SCARLET AND ILACK On the New Court System - A revision of the antiquated judicial structure at Grinnell is imperative. Both the American Civil Liberties Union (1) and the MUP (2) emphasize student freedoms and rights over disciplinary proceedings of college or university administrators. The judicial study group at Grinnell has been attempting to bring this college out of the dark ages of dictatorial and secret procedure and into the era of due process. Their proposal indicates they have gener- Illy followed the important guidelines of the AAUP and ACLU. Careful reading of their proposal, however, raises several questions, two oi singular importance. in section 1 under “6. Re- view" the proposal contains a “tacked on" statement giving the president of the college the right to overrule the court not only when he is appealed to by a student but also whenever he decides to do so. President Leggett has stated that he might actually nverr rule a court decision and impose a more stringent punishment. This power is beyond the AAUP guidelines and jeopardizes every- thing the Community Court stands for, Secondly, the section on a separate policy-making body — al— though good in concept —- is nebulous and wrongly organized as stated What are its functions? We can only hypothesize that the poli es set forth will have a great hearing on student life and will determine the practices of the Community Court. if this is so why is the committee dominated (a to a) by Administration and faculty? It is plain to see that on matters where there is a fundamental dif- ference of viewpoint, such as the separation of students from the college for visitations violations, the administration-faculty wiu continually overrule the student opinion. The result may easily be worse than what we have now. Why not an equal voice on the policy-making body for those most affected by its actions? L Academic Freedom and Civil Liberties of Students in Colleges and universities, November, 1961 (ACLU pamphlet) 2. Bulletin. American Association of University Professors, Detember, loss Those Locks on the Loggia— The logic behind bureaucratic rationale has to do with some- thing like "the stable maintenance of an institution," we suppose. It is a peculiar kind of logic; slightly irrelevant to human con- slderaiions. Thus a college, building dormitories as a place in which stu— dents may “live,” iinally views don'ns as a place in which students are controlled. Proceeding from the premise of this twisted logic, the college locks up its women students (in order to separate them from the men at night) and, consequently, imprisons them within a fire trap. As if this is not enough, fire drills have been used as a further means of periodically checking on the actual nightly presence of women students in the dorm. Women students safely locked up (away from the men on campus), the institution ceases to concern itself with the welfare oi the men; lire drills are not planned ior them. The SKrB questioned the safety of Ihe locked dorms at Grin» nell — wherein no allowance is made for free and unobstructed egress so necessary during the panic state which often accompanies n fire, A letter to the State Fire Marshal elicted a response with- in a week stating the lowa Code “panic bar” requirement. it takes out a week to find out if buildings are up to par, but Grinllell’s Direclor of the Physical Plant, Evan H. Walden, (8&6) prefers a policy of “wait and let them inspect us." The “enlightened response” of bureaucratic minds to criticism about Grinnell's inadequacies —— in this case, faulty fire safety pre- tautions~is, as usual, one of defensive reaction. Walden maintains that women students would be quite safe in the event of fire; they may be locked in with the blaze but they could traverse the ioggia a long way in either direction to escape or could jump through first floor windows. We tried to picture this blaze scene — smoke- !illed loggia, hundreds of milling women (like a Sunday stroll?) —-— but it escaped us. Walden further argues that, indeed, the truly irrelevant think- klg on this issue is in the minds of those who talk of savings lives (to. by leaving the loggia unlocked) because the dorms are, in fact, fireproof. To this claim we would simply cite the example of the recent conlllagration at “iireprooi McCormick Place conveerb lion hall, Chicago. We would also cite the 1945 Haines Hall fire which Walden seems to ignore. ‘ The college will probably take its allotted three months to raise iire precautions at Grinnell to standard, thus timing the night— time unlocking oi the loggia with the enactment of are “no hours for women” proposal. Yet we cannot help but think that even bu- reaucratic minds might be affected by the possibility of disaster in the interim. Although human considerations may sometimes be relegated to last place, college “image” considerations usually are not. GRINNELL course Scar-lei and Blue o........, t... A weekly newspaper published Friday of the college year by unit. neil Committee on Student Publications. irtprrscntcd for national ndver— tislng_by National Adverilsmg Service, rnc., College Publishers Repre» stntntivc, in East sort. Street, New York, 22, N.Y. Second class postage paid lIK Grinncll, iowa. Subscription rule soon per rcnopl year. isoo paid subscriptions. EDITOR .. nuerEss MANAGER ASSOCIATE rnrron . Kryrrytur Neumfln .. snub wtu Murine Gelber Friday, Fohtuary M. l9”, Faculty Comment “On The Need for More Crazy Peep e” By George Young (Russian) in preparing this essay I have, naturally, en- gaged in considerable consultation and research. 1 have opened many books, I have heard many opinions on every topic, both pro and con, both solicited and unsolicited, both at home, at work and at play, and after weighing all the issues carefully, after meditating long on the complexi- ties, subtleties, and priorities involved, 1 have arrived at the unavoidable conclusion that we need more crazy people at Grinnellr True, we have John Crossett, Mac 'Nelson, Ezra Mendelsohn, Arieti, and others; but who else do we have? We are, nearly to a man (or woman) good, serious, responsible, conscientious students, janitors, teachers, housemothers, and administrators, and this is fine, very fine, excel- lent if you will. But we need more crazy people. For instance, with no minclng words, when was the last time a bull fight was held on the central quad? When did we last have a win- ning, or losing, blad- derball team? When did we last graduate an outstanding poet, or even give him credit for writing poetry? True, it could be ar- ' gued that students at a liberal arts college in a cornfield should study, not fight bulls. should lose at loot- Mr‘ Young