fits into wellness. Reportedly, a man heckled Professor Kristin Moriah, English, as she walked home on High and Fifth Streets on Saturday night. The man called her “the queen supreme of racism” and said that he is glad to not be a part of the English Department. The comments, which targeted a member of the English department and the department as a whole, led Moriah and administrative officials to believe that the heckler was a student. As of now, the Office of Diversity and Inclusion, which leads bias-related incidents reports and investigations, has not discovered who the student was. Moriah also filed a report with the Grinnell Police Department. Moriah is a visiting assistant professor on a one year contract. At the end of the semester, she will fill a tenure track position at Queen’s University in Ontario. Despite last weekend’s incident, Moriah has found the College and greater Grinnell Community very welcoming. “I’ve had a great time actually in classroom the students in my classroom are doing great work … my time in town has also been overwhelming. I found people who live in Grinnell have been incredibly kind and welcoming to both me and my family in ways I could have never have predicted — that’s one of the things that made that comment so confusing it seems like it stands in such contrast to basically all of my other interactions in this state,” Moriah said. The English department, headed by Professor Ralph Savarese and other
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In a Special Campus Memo from April 24, 2017, Chair of the Board of Trustees Patricia Finkelman ’80 regarded the “discontent” emerging from the issue of divestment as key to the decision to impanel a Task Force on the issue. The campus activist community reacted with disdain to the Task Force’s recommendations. Quinn Ercolani ’20, who has long been involved with pro-divestment activism, characterized the mood of student activists in the wake of that decision as “disappointed and angry.” “The divest movement was asking for one thing, and that’s the one thing the Task Force explicitly recommended not happen ... there’s this step that hasn’t been taken, and that step has moral and ethical ramifications to it,” Ercolani said. Lucy Nelson ’20, a member of
Sara Ashbaugh, Emma Friedlander, Ryan Hung and Emma Traband, all ’18, and Isabel Monaghan ’16 received the Fulbright U.S Grant. All five recipients received grants for the English Teaching Assistantship (ETA). According to the official Fulbright website, the Grant “facilitates cultural exchange through direct interaction on an individual basis in the classroom, field, home, and in routine tasks, allowing the grantee to gain an appreciation of others’ viewpoints and beliefs, the way they do things, and the way they think.” Assistant Dean and Director of Global Fellowships and Awards Ann Landstrom echoed this sentiment, saying that “Fulbright U.S. student grantees are seen as ambassadors around the world.” Ashbaugh and Friedlander will go to Russia, Hung to South Korea, Monaghan to Austria and Traband to Germany, each with their own motivations and goals to teach English. For Friedlander, a history and Russian double major, applying to the Fulbright had not always been her plan. She only decided to do so last summer, after thinking through her post-grad plans. “I wasn’t completely sure at first because I was like, ‘I don’t know if I want to teach English for the rest of my life,’” she said. “But it was a really great way to get immersed in a country that I had been studying in the classroom for such a long time.” Friedlander will be teaching English at a university level while also doing a “public history project” through which she will explore the history of the community she is placed in. While she has not been assigned to a city yet, she is excited to be placed in a city that not a lot of students would have the opportunity to go to. Ashbaugh, a Russian and political science double major, who will also be teaching English in Russia, also expressed excitement about living in another country, and
>> See Divestment page 2
>> See Fulbright, page 3
MAYU SAKAE
On April 28, the Task Force held an official meeting to discuss its recommendation against divestment.By Maxwell Fenton fentonma@grinnell.edu On April 28, 2018, the Fossil Fuels and Climate Impact Task Force paneled by the Board of Trustees announced their conclusions regarding the issue of divestment from fossil fuels. According to their official report released on the same day, there was “strong agreement among the members [of the Task Force] that climate change is a critical global threat, with the use of fossil fuels as a primary contributor.” Divestment, however, would not be their solution. In their report, the Task Force specifically recommended against divestment as a means of combating climate change, writing that the action of divestment would “introduce significant investment risk in the endowment while having little, if any, direct impact on climate change.”
There was "strong agreement among the members [of the Task Force] that climate change is a critical global threat, with the use of fossil fuels as a primary contributer." Instead of full fossil fuel divestment, the Task Force recommended that the College
ought to bolster its existing capabilities, recommending several broad categories of action in a Campus Memo sent April 28, 2018. These would range from reducing the College’s carbon footprint through the implementation of a Sustainability Plan, institutional measures including the creation of a Sustainability Standing Committee and investment-based measures like shareholder engagement, focusing on the social and environmental applications of the College’s endowment and the possible creation of a “fossil fuel-free fund” for donors. This decision comes on the heels of a wide range of student activism agitating for divestment, including the February 2017 occupation of the President’s Office by approximately 150 students. Divestment as a political protest tool has long been a locus of campus activism, particularly at the College. In the 1980s, Grinnell activists demanded divestment from corporations active in South Africa to protest racist apartheid policies in the face of trustee and administration disinclination, at one point constructing a model “shantytown” in the middle of campus to illustrate the lasting economic effects of racial segregation in that country. In 1985, the Board of Trustees voted to divest some of its holdings in South Africa and, by 1986, The New York Times listed Grinnell
College as one of dozens of institutions “committed ... to selling all stock in companies that do business in South Africa.”
"Grinnell College did not choose to continue to invest in fossil fuels because this would not be an effective tactic." Nate Williams '20
SRC election results for leadership postions announced
By Kate Irwin irwinkat@grinnell.edu
For Lindsey, this position was a natural fit, as he regularly uses the library space as a Library Monitor and had applied for the position in past years. As Library Coordinator, Lindsey will be responsible for general maintenance of the SRC as
well as library management. Lindsey already has an extensive list of things he hopes to do for the space, both new and old. “Plans I have for the space include maintenance, updating the catalog, getting books that people are requesting and I'm trying to perhaps create an online component of the SRC library, or just resources in general. … Getting a wider range of resources would [be easier] if we had a centralized place where I could [collect] documents, links and other websites,” Lindsey said. Stanfield decided to run for Events Coordinator after finding that he enjoyed planning events he had hosted in the SRC. In this position, he will host events within the SRC for the different affinity groups that meet and bringing speakers to campus. “At the beginning of this year I hosted a party in the SRC, sort of a welcome back party to reintroduce a lot of people to the space and what resources were available here, as >> See SRC page 2
Saturday The Grinnellian Central Campus Stage, 3 p.m.
Saturday Grinnell Symphonic Band Bucksbaum 104, 4 p.m.
The Stonewall Resource Center held elections recently for the 201819 cabinet. The new additions will be Kyle Lindsey ’19 as the Space and Library Coordinator, Connor Stanfield ’21 as the Events Coordinator and Tucker Haddock ’21 as the Logistics Coordinator.
"Plans I have for the space include maintenance, updating the catalog, getting books that people are requesting..." Kyle Lindsey '19
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MAHIRA FARAN
Conner Stanfield ’21,top left, Kyle Lindsey ’19, bottom left and Tucker Haddock ’21, right, were elected to leadership positions for the Stonewall Resource Center for next semester. Sunday Collegium Musicum Concert Bucksbaum 104, 8 p.m..
Wednesday Campus Council Harris Cinema, 8 p.m.
Thursday Latinx Entrepreneurs in Iowa JRC 209, 4 p.m.
Features 4 | Community 7 | Arts 9 | Sports 11 | Opinions 12
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SRC elections prompt discussion of inclusivity
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well as connect first years to students of different class years. And I also helped with Mary B. James and Drag Show, so it was just a natural [fit for me to] keep doing events and that sort of thing,” Stanfield said. Stanfield plans to make the SRC as welcoming as possible. He hopes to accomplish this task through planning events for different identity groups, allowing them to establish a relationship with the physical space of the SRC. “I want to make this space and sort of the whole environment as welcoming as I can,” he said. Haddock felt that Logistics Coordinator was the best fit for them after their experience at a leadership conference. This position oversees budgeting large events and streamlining various processes. “A really big catalyst for me wanting to run for Logistics Coordinator was that I was lucky enough to attend the Creating Change Conference at the beginning of this system. It was a queer activist leadership conference in Washington, D.C. So I really had this deep understanding of how that could change a person’s perception of what it means to be queer, how they fit into the queer community, and how issues that I think initially don’t seem related to the queer community can be related to it,” they said.
"A really big catylyst for me wanting to run for Logistics Coordinator was that I was lucky enough to attend the Creating Change Conference at the beginning of this system." Tucker Haddock '21 They hope to continue this experience for students to attend leadership conferences, such as the Creating Change Conference and more that examine other issues and identities with queerness. Lindsey, Stanfield and Haddock all agree that the SRC is important as it is the first established space for affinity groups that they have experienced as Grinnellians. “I realized the potential that queerness in general could mean, because I feel like I’ve learned a lot about queerness while being here, but really understanding how institutional support can make a difference in constructing queer community in a space,” Lindsey said.
“Coming to [the SRC], I’m reminded of the power and the value that part of myself has,” Haddock added. Lindsey, Stanfield and Haddock all have plans to make the SRC more inclusive and accessible to all gender and sexual identities. “The different affinity groups within the SRC is one of the ways we ensure that the SRC doesn’t stay for just people of a select few gender identities or sexualities,” Stanfield said. “I think that these affinity groups help to ensure that there's a lot of diversity within queerness being brought into the SRC.” The physical space of the SRC provides multiple physical barriers for accessibility. While leaders of the SRC have tried to circumvent these obstacles, there is only so much they can do.
"I want to make this space and sort of the whole environment as welcoming as I can." Conner Stanfield '21 “Short of getting our own building, we cannot be accessible,” said Ric Tennenbaum ’18, one of the SRC’s current coordinators. However, despite the drawbacks of the physical space of the SRC, the organization still actively works to support the institutional memory of queer people on campus. For Stanfield, the link between SRC alumni and current students is the greatest indicator of this institutional memory. The library serves this purpose as well. “If students make zines, we can keep them. … We also have video recordings of drag shows, we also have digital archives of all the events we’ve had, and we also keep news clippings from The S&B. And that’s been really essential to really remember our history, who specifically has done very important things,” Tennenbaum said. “We have the physical documentation and people can peruse it, and it’s up to our monitors and our staff to dig it up and do that work and make it accessible.”
By Jackson Schulte schultejt@grinnell.edu
Students urge the College to address theft on campus
This school year, Grinnellians seem to be losing items at a higher rate than usual, with most theft taking place in the cubbies and shelving outside of the Dining Hall. Students who have been victims of the recent theft have formed online communities such as the Facebook group “My stuff got stolen at Grinnell,” which as of May 3, 2018, has 116 members. In an email interview with The S&B, Director of Campus Safety James Shropshire did not point to a particular factor that might be prompting recent thefts. Shropshire instead implied that students are always more susceptible to theft in public spaces such as student centers and libraries. “Theft is often described as a crime of opportunity,” Shropshire wrote. “Often this opportunity manifests itself in a situation where someone may leave a valuable, like a laptop, unattended while using the restroom. Most thefts occur on college campuses in spaces that are utilized as a shared space and often open to the public.” Shropshire also noted that campus safety currently has no suspects for recent thefts on campus. “If anyone might have any information regarding these recent thefts, I would encourage them to provide that information to the Grinnell Police Department or the Department of Campus Safety,” he said. Students who have had items stolen from the area outside the Dining Hall are confused as to why the thefts keep happening, and feel as though the College hasn’t done enough in the wake of the reported events. Taylor Burton ’18, like many students in the “My stuff got stolen at Grinnell” Facebook group, had
her entire backpack stolen from the JRC while she worked her Dining Hall shift on Feb. 1. She could not go home to drop off her bag because she had to hurry from her other campus job as a writing mentor straight to the Dining Hall. “I had my laptop, my winter boots, the clothing I was wearing before I changed for work, a bracelet my boyfriend got me from Scotland,” Burton said. “If I were to count up how much it [cost], it was over $1,500 at the price of purchase worth of items.” “Since my freshman year I used to leave my stuff [outside the Dining Hall] and I never thought anyone would steal it,” Burton said. “I’ve since been able to get a new laptop because people helped me out, but if I have my laptop in my backpack I don’t store it there anymore. If I have my backpack, I’ll put it by the front service desk, because I trust those people to watch it.” The Dining Hall rules create a serious dilemma: students aren’t allowed to bring bags and coats into the Dining Hall, but instead must leave their items out in the open before going in to eat. On the Friday before spring break, Megan Christel ’20 had her laptop stolen from her backpack while she went to lunch for just 20 minutes. “I grabbed my bag [after lunch], and I realized it was a little bit lighter,” Christel said. “I came to the grill, sat down and I looked in [my bag] and realized ‘Oh shit, it isn’t there.’ I went straight into panic mode and called security and student affairs.” Christel expressed frustration with how security and student affairs handled her report, and other students have taken action to make sure that the College hears their voices. In the top post in the “My stuff got stolen” Facebook group, the group’s administrator Zeyu Chen ’21
urges students to report what they’ve lost, and says that he “will report missing items monthly to the school.” Christel also questioned campus safety’s infrastructural capacity to solve any thefts in the JRC. “I’m sure everyone’s doing as much as they can. But security never called me back. They were like ‘We probably won’t get much off the tapes. The angle isn’t right and they’re kind of blurry.’ If you’re admitting that these security cameras do nothing, then how are you helping students?” Regarding the cameras, Shropshire wrote that campus safety is working with Information and Technology Services (ITS) to get more cameras installed, but that those requests are “pending.” “The current array of cameras on campus are appropriately supported by ITS via dedicated server space,” Shropshire wrote. “One of the pending requests is for additional camera coverage in the JRC. The addition of these proposed cameras will require allocation of more dedicated server space to support operations.” The cubbies and shelves outside the Dining Hall currently host hundreds of backpacks and jackets every day, but Shropshire encourages students to leave valuables at home before entering the Dining Hall. “I would encourage students to store valuables in a safe space in their apartment or residence hall room. One should only carry items that are necessary for their day to day activities on campus. I would also strongly encourage people to not leave valuables unattended in common spaces, even for a few minutes,” Shropshire wrote. Shropshire emphasized that victims of theft should notify campus safety, and if they wish, the Grinnell Police Department, for further assistance.
