Stephen Briscoe, Director of Campus Safety and Security, said that when a student called requesting a student advocate, his office transferred the call to the Center for Religion, Spirituality, and Social Justice (CRSSJ), and the survivor reached the CRSSJ’s voicemail. As they don’t have the names of any student advocates, Briscoe says his office should have contacted Chaplain Deanna Shorb, who is in charge of directing survivors to the resources they need, instead of transferring the student to the CRSSJ.

“What we will do in the future is make sure that all of our workers know that Deanna is the sexual advocate person and that she’s a confidential reporter too,” Briscoe said. “So if someone calls and asks for a student, Deanna’s the one we can put them in contact with…We’ll make sure all our staff knows that Deanna can be contacted [after hours] and can get in contact with the student advocates.”

Shorb has helped revitalize the Campus Advocates, who have historically been aligned with the Domestic Violence Alternatives/Sexual Assault Center. The Advocates are now distancing themselves from the organization due to student advocates’ desire not to be anonymous. The protocol for the response to instances of sexual misconduct is somewhat unclear.  Miriam Clayton ’15, a member of Campus Advocates, said that group members have been trained but are currently waiting to receive certification so that they will be able to represent survivors at the hospital or in a legal situation.

In years past, survivors have been able to contact the Advocates, who have been available to survivors as a confidential resource, via a hotline that was well publicized through a sticker campaign. However, with the current system in place, the Advocates are not functioning in the same capacity as they used to. But that will soon change. Starting this fall, Advocates will have their own hotline phone number for people to call and will make arrangements to have someone carry the phone with them on nights and weekends, in a set-up similar to the RLC-on-call system, according to Clayton.

Reports of sexual assaults on campus are uncommon. As sexual misconduct is difficult for most survivors to discuss or even define, many incidents go unreported.  However, the last two years have shown a dramatic increase in reporting. In 2009, the Clery Annual Disclosure Report shows three instances of sexual misconduct were reported, and in 2010, there were only two reported. Yet in 2011 that number increased to seven, and there have already been ten reported in 2012 alone.

Dean of Students Travis Greene does not think this increase in reports necessarily means that there has been an increase in incidents of sexual misconduct.

“We really have no way of knowing what that number means,” Greene said. “On a human level, you see the numbers and ask, what the heck is going on at Grinnell? But it could be that we’re doing the right things, that we’re getting our resources together, we’re sending a coherent and consistent message, we’re making reporting systems survivor-friendly. The conduct system is much tighter. So all of those things together could create an environment where students feel more comfortable to report.”

Together with Shorb, Greene is working to create a website with an all-inclusive list, including pictures, bios and contact information, of people and resources that survivors can use, both confidential and not. Shorb hopes that this will make finding information an easier, consolidated process for survivors.

“You could look and maybe be more comforted or more inclined to report or seek an advocate in your decisions about reporting if you knew there was someone who you felt more comfortable with whether it was because of gender, or racial/ethnic heritage, experience, what their discipline is. There are any number of things that might make you feel a kinship with this person or that this is a safe person,” Shorb said of the website.

Though protocol is currently slightly unsettled on the role of the Campus Advocates, both Shorb and Clayton are confident that the changes will be better defined and implemented in the fall. Greene is currently working with Student Affairs staff to find more ways to expand discussions of sexual health during New Student Orientation to include more on the topic of sexual misconduct.

“I think there’s a tension in our community about sex positivity and consent. If we can clarify what it means to be in an environment that celebrates all forms of diversity and being sex positive, but also working just as hard to make sure that students feel that they have consent and that they can be assertive and say, ‘no, that’s not okay,’ that’s an important direction to go,” Greene said. “But at the end of the day, we all recognize that there’s always more that the College could be doing to help support students not just with issues education, awareness, and prevention, but also how to be assertive so that when you’re in a situation and you’re not feeling comfortable, you feel like you have the skills to be assertive for what your own needs are.”

A large majority of senators supported the resolution, but there was some debate before the vote.

“This [position] would be the voice of the SGA. We really don’t want that,” Senator Brian Silberberg ’14, suggesting that the president already serves that role. “All of this is too vague.”

“Vagueness was, as suggested, intentional,” outgoing S&B Editor-in-Chief Solomon Miller ’13 said.

Miller, the author of the resolution, wanted the new position to have enough freedom to fulfill its function. After the trial period has ended, the SGA will be able to better define the role of Outreach Director.

While senators worked toward better communication with this resolution, another proposal regarding constituent content was voted down 8-7-2. It needed a supermajority to succeed.

The idea of required weekly meetings with students was extremely contentious. Many senators compared the meetings to the bemoaned hall councils. Others thought that weekly meetings were needed for “transparency.”

“What’s wrong with an email address?” Senator Tom Van Heeke ’12 asked. “It is not our job to get people interested. When people care, they can contact you. This is not going to add a whole lot, besides adding time to people’s days, when no one is going to show up anyways.”

Senator Jacob Washington ’15 ardently disagreed. He called for increased responsibilities for the members of Joint Board, because senators today do not accomplish as much as their counterparts on the “local, state, and national levels.”

“Our job as senators is to serve,” Washington proclaimed. “People may look up to me as a freshman. People may look up to me as a member of the basketball team. Nobody looks up to me as a senator.”

Senator Sam Mulopulos ’14 said that the meetings were “not an effective way of solving problems” regarding the efficiency and effectiveness of Joint Board. He instead proposed an amendment advocating for senator proficiency in Robert’s Rules of Order. It did not pass.

Eventually, Presiding Officer Peter Aldrich ’15 grew tired of the senators’ “ungermane” and extended debate. He recused himself from his position.

“I am so frustrated with the state of debate, I do not believe that I can run it effectively,” Aldrich said. “Because I am presiding officer, I cannot partake in debate. However, if I could, I would.”

“Some of [the increase] has to do with the individuals that were initially busted by the police department and just the overall interaction with the drug task force and Grinnell College,” said David Menninga, a Grinnell Police Department investigator who joined MINE last August. “We really just act on information that we gather…information from sources that have purchased from the campus.”

Task Force personnel alarmed students with their new practice of entering dorms without a Campus Safety and Security escort. Administrators at the College met with Interim Police Chief Theresa Petersen last month to express their concerns about police entering dorms without Campus Security present.

“[The College has] been working under the philosophy and the understanding that anytime Police are in the residence halls, they are going to have an escort of Campus Safety and Security. That’s who our students know,” Dean of Students Travis Greene said. “There have been one or two instances that I’m aware of where that hasn’t been the case. My understanding is that it’s been undercover drug narcotics agents who, because they didn’t want to interfere with a lead, didn’t let us know until after the fact.”

According to Greene, the College has made no effort to increase police presence on campus. In April, administrators attempted to stop MINE from coming onto campus without the administration’s knowledge.

“[Vice President for Student Affairs Houston Dougharty], [Director of Security Stephen Briscoe] met with [Interim Police Chief Theresa Petersen] to express our concerns and our hope to be able to collaborate so that at a minimum we would know that they are even coming onto the campus,” Greene said.

They could not reach an agreement because MINE did not want to risk compromising its investigations.

“That’s just the nature of a drug task force,” Briscoe said.

One of these incidents involved task force members searching a student’s room after following the student in the dorm hallway, looking through the open door and seeing a bong, according to the student, who requested anonymity for legal reasons. The student finds the role security played troubling.

“[During the search] the security guard came in and he’s like, ‘Oh we heard there was a situation down here but it looks like you have it under control and I don’t want to be in your way so I’ll just get out of here.’ Probably wasn’t in my room for more than 30 seconds,” the student said. “And I was like, you’re supposed to be here to watch out for me. You’re not on their side. You’re Campus Security. You know, where’s my [RLC]?”

After completing a search of the room and finding both paraphernalia and marijuana, the officers asked for its source.

“They were like, ‘Where’d you get the weed?’” the student said. “But I wasn’t going to go down that road.”

Menninga, of MINE, uses two main methods for accessing dorms without a warrant or notifying Campus Security.

“I’ve entered dorms by student and by doors being propped open or unlocked. I haven’t obviously broken into a dorm,” Menninga said.

While students may find Menninga’s presence invasive, it is entirely legal as long as he enters by the one of the aforementioned mechanisms because dorm halls qualify as “common areas,” which according to Law.com consist of “the areas not owned by an individual owner of the condominium or cooperative residence, but shared by all owners, either by percentage interest or owned by the management organization.”

“A warrantless entry [to a common area] is valid when based upon the consent of a third party whom the police, at the time of the entry, reasonably believe to possess common authority over the premises,” ruled the US Supreme Court in Illinois v. Rodriguez (1990).  A student opening the door to the dorm fits this description.

MINE’s exercise of its legal muscle has changed the attitude on campus concerning marijuana.

“Everybody is so paranoid right now.  Everybody’s just so worried about their futures,” said the investigated student. “Everybody is just so anxious.”

Rumors about who the informants are have begun circulating.

“[People say] I think this person is [an informant], that can ruin someone’s social life at school,” the student said.

The law of common area entrance allows students some protective agency.

“It’s [students’] responsibility to make sure they don’t prop doors or they don’t let people into the Residence Halls who clearly don’t belong,” Greene said.

Dougharty remains optimistic about the future of the College’s relationship with Grinnell Police Department, especially because of the attitude of Dennis Reilly, who will take over full-time as Grinnell Chief of Police in June.

“Our sense was, and Steve [Briscoe] spent time with him during the interview process as did [incoming VPSA Sivan Philo ’13] that he is very, very interested in continuing a collaborative relationship with the college and a cooperative one,” Dougharty said.

Ultimately, for Dougharty, it comes down to one simple rule.

“Don’t let anybody in you don’t know,” he said.

“We continue to draw and change things,” Janet Stegman said during the presentation. “What you see tomorrow isn’t necessary what you’ll see today.”

However, the plan does establish certain goals for the future. Stegman suggested expanding the current number of students living on-campus from 1350 to 1400, giving older students more chances “for leadership and mentoring roles.” Also, the construction of new common rooms in dorms would make residence halls “spaces for both social [and] academic pursuits.”

