Friday, May 2. "6' By KEN HICKS As it mmed out, last Friday’s com- munication crusade wasn’t even thera- eutic for its participants, which is too ad, because it there is anything Grin- Vieli needs it’s a thorough cleansing and flushing out of the cerebral portions of its student body, The petition to invert the tlag had been circulated. That was groovy. You speak but in any way you call, right? Then the flag flying majestically upsidedown, and that was groovy too. Somebody hadn't had anything to do on a nice afternoon, find he'd turned it over. Fine. And then watching the tratjock boys come to raise the thing right by God and all else what is dear. Confrontation! Just like TVl Gooi. And to top it all off, oops on cam- pus. Boopigsgobomdtheilapbelongsmthe people. Out; of sight! it real happeningl The only problem was, you see, that Qven for the people who stood around the pole lor so minutes yelling at each ther, it was a game. it it hadn’t been ‘ust another little intellectual exercise, e wouldn't have just stood there talk- iiig. We would have moved like Chief Peters, or moved like the jerk With the gun, or moved like the people i met downtown, or moved somehow. I’m try- ing to say nobody tllere took the thing seriously, even if we thought we did, For us, it was just a mental workout. We should have taken a him from Chief Petals. Mall, that guy was mad. But no, we just chalked it up to his being a cop, and we said, “Gee, won‘t you talk to uS about our symbolic intent," and we got mad when he didn't give a damn what our symmlic intent was. That should have told us something about the mood of the town, right? Sure. To be honest, I talked to two people at the Home Show. This is two out of perhaps forty attempts, With them, i tried to eiipl in what the students who'd committed t s sacrilege were trying to say by 't nd wasn't this attempt at oommurllcattun great? And they said yes, that's line, but don’t screw around with the (lag, because then you just turn everybody off. Which was the case of course. But th were only the two people who would talk to me. There was also the lady who delended herself against me by flailing her arms in my direction, and hissed, ”Keep away from me, you just keep away from mei” And another lady, with the file in her eyes I saw all after- noon: “I hope you students don’t think you can whitewash the Grinnell people— I hope you like the Russians!” It doesn't make much sense, does it? They’re not being very rational, are they? No, But in another way, a less cerebral way, it makes perfect sense, and the violence of their reactions was to be expected. The interesting thing is KEN HICKS was one or many students who talked to townspeople last Friday. SCARLET AND IL'ACK iHicks: “Nobody Took It Seriously" that we, with all our intellectual proWr ess, couldn’t predict it. Why not? Just like the Playboy incident, even more so, we found it impossible to real- istically judge the effects our actions would have on the real people in the real world outside. To us, a body can be simply. objectively, beautilul. a dag can be simply, objectively, a piece or cloth. Our celebrated liberal arts exper- ience has not taught us that to real people these things are tied up in the shame of the daughter who had to get married and the grief over the son killed in Korea. To strip, to invert a flag; i.e., to at- tack these things which are Such a basin part of the personal identity at so many people, is to create animosilies which cannot be salved by an aftemoon‘s leal— let campaign. These people lelt threat- ened in every little corner of their being. and it's amazing that we couldn’t see this would happen, amazing that we thought we could actually talk to these people, I thought Grinneii was supposed to prepare us for the outside world, not im< munize us to it. The only people we could talk to were those we didn't need to talk to, and the ones we should have talked to were the ones we couldn't talk to. That might be something to think about, next time we turn over a flag. Z: } Cops (Continued from Page 1) scene, accompanied by Pdwesiliek Coun- ty Sheriff Wayne Callison and another uniiormed officer of the Grinnell Police Department. None of the officers was wearing a gun. Peters strode through the crowd, low- ered the ting, crumpled it under his aim, and carried it away over the loud pm- tests of Click and other students. One student shouted: “You can’t take that flag! It’s the American flag, and we’re Americans, too " “Are you? I doubt it!" Peters respond— ed sharply. “Maybe someday when you grow up you'll want a flag like this. Folks are getting out of here all the time, and I wish to hell you'd all leave,” he shouted. As Peters walked away with the flag, several students asked him to discuss the meaning of the symbolic protest with them. “Baldney! Don’t talk to me!" Peters told them. Peters told the 5&1} that he made no arrests because he ”didn't knew Who did it." He added, “I’m going to take the flag down to the station, fold it up. and treat it the way it should be treated." Shortly after Peters left the campus. an unidentified student raised another American flag upside-down, halfway up the ilagpole, The second flag was lowered and folded up after several minutes by Mlss Mary Kay Taylor, an instructor in biology. About ten minutes later 30 students walked to the police station to retrieve the llag at the suggestion of freshman Phil Sasich. The students explained to Peters that the flag was inverted as a symbol or distress over the Vietnam War. “There is distress up there (at the College), but not the same way you and I are thinking,” Peters told them. ”Don't take this flag out and defile it." Peters said that Section 32 of the