"...that's been realy essential to really remember our history, who has done very important things." Ric Tennenbaum '19
“I’m so excited for what [this group] will do,” Tennenbaum said.
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Multiple students who left their belongings outside of the Dining Hall have had their items stolen off the shelves.
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Divestment discussions lead to dissatisfaction Continued from Front Page the Advisory Committee to the Task Force, echoed these sentiments in an email to The S&B. In particular, Nelson described the false dichotomy of divestment versus sustainability efforts that many activists found implicit in the findings of the Task Force. “[Student activists] are also frustrated at the manner in which sustainability has been posed as an alternative to divestment, pitting one strategy against another without examining the ways in which their effects may be distinct yet equally effective,” Nelson said. “Grinnell College did not choose to continue to invest in fossil fuels because this would not be an effective tactic; it did so because the values of the individuals who have the final say align with those who perpetuate injustice, regardless of the values of the student body,” said Nate Williams ’20, a longtime campus activist. In the same Special Campus Memo, Finkelman described the goals of the Task Force as a “broadbased, transparent process of intellectual discovery” which would promote a rich civil and intellectual debate on the subject of climate change. As part of this “process,” pro-divestment forces took on an educational role in addition to more overt political action, presenting evidence in favor of divestment
policies to the Task Force and Board, more generally. However, Grinnell’s student activists feel the moral, ethical, and political evidence they provided to the Task Force was disregarded in that body’s ultimate decision against divestment. Williams was particularly vocal about this issue.
"[Student activists] are also frustrated.. ." Nate Williams '20 “[T]his is clear evidence that the trustees' framing of real political issues such as divestment as ‘intellectual exercises’ in gathering research, presenting arguments and generally trying to appeal to the reasonability of the Task Force is nothing other than a method of calming us down. The research and expertise presented clearly demonstrated the historical and current efficacy of divestment as well as the inability of shareholder activism to create meaningful change,” Williams said. Williams ultimately regards the decision as antagonistic to student activist efforts. “This decision has confirmed that the task force was formed to quell student momentum and that meaningful change can only be generated through adversarial pressure — not through dialogue,” he said.
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Fulbright finalists share their plans
Edited by fentonma@grinnell.edu & suetamay@grinnell.edu
Younker to undergo renovation
By Zoe Fruchter fruchterz@grinnell.edu
MAI VU PHUONG
Left to right: Fulbright Grant recipients Emma Friedlander, Sara Ashbaugh, Emma Traband and Ryan Hung, all ’18, Continued from Front Page is ready for the challenges that may come with it. “Living in Russia will be challenging for a lot of reasons, especially since I don’t speak the language incredibly well. I’ve been studying it for four years now but I’m not fluent in it so I think it will be a challenge just to navigate that language barrier,” she said. “But that’s why I applied to the Fulbright, partially because I really wanted to live in Russia and to solidify my language skills and keep working on my language after college. So I’m really excited about that, too. So it’s … a challenge but an exciting challenge, I suppose.” For Hung, a theatre and dance major who will be teaching English to high school students in South Korea, his community engagement project is closely related to his undergraduate area of study. “My community engagement project revolves around me working with other local creative artists and creating work in the medium of performance as well as trying to enlarge the accessibility of the arts for local children in the area [that] I am placed,” he said. Traband, a German and biology double major, will teach English
to students in Germany, and her community engagement project was inspired by her college study abroad experience. “My community engagement project is focused around regional museums since, when I was studying abroad in Germany, I found the variety of regional history museums and kind of special topics museums really interesting,” Traband said. The recipients with little teaching experience feel that the teaching aspect will be another exciting aspect of the grant that will challenge them “They emphasize in the application process that teaching experience is not necessary — it’s more the idea that you are able to explain American culture and American politics to another country within this English teaching setting,” Friedlander said. “That will definitely be a new thing to tackle.” Hung, who has had some teaching experience, agreed. “I’ve had peer mentoring experiences in high school and in Grinnell, and I have tutored in the past in high school and I have also been an ALSO creative writing tutor at Grinnell, and I have actually taken education courses here, but in terms of teaching English that’s a different
dynamic,” he said. “But I think it’ll all work out.” The application started from October and, after the semi-finalists were announced in January, the recipients waited to hear the final results between February and May. The early application period and waiting to hear the results made it a long process. However, throughout the process, Landstrom helped the applicants each step of the way. “I strive to be an essential part of the Grinnell College experience for those interested in applying for Global Fellowships and Awards. I believe quite strongly that ‘it takes a village’ to mentor and guide students through their college years and especially so through a fellowship, scholarship, or grant application process,” Lanstrom wrote in an email to The S&B. “My fellowship advising approach is to get to know the student or alumna/ us – their background, education, experiences, activities, strengths, skills, interests and passion.” This support was felt by the recipients. “If ther e’s anybody that’s thinking of doing a Fulbright in the future, you do have good resources at Grinnell,” Friedlander said. —Editor's note: Emma Friedlander is the editor-in-chief of The S&B.
Christmas comes to art department
By Zoe Fruchter fruchterz@grinnell.edu
In Fall 2018, Ally Christmas will join Grinnell College’s Art and Art History Department as a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow. Andrew Kaufman, art and art history chair, describes the College endowment and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation program as “mutually beneficial to the fellow and the [art] Department.” Christmas will be receiving her MFA in photography and video this month from the University of Georgia, Athens, and the fellowship will allow her to teach in a mentored environment, while having time to advance her own research. “My research has focused the past two years on the construction and performance of self that we engage in through (or despite) our strained relationships with technology,” Christmas wrote in an
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email to The S&B. “The program correspondingly benefits departments by allowing a small increase in the number of course offerings and the opportunity to bring in contemporary perspectives from a recent MFA,” Kaufman said. At the College, Christmas will fulfill a Video and New Media position. New media is a broad term recognized as incorporating a variety of digital mediums, from video and photography to glitching and animation. Self-described as specializing in video and “video-prose,” Christmas wrote, “I work with a lot of text, and I like to think of video art as a form of painting with time, where each frame becomes an individual painting of sorts, although these frames are ‘painted’ digitally in combination with indexically-shot footage from the physical world.” Currently, she is working on a series of “video poems” wherein she layers video and text to
document her day-to-day thoughts and experiences as “brief anti-narratives,” as well as a project that utilizes collapsible greenscreens to experiment with the imagery of invisibility. Christmas will teach one course per semester, over the next two years. The fellow will first introduce a 100-level video course. “Although my work takes a more experimental approach, the class I’ll be teaching this fall will likely provide a wide purview of approaches for students to explore — from basic notions of what ‘the moving image’ is, to found footage projects, conceptual videomaking, and installation work,” wrote Christmas. The second course that Christmas will teach will be a 200-level new media course focused on a medium of her choosing. Both courses will fit into the progression of the studio art major. >> See Professor Christmas page 9
Renovation on Younker Hall to improve the building's accessibility will begin this summer. These renovations include the addition of an elevator and a ramp on the northeast side of the building. The ramp will extend from street level to Younker Pit, leading to an entrance that will allow direct access to Pit-level rooms and the Stonewall Resource Center (SRC). The entrance to the elevator will allow access to all floors of Younker, making the entire Hall accessible. The SRC, located in the basement of Younker, has been criticized in the past for its inaccessibility. Director of Residence Life Joe Rolon wrote in an email to The S&B that “accessibility into all parts of Younker, including the Stonewall Resource Center, is very important. With the ramp, all students including those with mobility issues will be able to access the SRC and the building.” SRC Leader Ric Tennenbaum ’18 expressed appreciation for the renovation, but emphasized that more needs to be done to make SRC fully accessible. “It’s really exciting to get the elevator in Younker! I am happy that there will now be elevator access into the SRC, but I will still be far from satisfied in terms of the SRC’s accessibility,” Tennenbaum wrote in an email to The S&B.
"I am happy that there will now be elevator access into the SRC, but I will still be far from satisfied in terms of the SRC's accessibility." Ric Tennenbaum '18
She stated that the SRC’s location creates a host of other accessibility issues: “It’s still in the basement of Younker, a chemically inaccessible building for many folks who either cannot enter Younker or hang out for extended periods of time ... We will still also be inaccessible to faculty and staff who cannot swipe into Younker Hall, and that breaks my heart. We’re in a small city surrounded by very little population density; pulling together all of our queer community — faculty, staff, college students, high school students, community members — for larger more intergenerational sharing of space is something we need to be doing. We need to be sharing stories, resources and experiences, but as the SRC exists in a dorm basement this cannot happen.” Most of the renovation will take place over June, July and August, while students are out of the hall for summer vacation. Rolon wrote that the renovation process is forecasted
to continue into the early part of Fall Semester. However, construction will only occur during the school day, not in the early morning before class or in the evening. Although project planners have tried to minimize the impact renovations will have on the lives of students next semester, the plans for construction have affected students’ living options. “The planned renovation did impact this year’s room draw process,” Rolon wrote. “With the elevator being built into Younker, some rooms have been taken permanently off-line and others will be temporarily off-line so as not to inconvenience students with noise and construction. The rooms that are temporarily off-line will become available once the construction has ended.” According to Rolon, students who selected to move into Younker were made aware of the upcoming renovation process before signing up, and those staffing the Younker table during Room Draw also provided students with relevant information.
"That kind of thing arriving as a queer student to be met with a temporary and only partially functioning queet resource center sends a mesage to new students..." Ric Tennenbaum '18
Beyond room selection options, the installation of an elevator will have significant effects on the operation of the SRC for at least the beginning of next semester. The elevator’s construction will take away some of the SRC’s space to make an access corridor. As a result, the SRC will downsize their library, and temporarily move into the Younker computer lab. The one room lab is a much smaller space than the current multiple rooms in the SRC, which include a drag closet, trans clothing swap closet, meeting/chilling room, work area, library and office space. “I am bummed that new students will not be met with a fully-functioning SRC when they first arrive here. That kind of thing — arriving as a queer student to be met with a temporary and only partially-functioning queer resource center — sends a message to new students about the kind of support and resources offered here,” Tennenbaum wrote. “I want to affirm that I am very happy about the elevator construction in Younker and how the administration has decided to put more resources into accessible housing. Yet, so long as the SRC occupies a basement room in a dorm building, our accessibility will be severely limited.”
English department addresses bias-motivated incident
colleagues urged Moriah to submit a bias-incident report, and after talking to her colleagues, Moriah agreed that filing a report would be the best course of action. As the comments targeted the English department, the faculty, staff and students felt the imperative to respond as a unified front. “I think that because that person made a comment about [being] glad that he’s was not an English major means that there’s something particular about the major or the kind of courses that are being taught and my courses that he found particularly disturbing,” Moriah said. Community Hour revealed that Moriah’s incident is not an exception to members of the College community. Students, faculty and staff stated their own experiences with racism perpetrated by peers. Many attendees characterized the administration’s response to racism as reactive and that it burdens of people of color to provide solutions to racism. Additionally, community members cited how the majority of the crowd at Community Hour were people of color further showed the College community’s failure in combating racism. “I hope that this does not come off the wrong way, but I did not come here to provide solutions. For me, it’s a little disheartening that every time you look
at this room and it's majority people of color, we spend the first 30 minutes talking about all the ways that we’re marginalized and other buzzwords … I protest this,” said Farah Omer ’19 at Community Hour, in response to the question on finding ways to prevent incidents like Moriah’s from reoccurring. “Most people in this room are not white people and racism is white people’s shit and they should be solving it. So with all due respect to you, and I really do applaud your efforts, I am not going to respond to this question because this is not a part of my job. Students of color spend most of their time here going through so much work.” Students further expressed their distrust in the administration, using the controversy surrounding the BCC’s closure, microaggressions often endured by people in power and conflicting information on how biasincident reports reach the Office of Diversity as evidence of incompetence of the administration’s response to student concerns. Some questioned if the administration chose to respond to Moriah’s incident because of her status as a professor. Next week, the English department along with the English SEPC will lead a series of anti-racist protests. It will include writing a “script” in response to the heckler and the College’s racial climate, which will be distributed
to protesters to hang on doors that they will be encouraged to cover in black paper and other materials as a demonstration against racism. As a third initiative, the English fepartment will publish an editorial online through The S&B stating why what Moriah calls an “anti-racist” pedagogy needs to be supported by all disciplines and the administration. Already, Savarese has sent a letter to all English majors and faculty stating the department’s commitment to antiracism, and the Community Hour provided examples on what “proactive programming” should look like. “One of the things we’re trying to think about as a way of honoring the strong feelings of students is through — and I’m not saying we’re doing this perfectly — but I would hope that if [community members] cover their doors black over campus, they might see that somebody had gone through the effort of making paper to wrap their door and they’re saying that personally they won't tolerate this,” Savarse said. “We were very conscious at that meeting of this [demonstration] is not sufficient ... or that anybody should be satisfied with this action, but we heard a lot of pain [at Community Hour] and that pain wasn’t being responded to in a way that allowed maybe the folks to feel like there was room for them to go forward.” LilyRose Weiss ’19 was
not available for comment, but Baumgartel, Duong and Tcheng, all ’19 and members of the English SEPC, see the role of the SEPC as reaching out to other student leaders, departments and the wider campus community to recognize their responsibility in fostering a healthy campus community. “Institutional memory at Grinnell is very transient and we might be led to believe that racism is new on this campus when it’s really not. I would love to see captains of sports teams and more students that aren’t as easily accessing these things like community hours or these emails or Mears [Cottage] where they might not even go to,” Duong said. Long-term goals include incorporating an “anti-racist pedagogy” instead of one that prioritizes tolerance, which can still allow for ideas that can harm minorities. The English department feels as though humanities strives for this type of teaching, but Moriah, Savarese and others hope that this approach to teaching can expand beyond the humanities. “It’s no coincidence that the student was very well aware of the kind of material one would encounter in a humanities class … in a climate of declining enrollment figures in the humanities and social sciences, it’s becoming increasingly clear to me that there are students at Grinnell without
having to be exposed to ideas that really put pressure on the assumptions they’ve grown up with and so if we’re only really educating people on racism who have taken a significant number of humanities courses, what are we saying about a liberal arts education?” Savarese said. Johnson and the Office of Diversity and Inclusion did not respond to The S&B’s inquiries on bias-incident reports and racism on campus. However, Moriah stresses the importance of submitting incident reports and for all students, not just minorities, to engage in dialogues to combat racism. Savarese agrees, claiming that the College’s explicit commitment to diversity should show in a community-wide response to issues that affect people of color. “It was wonderful to see people of color show up ... but racism affects and degrades everyone, and it’s important that all students show up and take it seriously and not just people who are potentially victims of these incidents,” Savarese said. “It’s important that people in power in the majority are also showing up en masse … and they are active and vocal when these things happen … I think one of the ways that it feels as if this burden is put on victims is that for some reason not all students are actually showing up when these things happen,” Moriah said.