In the early 2000s, Stegman+Associates worked on proposals for the JRC, the Bear and East Campus. Now, the only new structure under consideration is a fifth building on East Campus, known as “East E,” which would replace the parking lot on the corner of 10th and East Streets.

More singles and a “cluster” room scheme define the layout of “East E.” Three rooms—a double and two singles—will surround a shared common room open to the hallway and accessible to all students. Planners hope that this layout will give students more opportunities for interaction in the still unnamed residence hall.

A larger lounge, purposefully designed as a “party space,” would occupy the first floor of the building. The loggia will either stop at “East E” or divide it in half, separating the living space from the multipurpose rooms.

“We’re really trying to entice older students to live on East,” Stedman said. This would address the age discrepancy in campus housing.

SHACS, currently located in the Forum, might also find a home in “East E,” providing Grinnell’s health staff a modern facility.

“I think our goal is to get SHACs out of the least accessible building on campus and to give practitioners more space,” said Vice President for Student Affairs Houston Dougharty.

Some students expressed concern at the distant location. Others countered that “East E” would be closer than the Forum to the residents of East and North Campus.

“I don’t think that the geographic location is much of a problem, but I think that putting SHACS into a dorm would make going to receive counseling scarier,” Ezra Katz ’15 said. “In the Forum, you don’t really run into people.”

East Campus won’t be the only area experiencing construction.  North and South Campuses will each undergo internal renovations, leaving the exteriors relatively unchanged.  However, new lounges, constructed between Haines and Read and between Dibble and Clark would connect the buildings and add an elevator shaft for shared use.

Stegman said the new lounges will be “sort of like a Starbucks in your residence hall,” with the aesthetic feel of a lobby or café.  Doors would divide the common area from the actual dorms.

“Faculty, if they want to have a program, would be able to be in the residence halls, but there would be a comfort line about how far they can go,” Stegman said.

Some faculty, though, have other problems they would like to see addressed in the renovation.

“I don’t pretend to know a lot about dorm life on campus here, but the one concern for me is sleep deprivation among students,” Professor Pablo Silva said.  “One complaint I have heard repeatedly is that they try to get to bed early, but there a lot of kids hanging out in the hall.”

Adding extra dry wall is an effective and inexpensive potential solution to the noise.

New Project Houses, housing a larger number of students, will be constructed in place of the current buildings.  Parking on South Campus would need to be eliminated to add to the new structures.  At the SGA Joint Board Meeting last week, senators especially criticized this idea.

“If we displace parking, we will have to find parking somewhere else,” Vice President of Services John Kalkbrenner said, when addressing student questions.

Chaplain Deanna Shorb, who oversees the Voicebox, confirmed that Grinnell’s student activism center will remain open.  However, it will bear a different name and be active as its own organization in addition to being a resource for other student groups, as it has been since its founding in 2006.

Hannah Kapp-Klote ’13 and Anna Hall ’13 are transforming the Voicebox into a new student group called the Anti-Oppression Peer Education Network, or OPEN.  OPEN’s primary purpose will be to discuss, and counteract, the forces of marginalization and oppression on Grinnell’s campus as well as in the wider world.  The group will address issues like racism and classism among the student body. It will also contribute to pre-existing student efforts such as the attempt to raise awareness and aid in the prevention of sexual assault on campus.

“The Voicebox didn’t really do its own work as much as it was a hub for other activists, and it was a support system for other activists.  OPEN is different because it wants to provide that same support and that same opportunity to be a hub, but it also is going to generate social justice programming and peer-to-peer education of its own,” Kapp-Klote said.

“I’m not saying it’s not the Voicebox.  I’m saying it’s not the Voicebox as it has been,” Shorb said.

Shorb also addressed rumors that the space currently occupied by the Voicebox will be taken over by a different campus group.

“I’ve heard others who are clamoring for that space, but the space isn’t available right now.”

Such rumors may be driven by the fact that the Voicebox’s once-robust membership has lost momentum in recent years.

“We’ve had a fair amount of transition ever since the students who had the vision for Voicebox graduated.  So it doesn’t come as a surprise to me that it would be a transitional time,” Shorb said.  “I think people have been trying to figure out what it was, instead of trying to figure out what it should be.”

That task now lies with Kapp-Klote and Hall.  For most of the school year, they have been collaborating with Shorb, RLC Autumn Wilke, and various students and student groups to determine how to put the Voicebox’s space and budget to good use.  They quickly realized that in addition to functioning as a meeting space for social justice-oriented groups, the Voicebox’s resources could be used to address new and pressing student issues.

“We are seeing a need for peer-to-peer education on campus, especially focused around facilitation of social justice issues and conversations about how social justice pertains to issues on campus,” Kapp-Klote said.

OPEN will aim to foster dialogue and promote inclusion of a wider range of student voices in campus discussions.

“We see this lack of communication that people keep talking about and we want to make sure that we’re bridging [this gap], and making sure that everybody is having an opportunity to participate in the conversation,” Kapp-Klote said.

Kapp-Klote and Hall also believe OPEN will help bring students together by encouraging them to interact with peers outside of their everyday social groups.  Their hope is that OPEN will make Grinnell a more unified and equal campus.

OPEN is still in the planning stages, but will emerge as a fully-functional student group next August.  Students old and new are encouraged to check out OPEN’s booth at the fall activity fair and join the email list.

In the meantime, Kapp-Klote encourages would-be activists to contact [voicebox] for a helpful list of frequently asked questions about activism at Grinnell, or check the [voicebox] page on Plans.

Kincaid will address the class of 2012 at Grinnell College’s 166^th Commencement ceremony.

Kincaid is a Caribbean novelist best known for her works At the Bottom of the River, Annie John, A Small Place, Lucy, Autobiography of My Mother and My Brother. In 2009, Kincaid was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and currently works as a professor of literature at Claremont McKenna College in Claremont, California. As the Commencement speaker, Kincaid will receive an honorary degree along with Patrick D. Irwin ’77, longtime member of the B-52s, and Carolyn Swartz Bucksbaum ’51, activist, philanthropist, and Grinnell trustee.

Kincaid was selected by a group of eighteen members of the class of 2012. Rachel Bly ’93, from the Conference Operations and Events office, assisted the students in the year-and-a-half long process.

“I think they were looking for someone who was a good speaker, for someone who would be relevant to the class in terms of who could speak about things that were interesting and relevant,” Bly said. “One of the things we talked about a lot was having someone who was international or who had a relationship internationally. We haven’t had too many commencement speakers who have been international or sort of represented the international students and although Jamaica Kincaid has been in the United States for a long time, she’s from the Caribbean, and that really played into finding someone who represented a slightly differ ent culture than some of the more recent speakers.”

Kincaid was selected to speak out of a list that included Ellen DeGeneres, Toni Morrison and Sandra Cisneros, among others. It was especially important to the 2012 Commencement committee that the speaker understand and address the class of 2012.

“We just don’t want a big name speaker who’s going to give ten of these and they are all going to sound the same,” Bly said. “We want somebody who’s going to get to know Grinnell a little bit and who is going to appreciate Grinnell for the quirky place that it is and be able to speak to that. I think that’s something that the committee, and especially this committee, was really really thoughtful about.”

Photograph by Emma Sinai-Yunker

A recent study by the Pew Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism found that 64 percent of media coverage of the 2012 Republican primary was of horserace and strategy, while only 11 percent was coverage of positions on policy issues. Do you think this disparity is a problem at the New York Times and how does the New York Times balance covering horserace and strategy versus positions on policy issues?
That’s always a question and a challenge for every presidential campaign. We at the New York Times and other news organizations are always accused of playing up the horserace too much. And I think some people do play up the horserace too much. On the other hand, that’s kind of what it is. It’s a horserace. Especially in a primary season like we had, where one candidate was up one day and one candidate was up the next day, it was like a rollercoaster. You can’t pretend that this isn’t about a race. That’s what it is. That said I’m really proud of what we’ve done at the Times in terms of the combination of coverage of campaign tactics and strategies as well as issue stories and investigative stories. We’ve looked a lot at the impact of Super PACs this year and the impact of technology. So it’s not just the horserace versus issue pieces. It’s about all kinds of aspects of politics this year. And I feel really good about what we’ve done. And now that we’re down to two candidates, we’ll have a lot more time in the months ahead to really bear down in a deeper way about how the candidates differ on issues and we have many pieces and projects planned related to that.

Another part of political coverage is fact-checking. If Mitt Romney says something like, “President Obama doesn’t have a jobs plan,” which he says, you could argue that that’s just factually untrue, because he’s proposed something called the American Jobs Act, or you could argue well Romney’s just not counting that as a jobs plan. So how do you decide when to put after a quotation, here’s the fact, and when do you say we need to just report their opinions?
You always have the challenge of not taking what anyone tells you at face value. Whether it’s a politician or someone you’re interviewing, you have to always do your homework and try to know the facts behind what someone is telling you and put it out when someone is trying to obfuscate or paper over something. In the context of our pieces if we know something is wrong, wherever we point it out, that’s fair game. But there are always limits to how much you can do in any one story. There’s only so much space and so much time. So I don’t think we necessarily want every time we write about jobs and Obama or jobs and Mitt Romney to just stop in our tracks and do a whole long piece about who’s right and who’s wrong and who initiated what. These things are often gray and complicated. In general I think we the New York Times and other news organizations need to do more than we’re doing in terms of truth-squading and fact-checking. We’ve become really good at it with the debates on the web and really quick turnaround, calling people on it. We do it with the ads. We try to do it. We don’t do it enough. But you can’t always do it every time you mention something.

The Washington Post has a fact-checker that gives out Pinocchios. Have you considered doing something like that?
It’s kind of a pet peeve of mine. I’ve been wanting to do that for years. The problem is that it seems like it should be easy to do but it’s rare to find a reporter that is that well-versed, who can jump in and do that on a variety of topics. There are a couple people that could do it, but they’re such high-value reporters that we need them for other things too. It’s kind of harder than you think. So what we do on debate nights is take expert people in different fields that can help out on those nights. You want someone who understands the issues but who also understands the politics, who can write it in a very readable and engaging way. That all can be hard, and the Post does a good job with that. Part of it is just finding the right way to do it and the right person. I don’t know whether we’ll end up with one person or not, but we certainly want to do a lot more of that than we’re doing.

