Page Two SCARLET AND BLACK The Scarlet 8i Black A weeitty newsndper published pith Friday 0! the Culll'flt year the minncii committee on stunt-iii publications Represented itir national ndvtrlislng by Na~ tional Educational Advertising Services, 360 Lexington Aye. yrw York. Now york iooti, Sen mid class pnslagu paid at Grin- ilcll. town sunscrtption rate is no per school year lsw paid sltDSCrlDllfinS Student Newxpaper of Grinnell College at Grinnell, low. usltutuw, r \ " v looms t- iiiiiolts iiusirttzss MAN/HIE“ MAN/\fflNh Lotroa li\\’UUl ivtmtt \ivottis hniron KLPURILRS lery ruiian. Lloyd amon John Brody sreve Grow Greg Butcher John Pepper ruin creeiiiield. are; Butt-her. Mark Silhlemfln, Mike slam, rhll Morale!- J. c. Labowitz, Klihryn tlelnxzi rat tester. Jon srcin, Nada Manglaienl, Phfl Slslch de raptu pauciorum Last Friday as we returned from Newton with what we had hoped was to be the antepenultimate issue of the Scarlet and Black, the campus was in turmoil. Students were flocking to the polling booths outside the lunch lines, and the overwhelming majority was voting to close down the school. We dutifully went and voted for what we felt was right: preservation of the academic status quo. No sooner was the student referendum ended than a faculty meeting began, during which the issue of closing down the school was to be discussed. As the faculty members filed into the room, they were handed petitions for five different ways to do this by five difs ferent factions of the faculty and students. Everyone was apprehensive and uneasily preparing for a four- hour debate on the details. When President Leggett arrived to chair the meeting, he did a very shrewd thing. He presented a proposal to the faculty for closing the school, but one which most of the faculty felt combined the best features of all the other proposals. Most, indeed! The faculty voted 91 to 4 to endorse it, Thereupon Mr. Morris presented a resolution to the faculty for committing itself as a body to a particular political stance. In spite of the protest of Mr. Ayers and Miss Noble and a few others, the proposal passed. In other words, the minority individual conscience was firmly and vigorously raped. But the faculty was in a hurry to get over to Darby Gymnasium and collect its standing ovation from the students. Now, some seven days later, some members of the community are having secondtfioughts. The procedures which have been hastily rigged to preserve some sem- blance of an academic commitment to the students amidst the shambles of this semester are so compli— cated and inadequate that even those who wanted to close the school are grumbling among themselves. A very dangerous precedent has been set that will ultimately remove all need for argument when questions such as credit-fail in requirements and majors come up, when students want to close down the school in the fall for elections, when the majority wants to subscribe the name of the college to a political movement. Earlier this year, in a report to the faculty by Mrs. Helena Ponseti, Spanish, on the Midwest Fulbright Con- ference on Higher Education held at the University of Iowa, June 1969, these words were spoken: “Institu- tionsof higher learning operated under several conflict- ing guiding principles cannot survive. It is not so much any more ‘a house divided cannot stand’ as ‘an institu- tion without clear goals cannot exist’." No one listenedi The eilitors would like to express their gratitude to all those who have helped with the paper, this semester and a special vote oi thanks goes to Proiessor n. o. Apostle, who shared with us his invcsllg into the nature oi a liberal education, something dear to us all. LOST OPPORTUNITY YOU ARE INVITED TO MEET \t'llO? Mr. Roger Blobaum, Democratic candidate for US Representative from the 4th District. This meeting will be sponsored by the concerned Citizens of the Grinnell Coma '2 Friday. May 22nd at ii-otl P M, much > Grinncll House, 1011 Park Slrccl. Grinnell. lowa WllY’.’ To provide an 01.17 portunity for interested persons to discuss American military and foreign policy with Mr. Blobaum. A short film on Vietnam, “Once Upon A War,” will serve as an introduction to the discussion. This film deals with the problems of civilian casualitlcs, a limited aspect ot the war but a very fundamental one which has broad implications and concerns us deeply @mo sit-mt NUS mtl‘wi mittvrs Friday. May is. I970 Letters to the Editors To the Editor: It is an observation common to mankind that those who try to do what they have not done for along time do it ill So it was with the faculty on May 5th in its attempt to be moral, One can perhaps lneasure the current stresses on mind and body and soul by obs serving that the