lowa Code prohibits llying the flag up- side down, except in cases ol distress. He returned the flag to the students when they agreed to raise the ilag right- side up. The students told Peters that they could not be responsible if tlle flag was inverted again by other students once it was raised. The students then walked to President Leggett’s office in Burling Library to discuss the flag incident with him. Page Thru med the college cdmmunity at Friday ailemoon’s anti-war rally. At right1 Professor Ray Horton watched the pro. ceedings. Sieinhorn: “We Got What We Deserved" By RON STEINHORN "It’d be a good thing for this town if the college would just get. the hell outl” This type of reaction and others even more blunt greeted some of us who went out into the somewhat hostile world of Grinllell on Friday to talk about the up- side-down American flag and the war — ill that order usually. It's an amazing thing to see what that ilag evokes in some people; the closest analogy might be waving a red flag in front or an enraged buiiiyou can’t rea- son with either of them. Even “rational discourse" doesn’t work. But, anyway, we went to talk about the war, and it was very hard to talk about because people were much more interested in talking about what a dastardly thing it was to put a flag (THE flag) upside-down in such a disrespectful fashion. One man said he had fought for the flag in WW II and had seen many of his buddies killed for it, one woman had had three sons in the service who had fought for the flag, one's son had been killed in the Army in Korea lor the ring, still altotller’s boy was even now in the Army in Vietnam lighting for the flag. Al- ways fighting and dying and being in- jured, and always lor the flag. Never tor the always unfulfilled promise which that nag supposedly symbolizes. So people would latch on to the llag issue and demand that Ted Glick get hung up himself, be kicked out of school, or sent to jail # or all three prelerably. Then, having succeeded in talking about the war and still having someone to talk to — three people walked out on me — another entire set of reactions could be seen. The general tone was that the United States has to be in Vietnam because Rus» sia and China are all set to attack us and by bombing Vietnam to pieces we're showing what Russia and China can eX< pect if they try to mess over us. One man even spoke of an anti-v.5. alliance between France, Germany, and ltaly which is all set to move as soon as we appear vulnerable. Another reaction was that Nixon was a good, smart man who understood things so Well [ha/t if he felt we should continue to fight, well then ._. we should fight. Stock responses or having to tight com- munism again in another place it we didn't here, and the domino theory were so numerous they are not even worth mentioning. And so it went all afternoon. I walked around the downtown streets for about one and a half hours and then stood in front of the Home Show for awhile. It was obviously a real trial to be con— rrdnted with us like that, representing those who had defiled their Symbol, questioning their belicls, ultimately iorc< ing them on the defensive; and those of us who expected that it might be better, easier, aiid more rewarding got when we deserved. Just one example typilied the whole thing for me. When i finally got sick 0! the inistradcn of talking on the streets. sick at viewing what I thought might be an enjoyable change, i decided to go over to the Rock Island depot and talk With the guys there since I know the men who run the station. When i walked in, there were two operators who I know pretty well and two sectionmen I didn't know. The fil'st thing out of one of the operators to me was, “Were you one of them that turned the flag around yesterday?” And train that moment I was placed on the defensive along with my values, having to justify why I thought the war more important than the flag; how could anyone ever tillilk that, why that was anarchy?! i never really did get to talk about the war, And that's how things went for me on Friday. It was discouraging at the time, but in retrospect, it was much as could have been expected. I didn’t hear or anyone being beaten up, that old man who came on campus didn't shoot anybody, and I was invited back to the train station to play chess and talk any- time I felt like it. z: } Leggeii (Continued from Page 1) with what you're doing?" Leggett re— plied. ”I don’t Want to do it, it’s as simple as that." “Okay, that’s why the war con- tinues,” Glick commented. He then told the president: “1 sort of pity you that you can’t stand up for what you think is right because you feel so bound to the institution. You aren‘t free." “I pity myself sometimes," Leg< gett responded. “i agree I‘m not free, but. that's the job. You don’t respect that; do you?" “No, I don‘t," answered Glick. The students complained to Leggett that Chief Peters had no right to com on campus and take the flag. “What I have with Chief Peters is a gentleman's understanding," Leggett said. “He calls me when he's coming on campus and I call him and ask him to Come when I think it's necessary." Leggett said, however, that Peters hadn’t called him about the flag inci< dent until atter he had come on campus and taken the llag in response to a com- plaint phoned to the police station by a student. Asked about the “gentleman's under~ standing" on Friday, Peters said, “I don’t have that. agreement with him ' He added, however, “i guess I'd call the president before I hit anywhere on campus." Leggctt also told the students: “This place Isn’t. a sanctuary. ii an individual Calls the police and tells them some- thing illegal is happening, there's noLlls ing I can do.”