It’s a Republican cliché that the New York Times is really liberal. And you have Rick Santorum saying things like you’re not a true conservative unless you’ve yelled at a New York Times reporter. Does that bother people at the New York Times and do you ever take that perception into consideration when making decisions?
No, we’re kind of used to it, but it’s really unfair. Sometimes we’ll get attacked by both sides for whatever we write. Especially in the era of the web, people just pick at everything we do. Last time with Santorum, when he yelled at one of our reporters for asking a question about his questioning Mitt Romney’s fitness to be president, it was all out there. Our reporter didn’t ask anything that was off limits or untrue, but people like to sort of just blame things on us. Newt Gingrich attacked the press during the debates a lot, and used us as a punching bag. They live off the press coverage. A lot of it’s just being dramatic and trying to win over people. You just kind of get used to it.

How has new technology and things being instant changed things in the newsroom? Do you feel a lot more pressure to get things out than you used to and do you think that is changing what kind of reporting you’re doing in some way? 
Yeah, there’s less time to be thoughtful and when something breaks there’s less time to do reporting because you essentially have to put your first draft out on the web right away. There are certain advantages to that. People get information faster and you certainly can’t be lazy about what you’re doing, but it also comes at a price. Certainly the earlier versions of stories aren’t at the level sometimes that they should be.

The lead stories on the web on the homepage are changing all the time. Something I like about the print version is the front page is the top stories from all of yesterday. So do you think with the web you’re losing some of your ability to shape what we think is the most important story because on the web it’s changing all the time?
I’m still kind of a traditionalist and I like the printed paper because I think there’s some order to that process. I think people like to catch their breath and say, “what did the New York Times think were the six most important stories yesterday?” Not necessarily the most important news events, but of the things that we publish, what’s our mix of the six most interesting things that you’d want to read on the front page? With the web you lose that. You get more immediacy, but you lose that. The nature of the web is that you can’t be static and you have to update and get fresh things. At the beginning we might have been a little too reflexive in always trying to update everything. Now, if there’s a really good enterprise story that took like a year to do, we might leave it up for five hours instead of one hour. We’re trying to figure all that out.

I guess I have to ask about the future. It’s hard to predict, but how do you see journalism changing and how do you see the medium changing? Do you think soon maybe we’re not going to have a print newspaper and it will just be online?
I don’t know. I’ve been so wrong in all the predictions. I never would have dreamed that we’d be where we are with the web. It just hit us really unexpectedly and so fast. Some people say print is on its last legs. It’s so cumbersome and expensive. Young people today grow up with the web and they’re not used to print. That could be true but I still think people value the printed paper. I’ve talked to some younger people who say, “I prefer print” and some don’t at all. So I have no idea. There was a sense with radio and TV that radio would no longer exist. My guess is that there’ll be some kind of enduring print product for the foreseeable future but it will be more of a boutique thing. It will be less center-stage. Our news operation is still supported by the print paper even though ads are way down. It’s still because people are paying a real premium for the print paper. That’s what keeps us in business still, even with the web. So I don’t see it going away anytime too soon.

SAAC works to promote the sentiment that student-athletes are typical Grinnellian students who happen to spend a large part of their day training. Encouraged to work hard in school and join clubs and extra-curricular activities, athletes are typically involved in much more than just their sport.

“We all get put through the same academic rigors and our time commitments are not more or less than anybody else’s, but they are pretty strict,” said SAAC member and football player Brian Westerlind ’12. “Planning around our days is something that everybody deals with. We’re still athletes, but we’re also just students the same.”

The organization participated in both Pride Week and Sexual Assault Awareness Week. They partnered with the Stonewall Resource Center, Real Men and PDC to bring speakers Katie Hnida and Esera Tuaolo to campus, semi-pro and pro athletes who struggled with their identities as members of traditionally marginalized groups in sports.

Real Men is an organization that also contributed to Sexual Assault Awareness Week. The organization, led by two football players, collaborated with Iowa Valley Community College for a walk in town to promote awareness and prevent of sexual assault.

When it comes to campus unity, Ryan Creps ’12, co-president of Real Men, is concerned mainly with creating a common sense of Grinnell College pride amongst the entire student body. Athletes and non-athletes are very involved in contributing to campus life. Still, concern about the divide of campus based athletic participation is a common sentiment among students.

“The divide isn’t as big as people want to think it is. It’s just there are some very vocal people out there who like to talk about it. I know that not everybody on this campus wants to be best friends,” Creps said. “I wouldn’t even say that the issue should be about unifying campus, but about creating some school pride because its going to be hard to unify 1,600 students. But if we all appreciate what Grinnell has to offer and we all have a love for the college itself, I think that that’s the bigger need.”

Coaching staff and faculty are impressed with student-athlete leadership, both in and out of the Bear. Assistant Athletic Director and Head Women’s Soccer Coach, Heather Benning ’96, is working with Assistant Athletic Director and Head Men’s Tennis Coach Andy Hamilton to supervise the department while Athletic Director Greg Wallace is on sabbatical.

“It’s been really nice to see Grinnell rely so much on student leadership,” Benning said. “You can have all the organizations in place that you want, but if you don’t have good student leaders, you’re not going to see results. I would say that [the athletic staff] has supported having these organizations, but honestly, what I think has made the difference is the student leadership.”

The football captains and coaches are also making an effort to develop a strong culture of morality and responsibility with the team. During pre-season training for the past two seasons, players participated in several workshops to promote this culture.

“For the last two fall [seasons] when we come back for our preseason training, the first five days of camp we’re only allowed one practice and a lot of meeting time. So for five nights in a row we’re doing workshops, or training, on a whole range of issues,” Head Coach Jeff Pederson ’02 said.

Football players worked with Real Men, Wellness Coordinator Jen Jacobsen ’95 and Student Affairs, among other organizations, to prepare for a successful year. Sexual consent, alcohol, diversity and other issues relevant to student life were discussed at the meetings.

The athletic department has also turned their focus to diversity in recent years. The initiative began with the appointment of Nnenna Akotaobi as the Coordinator of Diversity and Inclusion in Athletics. Her position is paid, in part, by a grant from the NCAA. Regardless of whether or not the grant is renewed, the position of Coordinator of Diversity and Inclusion in Athletics will remain permanent.

Akotaobi is one of two staff advisors for PDC and works with the student leaders to enable an open dialogue about diversity in athletics.

“[PDC] creates opportunities for [the students] to socialize and just kind of engage in different ways with different students from different teams. We have student athletes from all different types of backgrounds,” Akotaobi said. “Different socioeconomic backgrounds, different experiences, athletes and non-athletes all come together to talk about the athletic experience.”

Student leadership and widespread involvement also propels PDC.

“It’s really grown from what I even envisioned it to be and the students are just kind of taking it on themselves and kind of making it and molding it into what they see it to be,” Akotaobi said.

Stephanie Brown, Lead Psychologist & Director of Student Health & Counseling of Grinnell College came up with the idea of “Self-Care Week”, after seeing the effects that exhausting finals and stress had on students. The first Self-Care Week happened last spring, so this is only the third self-care week to take place at Grinnell.

Often self-care is low on the list of student priorities during Hell Week and Finals Week, but SHACss and the HWCs are trying to get students to think about taking care of themselves.

“Before we get to the crisis of final’s week and the week before that, we want to provide our students with some tools, or at least get them thinking about the idea of taking care of themselves,” said Jen Jacobsen, Wellness Coordinator. “From a wellness perspective, self-care is really holistic. It’s not just exercising enough, eating well, or sleeping enough; think about the plant potting event on Monday. Just working with your hand has shown to be very therapeutic and de-stressing. And then you can leave the flower in your room, which is nice.”

Self-Care-Week also partnered with the writing lab, which did Revision Palooza in JRC 101 on Monday. “That was some academic wellness to make sure you are on top of your papers and lab reports.” Jacobsen said.

There was Yoga and Yogurt in ForumSouth Lounge at 4:30pm on Wednesday, during which about 20 people showed up. “What I like about 4:30pm is that it encourages students to take a break between the end of classes and going to dinner, after which they will be studying in the evening. You can’t study 24 hours a day. Nobody can,” Jacobsen said.

Also on Wednesday was the Sexual Assault Awareness Panel talk, where a sexual assault survivor, college administrator, SGA representative, and psychologist from SHACs gave speeches.

The Hall Wellness Coordinators put together a smoothie-making event on Thursday during which people got fruit smoothies, based on the idea that fruit might reduce stress.

Chair Massages will be on today, Friday, May 4, hosted and sponsored by SHACs. “The idea is that some touch and physical contact is important in terms of releasing stress,” Jacobsen said.

Though uncertain about this year’s attendance, Jacobsen is confident about the activities: “Last year, the HWCs did ice cream and we handed out a hundred pieces of ice cream and other things also worked well.”

“One of the things that I like about Self-Care Week is that a lot of the things are driven by students, so it doesn’t need to be someone from SHACs, Wellness, or student affairs showing you how to take care for yourself,” Jacobsen said. “Students are really in power to be able to share their skills and knowledge, plan with other students and come up with good ideas.”

Photograph by Joanna Silverman

RLC Dan Hirsch and Eric Mistry ‘14 launched the project through Facebook and e-mail by encouraging the campus and city to attend. While at the event, Chris Dorman ‘12 kept spirits high by leading a giant wave. Anticipation ran high as the multi-generational crowd gathered at the edge of the field. Just a few minutes after 5:30 p.m. Hirsch counted down and the sky rained red Frisbees.

Hnida speaks in JRC 101. Photograph by Emma Sinai-Yunker

“I speak at colleges and universities across the country, and I have been so impressed with the action and the progressiveness of [Grinnell,]” Hnida said.

Hnida’s visit was sponsored by the Real Men Program, which is also holding Walk a Mile in Her Shoes, as part of Sexual Assault Awareness Week.

“This week is really something phenomenal,” said Hnida. “Taking this issue, grabbing the bull by the horns and talking about it—that is so important.”