ball and basketball. not bladderball, should criticize and cate- gorize poetry, not write it, And it could be argued that instead of bullfights, bladderball games, and poets what we really need are more committees, committees on committees, more reports, more proposals to foundations, more money, more buildings, more medals, and all the other essen— tials of higher education, And my only answer would be: yes, but we also need more crazy people. Our problem is that the kind of crazy people we need more of either never come here in the first place, or they come here and Sniff around and leave, or they settle in and gradually quit being crazy, or they keep thinking alld acting crazy and finally we just have to send them off to lowa City. To say it differently, a great college can be small, but regardless of size it should be large enough to accommodate the exceptional. And while we are a good college, yea, even a very fine college. we will never become the college we could he, never even become the college our catalog says we are, unless, despite all we say we have done and are doing, we do more, much more, to accommodate, even encourage, the ex- ceptional. As it is, we are turning out any number of Rhodes scholar types, but no Rhodes scholars; any number of beatnik types, but no zeal beats; any number of people who write poetry, but no poets; any number of good athletes, but no great jocks. Why? Every year, I understand, we admit potential Rhodes scholars, potential anarchists, potential poets, and potential jocks — but what happens to them? if we had a potentially brilliant poet, we would probably do our best to turn him into a good new critic, teach him to think analytically instead of by analogy or worse. I don’t know what we would do with a future Bill Russell, Churchill, Einstein, or Malcom X. Try to make them more like us, I suppose, and If that didn’t work, flunli them out. And I don’t know what we would do about social regulations. if we had a female Wittgen- stein would we let her live off campus? Or if we had a Picasso wouldn’t we have to chase the fe- male models out of his room and tell him to go paint squirrels? I am not suggesting that every rule-breaker is a future Picasso, nor am 1 suggesting that we should fill our campus with poets, nor am I even suggesting that we need fewer normal, sane, re- sponsible people. i just think that to give better balance to our campus population we need a few more unbalanced people. And, I think, one of the reasons we don’t have a decent number of crazy people, and one of the reasons we can’t keep the few we do get is that we make it too difficult to be crazy here; we have too many written and unwritten rules against being crazy. In one way or another, we rule out drunken< ness, idleness, over-specialization, fornication, under-specialization, nudity, prostitution, privacy, obscenity, gluttony, bludgery, creativity, non-cre- ativity, pettifoggery, and, alas, even motherhood. Now as a student and teacher of language, 1 respect rules and regulations. I realize that with out rules no one could live, work, or even write a coherent sentence. but one of the maddening problems which every already overworked and underpaid modern language teacher must face is that of the constant discrepancy between rules and usage. When should the rule determine the usage and when should the usage detennine the mle? And no matter how many scholars work at breakneck speed to turn out the latest and most comprehensive grammars, the rules in those grammars are always at least one step behind the changes in the living language. Then, even worse, once one has formulated the rules which are not subject to change, he still has to deal with the exceptions to those rules, and even with the exceptions to the exceptions. And, worst of all, it usually turns out that no matter how good and important the rule, the exceptions are even more important. For instance, in every language I have studied, the verb “to be" is ir- regular; and no matter how many or beautiful the conjugation patterns, and no matter how es sential these patterns are to the rest of the lan- guage, the verb “to be” will just not fit in. In fact in Russian, the verb "to be" was so irregu- lar that the Russians, thinking they ought to be more ciVllized and orderly, booted the present tense of “to be" right out of their language. That, I suppose, is one way to handle the prob- lem oi irregularities and exceptions; only now, no Russian in the world. unless he transfers to another language, can say to himself or to any- one else: “Look, here l am.” He has to say: “Look, here I." In conclusion, i won't draw any analogies or propose any solutions. Hi just say that l eagerly look forward to the day when bulliights are held on the central quad, when bladderhall scores are recorded in the 5!er ('1’), and most of all I look forward to the day when Grinnell can grant to poets and all kinds of crazy people not only honor- ary degrees but even regular ones. Nietzsche once had Zarathustra say: “I say unto you: one must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a danClng star.” I know that as a serious little college in a corn- field, we’re not in the dancing star business, but still, maybe a little more chaos would be nice. JllIIIlllllllllllllHillllllllllllllllllllllilllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllilllillllllllillllllllllIIllllllllllillllllllllllilllllUIIHHimlilllllllllillllllllllllllHIIIHllllllllllmllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllilllll IillllllilUlllllllllllllllllllllllllllillllll tellers . . . Defending the P. E. Complex To the Editor: In the editorial stating the case against the P. a. com. plex Krys Neumon proposed that the extravagant P. E, fa. cilities be significantly modi- fied. She neglected to point out how tho modifications could be made. We would like to examine the supposedly ex~ travagant P. a. complex in depth. Miss Ncuman mentioned dis» pleasure at being left in the dark concerning decisions about the P. E. complex. it is difficult to avoid lack of information be- cause the P. E. department knows what facilities are re- quired in a complex of this nature and only the architects are qualified to design the structure. The p. E, building committee was by no means meeting behind closed doors. Nantes of the student repre- sentatives on this committee were presented to the Senate. The P. E. staff told the archi» tects what facilities would be needed and the architects de- signed the complex around these specifications. The fol- lowing are the )ustlfications tor the facilities which you see as so expensive. [nadequacies (l) Darby gym is inadequato See Lessons on page a