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Let's reflect: Grinnell College 2017-18 Year in Review By Amanda Weber weberama@grinnell.edu As the 2017-18 school year comes to an end, the College student body has an opportunity for reflection — to think back fondly on crane memes, the chronicle of the Mac Field fence and all of the little moments and fun events that made up this year’s college experience. With this in mind, The S&B created and distributed a survey to the student body and faculty the opportunity to share the things that have made this year great. Perhaps one of the most notable features of the year would be one a physical one, displayed prominently on the skyline of the campus for almost the entire year. It would not have been 2017-18 without the iconic presence of the McGough Construction crane, catalyst for a plethora of memes and object of the affection of many a Grinnell student.
"I have to be quite honest, Relays 2K18 was absolutely amazing! ... I think that the only person who laughed more at Grinnell's student body than I did that day was Prof. Wayne Moyer."
Aubrey Champlin '20 “I really do feel that crane memes defined the year for me. However, the ontology of the crane as it relates to its student adorers continues to prove ultimately elusive to me,” wrote Aubrey Champlin ’20 in response to the survey. To the disappointment of many, the fan-favorite crane left campus during the weekend of April 21. However, its departure indicated a
good deal of progress made on the construction of the Humanities & Social Studies Complex (HSSC), which was certainly a positive, especially for the professors who hope to be settling into new offices in the fall. Still, it is hardly surprising that, of the students who responded, it was almost unanimous that the crane was a major icon of the year. Elise Bargman ’21 also made note of the fence around Mac Field, another familiar sight on campus and the source of many more memes. However, sights on campus were not the only defining factors of the year. A number of students cited this year’s recent Relays as one of their most enjoyable memories from the year. “I have to be quite honest, Relays 2K18 was absolutely amazing! It was my first time being able to participate and my team (Team ATHLETES) won every event (well, not actually, but we screamed ‘WE WON’ after every single event, and now everyone thinks we actually did) … I imagine that the only person who laughed more at Grin-
nell's student body than I did that day was Prof. Wayne Moyer,” wrote Champlin.
"Relays and Tithead were just pure fun and made me glad to be here!" Kelly Page '21 This year’s Titular Head film festival was mentioned with a similar degree of excitement. “Relays and Tithead were just pure fun and made me glad to be here!” wrote Kelly Page ’21.
Other notable events included the White Privilege Conference, the paint fight that took place during New Student Orientation, the Big Thief concert, the Wells Fargo protest, the LeaderShape conference and many more. Outside of actual events, academics was also a feature of multiple students’ enjoyment of the year. “As a second year, one of my favorite parts of the school year this year included developing more focused interest in academics and developing better relationships with professors,” wrote Abdi Yusuf ’20. “My first two semesters were scheduled in a way that I had the ‘bookends’ of the Grinnell academic experience back to back; I was in Tutorial in the fall and French 350 (an advanced seminar) by the spring. While it hasn't been typical (or easy for that matter), it's been incredibly refreshing and I've learned a lot!” wrote Victoria Park ’21. Page also cited her Tutorial as her best classroom experience of the year. “Tutorial with Ross Haenfler was fun and interesting and so much better than I thought school could
be,” she wrote. In the vein of academics, one of the respondents was new Associate Professor Anya Vostinar, computer science. According to Vostinar, her best experience this year has been starting her new job, and she has been having a good time on campus so far. She also shared her excitement about getting “Cache the wonder dog” and seeing students interact with the dog. Another very notable feature of Grinnell, noted by many of the respondents, was the campus community. From attending protests together and playing games at Relays to admiring the crane through shared memes and collaborating to create cinematic masterpieces for Tithead, the College community sticks together, and it comes as no surprise that it is an important part of many students’ experiences. In fact, in response to a question about what her best out-of-class experience entailed, Page wrote, “Feeling like I’m part of a beautiful community.”
“My first two semester were scheduled in a way that I had the 'bookends' of the Grinnell academic experience back to back... While it hasn't been typical (or easy for that matter), it's been incredibly refreshing and I've learned a lot!" Victoria Park '21 And, in true Grinnell College fashion, the last respondent to the survey went by “Kanye,” class of 2024. From the lack of input from Kanye, one may be able to extrapolate that everything about their year was stellar beyond words.
What's your favorite D-Hall hack? The S&B's Ahon Gooptu approached Grinnell students to find out what they do to make the daily grind of the Dining Hall bearable and maybe even, dare we say it, tasty? If you're looking to get yourself some resourceful tips for tasty food, even on a meal plan, this is the place. Photos by Mahira Faran.
“I put ketchup cups inside a to-go cup to keep it safe, when I get a to-go box.” — Marnie Monogue ’21
“Get off the meal plan.” — Ayon Dey ’18
“Pizza bagels are dope to make. You cut open a bagel, you get some marinara sauce from the pasta bar and then whatever cheese and other toppings that you want.” — Nai’ya Willis-Hogan ’20
“So you can make ice cream sandwiches if they have particularly good cookies. You just grab two and then you put a scoop of ice cream in the middle and smush it all together.” — Anna Engelhardt ’21 (left)
“If you eat lunch at 12:10, it’s the best time because between 11:50 and 12:00, the line [outside] is disgusting and the line for the food is disgusting.” — Monserrat Castro ’21
“Cheese fries. Get any fried potato from the Grill, then you have the cheeses at the salad bar. Add some bacon or pork or beans. Slide over to the microwave, pop it in for a bit and melt the cheese. You can add some parsley, oregano [or] Cajun seasoning on it, if you like.” — Michael Lee ’18
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The history of Bucksbaum: Grinnell's fine arts legacy By Clara Larson larsoncl@grinnell.edu The College’s enthusiasm for the fine arts can be traced at least as far back as President John Hanson, whose tenure as president of the college spanned from 1906 to 1931. Hanson stated in an interview during his time as president that “art belongs to liberal education” and that “the ideal toward which Grinnell College is bending its efforts is to foster in every student a creative spirit of beauty as a part of daily life.” At the time of Hanson’s presidency, Grinnell had no formal fine arts building, but his dream was realized in 1961 with the construction of Grinnell College’s first Fine Arts Center, the predecessor to our current fine arts building, the Bucksbaum Center for the Arts. The $1,400,000 Fine Arts Center was comprised of two buildings, the Arts Building and the Roberts Theater. Although a desire to bolster the presence of the arts on campus may have partially motivated the project, the September 1962 issue of Progressive Architecture reported that the construction of the Fine Arts Center, alongside Burling Library, was part of a “development plan drawn by SOM to increase the enrollment capacity of the college to 1100.” SOM is the abbreviation for Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, the Chicago-based architectural firm that designed the Fine Arts Center. During the excavation for the Fine Art’s Center, a peat deposit was discovered below the site’s grounds. Grinnell’s Biology Depart-
ELENA COPELL
Bucksbaum Center for the Arts is Grinnell College's current fine arts center, but it was not the first, and it may not be the last. ment was awarded a National Science Foundation Grant to excavate the deposit, which culminated in a paper entitled “A Post-Kansan Peat at Grinnell, Iowa: A Preliminary Report.” The paper reported that the peat was a remnant of glacial deposits, and expressed the intent of the Biology Department to analyze pollen samples found in the peat for the purpose of studying interglacial ecology. The Fine Arts Center was in use for 30 years, until Grinnell outgrew its facilities. “The current [fine arts] faculty has been pushed beyond its limits. [The Fine Arts Center] does not serve the interests and the demands of the students today,” said Liz Ballentine, then-chairman of the Board of Trustees, during the 1996
groundbreaking ceremony for what would soon become Bucksbaum. Then, in 1999, three years and $22 million later, the Bucksbaum Center for the Arts opened to the public.
"He [Pelli] was trying not to overwhelm the campus with a huge building. It looks like a cluster of small buildings instead of one large building. It's brilliant." President Russel Osgood The new arts building was designed by Cesar Pelli, a world-renowned architect known for design-
ing not only the World Financial Center in New York City, but also Kuala Lumpur’s Petronas Twin Towers, which at the time were the tallest buildings in the world. Paul Nelson, Grinnell’s music technical assistant both today and at the time of the construction, speculated that Pelli may only have agreed to do such a small project “because he hadn’t done anything like this before … so he was breaking ground.” Nelson represented the college’s music department during the building’s design process. He noted that none of the architects working on Pelli’s team had any significant experience in the arts, which “really came back to bite us,” in his opinion. He further speculated that function may not have been the
highest consideration in choosing an architect for the building, and that “the trustees wanted to get a big-name building, so they went with Pelli.” Bucksbuam was designed to follow the curve of Sixth Avenue and, to do so, the architects chose to arrange the music wing as a series of pie-shaped rooms. “We’ve had a lot of problems here with this room, room 103,” Nelson said. “Acoustically, we’ve had problems with it because of this pie-shaped concept.” He further conveyed that this flaw perhaps reflected the architects’ lack of knowledge of the arts. “Did we get our bang for the buck?” Nelson pondered. “I’m not sure we did.” On the other hand, Grinnell’s then-president Russel Osgood praised the building’s design. As printed in the Des Moines Register’s September 21, 1999 issue, Osgood stated, “He [Pelli] was trying not to overwhelm the campus with a huge building. It looks like a cluster of small buildings instead of one large building. It’s brilliant.” Although Bucksbaum’s construction in the '90s greatly expanded Grinnell’s art facilities, Nelson reported that “today we are out of room” and added that “the music department has an annex across the street now.” “It’s tight, Nelson said. “Some of it was the school saving money.” Today, it seems that the Grinnell student body’s enthusiasm for the arts may be stretching the confines of the college’s art facilities once again.
Room draw brings excitement, or settling for last choices
MAI PHUONG VU
Last Sunday, the Harris Center acted as the site of room draw, the event at which students picked out the dorms in which they would be living for the 2018-19 school year. By Kate Irwin irwinkat@grinnell.edu Room draw for the 2018-19 academic year took place this past Sunday, April 29. For some students, room draw was a success and they got the room of their dreams. For others, it was less than ideal. Room draw's schedule includes four different options. The first three are special, and students must indi-
cate their interest in these rooms and sign up in advance. These special room draws include substance-free, quiet hall, and gender-specific. Then there is the normal room draw with times designated for each class year. Each student is assigned a room draw number, and this number indicates their place in the order of picking rooms. Students often come into room draw with their top room options listed, but since it is a con-
stant process, there is no guarantee their room will still be available by the time their number is picked. For Marnie Monogue ’21, room draw wasn't quite what she expected, but was still a positive experience. “I was surprised that it was old-fashioned, pen and paper, everybody stands in line, I sort of expected it to be online, like class registration. But it was kind of exciting because it was happening in real time,” she said. Further, Monogue and her roommate did not get their first pick of room. “We sort of had to move on from Plan B to Plan C, and so on to try to figure it out,” she said. While Monogue didn't get her top choice, she is still happy with her room and future roommate. She will be living in Langan again next year. “It's kind of nice I don't have to change buildings. … I currently live in the Pit so I’m glad to not be in the Pit anymore,” she said with a laugh.
"I lived in a women's only floor this semester and I thought it was nice." Elizabeth Collinger '21 For Zeyu Chen ’21, room draw was more confusing than he had initially anticipated. However, once he started the process, it made sense and worked out well.
Chen got his first-choice room, and he and his roommate will be living in Smith, a substance-free dorm. Chen and his friend group will all be living in Smith next year, so he has the benefits of his friends being close. “Pretty much everyone in my friend group partnered with another [person in the group]. … A lot of my friends will also be living in Smith,” he said. Chen appreciates Smith for its substance-free living environment — which he feels tends to be quieter — and the presence of his friends. It is also a benefit to him that the dorm is centrally located. Like Chen, Elizabeth Collinger ’21 also went through the special room draw process as she chose the gender specific option. “I lived in a women's only floor this semester and I thought it was nice. Also, I have to deal with less people, which is really nice, because it is stressful,” she said. Due to Collinger's efforts to scout out the rooms before room draw, she got the room. “First, we asked [technical assistant] Lauren Myers which specific floors would be gender specific, because they don't give [the information out]. Since we asked, we went around to the different rooms on Clark third and knocked on rooms and were like, ‘Hi, can we look in please,’” she said. Collinger is excited about her room because of the amenities, the
close location of her friends and the fact that one of her friends will be a Community Advisor for the floor. “I've got a sink, and it’s a corner room, and I'm really living my best self,” she said.