Because of an injury to her quad at the age of thirteen, Hnida stopped playing soccer, but because she could still kick well, her father encouraged her to try out for the football team.

“Something about it just got my blood going,” Hnida said. “It was just right. I had found a home [in football].”

After graduating, Hnida enrolled at the University of Colorado-Boulder, where she was a walk-on kicker for the Buffaloes. Although her gender was accepted by her teammates in high school, members of Colorado’s team harassed Hnida throughout her year there. A teammate raped her, and she left Colorado. After recovering, she transferred to The University of New Mexico, where she continued her athletic career and became the first woman to score in a DI game.

JRC 101 was filled mostly with women, but many men, especially athletes, were also present.

“I think that [her talk] was vitally important, both because of issues with athletics and issues with the football team becoming more integrated on campus,” said Sam Offenberg ’14, a member of the Pioneer football team.

Hnida stressed that sexist behavior is not inherent in athletic activity. Although her time at the University of Colorado was “one of the darkest periods” in her life, Hnida was impressed and reassured by her teammates at New Mexico.

The Clothelines Project, in which students created t-shirts expressing their experiences and feelings about sexual assault, hangs in the JRC courtyard. Photograph by Joey Brown

“It was like having 100 really terrific brothers,” said Hnida. “I was just like a sister to a lot of the guys.”

However, Hnida needed healing before getting back into the game. After being raped, Hnida struggled to seek help, because she had difficulty defining what happened to her and she did not know where to turn for help.

“I did not go to the police. As a matter of fact, I did not tell anybody,” said Hnida, who explained that she also felt uncomfortable confiding in her parents. “I fell into a depression so deep that I couldn’t even get out of bed in the mornings.”

Eventually, Hnida found the courage to have hope.

“There was no giant Oprah ‘Ah Ha!’ moment. I just knew that I couldn’t live like that anymore,” Hnida said about seeking therapy. “It was really hard. It was really painful.”

Although she had avoided football after the attack, she began practicing her kicking at night on the field, and her love of the game returned.

“I wasn’t going to let anyone take that dream away from me,” Hnida said.

When other women accused football players at Colorado of sexual abuse, Hnida decided to come forward. Sports Illustrated‘s story generated a tremendous response that was at times overwhelming for Hnida.

“It was brutal when I reported,” Hnida said. “One of the worst things about sexual assault is that no one really wants to talk about it.”

The University of Colorado fired its coach, and two players from the team apologized to her for the abuse and harassment.

Hnida stresses the need for continued communication about issues concerning sexual abuse and rape, for both prevention and healing.

“I think that it’s really important when you’re with your peers, friends, boyfriends, and girlfriends, that this is something that you need to be aware of, something that needs to be discussed,” Hnida said.

“I think it was a great talk,” Cristal Coleman ’15 said after Hnida finished her speech. “Grinnell is a very aware and socially progressive place. I think that this talk created more awareness, and it’s going to fuel more progressive changes that are going to make Grinnell a better place.”

North American Regional Director of the United Nations Environemtal Program and Grinnell Alum Amy Fraenkel ’85 speaks at convocation yesterday in JRC 101. Photograph by Carl Sessions

How did your time at Grinnell prepare you for the multiple careers that you have had?
There are four areas. The first is the academics, but it’s not just academics and the materials we had to read—there were too many books sometimes—but the passion and the inspiration of our professors. Many of them just made you care. This is values-based academics. The other part is learning the spirit of debating and thinking for yourself, so you’re not taking [material] in passively. It’s a value of looking at the facts and questioning them.

The second part is something that you have to learn with any institution that you work with, whether it’s the private sector, or a non-profit group, or the government, or the UN, there’s always some kind of system you have to learn. Learning how to play the game and play it well is key…a work-play balance is also very important.

That helped with the next thing, which are relationships. One of the key things in my world, to get anything done in the Washington beltway or in the UN system, is you’ve got to have your networks with people. Usually nothing happens at meetings, everything happens outside the room, and often it’s precooked, so you walk in the meeting, and certain people in power know how it’s going to turn out. There’s a lot of coalition building and a sort of choreography…There is also the importance of coffee and beer. Basically having coffee or drinks with someone is so important to forge those relationships, step outside of the formal workplace and meetings. Often some of my best work and connections are done with very high-level people, but out of Washington. Last night, I saw Senator Kerry and a number of members of Congress.

Fourth is the one I feel most strongly about, I call it ‘don’t be a sheep.’ The courage to not be a conformist. The courage to take that skill of asking questions and really turning the stone over and pushing the envelope—not being satisfied with the status-quo…None of the great things of the world were done by people who avoided the line and upheld the status-quo. They were all people who were willing to take the risk. It might be unpopular or tough, you might get knocked down a few times, you might fail at some point. But timing is very important also. Policy has a rhythm, it can be opportunistic and very media-driven…people tend not to take big leaps in government unless there’s an opening, we tend to be very reactive, and I think that’s human nature. Seeing and seizing those moments and having the courage to get ready to leap through.

You’ve spent 25 years working in environmental law and policy, what’s changed, in terms of people’s concerns about the environment and the way international institutions have approached issues, the most during this time?
It’s a big question. It’s changed in a few major ways. I can take you back further since I was involved. When the environmental movement was formed, in the 60s and 70s, when EPA was created, our organization UNEP, Earth Day was created in 1970. There was this big, massive movement. Most of the major building-blocks of U.S environmental law were created then as well—the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act…The real push was in the 70’s, but it was still viewed as exterior—the tree huggers, they’re all about hugging polar bears and hearts or whatever—so it was kind of in a box outside of economic discussion completely. What’s happened since then is that the environmental situation has gotten a lot worse, and we also know a lot more. For example, even though scientists [detected] some early signs of climate change in the 60’s…One of the environmental economists talked about climate change. But it wasn’t well-known. And now we know a whole lot about it. We know about the loss of biodiversity. We’re losing an incredible amount of biodiversity in every region of the world. The amount of people without safe drinking water [or] access to safe sanitation, the population since the 70’s is unbelievable…It’s a whole different world than it used to be. Because of that, finally, slowly but surely, people are beginning to see that there are those limits to growth…Corporations are seeing it. They need natural resources and minerals as inputs, and they’re getting scarce. The water supply is not going to meet demand in 20 years. I think there has been a wake-up call.

Do you think that the upcoming Rio meeting will shed positive light on the UN?
I’m not sure. I’m very involved with that meeting. That dynamic is coming up front and center. The other piece of it is that there’s a challenge in overcoming short-term political realities, with the fiscal situation, it couldn’t be a tougher time for a meeting like Rio. It’s also a tough time in the U.S Congress and in other countries to try and pay attention to these issues. The old way of thinking is to deal with the environment after development…But it’s a tough sell to change conventional thinking. That means there’s been very, very little progress in the U.S Congress for example in any environmental legislation. And also, on the U.N issue as well. There’s been a bit of a drawing inward into domestic policy.

What areas would you suggest Grinnell students explore who are interested in working with environmental policy and law?
There are many different ways to contribute to these issues. My path has been one of policy and law. Another has been through economics—there is a tremendous demand for economists who get this stuff. Journalism is another which is very important. I think journalists really have stepped up, like Tom Friedman, who is one of my heroes. Scientists have also been stepping across the line into more of an advocacy role. All of what I work in is grounded in science. They are bringing it to policymakers and making the case for them to do something. You’ve got to make it compelling. And teaching is another area. There are endless ways to work on this.

Relays were initiated in 1973 and have been an on-and-off event for the past 40 years. Due to a rise in the drinking age and the college’s 150th birthday celebration, Relays took a couple hibernation periods. The most recent hiatus ended in 2002, and the games have been active ever since.

“Teams of six to eight people form teams. It’s a celebration of different relay games outside and it tries to connect the faculty and students in a more social environment. A lot of the SEPCs form teams, which means a lot of professors,” said event organizer Matt Rosenbaum ’12.

There will be a slight change in the format this year. Whereas in the past, many of the games involved drinking beer, this year there will be a beer garden for those who hold valid identification that they are of legal age to drink. It will be a barricaded area with kegs and drinking outside of the beer garden will not be allowed.

“It’s going to be a little different this year because in years past it’s been more drinking oriented with most of the games involving chugging beers. In an effort to ‘reduce harm’ we have to be more cognizant of public drinking,” explained Rosenbaum.

The relay games will instead involve chugging water and chugging milk.

After Relays, Titular Head will take place at 9pm in the Harris Gymnasium. Although the film festival began as an extension of Relays, in the past few years the event has taken on a life of its own. This year, there were over 50 submissions of student-produced films. Each film is limited to five minutes in length and the event should last about three hours. Margaret Allen ’12 and Ben Tape ’12, members of the Grinnell Ritalin Test Squad comedy improvisation group, will be hosting this year’s festival.

Kevin Jennison ’12, Ben Spears ’12, and Devin Turner ’12, the directors of several films including “I’m at Grinnell” and “Big Cookie” turn their talents to running the popular event.

“[Titular Head] is kind of notorious for showing a range of quality of videos. From stuff that you never really want to watch ever again to something that is really fun,” explained Jennison. “It’s often really self-referential and very confined to the Grinnell community.”

Attendees should be given fair warning; the videos can be quite graphic.

“It also has sort of a reputation for being explicit at times. Some of the videos that students make can be artful, humorous, and just outright provocative,” Turner said.

Nearly all videos submitted are being shown this year. There is no censorship and no video is removed from the festival for being too profane. Organizers have tried to include as much content as possible without letting the show go on for too long. A panel of 10 students judges the films and a winner is chosen every year. This year, the organizers are excited about the superiority of the submitted films.

“I think we can pretty confidently say that the quality of films this year is actually pretty solid. We’re really, really pleased with the films that people submitted,” said Spears.

The organizing trio has been active in Titular Head since first year, when they submitted their first video. This year, they submitted two videos.

“[The festival] embodies Grinnell’s quirkiness and sexual liberation and pride for the school and love for the little things that we have in common,” Jennison said.
Organizers also expressed gratitude for the support that ACE and SGA have given the festival.

“ACE and SGA have been helping us out a lot through every step of the way,” said Turner.