iaculty was driven, for the first time in my seven years at the College, to adopt a moral position. In fact, Dean Wall informs me that the faculty has not done such a thing since 1942. Mr Klausner, doyen of the philosophy department, maniully tried to rescue the iaculty from its violation of tradition and res» pect for individual conscience; he moved to Strike the word “morality” irom the preamble to the resolution which was ulti~ matcly passed, The preamble stated that Grinnell College was devoted to “reason and moral~ lty,” Mr. Klausner’s motion als most passed, since there was general agreement that the faculty had no idea of what mors allty was. But hotter heads pres valled and the word “morality” was kept on pragmatic grounds. 1 was unable to get the floor to move that the word “reason" was, in the context, as suspect as the word “morality." Let it be on the record that the iacully took a hastily drawn-up and badlysworded resolution from a minority of the students lsome fraction of 374 hundred students out of a total of over two, approved that resolution as rcpi-csenting a majority or the students and faculty, and then Claimed to represent “Grinnell College as an institution ” The faculty's action was probably illegal and certainly immoral. In suspending classes as a part of the motion, the laculty violated its own commitment to education and demanded that every indivir dual faculty member comply with its wrong action. Ipoint with humble pride to the fact that I have viewed with alarm the steady tendency oi the faculty to move in this direction. In the past few years we have seen a shift or power in the faculty away irom the old-line liberals who sure vived the Stevens’ crisis and over to a group of young instruc- lors _ dedicated and aggressive 7 who represent what is called “the new left." After a couple of years or jockeying, the old»line liberals have surrendered to the new left. The illcoalesced coalis lion is backed, of course, by a sizable minority ol students; their combined intentions and efforts are aimed at (in their bar- barous jargon) “politicizing” the College, Tuesday’s meeting was the first successful step in “politiclzation.” “Folilicizalion” CDnSlstS 01' the lollowing premises: all actions are political; no individual or me stitution can avoid being politir cal; therefore no individual or in- stitution should try to avoid being political, and if either does so try, it should be lorced into taking sides. Those of us who read the an- cient classics 7 which, as Fielding says, “steel and harden lhe mind against the capricious invasions of fortune — remember our rhucydid‘es- as long as human nature remains the Same, Thucydldes’ history will prove relevant, We are beginning to see icon-acted the process of revolu- tion which took place at Corcyra, one state of which was what the “new left” calls "politicizalion," that is, creating factions so ops posed that no middle ground is lcii for sanity, reason, or moral- ity Those who attempt to occupy (his middle ground will find that their golden mean is steeped in their own blood, as extremists from either side destroy them. in the student takeover of the AFROTC building we observed the first real violence on orinnell campus. That violence is sane tioned by the faculty‘s resolution, which does not condemn student violence but only what it calls “official repression.” in the sad iigure oi Mr, Ayers, who was in timidated into leaving his apart- lnent (at lhe hack'oi the AFROTC building) ior fear oi what might happcn to his wife and iniant child, we behold Grinnell's iirst political reiugee, Such are the ominous firstrfruits of “leftrwing fascism.” Man’s iirst disobedi- cnce has already been re-com- mittcd; the primal sin 7 murder oi brother by brother 7 lies at the door. tSubmittcd closure) bcrore college Jollll Crossett. Classical Languages To the Students of Grinnell: I have just returned from that clever interpretation oi Robert's Rules of Order known as a student body meeting. 1 alter my congratulations to that meeting for passing an undistinguished piece oi sophistic hypocrisyi it is undistinguished because it merges into that fine Grinnell tradition of negative stands and statements. It is hypocrsiy because it proposes the repression oi education — of library facilities and class — to serve notice to the world (or at least the state of Iowai that we condemn the repression or education. David Lcwis asked the ques tion: “To whom will this proposal be significant” I ask: “What will it signify?" It signifies that Grinnell can act negatively, that students can disrupt education as well as national guardsmen, and yes, that students are against the taking of life, Who in the world LETTERS— Continued on Page 4