"I was surprised that it was old-fashioned, pen and paper... I sort of expected it to be online, like class registration. But it was kind of exciting because it was happening in real time." Marnie Monogue '21 Across campus, Phinn Lloyd ’21, Victoria Park ’21 and Emma Heikkinen ’21 will be living in a triple in Read next year. “Emma asked if we wanted to live in a triple next year and it sounded like such a fun idea,” Lloyd said. Lloyd, Park and Heikkinen knew that they wanted to live in South and have a room set up with a bigger main room and two adjacent rooms. They got their second choice, which was a bonus. Additionally, the three plan on getting a pet for the room. “We’re thinking about getting a small animal. We’re going to make it a door tag as well,” Park said. “Like a Wal-Mart fish, or a WalMart crab,” Heikkinen added.
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Recapping Relays 2017-18
SARAH RUIZ
Top left photo: (From left to right) Artis Curiskis ’18, Zack Stice ’21, Jackson Breshears ’21, Andrew Tucker ’21, William DuBow ’21, Dawson Keller ’21, Alex Mickus ’21 and Anthony Gulve ’20 hang out as a team. Top right photo: (From left to right) Mahira Faran ’20, Pratik Karki ’20, Ben Lim ’19, Reed Winter ’21 and James Msekela ’20 show off fun costumes. Bottom left photo: (From left to right): Sydney Kasper ’19, Lauren Acker ’19, Bryce Lew ’19, Kiara Borosky ’19 and Ronnie Ruse ’19 show their team spirit. Bottom right photo: (Clockwise) Simo Bambi ’20, Valencia Alvarez ’20, Zuhayr Alam ’20, Izzy Herring ’20, Lauren Edwards ’20 and Duncan Ward ’20 form a human pyramid. By Ahon Gooptu gooptuah@grinnell.edu The year was 1973, Wayne Moyer, political science, had not long before arrived in Grinnell. And with him, he brought Grinnell’s beloved Relays. “The idea of spring festivities is very old but [in an attempt] to try to bring that back … we held the first relays in the spring of ’73. And it was very much like you saw it over this last weekend, except that the beer was outside,” said Moyer, who supported two sophomores of the class of 1975 in their successful attempt to obtain funding from SGA for three kegs of beer for the first Relays. The inspiration came from the Berkeley-Calhoun Olympics held between two residential colleges of Yale University. During his time at Yale, Moyer had been associated with one of the colleges. “It’s a stage of the semester when
everybody is really uptight prior to exams. It is also a stage when the weather, which has been a long winter, becomes really nice,” Moyer said. “[Relays] provides an opportunity just to relax, have a good time, to pull yourself away from your studies for a few hours.”
"[Relays] provide an opportunity just to relax, have a good time, to pull yourself away from your studies for a few hours." Professor Wayne Moyer, political science Relays got bigger and bigger throughout the 1970s until the drinking age was changed in 1987. The games looked a little different then, when the drinking age was only 18. “The all-favorite event is
what we would call the Milwaukee beverage relay, baseball style, where you chugged a beer at each of the three bases. That one is, of course, no longer possible,” Moyer said. Many events have been modified over the years, such as the infamous bat relay. “You used to chug a beer before you went down to the bat and we used real bats and you actually put them on the ground and you actually circle[d] around it ten times,” Moyer said. “Then it is impossible to walk in a straight line. So people were taking various parabolic trajectories, sometimes falling on their faces in the process.” Shannon Hautzinger ’18, who has been a member of the Relays Committee every spring that she has been in at Grinnell, felt content after organizing the event one last time. “This year we got 70 teams, which is more than we’ve ever had
before,” she said. “And it was kind of intimidating, ’cause I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, how are we going to make this happen?’ But it ended up working out fine. I think that’s what I’m most proud of.”
"This year, we got 70 teams, which is more than we've ever had before." Shannon Hautzinger '18 Moyer was impressed with the organization of this year’s Relays. “This one was the best-organized that I remember from the last few years. And fortunately, we had a good day too,” he said. “The spirit was very much like the first one: having fun and laughing at each other.” There were minor complaints about this year’s event. “We got the biggest grill we could get and it takes
time to cook food, no matter what,” Hautzinger said. Despite getting the largest grill possible there were still long lines for food, which sparked complaints. The sound system also posed some issues, and the organizers received some complaints. “The sound system could have been better too," Hautzinger said. “In past years, we got megaphones.” She hopes that the next committee will be able to deal with these issues more efficiently. But, at the end of the day, she was glad that there was no rain, which allowed everyone to enjoy all the events to their fullest. “I always love the shaving cream and cheese balls and the kind of debauchery that ensues at the end of the event,” Hautzinger said. “It’s always really fun and it’s a good way to reflect on the entire day. Everyone’s just running around, but for the most part, having a good time.”
Community Local cyclists bike across Iowa for charity
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By Seth Taylor taylorse@grinnell.edu
If you get winded taking five minutes to bike to McNally’s, just take a second to imagine taking three days to bike 370 miles across Iowa. That’s exactly what two local cyclists are doing this week — through wind and rain, across gravel roads and winding highways — to raise money for St. Francis Manor, a Grinnell rehabilitation and long-term care facility for those who have endured medical conditions that have limited their mobility. Jon Duke and Tim Stahl created Stroke for Stroke Cycling to raise money for new equipment at St. Francis Manor, where they both work — Duke as a physical therapist and Stahl as a physical therapy assistant. The name Stroke for Stroke comes from the work Duke and Stahl do every day, helping to rehabilitate patients who have suffered life-altering medical emergencies like strokes. Every stroke that Stahl and Duke take on their bikes will be one stroke closer to giving their patients new resources with which to recover. The money they raise will go towards the purchase of a new $30,000 piece of specialized equipment called a LiteGait. The LiteGait is a partial weight-bearing system that can suspend patients above a treadmill and give them real-time feedback about
their weight displacement. This can help patients with their balance and, eventually, help them to learn to walk again. However, Stroke for Stroke Cycling isn’t just about raising money for the LiteGait. It’s also about raising awareness of cardiovascular health and issues of heart disease in America. According to the Center for Disease Control, heart disease is the leading cause of death in the United States, with about 630,000 Americans dying from heart disease every year, almost a quarter of all yearly American deaths.
"You go through the whole gamut of emotions whenever you're in an endurance activity like that." Tim Stahl Duke is a competitive gravel cyclist in his free time, but Stahl — a former wrestler and football player — was not a regular cyclist until recently, when he experienced some cardiovascular issues of his own. “I had a situation with my health that wasn’t real good, and my cardiovascular health was really poor, and Jon — being the gravel cyclist that he is — he says, ‘Hey, why don’t you give gravel cycling a try?’ … And that was about 14 months ago,” Stahl said. Stahl and Duke began their training soon after. Over the winter they logged more than 5,000
Fire marshall investigates “suspicious” fires
CONTRIBUTED
Tim Stahl and Jon Duke have trained for months to ride 370 miles across Iowa miles on a trainer and practiced outside in the elements whenever possible. They used Zwift — a virtual training program similar to a video game that simulates different environments to break the monotony of indoor training —anywhere from one to four hours almost every day. For Stahl, the rigorous training has been a personal project that has greatly benefitted him in both physical and mental health. “This is my first experience with it all, so it’s really been a journey for me,” Stahl said. “It’s not only been physical. It’s emotional, spiritual. You go through the whole gamut of emotions whenever you’re in an endurance activity like that.”
By Chloe Wray wraychlo@grinnell.edu
The Grinnell Police and Fire departments are investigating two fires from April 26 that they have deemed “suspicious in nature,” according to a press release. The Iowa State Fire Marshall’s Office is also assisting with the investigations. According to Police Chief Dennis Reilly, Grinnell Police and Fire responded to a fire on the exterior of a structure at 1308 6th Ave. at 12:11 a.m. on April 26. Just seven minutes later, at 12:18 a.m., Grinnell Police and Fire responded to a fire on the exterior of an apartment located at 1115 Reed St. Grinnell firefighters were able to quickly bring the two fires under control, with only moderate damage to both buildings and no injuries reported. The Grinnell Police and Fire Departments were unable to provide further details because of the ongoing investigation.
This year, UnityPoint Health® — Grinnell Regional Medical Center (GRMC) will donate 550 bike helmets to third grade students. Facilitated by the GRMC, the program relies on sponsorship from several local businesses, the support of medical center employees and additional community members, including Bikes To You owner Craig Cooper. According to Cooper, the program is based on the initiative of Dr. Phillip Brooks, a former radiologist at the GRMC. As a radiologist, Brooks frequently saw head injuries that he knew would be easily preventable if children learned to wear helmets, a practice that they would ideally carry into adulthood. In the mid-1990s, Brooks used to stop by Bikes To You and hand Cooper a check for $300. “Hey man, I want you to use this money to give helmets to little kids,” Cooper recalled Brooks
1308 6th Ave. was damaged in a fire on April 26. Anybody with information about these fires is encouraged to contact Sgt. Dan Johnson at (641) 236-2670.
"That's our passion: to help people that are in need" Tim Stahl They will begin in Hawarden, IA, heading straight east towards Orange City and Decorah, finally ending in Lansing, IA, on the Mississippi River. They will have a support vehicle the whole time and will stop only if they have to. They estimate the trip will take them about three days.
Between training and the actual trip itself, this fundraiser is a huge commitment for the two cyclists, but it has already proven to be well worth the effort. As of May 1, Duke and Stahl had already surpassed their $30,000 goal, meaning that patients will soon see new LiteGait equipment at St. Francis Manor. All of the surplus funding will go to other projects around St. Francis. According to Stahl, that’s why they ride. “That’s our passion: to help people that are in need — help to get them back to the functional level that they were before they got sick or injured — so they can get back to doing what they love,” Stahl said.
Bikes To You and GRMC donate helmets to kids
By Carter Howe howethom@grinnell.edu
ELENA COPPELL
And now, after Stahl could barely make it 15 minutes early on, the two cyclists are ready to ride almost 400 miles across Iowa.
saying. Cooper set aside a fund for the helmets, but he did not see very many kids in his store. After Brooks had given Cooper three or four checks, each for $300, Cooper began to feel guilty that he would not be able to distribute the helmets as widely as Brooks would have liked. Cooper suggested they take Brooks’ idea and make it official. The idea, which promotes a healthy and responsible lifestyle, aligns with the values that the GRMC wishes to encourage, so the GRMC took on the project. As it developed initially, the GRMC staff almost exclusively funded the program. Cooper credited GRMC nurse Kim Jones as being essential in expanding the program by securing outside donations. “Providing bike helmets to young people helps them build healthy lifestyles from an early age. Our goal is to promote safe biking education and long-term safe habits for wellness by providing helmets to third graders,”
wrote Heidi Ramaeker Pearson, the GRMC communications and development specialist, in an email to The S&B. To satisfy the goals of the GRMC, Cooper will give a presentation on helmet safety to third grade students at 12 elementary schools: Brooklyn-Guernsey-Malcom, Central Iowa Christian School, East Marshall, Green Mountain Garwin, Grinnell-Newburg, Lynnville-Sully, Meskwaki Settlement, Montezuma, North Mahaska, Sully Christian, South Tama and Hartwick-Ladora-Victor. The presentations will occur when Cooper distributes the helmets over the course of four days, May 1 through May 4. He will also adjust the helmet straps and band to individually fit each of the students. While not all students have a bike, Cooper says that the program encourages students to wear a helmet whenever there are wheels beneath their feet — whether that be on a bike, rollerblades or a scooter.
Grinnell students participate in Wells Fargo protests By Gabe Loewenson loewenso2@grinnell.edu This past Tuesday, approximately 20 Grinnell students participated in a protest of Wells Fargo, which occurred during a shareholders’ meeting at the Wells Fargo office and the Marriott Hotel in Des Moines. The protest was aimed at taking a stand against a host of issues, including Wells Fargo’s alleged predatory loan practices, the company’s support of the NRA, a recent pay raise for its CEO and the company’s support of the Dakota Access pipeline. Most Grinnell students participating in the protest did so under the banner of Student Action, an organization dedicated to social change. The protesters were divided into several different groups. The smaller groups created a distraction, diverting attention away from the main group of protestors. “I was part of a distraction team that blocked the doors so that eventually I could let in hundreds of protesters into this hotel lobby,” said Paige Oamek ’20, who took part in the protest. “I had a police liaison, which was another student at Grinnell, who helped physically stand in front of me so any security or police could not toss me … so we were prepared for stuff like that.” Another distraction team attempted to infiltrate the Marriott Hotel via the skywalks on the sec-
ond floor. “There was basically a ‘fake protest,’ which Wells Fargo basically thought [of as] the main thing,” said Dylan Bremner ’20, another student protestor. “And there were other people, mainly Grinnell students, some other young people, who were trying to infiltrate the Marriott Hotel, where the shareholders’ meeting was being held, so that we could bring the protest into the Marriott.” This group, though, encountered opposition. They were confronted by security and eventually shoved out. “Somebody opened the door for us on the inside, one of the other activists who had been able to infiltrate, basically,” Bremner said. “… So we all just swarm in, and there’s a bunch of police that try to block off the door and pull this guy away, and I’m pretty sure I was one of the first people through the door, because I was right next to it and pretty much the only thing I remember was it was a really small door so I couldn’t see anything beyond it. So I just ran through the door and there’s police everywhere in front of me.” Their distraction, however, provided the opportunity for the main group to enter the hotel. “[Police] just kept shoving me, and other people who were on
the edge [of the crowd] more and more until, they just kept shoving us towards the door,” Bremner said. “They were threatening arrest and stuff, and so finally we left, but I think by the time that happened, it was a good enough distraction that it helped people kind of get through on the ground floor. So by the time we left, and I went back out down the street, I got a call from Sayles [Kasten ’19] from Student Action, and he’s just like ‘Oh we’re in the Marriot so just come in,’ so we just walked in the front door." Notably, one Grinnell student who participated in the protest, Nate Williams ’20, brought along a plastic trombone. The Des Moines Register reported on it and, in the article, Williams said, “I think it added some volume and some energy. It was generally a really fun, empowering time. And I think the noise of a trombone just added another piece to it.” Oamek agreed, saying, “We are angry, but [the protest] was also a place of extreme joy, a place that deserves celebration of everyone being out there, coming together and being able to say what they have to say and take up space. Music adds a lot of energy and a lot of power and a lot of fun ... the shareholders could hear us in the meeting so I’m sure they could hear the trombone as well.”