To make ACE security’s job easier, the organizers urge attendees not to throw things onto the stage, especially chairs.

“We’re super excited and I hope everybody else is too and it’s going to be a fun time,” said Jennison.

Schechter disclosed consulting firm Stegman + Associates’ plan for the future of the College’s dorms. Major renovations would occur over a 10-year period on every part of campus. A new dorm, referred to as “East E,” would be constructed as “swing space” to house students displaced by renovations. Group draws would predominate the new building layouts, and campus parking would be sacrificed. Senators noted positive and negative aspects to these parts of the plan.

VPSA Chris Dorman reassured the College that a campus-wide drug search rumor was, in fact, just a rumor. The Strategic Planning Steering Committee hopes to have a 20-page document released before the arrival of trustees on campus. The College has hired two new RLCs, and the Dining Hall’s donut machine is now functional. However, a schedule for donut delivery has not yet been announced.

Besides these highlights, much of Joint Board was monotonous and meandering. Many senators and even some cabinet members departed before the conclusion of the meeting after 11:00PM.

President-elect Colleen Osborne ’13 once again presented her cabinet appointees for next semester. Led by Senator Sam Mulopulos ’14, Joint Board discussed ways to fulfill its constitutional obligations in the appointment process and the creation of a closed hearing, to give senators privacy to express their true opinions on nominees, even though Mulopulos was sure that “all candidates are qualified.” These parliamentary procedures were debated for longer than the merits of the actual nominees, who were confirmed in all cases with nearly full support.

Senators reaffirmed the need for transparency when discussing S&B Editor-in-Chief Solomon Miller ’13’s resolution to create the position of SGA Outreach Director. A large amount of the grandstanding on the resolution was especially contradictory, given some senators’ earlier discussion of holding closed hearings, which by definition are not transparent.
“Make every student as capable as Matt Rosenbaum [’12] at getting a budget into SGA,” Miller said, suggesting that all Grinnellians should feel confident when trying to obtain funding for events or projects.

Osborne said that her Cabinet opposes the resolution and is sure it will communicate with constituents on its own, even after Dorman gave a disheartening account of the amount of time that he spends on SGA matters a day, leaving him without enough hours to truly engage students, let alone tackle schoolwork. Many senators also advocated for a resolution requiring weekly senator meetings with constituents.

“Senators should have more responsibility,” said Senator Jacob Washington ’15, who later in the evening admitted that he had not even attended Smounker’s last hall council. Mulopulos apparently neglected to consult Washington when unilaterally scheduling the joint meeting.

Toward the end of the evening, Schechter used a laser pointer to put a red dot on students assembled for Joint Board.

“Stop dicking around,” Aldrich admonished.

Photograph by Devon Gamble

For young people who are interested in farming but do not come from a farming background, do you think it’s possible for them to get into, and make a good living farming?
There’s no cut and dried answer to that. Everybody comes from a different perspective. I would say that you have to start somewhere. You don’t start with a whole system you start with a piece. Yes, for many people you do have to take a day job. Or maybe you don’t start where you are right now…maybe you go somewhere that’s more conducive to it. For example, Iowa right now is in an incredible land price explosion, which is a blip but maybe you have to go someplace else that’s not in quite such a land problem.

What are some ways that the type of farming is different for people hoping to start farming?
One of the beauties of my kind of farming is that it can be layered on an existing farm synergistically, without jeopardizing the mother ship. You can go on any of the farms around here and take 20 acres and start what I’m talking about and make a living that wouldn’t jeopardize the whole operation.

How can the farming practices you advocate, which include land restoration and environmentally conscious livestock husbandry, be applied to vegetable farming?
You’re going to have to charge a living wage. There are definitely economies of scale. Elliott Coleman is the guru of this up in main and he grows a product up in Main in the wintertime. All of this works. The weak link in this is creativity.

How do local farmers address the fact that the same market infrastucture is not available for small farmers that currently exists for the conventional system.
You do it one at a time. We’re not where we are over night and we wont change it overnight. You crawl before you walk. You don’t fix a whole you fix a piece. For example you could start and maybe you wouldn’t start right here, maybe you’d sell to Des Moines. We’ve pioneered our metropolitan buying club that uses the Internet. The thing now is that the Internet has given us amazing opportunities to real time market cheaply and locally that we’ve never had before. I believe that the future of food marketing is going to be without bricks and mortar. The whole effort to try to get our food into the super market is missing the boat. I think we’re heading towards no super market. Creative local farmers are just going ahead and jumping into that right now. There are three software companies in the country that are creating virtual farmers markets which takes all the bricks and mortars and warehousing and cashier out of the transaction which gets the cost down and completely circumvents all of the super market deal. I think as we start doing that we’re not going to feel as inhibited about a lot of things. In fact we’re going to be able to sell it cheaper than the super market because labor, energy and bricks and mortar are becoming more expensive. Those of us who are operating without it are going to be able to get better price comparison and put that money in our pocket to pay our higher labor and management costs so we don’t have to use the migrant labor.

Nick Volk and LaForest Sherman, two of the three candidates for senate district 38, chat before the Democratic Forum last Tuesday. Photograph by Emma Sinai-Yunker

“The point of the conference is to help reinvigorate the youth vote for the 2012 Election,” Frerick said. “All these party organizations have come together to plan this. We have worked with the Iowa Democratic Party, Obama for America, and the College Young Democrats of Iowa as we try to achieve the same objective in November.”

Congressman Bruce Braley from Iowa’s 1st District (including Grinnell), Iowa House Representative Tyler Olsen, Deputy Political Director of Obama for America Steve Walker, Grinnell’s own Rachel Bly, a candidate for State House, and others will be speaking in JRC 101 for the convention.

“This is the best line-up we’ve ever had,” Frerick said. “I want people to leave Grinnell knowing three things: knowing that we organized great hospitality for them, knowing that we are organized for 2012, and knowing that they have better connections to network with across the state.”

At the end of Saturday, Frerick has planned a political-themed Pub Quiz in Lyle’s. He hopes that participants build bonds that will be helpful in energizing democratic college students in Iowa, a battleground state, for the 2012 Election.

“Iowa has over thirty institutions of higher education,” Frerick said. “The purpose of the event at the Pub is to get them all together so they get to know each other in an informal setting, so they can reach out to each other and combine forces.”

Frerick encourages Grinnellians to participate in Iowa politics.

“All students are welcome to listen to the speakers,” Frerick said. “This is a good opportunity to see some big name politicians.”

The Grinnell College Democrats also hosted a forum in JRC 101 last Tuesday to introduce the three Democratic candidates for State Senator. Those running for office, opposed and unopposed met and spoke in front of a group of around 30 supporters. The group was made up of students, community members and college staff.

Joseph Engleman ’14 helped organize the event and said that overall, the forum went well.

“There was a great turn out, especially considering that there were a few other events happening on campus,” Engleman said. “We got to hear the three different visions of whom should be running district 38. And I believe they covered a lot of issues that college students want to hear about.”

The Democratic candidates who are unopposed in the primary were introduced first and allowed a brief statement: Rachel Bly for House District 76, Diana Dawley for County Auditor, Tom Kriegel for County Sheriff, and LaMoyne Gaard for County Supervisor. The Forum then featured the three Democratic candidates for Senate District 38: Shelley Parbs of Urbana, LaForest Sherman of Grinnell, and Nick Volk of Walford. Each of the candidates was allowed ten minutes for an opening statement, in which they highlighted their stand on issues such as employment and education.

After their opening statements, the floor was opened to the audience for questions. Each candidate answered to the best of their ability, and admitted when they needed to do more research before making a definitive statement. The forum concluded with closing statements from each of the candidates.

“We heard about what kind of debt level students are going to be graduating with and Monsanto, things like that. Students should know that the district is there to represent them,” said Engleman. He thinks it’s very important to have Democratic forums such as these on campus to keep students involved.

“I think one thing that we talk about a lot here at Grinnell is the divide between campus and community,” added Gracie Brandsgard ’14 Secretary for the national College Democrats of America. “This is a really great way of breaking that down. Having community members and students attend the same event and get informed is something that we should really be looking for.”

VPSA Chris Dorman ’12 discussed a new program to provide car rides in town for intoxicated students of the College in an effort to prevent students from “consciously choosing” to drink and drive in order to avoid the police. He hopes that this could solve that problem.

Dorman also encouraged students to make safe choices on 4/20, saying that police are currently “cracking down” on drug-related offenses.

“I would cease and desist—especially if you’re dealing,” Dorman said.

The Harm Reduction Committee reported two more hospitalizations this weekend, although only one of them was alcohol-related. The total number of students hospitalized for alcohol this year stands at 26.

President Gabe Schechter ’12 discussed the College’s admittance policies with Joint Board, welcoming any comments on the make-up of new classes.

“We want to better shape upcoming classes. Not that all of [your classes] weren’t shaped with the greatest amount of delicacy,” Schechter said teasingly.

Joint Board approved Ultimate Frisbee’s budget for their next competition, and to the dismay of ACE Coordinator Austin Frerick ’12, senators also voted to approve increased funding for party budgets, despite the over-allocation of ACE’s funds for this semester (much of that money has been allocated but not spent).

Senator Sam Mulopulos ’14 introduced a resolution to abolish postering for events in campus loggias, and Solomon Miller (Editor-in-Chief of the S&B) introduced a resolution for the creation of an SGA Outreach Director to increase communication between the SGA and Grinnell’s students. Both were tabled for discussion next week.

SGA President-elect Colleen Osborne ’13 also introduced the appointed members of next year’s Cabinet to Joint Board, allowing senators to ask a series of often silly questions. Chloe Griffin ’14 will be ACE Coordinator, and her star sign is Virgo. Ron Chu ’13 will be Administrative Coordinator, and he can type at least 100 words a minute. Roni Finkelstein ’15, a writer for the S&B, will be Assistant Treasurer. Osborne said that Finkelstein is “really into” economics. Emily Evans ’13 will be Films Chair, and she is happy to share her “new, innovative ideas” with the rest of the campus. Zafreen Farishta ’13, a Big Sister in the Grinnell community, will be Services Coordinator. Last but not least, Poojith Padmaraj ’13 will return for a second term as Concerts Chair. Doubting his qualifications, Senator Alex Krempely ’13 asked him, “Why do you think you’d be a good Concerts Chair?”