CONTRIBUTED
Protesters gathered at a Wells Fargo shareholders' meeting on Tuesday.
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Community Ahrens Park gets new, accessible playground equipment with help of community members
Edited by taylorse@grinnell.edu
By Carter Howe howethom@grinnell.edu This week some Grinnellians may wish they were school-age kids again, and not only because the semester’s end means coursework is starting to pile up. Ahrens Park is getting some snazzy new playground equipment, including a massive new play structure called the Mega Tower. Volunteers and park employees have worked over the past few weeks to install the equipment and expect to unveil it on Friday, May 25, when they will host a play day and celebration for second-graders at Grinnell’s elementary schools. The new playground is part of a larger initiative to upgrade the facilities at Ahrens Park funded by the Ahrens Park Foundation, which oversees the equipment and operations of the park, the Claude W. & Dolly Ahrens Foundation, a separate foundation with a broader aim that often partners with the Ahrens Park Foundation on projects such as this, and individuals and organizations from the community. The Ahrens Park Foundation decided to upgrade the playground equipment because it is almost 25 years old — the industry standard “life expectancy” for playground equipment — and was becoming difficult to maintain, according to Julie Gosselink, president and CEO of the Claude W. & Dolly Ahrens Foundation, co-chair of the fundraising committee for the Ahrens Park playground project and a Grinnell College trustee. The newly upgraded playground will include two areas, one for children ages 3 to 5 and one for children ages 5 to 12. The area for older kids will include the highlight of the new playground, the Mega Tower, a two-story tall structure with six slides that promises endless fun. Other new equipment will include swings, a merry-
The Mega Tower will provide endless fun for Grinnell's young (and not so young) citizens go-round, a climbing wall and new rubber surfacing that is much safer than the current gravel surface. All of the playground equipment will come from Miracle Recreation Equipment, the playground equipment company that made Claude W. Ahrens himself most of his wealth. Gosselink said more details about the playground would be unveiled after all of the equipment is installed.
"It's pretty rare even here in Iowa to find handicapped accessible playground equipment for children." Julie Gosselink, CEO of the Claude W. & Dolly Ahrens Foundation Gosselink said that another highlight of the new playground is that it will include handicapped accessible features. “It’s pretty rare even here in
Iowa to find handicapped accessible playground equipment for children, so this was something that we felt really strongly about being able to provide here at the park because we’re considered an all-around top facility … [and] that was one thing that we recognized was lacking, and so there are many features that will accommodate kids of all physical abilities,” Gosselink said. Though the Claude W. & Dolly Ahrens Foundation usually uses their endowment to finance their charitable projects, Gosselink said the foundation decided to fundraise in the community for the playground and park improvement project due to a high level of community interest and the sheer scale of the project. Of the estimated $430,000 cost of upgrading the playground, Gosselink said the foundation set a goal of raising $150,000 in the community and raised about $100,000. She also said they saved $100,000 because volunteers were willing to install the new equipment. Though Gosselink said the
SARAH RUIZ
foundation was initially skeptical about fundraising in the community because they did not want to create the impression that they were running low on money, she said that in the end the board decided the community’s desire to be engaged in the project made them decide to fundraise.
"We're seeing these... anonymous donor checks and individual donations [and] small donations kind of left and right for different projects that are happening at the park." Julie Gosselink, CEO of the Claude W. & Dolly Ahrens “We’re seeing these ... anonymous donor checks and individual donations [and] small donations kind of left and right for different projects that are happening at the park, and it was wonderful that
there are people out there who want to help … so we really struggled as a board. We spent probably a year talking about this — do we go out and actively fundraise — because of the perception. We didn’t want anybody to think all of a sudden that now we’re in this desperate need for funds and we’re not [going to] give funds away anymore like we’ve always done [but] we’ve just felt that this was a great community project,” Gosselink said. The money the foundation was able to raise from the community included a standard-sized donation from the College, Gosselink said. “The College has been very supportive. We did receive a minigrant from the College this last fall and it was in the amount of $4,000 … it was right in line with all of our other organizations and grant funds and businesses that supported the project, so we were very happy with the gift in that amount.”
"I want to stress that our donors and our volunteers have really helped to make this project a success." Julie Gosselink, CEO of the Claude W. & Dolly Ahrens Foundation Gosselink thanks the donors and volunteers in making the playground improvement project happen and said that it could not have been done without their help. “I want to stress that our donors and our volunteers have really helped to make this project a success, and we’re so grateful and thankful for the support we have in the community … the goal with the foundation is to provide excellent first-class facilities so we get to enjoy this equipment and this area for another 25 years.”
This week is Small Business Week in America, and in honor of our own small businesses here in Grinnell, The S&B's Mayo Sueta spoke to a few of the owners of Grinnell’s most popular small businesses about how their businesses got started, from more modern staples of Grinnell's downtown to long-time fixtures of the Grinnell Community. Sarina Lincoln took the photos of these local icons.
Saints Rest, Open since 1999 “From a very young age, like literally three or four years old, coffee had always been a big part of my life. Like a lot of my memories involved drinking coffee with my grandpa … my dad drinks coffee, it’s just like a … social staple in my life. I went to college [and] I got a degree in merchandising, so I did retail for a really long time and then I came home and decided that [owning Saints Rest] would be a really cool idea … I could incorporate one of my passions — which is coffee — with the background I have in retail.” -Sandra “Sam” Cock
Bikes To You, Open since 1992 “I started in Grinnell because I thought that they needed a bike shop and that there … were good employers in the Grinnell area because, you know, when people have jobs they have money to buy things, so that’s how come I chose Grinnell.” -Craig Cooper
McNally’s, Open since 1902 Prairie Canary, Open since 2012 “I’m the second owner of Prairie Canary. The first owner was Carly Groben, and what happened was that … she basically won a restaurant ... The City and the Chamber of Commerce [had] a contest called Iowa’s Best Bite and they just took in applications. … I think they had 40 or 60 applications and they just chose the best one … Through that Ms. Groben was able to open the Prairie Canary.” -Paul Durr
“[McNally’s] was started by a man who … worked for a cattle yard [that] butchered meat way back in the day, and then they would put it on a horse drawn wagon and he would deliver that into the town … He started doing that and then opened up his little store … where the movie theatre is now and he had a little storefront and then it kinda’ grew as people started … buying groceries in grocery stores as opposed to having them delivered to them. And then eventually [McNally’s] moved down to [our] neck of the woods, and we bought the business in 1988, and that’s kind of how it started.” -Julie Smith
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Christmas adds variety to arts
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Anne Rogers By Kelly Page pagekel@grinnell.edu Anne Rogers ’19, a studio art and gender, women’s and sexuality studies double major, has made art all her life. The first artwork she remembers creating, in first grade, was a collage about a chair in which she felt safe. Now, she has exhibited work in BAX (Bachelor’s of Art Exhibition) and Smith Gallery and secured internships in papermaking and weaving, continuing to make art that she feels strongly about. Even though she has always loved art and known that she wanted to do it, Rogers did not always feel like a life centered on art was possible. “I went to a magnet high school that was pretty academically rigorous and I think there was this mindset that you couldn’t be successful unless you did well in a traditional academic setting, especially in STEM. I had no idea what it looked like to be an artist. I knew a few people who were artists but it just didn’t seem like it was going to work for me,” Rogers said. However, when she came to Grinnell and took studio art classes, Rogers saw that being a serious artist was more possible than she thought. “There was this combination of me figuring out that there were things that I wanted to be making that were actually really important to me, and also meeting and talking to lots of people who are artists, like lots of artists come here for talks and judge BAX and also people who are students,” Rogers said. Taking a sculpture class at Grinnell also served as an inspirational experience for Rogers. “We used all these huge and dangerous woodworking tools and learned how to weld and we made things that were big and things that
were really messy and people were making work that they cared about,” she said. “That was the semester I declared, and after that I took two studio art classes in the spring, I took Chemistry of Art and Drawing, and I feel like that period of time in my second year was just when I realized that this was what I wanted to be doing.” Recently, Rogers has been making a lot of art that deals with laundry and paper. For 65 days, she wore the same clothes that she made out of linen tablecloths purchased at Second Mile thrift shop. Now she will work to make paper out of them, replicating the pre-industrial revolution process of making paper out of peasants’ linen rags. Any garments that she was not wearing she hung in BAX on hooks, which will eventually display the paper she makes out of the clothing. Rogers explained her fascination with papermaking: “I’ve always really liked paper. I really like physical versus digital things and things that are handmade and find a lot of joy in
making things by hand ... and just feel like my interactions with the material world are always more satisfying than most other things.” After she took Chemistry of Art in her second year at Grinnell, where students explored the process of making paper, Rogers did a summer internship at Cave Paper in Minneapolis, where she learned more about papermaking. “I love the repetition, I love just doing something with my body that’s satisfying. It’s also just, like, handmade paper is beautiful and nice to touch and it’s just good as an object,” she said. Rogers’s interest in laundry carries over to her other piece exhibited at BAX: two stacks of laundry made from hollow ceramics. “They look like clothes and I think that was exciting because I made this thing that totally transformed the material and also that felt important to me,” Rogers said. Rogers explained her current love for laundry: “I’m really inter-
ested in routine, and also I just love clothing, not in a way that it’s like I love wearing it as much as clothing as an object, I just feel like it’s really beautiful and tender and sort of comforting … I feel like routine is often seen as the last thing that you’d want to be doing and this huge chore and this thing that is just bad and annoying. But I feel like thinking about it that way isn’t super productive, because it’s always gonna be there and you’re gonna always have to do it, and if you can find a way to enjoy it and appreciate it, that will make your life a lot easier.” Rogers’ other recent projects include documenting every object she brings to CERA with dye made from walnuts she found there and onions she ate at home, and a project where she drew her room onto curtains that she then hung in her room, playing with what people could and could not see. An artist coming into her own, it will be exciting to see how Rogers’ work will evolve.
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Rogers, a third-year from Chicago, IL, has been incorporating clothing and laundry into her art of late. A lover of routine, she recently created clothes out of linen tablecloths and wore them for 65 days straight.
For the past year, a committee of faculty from across campus has been discussing the potential for a media studies major. Last year students also circulated a petition calling for a media studies major. Although Kaufman has not been involved in the committee, he does see a need for such a major. Kaufman has taught digital media since 2008 and has continuously experienced difficulties in getting his students the materials and equipment necessary for their studies. In addition to a lack of resources, the art department has only one studio technician, Joe Lacina, who has far too many responsibilities for one person. Kaufman hopes that the fellowship will temporarily fill some of the voids in the department, while showing the College a need for additional faculty. “We thought this would be an awesome strategical way to show institutional want and need from students,” Kaufman said. He predicts that interest in Christmas’ classes will be high, with more students registering than can be accommodated. The new media and video classes will likely demonstrate interest in a Media Studies Major, bolstering the committee’s efforts. “We talk about film and film theory in a lot of different courses on campus, but we don’t have a dedicated program for the new technology that’s pervasive everywhere,” Kaufman said. “If you think about Grinnell college and their hope to be forward thinking and ahead, it seems sadly inadequate for the students I’m seeing.” In a follow up email with The S&B, Kaufman explained that a new course form is in the process of being completed for the 100-level class in videography, the first course which Christmas will offer. Kaufman expects the course to be visible in the online course catalog by the week of May 7. The class will have no prerequisites and will be open to all student years, capping at an enrollment of 15 students. After receiving the fellowship, Christmas visited campus and spoke with members of the Art SEPC. “I was so pleased to learn how excited they were to have video classes offered in the Studio Art Department,” Christmas wrote. “It seems like there is already some incredible student work being made and I can’t wait to jump in and help contribute to that.”
Students speak: What's the best art experience you've had this year? The S&B sent writer Zoe Fruchter and photographer Mahira Faran to ask students their favorite art experiences of the school year — be it visual arts, music or anything else.
“The Nnamdi Ogbonnaya set at Gardner was immaculate. He look what people were expecting and then threw it out the window and then it flew out the window and fell onto the ground and shattered into a million pieces and I watched it happen and it was beautiful.” Jimmy Pentuic ’20
“I think it had to be in Faulconer Gallery with the art from India [“Many Visions, Many Versions: Art from Indigenous Communities in India”] ... it was really cool seeing an art style that had been around in the country for thousands of years being used to depict modern images like the tsunami that hit really hard in 2004.” Lilya Woodburn ’20
“When I went to the Louvre in Paris ... that’s self-explanatory.” Will Dubow ’21
“I went to Taiwan to put on an installation in the Museum of Contemporary Art with a short course which was pretty amazing.” Molly Stone ’20
“Two of my friends are studio art majors and it’s their senior year, so just seeing them get to show off what they’ve done this year has been my coolest thing. Shout out to Helen Lant and Bea Herce-Hagiwara!” Maddi Danks ’18
“Curating the Haitian art exhibition last semester for the show this semester with my exhibition seminar.” Abdiel Lopez ’18
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Edited by schultej@grinnell.edu
TitHead Review: 2018 in a nutshell Squirrel Flower reflects
By Emma Friedlander friedlan@grinnell.edu What, in essence, was the 20172018 school year? Was it a rapid transition of dominant memes, from cracking open a cold one with the boys to the Walmart yodeling boy? Was it the disintegration of the world around us, with another year of a Trump presidency and injustices across the globe? Or should the 2017-2018 school year be defined by events in Grinnell itself, from the rise and fall of the infamous crane to the controversial closure of the Black Cultural Center? The Titular Head film festival of Spring 2018 gave credence to all these definitions. Colloquially known as TitHead, the film festival was organized by “Titty Boys” Nick Roberson, Erhaan Ahmad and Artis Curiskis, all ’18. According to Roberson, the organizers made a deliberate effort to “push towards more wholesome content with meaning, rather than exclusively raunch [sic] nudity and plotless shock value films.” TitHead has been defined by shock value in the past. Students who have attended past TitHeads can attest that the event is less of a film festival and more of a spectacle of various genitalia and bodily fluids captured in moving picture. While the 2018 TitHead still featured its fair share of the “taboo,” mostly female nudity along with a Keystone Light enema, the shift towards a great emphasis on plot was also palpable. Altogether, the variety of films screened at last Saturday’s TitHead should be considered representative of the 2017-2018 school year as a whole. Let’s say that a group of Grinnell students decide to go through the Titular Head archives a decade from now. They come across 2018’s batch of videos, but alas! The collection is missing a dated label. Upon perusing the films, though, the students would have no doubt that this particular TitHead must have been produced in the spring of 2018. The film festival featured not one but two parodies of “Call Me By Your Name,” the gay coming-of-age drama released late last year. More specifically, the two student films (produced entirely independently from one another!) both parody the movie’s iconic masturbating-in-a-peach scene. “Call Me By Your Crane” tells the story of a budding romance between a young man and woman, complicated when the man gets off ysubg a peach on the second floor of the Joe Rosenfield Center (JRC) and then rests it on a nearby table, only to be found by the woman, who flirtatiously and unknowingly takes a bite of the peach. The other parody, “DHall Me By Your Name” is more of a vignette. A
on spring successes and women in music
CONTRIBUTED
“Call Me by Your Crane” parodied the infamous peach scene in 2017’s coming-of-age film “Call Me by Your Name.” student secretly (yet enthusiastically) masturbates with a peach at a table in the corner of the dining hall, only to leave the peach behind for another student to come across and eagerly munch. Despite the blue nature of both films’ punch lines, they are carefully produced, with clever camera angles and facial acting. The insertion of a phallus into the juicy fruit is never explicitly shown, but heavily alluded to. “Call Me By Your Crane” even won Best Drama, testifying to its effective celebration of an important gay film. Other films at TitHead evoked current pop culture moments. “That One Friend” parodied obsession with the Enneagram, while “Starter House” used Minecraft to show off a perfect replica of the JRC. By embracing the gimmicky online fads of the current moment, these films become emblematic of the millennial generation. Some TitHead movies addressed current events on campus. The most poignant example is the untitled video directed by Joy Mitchell ’21 and produced by Concerned Black Students (CBS). The CBS film featured footage of Black students hanging out on campus, followed by text that addresses the grievances of Black students at Grinnell and demands action, especially in light of the recent closure of the Black Cultural Center (BCC). The CBS accordingly won the award for Best Experimental Film. Some comedic films also addressed current events at Grinnell. One example, “Scooper Hero,” featured a super hero named — get this — “Scooper Hero,” who eradicates the villainous Scooper Hero ice cream. “A Comment on Nalgene Culture” parodies the recent trend of Nalgene water bottles being stolen. The infamous crane was heavily featured throughout the night, a tribute to the monumental structure that hovered over our campus for the last year. The greatest shock value of the night came from “The Fight.” The film features a slow, somewhat confusing build-up that culminates with a very up-close shot of a student delivering
a Keystone Light enema into his own butt. This moment was met by the collective sound of the entire audience’s jaws clattering to the ground (the film won the award for Best Lewd Picture). Other films cheekily featured nudity without excessively overt sexualization, such as in “Turnips” and “Shower Time.” While events specific to the 20172018 school year were especially prevalent at this year’s festival, that is not to say that perennial themes were not also on display. Considering the class of 2018’s dedication to maintaining Grinnell traditions, this should come as no surprise. This was the class that fought for the longevity of parties like 1010 and 100 Days when they no longer received administrative support – Grinnell tradition is clearly a big deal to the current cohort of students. For example, there was a “Doppelgangers” video, a theme from past years that compares similar-looking Grinnellians’ DB pictures side-by-side. Another favorite, “Grinnell Blend,” featured a number of Grinnellians’ faces being smothered with a mysterious whitish cream, revealed at the end to be a large pump bottle of creamer. The final film of the evening repeated a trope from past TitHeads wherein a GoPro camera is attached to a handle of Hawkeye vodka and myriad students swig from the bottle. This combined emphasis on the current moment and on tradition speaks to the current tension between the future and past at Grinnell College. As new buildings replace outdated ones and important institutions on campus are changed or eradicated, Grinnellians must come to terms with how to maintain tradition while acknowledging and embracing the present moment. As the credits rolled and the hosts leapt back on stage at the end of the night, they blared “Slovo patsana,” by Maks Korzh, a Russian banger that has swept through Grinnell over the year. The Titty Boys enthusiastically raged to the song, inviting everyone to join them on stage as they celebrated the end of the show, the end of the school year and the end of a cultural moment.
Smith show puts the prairie on display
REINA SHAHI
Prairie grass hangs in the center of the gallery, inviting visitors to navigate the space. By Lily Bohlke bohlkeli@grinnell.edu Walking into the Smith Gallery this week, “50135 to 50112,” is almost like walking into the prairie. Prairie grass hangs from the center of the room, a piece by Charlotte Richardson-Deppe ’19, which is suspended by pieces of glass hung from the ceiling. Around the gallery, there are various other pieces, including three back-to-back videos on a loop, each by Misha Gelnarova, Helen Lant and Bea Herce-Hagiwara, all ’18; transparent prints on the window by Can Cai ’18; a sculpture of a chair covered in restraints by Isabella Gonzalez ’18; and a red sheet covered in gold tick marks by Ella Williams ’18, among others. Other students whose work was featured were Emma Christoph, Julia Cory, Julia Shangguan and Emily Mamrak, all ’18, as well as Anne Rogers and Lydia James, both ’19. As part of the Advanced Studio: Site Specific course taught by Professor Lee Running, studio art, students first created a self-directed project in the Conard Environmental Research Area (CERA), and the class went out to CERA for a critique. Throughout the process, they really engaged with the prairie, including an overnight
camping trip to prepare them to take on this site-specific piece. After critique, each student had to decide how to document their work in a way that would work in “50135 to 50112.” “We wanted a place to think about recontextualizing work that had been produced for one place, and how do you display something when you can’t see it in its original format? Which is kind of a universal problem for artists,” Running said. “It gave an additional problem to the class in a really interesting way. And then the students were responsible for positioning and thinking about where the work was going to be in the room and putting people’s work together.” Lant’s contribution to the gallery was one of the three videos playing on a loop. She placed a mirror in the North Skunk River at CERA right underneath the highway bridge, angled to reflect the sky rather than the bridge itself. She then covered the mirror with mud, and in the video the mud is slowly being washed off. “Most of the prairie around here is restored; it’s not the same native biodiversity that was once here, and the mark of the human hand is kind of everywhere you look,” Lant said. “The North Skunk River [has] been completely rerouted to go in a straight
line for efficiency and irrigation, and I was thinking about that and kind of wanting to subvert the human touch in that way, … symbolically erasing the human hand.” In transferring their work from the prairie to the gallery, the biggest consideration for students was how to document an outdoor, site-specific piece in a way that conveys the same effect indoors in Smith Gallery. Some students used elements of performance during the critique at CERA, but adjusted their work for the gallery. Gonzalez’s project, for example, had a performance aspect to it; in the gallery, however, the chair sits still, according to Running. While all of the projects in “50135 to 50112” were created by individual students on their own, somehow all the pieces come together as a cohesive exhibit. “I think I appreciate the dialogue that happens between the works of art. I think they reveal things about themselves by being in proximity to other pieces, and I think that’s always an exciting thing for an artist,” Running said. “And pedagogically, that’s important to me. The community that students can form here is something that makes their practices sustainable beyond Grinnell.”
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Squirrel Flower is having a big spring, opening for Julien Baker at Iowa City's Mission Creek Festival and for Big Thief in Gardner Lounge. By Kelly Page pagekel@grinnell.edu While Ella Williams ’18 started performing as Squirrel Flower only durin gher first year at Grinnell, she has been surrounded by music all her life. Many members of Williams’ family are involved in music and art, including her father, who is a professional bassist. Williams grew up going to his gigs and singing with his fellow musicians.
"Throughout history so many women have been plagiarized by men and not given credit and the politics of it are really fucked up..." Ella Williams '18 “Being able to be on a stage that young emboldened me to be able to pursue music and not be afraid to do it,” Williams said. Williams started performing in the Boston folk scene at age 14, but found her love for experimental DIY music when she was a senior in high school. After getting involved in the Boston DIY scene, she came to Grinnell and became Squirrel Flower, a name she gave herself as a child. Since performing as Squirrel Flower, Williams’ sound has grown and changed. “I’ve definitely gotten better at guitar and more willing to experiment in that respect, and just experiment with being a little more grungy and playing with distortion. My first EP ... I call it dream folk, like a lot of reverb, a lot of loops, is just like single guitar a lot of the time and very ambient. I still love making that kind of music and doing super minimal stuff and stuff with harmonies and my voice, but I’m also breaking out of it into more rock and roll influenced music and bigger band arrangements, heavier drums and just crunchier guitars.” As a gender, women’s and sexuality studies and studio art double major, Williams applies her knowledge to her musical projects. She focuses on feminist art, reclaiming violence and dealing with the impacts of internalized misogyny and queer-phobia. “I’m a very sensitive person and also very perceptive and I think my whole life I’ve just felt so strong … and as a kid I had to find a way to channel that ’cause I didn’t know how to deal with it … so that’s definitely where a lot of my music came out of. I’d say now it’s definitely a little more sophisticated than that. I also write when I’m feeling happy. It’s less based on my emotions and more my observations,” Williams said. In the past couple of years, Williams has played at Grinnell with indie darlings like Frankie Cosmos (whom she had previously opened for as an 18-year-old in Boston), Jay Som, Moses Sumney and, most recently, Big Thief. On playing with Big Thief Williams said, “It was a dream. They’re my favorite band. I was also nervous because I was like ‘Jesus Christ, it’s Big Thief, I want to impress them,’ but I’ve also just played so many shows in Gardner so it was a little less nerve wracking.” Outside of accomplishments on campus, Williams has toured and partnered with Rough Trade Records. Planning her entire career independently, many of the connections she makes in the music world have been helpful to her. One of those connections helped her play at Mission Creek Festival in Iowa City for two years in a row. This year she
performed in a sold-out theater as an opener for acclaimed singer and guitarist Julien Baker. “I’ve performed in theaters that size before with my choir that I was in through middle school and high school ... but I’d never done that with my own act, so it was actually one of the first times I’d been really nervous for a show. Backstage about to go on I was super nervous, definitely sweating a lot, definitely had to chug half a beer before I went on, but once I was out there it was amazing,” Williams said. However, with rising fame comes some problems. Last year, the Russian rapper Face stole her song “Conditions,” rapped over it in Russian and released it as a song called “Lisa.” Williams did not know until someone tweeted at her about it. After Williams took down the song from Spotify and iTunes, Face sent her a series of emails in which he offered her $100 to use “Conditions,” an offer Williams did not accept. Williams did not hear from Face until his new manager reached out to her to strike a deal that would allow him to use the song. At this point, however, Williams was not interested. “Throughout history so many women have been plagiarized by men and not given credit and the politics of it are really fucked up, so it’s pretty wild,” she said.
"[Playing with Big Thief] was a dream. They’re my favorite band. I was also nervous because I was like ‘Jesus Christ, it’s Big Thief, I want to impress them,’ but I’ve also just played so many shows in Gardner so it was a little less nerve wracking.” Ella Williams '18 Lawyers told Williams that there is not a lot she can do to stop Face since he operates in another country, but she hopes that after she releases a new video for “Conditions,” she will be able to take him down “in a more social capital way.” Aside from dealing with a Russian rapper, Williams’s musical career so far shows signs of a bright future. She is working on recording her first full-length album and, after she graduates in December, she is excited to put even more of her energy into her music career. “Last fall after I released ‘Contact Sports’ I had been getting so many awesome gigs and I don’t think it was actually a shift in people’s perception or what I was doing, but I took a step back and realized all the things that I had been doing, and also realizing that I had been able to do all this shit while in college, full-time. I was like, if I can do this while a fulltime student in the middle of Iowa, I can definitely do this as a postgrad with a lot more time and a lot more freedom to travel and tour.” As she spends her last few months here, Williams wants to see a rise in women feeling comfortable making music at the College. “I wish we had an environment where women felt freer to jam and try things out and start a band,” Williams said. “The only reason I got into music here was because I met Vera [Kahn] and we started jamming together, but it felt like a pretty hostile environment. The Showvember lineups have always been predominantly cis men and that sucks and there are concrete things we can do to help, [like] just publicly encouraging people who aren’t cis men to play the kind of music they play.”
Sports
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Student Athlete Mentors (SAMs) Prepare to Take the Next Step By Seth Bartusek bartusek@grinnell.edu As part of the system of mentorship and advising at Grinnell College, Student Athlete Mentors (SAMs) are tasked with helping their peers connect with available resources on campus and with providing support. Currently, student leaders Lauren Hurley ’18 and Nate Zaroban ’18 are ushering in a new group of SAMs as well as to pass the baton on to the next student leaders. “We’ve had a great group of leaders this year,” Hurley said. “I think the group of new SAMs will have great leadership and be able to bring lots of energy to the program.” The SAM program has been a recent success story. Created four years ago, it has grown to include a representative from each varsity team and ultimate frisbee, a stride that Hurley feels has greatly increased groups’ accessibility to student athletes and created a more supportive network amongst athletes. “We have created a community within the SAMs,” Hurley said. “This has helped promote support across teams and interest in what other student athletes and teams are doing within the Athletic Depart-
ment.” In addition to connecting peers with campus resources, a different SAM hosts an event each month to help students in various facets of college life. “We really leave the event planning up to the SAM,” Hurley said. “The events can take different forms, from a smoothie [study] break to a mental health outreach with SHACS that’s at a time when people won’t have practice. We have found that these events help make us more accessible.”