-Compiled by Joe Wlos

After secret experiments funded by SGA for the purposes of creating a synthetic SGA gavel with equal power to Thor’s hammer Mjolnir, Grinnell scientists accidentally generated a virus that causes the dead to be reanimated. Contrary to common sense, the best defense against the horde appears to be Nerf guns.

The virus was accidentally released Wednesday evening when three unidentified students put on infected headbands and were instantly killed and re-animated. The National Guard was notified, but will not be able to come and save Grinnell until Sunday because, “Finals are just around the corner and [they] have real things to do.”

HVZ organizer James Tiffany ‘15 callously explained the rules.

“Humans v. Zombies is basically a glorified game of tag,” Tiffany ’15 said. “But it has little things added to it. The zombies are the ones tagging and the humans are stunning them with darts or socks.”

HVZ was created in 2005 by students from Goucher College in Maryland. Since its inception, it has spread to over 1,000 different universities, high schools and cities across six continents. The rules that the Goucher College students outlined (which are available at humansvszombies.org) are simple: everyone starts as a human except for one person who is the original zombie, if a zombie tags a human they turn into a zombie, zombies must “feed” (tag a human) every 48 hours and humans can “stun” zombies by shooting them with a Nerf gun or hitting them with a rolled up sock. The zombies win if they convert all humans, and the humans win if they survive long enough for all the zombies to “starve.”
However, Tiffany decided to make “house rules” for the Grinnell game.

“Both humans and zombies will have missions to complete,” Tiffany explained. “Humans will have missions like escorting [a human] from ARH to Rathje. An email will be sent through the website to all the humans in advance, but zombies won’t be notified until closer to the mission.”

The website Tiffany refers to is the HVZ resource site for Grinnell survivors (http://www.hvzsource.com/grinnellcollege/) which has a list of all of the participants and a live feed of the number of zombies and humans.

The Nerf guns used at Nerf at Noyce are being used to equip the 70 humans to fight off the zombies.

“This event is sort of affiliated with Nerf at Noyce,” Tiffany said. “[But] the stuff they have originally came from SGA.”

The battle that is raging on campus is taking place across campus except some academic buildings, the dining hall and dorm rooms and restrooms.

Spencer Libreto ’15 was one of the zombies’ earliest victims.

“I’m a second generation zombie” Libreto said on Thursday. “So far I’ve eaten three brains. I’ve learned that you’ve got to be on the prowl constantly or humans will figure out where you are. I was out until 1:30 a.m. last night, waiting for the libraries to close.”

HVZ will continue all weekend, with significant missions occurring today and on Saturday. The capstone of the event (assuming the humans are still alive) will be on Sunday morning, when the survivors will make their final escape from the zombies.

—additional reporting made up by Michael Schoelz

“I was so mad that the thunderstorm was trying to steal my thunder,” Miah remarked. “But I thought it was very, very emotional.”

Miah was one of many return performers for whom Drag Show is a defining memory of Grinnell.

“We have a lot of senior divas who have been doing this since freshman year. Jared, Christian and I—we have been doing this all four years, and it was a testament to how much we have grown as individuals and performers. Our performances really encapsulate everything we have learned at Grinnell.”

QPOC allowed Miah to find his place on campus.

“I tend to be perceived as this bitch from New York City who hates people, whereas I just don’t really care,” said Miah. “I’m not from the midwest, I’m not always friendly to everyone. I just like doing my own thing and not being bothered. QPOC was an organization where I could show aspects of my personality and be respected. I wanted to display that in terms of performance art, and I could show my New York side, my Bengali side, and bring everything together and let the school be a part of me that wouldn’t necessarily be twisted or manipulated out of hand. It’s just, ‘This is Sejan doing what he likes to do.’ And for me it was just a safe space of artistic expression where we can have people think about gender.”

QPOC, which meets weekly in the Stonewall Resource Center, aims to address issues of racial, ethnic and economic inequity within the queer establishment. As part of pride week this year, QPOC was instrumental in bringing Esera Tuaolo, retired NFL player and gay rights activist. As one of his last acts as QPOC co-leader, Miah served as the master of ceremonies of Drag 2.0, which earned close to $500 for the Iowa Pride Network.

Elliot Karl ‘12, one of the drag show divas, served as an announcer in the show. For Drag, Elliot donned the visage of his drag personality, Deborah, complete with heels, red lipstick and the classic little black dress. During his time on stage, Karl commented on the purpose of drag as a political act. In a later interview Karl explained what he meant by his comments.

“The act of adorning clothing, non-gender normative clothing, and in some cases performing a gender that you yourself do not identify as, it has been used in a variety of historical and cultural contexts in a way that’s both supposed to be fun, and there is a lot of community that’s built around doing drag, but it’s also political in that it challenges essentialist notions of gender by highlighting how all individuals or any individual can do, perform, be a gender, can perform a variety of different styles of gender. If I, in what I present as a man, can strut in heels better than most women I know, what does that means for a stable assumption of traditional womanhood?”

In response to student frustration last year, the Room Draw number allocation was also restructured.

“Numbers are always randomly assigned, and in previous years students were first grouped by their class year, i.e., seniority, but that random number could be anything from 1 to 1,100 (the total number of students except graduating seniors). This year, to make it more consistent and a little bit more sensible, instead of having a rising senior with a room draw number of 700, we sorted all the students by seniority first so the low numbers all went to the rising seniors,” said Laura Gogg, technical assistant of Student Affairs.

This means that all rising seniors will have a number between 1 and 416; rising juniors will get between 417 and 746, etc. The new allocation of room draw number gives students a better sense of what their chances are in terms of getting a single or being able to choose a dorm in certain part of the campus.

It might be easier this year for upper classmen to get off-campus housing, however it’s not necessarily because of the potential big first year class. And despite the change, Gogg emphasized the difficult and complicated process that goes into arranging housing for a constantly changing student body.

“Sometimes we do not have as many people who want to move off, and we are also balancing how many students are going abroad and the number of transfer students, so there are several factors that we have to take into consideration,” said Gogg said.

Conner explained that off-campus housing may still be available, to give the administration some padding to make sure all students fit.

“If students are still interested in living off-campus, they can write to us and ask to be put on the list, since we may have the availability to let more people off-campus.” Conner said.

The number of students living off-campus is usually between 150 and 200.

“Right now we are at 146, with several declines coming in for offers that we sent. … We have a little bit flexibility,” said Gogg. “If someone is interested, they should let us know, and we can put them on the waitlist; right now there’s no one on the waitlist.”

Laura also advises students to contact her early if they are taking a leave of absence in the fall but are planning on returning to Grinnell in the spring. For current students that do not have a roommate, they can complete a form, and their names will be added to a spreadsheet with their information, which gets sent out to everyone that’s on the list.

“The most number we’ve had on the spreadsheet was 33, and right now we are down to 18, so it’s been really successful in helping students finding their future roomies,” Gogg said.

Vice President of Academic Affair Wadzi Motsi ’12, one of the main organizers of the this week’s symposium, was both proud and encouraged about Grinnellians involvement in the symposium.

David Shinn, former U.S. ambassador to Burkina Faso and Ethiopia, is currently the Adjunct Professor at the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University. Formerly, Shinn served under President Bill Clinton between 1996-1999. On Thursday, Dr. Shinn presented on China’s expanding role in Africa as an investor in many different Afrcian countries’ economies. Photograph by Emma Sinai-Yunker

“It’s a good chance to talk about Africa on campus,” Motsi said. “The symposium has been really well rounded. I think it’s informative for a lot of people. Usually when people talk about Africa they talk about the poverty, the hunger, the sad faces. The symposium has been a lot more well rounded than that.”

Often the conversations surrounding development lean towards talking about the more desperate situations on the continent. Motsi, however, emphasized that the symposium this week brought in many more perspectives and expanded the conversations on campus surrounding Africa.

“African countries are some of the poorest in the world, but there’s also another story of African activists, countries growing economies, all those narratives are coming through,” she said.

On Monday, Lahra Smith, assistant professor in Georgetown’s University’s School of Foreign Service, discussed Africa’s rapid political and economic development. She argued that Africa is currently breaking away from its previous history of economic decline and unstable governmental systems by improving education and health care institutions, as well as through agricultural and industrial development. According to Smith, Africa’s economy is developing more rapidly than any other region in the world.

Kelly Askew, associate professor of anthropology and Afroamerican/African Studies at the University of Michigan, discussed song and poetry that coincided with the death of Tanzania’s first president, Julius Nyerere.  Nyerere implemented a socialist economic system, under which he protested subnational divisions, such as ethnic, religious or racial differences. He also promoted liberation movements across Africa. Askew translated and analyzed 150 of the many mourning songs of various genres that were played within the forty days prior to Nyerere’s death. Within them, she found recurring themes of love, peace, unity, God and Nyerere’s wisdom and success but notably absent was any word for “socialism.” Askew continued her research by examining United States journal articles discussing Nyerere’s life and death, and she found that every single one defined him as a “socialist,” typically in a negative context.

Julius E. Coles, former president of Africare, an African-American non-profit organization that provides aid for Africa, spoke at convocation about African political and economic development. During his tenure at Africare the organization size doubled from 30 to 60 million dollars. A graduate of Morehouse College, Coles emphasized that his experiences studying abroad gave him the confidence to pursue his international career and live as a global citizen. Coles sat down with S&B correspondent Charlotte Hechler to discuss his experience working as a global citizen in international development.

What do you think is the role of the United States Federal Government as well as individual grassroots organizations regarding Africa and development? 
I think that when you look at development in Africa, it needs all the help that it can get. It’s in dire need of assistance—it’s the poorest area of the world. From my perspective, it needs help from multi-lateral financial institutions like the World Bank and IMF. That assistance needs to be on softer terms than is currently being provided because those organizations have contributed to a very large debt structure that is hampering African countries. Second, I think that government assistance like the United States Agency for International Development or other bi-lateral programs are also important because they bring different skills and values to the table, in terms of helping Africa. But very often, governmental organizations and international financial institutions work at a much larger level—at the governmental level. So NGOs work at the grassroots level, and they are able to get down and work with communities and poorer people. The NGO community has a vast responsibility for working with people at the grassroots level and increasing their capacity. They work in areas where other organizations are not able to work.