The SAMs program has been a recent success story. Director of Wellness and Prevention Jen Jacobsen, who runs the group, has been encouraged by the growth of the program over the last few years. “I think at this point we’ve grown where we need to grow,” Jacobsen said. “96.6 percent of our student-athletes know who their SAM is and 75.1 percent of our student-athletes say they have gone or will go to their SAM if they needed help. From here we really want all of campus to be aware of the resource that they have, not just the student athletes.”
Zaroban and Hurley have each been involved with SAMs for the last three years. Therefore, their absence will mark a turning point for the program in the coming year. “To find a new SAM, we usually ask the current SAM to brainstorm people on their team who could fill the role to find someone to best fit the needs of that team,” Zaroban said. “Then they pitch those people … to a SAMs meeting where we discuss that nomination. The unique needs and subcultures of each team plays a big factor in the type of person we nominate for that group.” Next year, the two new student leaders will be Hanna O’Neill ’20 and Jake Conran ’20, who have served the Women’s Swimming and Diving team and Men’s Basketball team, respectively. “We’ve had Baseball, Softball, Men’s and Women’s Soccer,” Zaroban said. “But we are really excited to incorporate Basketball and Swimming into the leadership as well because [Conran and O’Neill] are from teams that have never led the SAMs.” Going forward, Conran and O’Neill will look to further expand the program beyond its current bounds.
Man's Best Friend: Dogs of the Bear By Andrew Tucker tuckeran@grinnell.edu As the weather warms up at Grinnell’s Bear Athletics and Recreation Center, the athletes are not the only ones happy to see the sun in the sky. While one will not find any bears, they just might encounter one of the staff members' canine companions who also call the Bear home. “They love coming here to go outside and be around people,” said Head Baseball Coach Tim Hollibaugh of his four dogs: Champ, 13 years old, Molly, 3 years old and Piper, 13 years old ,are all golden Labradors, and Piper, 8 years old, is an English Setter. “Champ is definitely my dog and is very obedient, and Molly is shy but she’s a pleaser.” The dogs occupy versatile roles around the Bear. Hollibaugh occasionally brings Champ and Molly into his Coaching Methods class as a way of teaching reinforcement techniques that help humans and dogs alike link actions together and develop skills. “[When the dogs came] we got to learn about our class topic without really doing class,” Maggie Remus ’18 said. While the dogs generally keep to themselves at the Bear, they have definitely established their own social scene. Five-year-old Ozzie, Head Softball Coach Amanda Reckamp’s
Basset Hound-Boxer-Terrier mix, is another frequent visitor to the office. Unlike some dogs in the Bear, Ozzie never shies away from walking around and interacting with people. “Ozzie is always excited to go to work,” Reckamp said. “Every morning he is waiting to see if I ask him to go, and [at the Bear] he expects and knows he will get attention from everyone that walks by my office.” In addition to athletes, staff members also enjoy the positive energy that Ozzie brings to the office. “Ozzie is very friendly and is always eager to greet me and receive some attention,” said Terri Stark, administrative assistant to the athletic director. Sports Information Director Ted Schultz also allows his dogs Archie and Oscar to frequent the Bear. “Archie, a yellow Labrador, is just goofy and Oscar, a Golden Retriever mix, is more lovey-dovey,” Schultz said. “Last week, Archie went to drink from the steeplechase water and instead jumped all the way in.” Despite their different personalities, Archie and Oscar, both of whom are 11 years old, love coming to work where they can explore all the smells and sounds of the College. With respect to their human friends at the Bear, Schultz said, “they love anybody who will pet them or give them food.”
Coincidentally, another Archie can be found one floor below in the training room. Jason Kofoot, one of Grinnell’s athletic trainers, regularly brings his Archie, a 4 ½ year-old American Staffordshire Terrier, into the office. Like Schultz’s dogs, Archie’s favorite toy was a Mr. Bill doll. That was before he ripped the squeaker out. “He’s very affectionate, playful in short bursts and pretty docile,” Kofoot said. Athletes visiting the training room will likely find Archie sitting upright in a chair facing the door, tail wagging in anticipation of attention.
“Last week, Archie went to drink from the steeplechase water and instead jumped all the way in." Ted Schultz, sports information director “Archie is the only dog I’ll pet for more than a second,” Melissa Anderson ’18 said. “One time I was petting him for 15 minutes and he fell asleep in my lap. Then I made him sit on a whoopee cushion and he got confused, but he still loves me.” Throughout the Bear, these dogs always capture the attention of passersby. Although they will likely miss the affection during the summer, their wagging tails will be waiting for the students’ return next fall
Women's Tennis Qualifies for the NCAA D-III National Tournament
By Lily Seibert seibertl@grinnell.edu
The women’s tennis team capped off their stellar season by defeating Lake Forest College and advancing to the NCAA Division III National Tournament on Thursday, April 26. This accomplishment follows a 19-4 overall record and an undefeated 9-0 record in conference play. According to Coach Paige Madara, the group strove to establish themselves as one of the more effective teams in the conference and region from the very beginning of the season. “Early on with our team matches, we really set the tone that we were a competitive team that would challenge the best teams in our region and have worked hard to challenge regionally and nationally ranked teams in our matches,” she wrote in an email to The S&B. Madara attributes the team’s yearlong success to a combination of fresh talent coming in from the first year class and strong leadership skills from the fourth years. Anushka Joshi ’18 echoed her coach’s comments, saying
that “we got really lucky with a really strong freshman class. They’re playing one, two, and three in the lineup.” Additionally, the program retained many of its core players from the year before, ensuring that the culture and goals of the team remained steady throughout the transition into the new season.
“Early on with our team matches, we really set the tone that we were a competitive team that would challenge the best teams in our region . . "
Coach Paige Madara
However, Joshi also attests that this year’s strong performances stem from Madara’s diligent efforts to put together the strongest group possible and mold the team culture in a positive manner. “[Our success] is the result of our coach trying to make the program more intense,” Joshi said. “Maybe in a couple of year[s] we’ll be even more successful because that’s the direction she’s trying to take the program. In
previous years, a lot of players were kind of like, ‘Oh, tennis is the casual extracurricular I do.’ But she’s trying to make it so that it’s your second priority right after academics.” As far as their aspirations for the National Tournament, Joshi claims that the team is simply looking to enjoy the experience with one another. While they hope to advance to the next round, their sense of accomplishment comes from performing competitively in conference play and against other regional teams. “Our main goal of the whole year was to make it,” Joshi said. “I think just the fact that we’re going is the big deal.” Madara expressed similar sentiments, addressing the excitement and pride that comes with taking a national stage. “The NCAA Tournament is a special experience that the NCAA puts on for our student-athletes,” she wrote. “From official signage, on-court officials, and line-up announcers, it’s a special place for our athletes to compete against the best in the country.” The NCAA Tournament will take place during the coming week.
CONTRIBUTED
SAMs communicate between athletes and the rest of the student body.
“We want to first have more communication with other student athlete groups, for instance Student Athlete Advisory Committee (SAAC) and Student Athletes Leading Social Change (SALSC), so we can do more collaborative work,” O’Neill said. “We also want to make sure our outreach programs are reaching non-student-athletes. By making these outreach programs more inclusive, we hope that people
will feel comfortable approaching us in any regard.” Based on the success of the past four years, Jacobsen is very encouraged to see where the program will go. “Our best leadership is peer leadership,” Jacobsen said. “Our SAMs are directly involved in athletics and [are] the experts of the experience at Grinnell, which makes them essential.”
Rueter's Digest: Sports as a Tool for Social Justice By Sam Rueter ruetersa@grinnell.edu
About a year and a half ago, while I was filling out what seemed like an endless stream of college applications, I kept encountering the same question: tell us about something you love and why you love it. Well, the two things I love most in this world (besides my family, my girlfriend and big cookies from the Grill) are writing and sports, so naturally I usually wrote about my experiences playing high-level high school soccer and tennis. On my applications I would talk about how important it was to be a part of a team, how playing sports helped me grow into a quiet but confident leader, and how much fun I had just being outside with my friends. Clichés? Absolutely. But they were the truth. Another truth is that for most of my life sports have been a refuge from anxiety or academic pressure; playing and watching them is an insular and self-protective experience. I came to Grinnell this year expecting to play on the soccer team and, when I realized early on that it would not be an enjoyable path for me to follow, I was dismayed to lose an important part of my identity. Who was I if I wasn’t a student and an athlete? What did sports mean to me anymore if I no longer chose to play them on a competitive basis? When The S&B approached me about writing a sports column I was excited for sports to be back in my life. However, upon the publication of this, my twentieth and final column of the year, I realize that my relationship with sports has changed, and I think (and hope) it is for the better. Sports are no longer a distraction or a hobby. Instead, they are a language. More specifically, I view the American sports landscape as an under-explored and deeply rich cultural
text, a kind of interdisciplinary form of academic discourse. Sports allow me to think about issues of inequality, accessibility, oppression and discrimination. Sports are reflective of and shaped by societal will, often that which is wielded by those with the most privilege and power. Sports are inherently political and have always been inherently political. The following are a few examples of the ways in which sports and society intertwine: management structures in major American sports are dominated by rich white dudes; when accounting for the amount of revenue generated by star players, most high-profile American athletes are massively underpaid; female athletes face wage and gender discrimination despite their proven talents; the whole sports world was quick to collectively pat itself on the back when they rebuked Donald Trump’s “locker room” comments, but that doesn’t change the fact that locker rooms are still destructively liminal spaces which often perpetuate hurtful ideologies and stereotypes; and college athletes are basically free labor in a capitalist economy. That is not to say that any of these problems are easily addressed. In fact, I actually think the majority of these issues are much more nuanced than they are portrayed to be in the contemporary media, whether you lean left or right or somewhere in the middle. But they are certainly important to think about. I despise name-calling and labelling. I think it undermines an argument, alienates an audience and generally indicates a lack of thoughtfulness. However, I am comfortable making the following statement: anyone who tells you that sports issues are divorced from societal issues just plain-old is not paying attention. In an era where consciousness is the best path towards positive change, such ignorance cannot go without notice.
REINA SHAHI
Tommy Smith '21 blocks a shot against an opponent.
Opinions
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Edited by bohlkeli@grinnell.edu
IoWhat is going on in politics?: Labor organizing in Iowa, as well as at Grinnell College
by Austin Wadle Labor rights in Iowa have been less than ideal for a long time. Iowa has had a Right to Work Law on the books since the 70s. However, in the 2017 legislative cycle, the Iowa Republican party dismantled collective bargaining rights for public employees through rewriting Chapter 20 of the Iowa Code, which governs public employment relations. This means that teachers, nurses at public hospitals and so many other workers that make our state great have lost the rights to bargain for anything except wages. Negotiations regarding healthcare, working conditions and so many other important working realities are completely off the table. Gov. Kim Reynolds and the Iowa legislature not only disdain organized labor, but also those working minimum wage jobs in general.
In the same legislative session, they rolled back minimum wage increases that were passed in several counties and municipalities in Iowa. These raises were fought for and won by organizations like the Center for Worker Justice of Eastern Iowa, Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement and organized labor across the state. This is an ever more common trend in Republican legislatures, in which those who once claimed to prize local control above all else nullify laws passed by progressive local governments through a policy called preemption. This tactic has been used widely to enact conservative agendas throughout the country. North Carolina’s transphobic bathroom bill, HB2, for example, was a direct application of this principle. College President Raynard Kington has not made strides to restrict transgender peoples’ access to appropriate facilities. But, as we saw in a campus memo just a few weeks ago, Kington is as bad as Reynolds on labor rights. He has gone so far as to say that students who participate in work-study should not be considered employees of the College. Rather than recognize many students’ de-
sire to be represented by a union, the administration presents a straw man. They cite the resources required to have unions for every workplace on campus, which has not been the goal of the expansion efforts made by UGDSW.
I grew up in a union household. My parents are both union educators and my uncle is a retired union air traffic controller. My experience in Iowa politics has been greatly shaped to my benefit because of my union siblings. Rather, the goal of the expansion effort has been to create one bargaining unit for all student employees. The College ignores our common interest as employees. Even though our wages and hours are standardized across jobs, they state that our positions are too different to have a single bargaining unit. They ignore histories of unions that have represented membership from across a wide variety of jobs, like those represented by the American Federa-
tion of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME). Incidentally, AFSCME is one of the unions most targeted by the horrendous rewrite of Chapter 20. Even worse, the College administration offered a thinly-veiled threat to students’ financial aid if union expansion was reached. I have not been uncritical of the union myself. When they were first attempting to unionize dining services I was concerned about the high schoolers who work part-time at the Dining Hall to help their families make ends meet. I was pleased when the union welcomed them into membership and ensured that they were paid appropriate wages for their work. I remain concerned about the career staff, who have horrendous working conditions alongside student workers but who are not represented by the union because of their management roles. It is clear that their conditions need to be improved, and I hope that the union continues to make this a priority. This also applies to many of the career support staff across the College, and I have made this concern abundantly clear to union leadership and will continue to do so. I have this ability because I am
now a member of the union, and the union now represents me and takes my voice seriously. At the end of the day, what is obvious through the release of Kington’s official position is that the College does not respect the labor of its employees, whether they are students or career staff. I grew up in a union household. My parents are both union educators and my uncle is a retired union air traffic controller. My experience in Iowa politics has been greatly shaped to my benefit because of my union siblings. But I am graduating, and I will be leaving Grinnell to go to graduate school. So why does this matter to me? Because I would not be at this institution without the hard-earned benefits that organized labor has given me. The comments made by Kington are an affront to my existence at this institution, just like Reynolds’s attacks on public and minimum wage workers were affronts to workers everywhere. Both figures should be ashamed. I am proud of my work as a Phonathon caller and manager as well as a teaching assistant in the chemistry department, and so I joined the union. I hope you’ll join too.