On other hand, some governments are becoming very critical of NGOs: they feel that these organizations are not following the government’s strategy for development—that they go off on their own and do their own thing, and that nobody’s there to guide them; that they do whatever they want to do, rather than what the people want to do. So now, there is some attempt in many countries to bring some control to these organizations and not let them work as freely as they have worked in the past. That has both [pros and cons], but I think that in general, we shouldn’t try to put that many restrictions on these types organizations; that they do good work and that they do try to help people in lower levels of income.

One prominent question in Global Development issues is how to provide aid for developing countries to increase the quality of life without imposing upon their culture. What is your opinion on this matter? How can grassroots organizations achieve their goals without replacing traditional culture? 
I think the first thing that organizations have to do is listen to what the people say: to communicate with the people. Very often, we as Americans or foreigners go into an environment and we have our own ideas of what needs to be done. And we don’t really try to find out what the people want to have done. Sometimes, there may be conflicts between the aspirations of the donor organizations and the community. But in the longer run, I think it’s best that we try to help [the communities] achieve their goals. And if we can help to influence their ideas of what needs to be done, I think that’s fine but that’s not the highest priority. Our highest priority is to help them to achieve their goals, and to listen to what their goals are. And very often, they have a better idea of what needs be done in their community than the outsider because they know what the environment is like, they know what the shortages are like, they have an understanding of peoples’ health traditions.

The whole issue of cultural sensitivity is very important. Very often, in my own experience in working in development, I’ve felt that it was necessary to employ social scientists (anthropologists and sociologists) to come in and do an analysis of the society and try to understand what some of the problems are, what some of the conflicts are, what the aspirations of the people are. I still think that that has a lot of merit, but we seem to be moving away from that now. So, I think there is a role for social analysis and anthropologists in the development field and they should be more employed by international organizations to have a better understanding of what people see as their own aspirations.

How do you keep hopeful and optimistic in a work where you probably won’t see the extent of the desired changes? 
I am very optimistic because I have been working in development work for 50 years of my life. So I saw Africa at the time of independence in the 1960s. I saw Africa at the end of colonialism, and at the beginning of their independent periods. So now, when I go back to Africa, I see Africa from an optic of 50 years. I’ve seen many many positive developments. I’ve seen changes in the educational system, improvements in health, improvements in infrastructure, quality of housing, development and expansion of the middle class. So I don’t look at development in short terms; I look it in much broader terms. And change does not occur over night. It takes time for change to occur. So I don’t have high expectations of change and success in short periods of time. I look at 10 to 20-year periods, and then I can judge. I think we as Americans very often want too much success and instant results.  The world does not work that way.

What advice would you give to those Grinnell students who are interested in pursuing a career in Global Development? 
Well I think that Grinnell is an excellent environment. I’ve been impressed with the diversity of the student body–the number of international students who are here– the students who come from different countries and speak in different languages. For a small college, I think this is really a unique environment in that regard. I have also had the opportunity to look at the variety of courses offered here, and I think that it provides a good educational background for students to develop the knowledge necessary to be a global citizen, and work in an international environment.

“SGA and ACE approved me to use funds in this way and, given this approval, I made financial commitments to performers with those funds,” Rosenbaum said in an email to the S&B. “I now face the reality of having to break my contract with these performers, which reflects poorly on the professionalism of myself and Grinnell College students.”

Rosenbaum states that he hired Stateline to perform “well known covers of light rock and other genres of music,” and he planned on having the band perform only in the early afternoon.  However, a group of students presented over 250 signatures against the band, suggesting that Stateline’s style was not “representative of what the entire class would like to hear.”

Tiffany Massey ’12 asked Joint Board to consider eliminating the band entirely and replacing it with student bands and rappers, even at a loss of $1,600.  President Gabe Schechter ’12 said that her plan was feasible.

“That money is not nearly the equivalent of making people feel like their last day on campus has been in someway tarnished,” Schechter said.

Although some senators said that the Joint Board debate was a “fine example of democracy,” the proceedings were sometimes uncivil, and senators and cabinet members traded shots with each other, forcing Presiding Officer Peter Aldrich ’15 to call many members out of order.

“The first four or five speakers who spoke in favor of the band were white men.  The women who spoke against it were black women.  It will not go unnoticed,” VPAA Wadzi Motsi ’12 said halfway through the meeting.

In previous weeks, Motsi has suggested that the College does not pay enough attention to affairs concerning African-American students.  However, there were many students and senators who supported the concerns of the petitioners, regardless of race.

The senators from Smounker—Jacob Washington ’15 and Sam Mulopulos ’14—both adamantly espoused the merits of the petition to remove the band, with Washington saying that constituent concerns must be heard and Mulopulos calling the evening a “massive outpouring of democracy.”

Later in Joint Board, Administrative Coordinator Alex White ’12 chastised Washington and Mulopulos for not contacting constituents frequently enough, a very undemocratic problem.  Their last mass email message to Smounker was at the beginning of March. Mulopulos claims that he regularly posters in the bathrooms, because it is more effective than email contact.

Eventually, Mulopulos proposed a resolution to repeal the funds for Stateline.  Although many senators spoke in favor of the resolution, some, especially Sam Offenberg ’14 and Max Farrell ’12 of CaNaDa, supported the band.

“People [complain], but they never emphasize their satisfaction,” Farrell said, after stating that many of his constituents actually approve of the band.  “Folks will still get down with the get down at the Block Party, no matter what.”

Next week, the final debate and vote on the issue will occur, and the funds for Stateline will either be stripped or kept in the budget.  In his email to the S&B, Rosenbaum suggested that this conversation has accentuated some larger issues with the SGA.

“Perhaps … this is a situation which highlights problems in the budget process and suggests that SGA needs to reform some of its policies regarding the allocation of funds,” he wrote.

“We have committees which are supposed to vet budgets,” VPSA Chris Dorman ‘12 said.  “My fear is that this makes us entirely inefficient. This is not how Joint Board should happen.”

­­—Compiled by Joe Wlos

Primarily, the body is set to prioritize and take action on pressing issues of diversity, to be tackled in the short term.

“We want to make sure that every year there is an outcome so that this is really not just having diversity conversations,” Bernal said. “There are many places for that and [the conversations] can even be sponsored by the council, but these conversations should come to a place where they actually have an impact on the campus community.”

Diversity is a priority for President Kington because of the vital part it plays in a complete education.

“I think its impossible to call yourself an educated person now if you are not comfortable dealing with a diverse group of people in all sorts of ways, whether that be social class or race diversity or geography or age or nationality,” Kington said.

The chairs have already begun speaking with President Kington about initiatives concerning enrollment.

“We’ve talked about veterans, we’ve talked about students with disabilities, we’ve talked about first-generation students and students with a difference in political perspectives and just really expanded that,” Bernal explained.  “We really want to make sure that it’s that harmony of voices on issues that we’re dealing with.”

The council will consist of a variety of students, staff and faculty. Student members will be drawn from SGA cabinet and the Multicultural Leadership Council as President Kington sees these two bodies as vital structures in representing the student body.

“When possible, I, in forming committees like this, do like to build on government structure, so we asked SGA in this case to give us a representative to make sure that we have appropriate student voices and also that that voice is connected to the government structure of the student body,” Kington said.

The initiative is meant to provide experience for Grinnell students that will help them throughout college, graduate school and their careers.

“We live in a diverse world and I think that you can proceed professionally or even in terms of being an engaged member of a democracy without having an ability to function in a diverse world and work with people who are different from yourself,” Kington said.

Despite rumors that circulated when the program was first implemented, the administration will not charge money for printing next year, said Bill Francis, Director of Information Technology Services.

“We were never really that interested in making money off of [printing],” Francis said. “Other peer institutions had a pay and release system, but I don’t think we need to go in that direction.”

Burling Library, where the largest volume of printing takes place on campus, went from wasting a ream, 500 pages, of paper a day to less than a ream a week, according to Chad Zinn ’07, Information and Technology Support Specialist.

“There’s not nearly as much paper being wasted,” said Beth Bohstedt, Manager of Access Service at Burling Library. “There’s a much smaller amount of unclaimed documents as there has been in the previous years.”

“Pride is a word that has a lot of meanings among people who consider themselves as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer,” said Elliot Karl ‘12, SRC Manager. “Politically, ‘pride’ is the opposite of ‘shame’ and is for people who are sexual minorities. A lot of times, because of systematic transphobia and homophobia, we are meant to feel shame about who we are; so pride is a celebration of ourselves, our love, our identity, our sexuality. [Pride week] is supposed to be as inclusive as possible, and at Grinnell, what’s really great about pride is that it is an inclusive pride for allied as well as queer students.”

Katie Wirsing, a spoken word poet brought to campus by SRC staff, performed on Monday in Herrick chapel. Tuesday was “Trans*Day,” with “Cross Dress to Class,” a Transgender Sexuality discussion in Smith Lounge, and the “Paris is Burning” Film Showing and Drag Discussion in the SRC. On Wednesday, there were “What a Feminist Looks Like” activities in the Grille, as well as an LGBTQ Identity in Athletics Presentation in ARH. Thanks to the work done by Javon Garcia ’14, Grinnellians are able to see Esera Tualo, one of only three NFL football players who have come out as gay after their career in the NFL.

“I would say the biggest event of the week is the former NFL player Esera Tuaolo giving the talk ‘Creating a World of Tolerance,’” said Karl.  “This event is of special interest to our campus because I feel like during my time in Grinnell we talked a lot about divisions between athletes and students who are involved in activist organizations, so the idea that there is a gay NFL athlete coming to Grinnell to talk about what it is like to be a gay athlete seems to be very germane to conversations we’ve had on campus in the past.”

Also on Thursday, Cait De Mott Grady is releasing a drag show book in the SRC.

“The SRC this year has really attempted to diversify our program; we had an academic come in the fall, an artist come on Monday, and an activist come on Thursday. We are trying to diversify our events and provide educational, entertainment and activist opportunities, as well as partnering with a number of students organizations, such as the volleyball team, pioneer diversity counsel, and ACE [All Campus Events Committee],” Karl said.

“We are proud to help support the SRC with its Pride Week each year. We have worked together to create one of the most robust schedules in years and couldn’t be prouder,” said All-Campus Events Coordinator Austin Frerick ‘12.

The Drag Show will be on Saturday, and on Sunday there will be a “pride parade” starting at 11:30a.m. in the Main parking lot. The parade will go around the campus and end at the annual BBQueer outside of Cleveland, after which people are welcome to make hand prints on the wall of the SRC.

All the events have been advertised well, and Karl is satisfied with the level of attendance so far.

“Some are more popular than others, but the turn out in general is good. We put posters in the JRC and academic buildings and we send out daily emails,” Karl said. “We have been very proactive in trying to get the information out.”

“As the cost to run and maintain the college increases, the amount of revenue also needs to increase,” said Doug Badger, Acting Dean of Admission. “We recognize the potential impact this can have on students and their families, and the College tries its best to minimize that.”
Some students worry that the increase in the cost will see a direct effect on their financial aid.

“I don’t mind the increase, but I’m worried about how it will affect mine and other people’s financial aid,” said Manu Spooner ’13.

However, Badger assured that Financial Aid is fairly unaffected by this increase.

“Financial aid is adjusted to help compensate,” Badger said. “Every year students reapply for financial aid and it is adjusted to fit their family’s current financial situation; if nothing in their situation has changed, then they would receive a comparable increase in their financial aid that corresponds to the increase in tuition.”

Students seemed to understand the need for the increase, but they definitely wanted to see some more scrutiny placed on the use of the money.

“I’d like to know exactly how the College is spending the money,” said Beck Ringdahl-Mayland ’13. “And I’d also like to see comparative data on how our tuition increases over the last five years compared to our peer institutions.”

Another major concern surrounding the discussion of the comprehensive fee increase is whether the value of education remains high enough to justify the increasing costs.

“[There is] no question that college is expensive,” said Badger. “But when you look at the average debt load of our students upon graduation [$16,000 – 18,000], students are in less debt than the average family buying a car. And if you consider the value of a car decreases tremendously very quickly and the value of the college education increases over time, [the cost of college] is still an incredibly valuable and worthwhile investment.”

“We admitted over 1300 students this year for both early decision and regular decision,” said Director of Admission Doug Badger. “Our goal is about 450 for the first-year class. Hopefully we’ll have 50-55 international students, and the rest will be domestic students.”

Accepted students still have until May 1 to postmark a response to the College’s letter.  The results of that will determine how many students are admitted from the wait list, leaving Grinnell with the final acceptance numbers for the year.

Grinnell generally enjoys a very diverse geographic representation in the student body, and the Class of 2016 is no exception.

“Although we have terrific students on campus already, we are confident that the next entering class will be a very strong one for the college,” Badger said. “The strength of this year’s admitted pool is the standardized test scores. If you look at them, they are notably stronger than we’ve had in recent years.”

In the international pool, Grinnell admitted 23 students from other countries during early decision this year.

“We are still trying to get 12 percent of each incoming class as non-US citizens. So that means if we look at a class with 450 or so, we are told to bring in 54 international students,” Badger said. “This year we took a handful more students in ED2. So nearly half of the class is already confirmed, which is good for security reasons.”

The College did not anticipate the level of increase of applications from both international and domestic applicants. Last year, approximately 900 international prospective students submitted applications, and around 11 percent were admitted. This year, the number surged from 900 to 1428.

“That’s a huge jump, and most of them are in the regular decision pool,” said Jonathan Edwards, Coordinator of International Admission
Of these 1428 admitted students, 84 students from 36 countries are represented in the regular pool.

“This year is kind of nice because we have a little more variety in Latin America, like Costa Rica, Ecuador,” Edwards said. “We also saw an increase of applicants from India and we accepted more because a number of Indian students are graduating.”

The Admissions Office is trying to keep the number of admitted students from each country representative of the number of applications from each. China is undoubtedly the number one exporter of students to the US, with around 400 applicants for Grinnell. The second is India, which usually has 70-80 applications. Grinnell’s international yield, or number of students who commit to attending, is usually around 38 percent, compared to 28 percent for the domestic pool.

“Because we had more applicants, we could be more selective, since we were selecting higher profile students, so the average test score and GPA will be higher, but what happens when you admit those really high achieving students is that other schools are admitting them too, and they’ll have more options, so the yield might be a little bit lower,” Edwards said.

Senators and Cabinet unanimously agreed to begin preparations for the battle.  Grinnell’s zombie apocalypse begins on April 18.  SGA allocated most of the money for the purchase of Nerf guns and ammunition for the game, but VPSA Chris Dorman ’12 ensured that participants would be also be able use their own Nerf guns, if they already had a stockpile of weapons ready.

All survivors will be invited to celebrate the end of classes with Block Party, whose budget SGA also approved. Matt Rosenbaum ’12, who appeared before Joint Board as the Block Party representative, said that although the official celebration would begin on the morning of May 18, “you can start anytime you want to.”

Rosenbaum presented the $6,000 budget to Joint Board, which approved the large sum after Rosenbaum explained that he had ordered “a lot more food.”

“Also, I ordered a lot more alcohol,” Rosenbaum added.

A second beer truck was on the budget to ensure that students arriving after afternoon finals would be able to refresh themselves.  In addition, Rosenbaum would also proposed booking a band for the event.  In the past, several student bands played for free throughout the party, but this year, after Rosenbaum heard a band that he claims plays “light rock” and maybe some country, in a casino over spring break, he will attempt to contact and book them for the event.

With the help of Stegman Consultants, Grinnell is considering “serious recommendations” for changes to the residence halls.  President Gabe Schechter ’12 reports that a new dorm on East Campus, referred to as “East E,” could replace the parking lot at the end of East Street.  The new dorm would have a layout more conducive to hosting events on East campus. Schechter hopes that it would provide more character to that section of campus buildings.

Another addition to residence life is the possibility of new Project Townhouses, possibly as large as Cleveland Hall, which would add more space for students to live in unique communities, such as Eco House.  Assistant Director of Security Russ Motta noted that renovations to all existing halls, especially to make the dorms more handicapped accessible, are still under consideration.

VPAA Wadzi Motsi ’12 briefed Joint Board to changes to Grinnell’s off-campus locations.  The College is considering changes to the Grinnell-in-London program, decreasing the number of faculty who journey to London for the full semester, while adding faculty who go for a brief period.  Motsi also updated Cabinet on the College’s continued efforts to “redesign interdisciplinary [studies] entirely at Grinnell.”

Finally, Administrative Coordinator Alex White ’12 stressed to senators that they must hold their hall councils as soon as possible, a solicitation that received some dissent and provoked a response from Chair Peter Aldrich ’15.

“I don’t like to be mean, but you have to talk to your constituents,” White said.

“Alex doesn’t like being mean, but I do,” Aldrich continued.  He proceeded to ominously explain the rules of impeachment to Joint Board.  By the end of the meeting, he was accusing senators of “naying” inappropriately, like donkeys.  Aldrich apologized for those comments, because they were out of order.

The Truman Scholarship was awarded to Charity Porotesano ’12 from American Samoa, a major in Political Science and former student government senator. This scholarship provides financial support worth $30,000 for college students with exceptional leadership skills interested in public service, education and advocacy to pursue graduate studies.

More recently, the Goldwater Scholarship was presented to Alice Nadeau ’13; Rebecca Mandt ’13 achieved honorable mention. Nadeau, a Mathematics major from Waterloo, IA, was chosen for this award in recognition of her excellence in mathematics and science.
Finally, Mateo C. Jarquin ’13, a History major from Nicaragua, was chosen as a Beinecke scholar. This scholarship is meant to enable highly motivated students of exceptional promise to pursue graduate studies in arts, humanities and social sciences. Jarquin will receive $4,000 upon entering graduate school and an additional $30,000 during his graduate program.

Grinnell is used to bringing in awards, and students have won each of these in the past. However, as Doug Cutchins, Director of Social Commitment, explained, the fact that they won in each of the different awards in the same year, and that they were announced within a two week span, made the recognitions resonate even more in the community.

“This is a great pat-on-the-back, not just for these four students, but for the professors, administrators and peers that have worked with them,” Cutchins said. “These awards go to specific students, but they recognize the general excellence of Grinnell College. I think we all share in these students success. Additionally, they will attract new talented students.”

Next year, Porotesano will be teaching social studies in the sixth and eighth grades back in Samoa. During that time she will apply for graduate school, possibly University of Iowa, University of Wisconsin-Madison or Vanderbilt University. She plans to remain involved with education reform in Samoa.

Jarquin and Nadeau will be back on campus next fall to finish out their undergraduate degrees. Motsi’s Watson project will take her to Ghana, Tunisia, the Czech Republic and Cambodia where she will study young political activism movements in each of those countries.
“It’s not so much about what young activists are doing, so much as it is about why they do it—really getting at the heart of what motivates people to become active in politics or disengaged,” Motsi explained. “I’m interested in finding out what drives people, because then you can find out how to advocate for their issues.”

Both Motsi and Porotesano insisted that there is no single formula for winning these awards. Motsi recommended that candidates should pick a topic that they are very passionate about, because that truly expresses their personality. Porotesano agreed that being authentic is the first major step and both valued how much Grinnell had pushed their boundaries and shaped their today person.

“If anything, it is always important to be yourself, and not something you think the judges want you to be,” Porotesano said.
Porotesano saw her raw determination was key to her application, despite the unpredictable nature of the election process. Her fear came from how highly qualified the other finalists were and how she would fit into the jury’s ideal Truman scholar mold.

“Since they are Truman scholars, they are trying to find out if the person is committed or if they embody Truman values to become a public servant,” Porotesano said. “For me this wasn’t just an award to add to a belt. They saw that I was somebody determined to make a difference. I was nervous, but I was going to get this.”