Sexplanations: Consent culture off-campus schools don’t hear about it as much. How do I navigate consent and stuff off-campus?
Sexplanations is an anonymous Q&A column about sex, sexual health, sexuality, gender, relationships and the promotion of respect at Grinnell College. Questions are answered collaboratively by the Sexual Health Information Center (SHIC), the Stonewall Resource Center (SRC) and the Office of Wellness and Prevention. If you have a question or comment, submit it anonymously at https://goo.gl/ forms/36C5fLe9DeRdi48k2 or email [howeemil]. I’m interning in a big city this summer and living on a large college campus. At Grinnell, we talk a lot about sexual respect and consent, and I know my friends at state
Navigating consent can seem confusing regardless, but it seems especially hard to navigate when you aren’t starting with a baseline of language, knowledge and values. Earlier this semester, Isabel Cooke ’16 did a workshop on healthy relationships, specifically how to be one half of a healthy relationship. Unfortunately, we can’t control others. So, thinking about how we contribute to healthy relationships and giving and getting consent is important. Cooke highlighted the importance of communication skills in creating a healthy relationship. Good communication is thorough and specific. Good communication brings out subtleties and examines them. Each action and activity requires a conversation as simple as “are you comfortable?” and “do you like …?” Communication is not always enthusiastic, but consent is.
Communication is not always verbal, especially when you’ve spent a lot of time with a partner and have a good understanding of their nuances and quirks, but consent should be.
Good communication includes being a good listener, and being a good listener is an important part of getting consent. Good communication includes being a good listener, and being a good listener is an important part of getting consent. Listening to body language and for enthusiasm helps us better understand whether a partner is interested in continuing with an activity. Listening respectfully allows us to respond respectfully to a partner since we are better able to hear and acknowledge everything they are trying to say. This also demonstrates to a partner that we respect them. Finally, practice! In the heat of
Dusty by Phoebe Schreckinger
the moment, for so many reasons, it can be hard to respond in the way you’d like to, but if you take the time to practice very specific combination of words, phrases and body language that you would like to use to get out of a situation, you are able to better respond in the ways you’d like to. If you’re refusing, these can include saying someone’s name to hold them accountable, offering another activity or offering a “because statement.” If you’re responding to refusal, stop immediately, share your appreciation for them sharing their feelings and offer a different activity. Using alcohol or other drugs narrows your focus and inhibits your ability to perceive and understand others’ verbal and nonverbal cues. Good communication should be thorough and requires good listening, so it’s a lot harder to be a good communicator while using substances that negatively affect those abilities. This is especially challenging when we are in new environments, as it places us in a more
vulnerable position — trying to process both the new environment and the communications of others. Finally, consent is something you can use every day. Make sexual respect a value of your new community; set the tone for others by talking about and modelling sexual respect and consent in everyday conversations. When you’re touching someone’s shoulder or including people in an activity, ask if it’s okay or if they want to participate, and respect their answer. Talk about sexual respect in a broader, global context, and challenge yourself and your peers to really think about how you contribute to the culture of consent and sexual respect in your daily life. If you’d like to think about consent and sexual respect outside or inside the Grinnell community, contact [jacobsen] or [howeemil2], and check out Scarleteen.com, starting with their “Essential rules for the consensual road” in their article “Drivers Ed for the Sexual Superhighway.”
Opinions Letter to the editor: An alum on Letter to the editor: Perspectives on current student involvement physical ability
Edited by bohlkeli@grinnell.edu
I read the recent Scarlet and Black article “Perception of SGA Changes with Executive Election” by Maxwell Fenton with increasing anxiety and bewilderment. I read The S&B regularly online and am aware of both the passion and involvement of students in the topical issues of the day. Student activity, agitation and involvement is a Grinnell tradition and one that should generate great pride. Imagine then, my total confusion at reading that campus turnout of the most recent SGA election was near 45 percent. Based on my estimates of the student body count, that is close to a 20 percentage-point drop in only two years. The explanations for this precipitous drop are given as a) bad timing, as in there were other events to attend; b) half the candidates were white men, thus uninteresting to large portions of the student body; c) it was a Friday; d) students are really busy people; e) general distrust in government and organizations; f) it is just politics-as-usual; and, finally, g) stu-
dents are less passionate about current events on campus. While I am more than ready to admit that the content of The S&B may not reflect the student body attitudes perfectly, I have always believed it was at least representative. I find none of the apathy used to describe the low voter turn-out in the articles, columns, opinions, and editorials of The S&B. With that, then, I must ask, what is happening to overall student activism and involvement?
Self-governance only succeeds if the willingness to govern exists. Without exercising that will, there is either no governance or governance not to your liking. Perhaps it is time to scare the current student body into action by indicating that points a) through f) above could easily be edited to ex-
plain what happened in the 2016 elections. Low turnout, apathetic voting, politics-as-usual, nothing changes, lesser-of-two-evils (i.e., politicians are all the same) thinking got us the current administration. Self-governance only succeeds if the willingness to govern exists. Without exercising that will, there is either no governance or governance not to your liking. Most students abhor the idea that they will become their parents. The recent SGA election indicates that Grinnell students are behaving just like their parents, at least when it comes to voter involvement. Is that really the result the student body is seeking? — Dan Finkelman ’77 Note: Dan’s spouse, Patricia Jipp Finkelman ’80, currently serves as Chair of the Board of Trustees of Grinnell College. This letter does not necessarily represent her perspective and does not reflect the thinking of the Board of Trustees.
Letter to the editor: Grinnell College Amnesty Policy perceived as nonexistant when students call for help I wish that I could say that I can call Campus Safety when I need help. Last year, I was at a party in a dorm and saw someone staggering down the hallway to their room, very obviously quite drunk. I went to check on them and found that they were more drunk than I knew how to handle. I enlisted the help of my friends and we eventually called the RLC-on-call out of worry for our fellow student’s health. The RLC came, interviewed us and assured us that we would not get in trouble because we did the right thing by calling for help. A few weeks later, I got an email summons to the College Hearing Board. They accused me and my friends who had helped of throwing an unregistered party. We were found not guilty because we hadn’t actually thrown that party, but I couldn’t help but wonder: what if we
had? Would we have gotten in trouble then? One of the other students who helped actually did face consequences, because of something else he had done related to the same incident. This is in direct violation of the campus medical amnesty policy.
As a student on this campus, it is my right to safety and security. Who is there for the students? When you need more help than a CA-on-call can give you and you can't feel secure calling Campus Safety, what options do you have?
Grinnell’s amnesty policy states that “When a student experiences a physical or psychological crisis while under the influence of AOD,
neither the student in crisis nor the student(s) calling for help will be subject to punitive disciplinary action from the college,” but my friends and I were all brought to a court, and one of us was subject to the very punitive disciplinary action from which the College promises immunity. I should be able to trust Campus Safety and the RLCs to be there for me when I am in need of help. As a student on this campus, it is my right to safety and security. But, given my experience, I cannot expect either of them to uphold anything about this policy. Who is there for the students? When you need more help than a CA-on-call can give you and you can’t feel secure calling Campus Safety, what options do you have? — Charlie McKenzie-Smith ’20
Are you an opinionated person? Apply to be an Opinions columnist next semester! Applications will be out in the fall, so stay tuned and start brainstorming!
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Scott Porter ’80 commented online on The S&B’s article titled “'Disability as Identity’ Panel to Start Conversations,” and gave The S&B permission to run his comment as a Letter to the Editor. This is interesting and proves perspective is important. I am very glad that current students feel wellserved. I became a paraplegic (from the chest down — for the persons trained in the medical fields — a lesion at T4) a number of years after graduating from Grinnell. Just as de Tocqueville could explore life in America as an outsider, I approach my life after my injury as an outsider and observe what changed with my injury. One observation changed my word choice with a decision not to use the words “disability” or “disabled” since they just describe a conclusion. I refer to deficits, as in “I have physical deficits.” If I am disabled, by definition I am not able. I can supplement or create adaptations to overcome my deficits and still be able. Post-injury I have travelled extensively (3 European trips representing the U.S. in marathons, and doing marathons in all 50 states and D.C. in one year, for example). So I have not let my physical deficits prevent me from being active. After returning to campus several times post-injury, I have resolved not to attend any more on-campus alumni events as they systematically prevent my participation despite my experience and ingenuity to adapt and overcome my physical deficits. While not discussed in the article or the panel discussion about identity, let me mention another observation about word choice which can reflect on identity. My hope is to promote deep thought about communication. Many will think the best practice is to use “person-first descriptions.” “Person first” is where we are to say and write “a person who is a paraplegic” or maybe “a person who has paraplegia,” but definitely not the simple phrase “a paraplegic” as the subject or the object for the relevant verb. The thought is that people aren’t
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just their diagnoses. There are other parts of their life experiences. There is a rationale (some diagnoses) where “person first” makes sense but it is in a very limited way which I won’t be explaining here, and the wholesale use of it reveals some bias (hopefully unconscious) when applied to all deficits. The bias reveals itself as a stigmatizing construction. The “person first” construction is only used to describe what the speaker believes is a bad situation. We don’t say “a person who is a professional athlete,” “… Medical Doctor,” “… professor,” “… dean,” etc. In most sentences the diagnosis doesn’t matter, such as: Scott, a person who is a paraplegic, can give a cogent explanation of and actual real world uses of the Object Oriented Programming concept of Polymorphism. The diagnosis in any construction is a non-sequitur. When the diagnosis does matter is when the condition is relevant to another part of the statement. Such as: A paraplegic can’t stay at Grinnell House since there is no way to get a wheelchair into the elevator. The sentence is not any better when it is changed to: A person with paraplegia… I now know many people with ambulatory deficits. Without the rigor of statistical analysis and research worthy of a peer reviewed journal to support my assertion, I will state my understanding that none of them worry about the “person first” formulation and are much more concerned with whether the locations they must visit have made it possible for them to get their wheelchair in the elevator. Again with the total lack of academic rigor, the people I KNOW WELL who insist on “person first” language are very invested in victimhood as opposed to living. If you are concerned that you now can’t communicate because you don’t know whether you should use “person first” language, let me close with advice that I think can be universal. Approach all communication with respect for all. Any technical violations of word choice will be covered over by that respectful approach.
Get $5 to Dari Barn and create a safer campus community by dropping off your unused prescription drugs at the Grinnell Police Department
UNUSED PRESCRIPTION DRUG DROP OFF DAY 3:00 - 5:00 PM May 11th van will leave the JRC every 10-15 minutes Contact [jacobsen] or [howeemil2] for more information
SPARC Policy The Scarlet & Black is published on Fridays by students of Grinnell College and is printed by Times Republican of Marshalltown. The newspaper is funded in part by the Student Publications and Radio Committee (SPARC) and also relies on advertising revenue to cover operating costs. All publications funded by SPARC are copyright of SPARC and cannot be reproduced elsewhere without specific written consent from SPARC. Contributions The Scarlet & Black welcomes story ideas from students, faculty and other members of the town and college community. If there is any story that should be covered, please email newspapr@grinnell.edu or visit thesandb.com Send letters to the editor via email at newspapr@grinnell.edu or mail them to Box 5886. The author’s name must be included, but letters can be published anonymously in certain occasions. Letters will be printed at the discretion of the editor. The opinions expressed in this section do not necessarily reflect those of the editorial staff. The S&B reserves the right to edit any and all submissions.
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Volume 134, Issue 24
Photo of the Week
Got a backpage-worthy photo? Submit it to [bohlkeli] and earn $5 for contributing a winner!
Spotted in the Pubs office: a group of wild-eyed journalists braving the tornado.
Arbitrary Analysis Social Calendar
SARINA LINCOLN
Toga party
Key party
Snedge
This week, Lily Bohlke and Riley Murphy, both '19, polled students asking: Brave Bunny or Reticent Rabbit?
Friday
7 p.m. Senior Gala @ Harris Center 10 p.m. Middle School Gardner @ Gardner Lounge
Saturday
10 a.m. Alice @ Cleve Beach 3 p.m. The Grinnellian @ Commencement Stage 10 p.m. Waltz @ Grinnell Golf and Country Club
Pub Quiz
1. The Fempire Strikes Back/Something About Beans 2. When the Roof Caved In and Butt Juice Came Out 3. 1 Moose 2 Mease
JRC
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Rants & Raves:
thesandb.com
Lemon party The Signs as Trashy Reality TV
Aries: Keeping Up with the Kardashians Taurus: Real Housewives of New Jersey Gemini: Dance Moms Cancer: Vanderpump Rules Leo: Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders: Making The Team Virgo: Say Yes To The Dress Libra: Jersey Shore Scorpio: Teen Mom Sagittarius: Flavor of Love Caricorn: Amish Mafia Aquarius: Ghost Adventures Pisces: Naked and Afraid — Sister Aurora Impulse
Students speak about what’s on their minds in 80 words or fewer, and you’re invited! If you have a rant or a rave, email it to [newspapr] or [bohlkeli].
Summer see you soon!
Unwritten
Double Standards
Artists like to party
Alright so we are extremely close to the end of the semester right and at this point I truly could not care less about what happens between now and the end of finals week. I have so many assignments and exams and this week I got sick so I was resting all of Wednesday and that just kinda has me f*cked up because like, REALLY? At least summer is going to be awesome because I'll be living with some of my favorite people and once the semester is over, it's over, and going through all these struggles just means it's going to feel even BETTER when we get to the end. LET'S GO.
these storms are giving me life! release your inhibitions! feel the rain on your skin!
Wild that white people's take on the extremely painful Kanye situation is that Kanye West and Taylor Swift are the same to them.
I loved Tiny Dorm Moose! More art at Moose, please!
-That Stressed Brown Girl
- Natasha Bedingfield
- Anonymous
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- Arts lover seeks Natty Lite