The grueling selection process spread out over a period of three months and included interviews at national conferences, meetings with students and faculty on campus and evaluations.

Dennis, Don and Gallant all possess educational backgrounds similar to Grinnell’s liberal arts tradition.

“One of the things I’m really excited about is that all of the RLCs come from amazing undergraduate institutions that will help them understand Grinnell,” said Assistant Dean of Students and Director of Residence Life and Orientation Andrea Conner. “They have an inherent understanding of how we function.”

Dennis graduated from the College of William and Mary in 2008 with a degree in Government and minor in Sociology. She currently attends the College as a graduate student pursuing a degree in Educational Leadership and is she is set to graduate this spring.
“I’m sad to go after being at William and Mary for six years, but at the same time I’m excited,” Dennis said in a phone interview.
Don, currently a graduate student of Student Development in Postsecondary Education attending the University of Iowa, received her bachelor’s degree in Psychology and Studio Art from Kenyon College in 2005. After graduating from Kenyon, she worked as a page layout designer for the Chicago Sun Times for three years.

“I wanted to get my legs under me before working in Student Affairs,” Don said. “But I missed that smaller community that you can only have on a small campus.”

Gallant, also a graduate student, currently studies Higher Education and Student Personnel Administration at New York University. He graduated from Brandeis University in 2008 with a degree in Sociology and Politics.

In addition to having educational backgrounds in higher education, all of the new RLCs have hands-on experience in Student Affairs.
“A lot of my current experience in Student Affairs came from my college experience,” Don said. “I was pretty involved in undergraduate orientation—I developed a pre-orientation program [at Kenyon] for first year students that helped them get acclimated to campus.”
Dennis echoes this involvement in Student Affairs through her work in the admissions office and orientation and family programs. However, she wasn’t always interested in higher education.

“I was a government major. I was going to go to law school,” Dennis said.

However, at the beginning of her senior year, however, she began to reconsider.

“I thought, ‘I love working with students.’ My mentor told me that I could do it as a career. She steered me towards higher education and administration,” Dennis said. “I wrote my master’s thesis on how first generation college students transition to school and I would love to get involved in doing this on campus.”

Gallant, too, was very engaged outside of the classroom during his undergraduate years. He was involved in new student orientation, student mentoring, student government, and the career center. Through the career center, he discovered Student Affairs. Currently working at Columbia University, Gallant advises student groups focused around religious, spiritual, humanitarian, and social advocacy issues. He attributes his fondness for Grinnell to its history of social advocacy.

“I have strong values around social justice and civic engagement,” Gallant said.

All of the new hires have expressed their excitement and anticipation for next year.

“I’ve definitely been wearing a lot more red and black in my wardrobe,” Don said.

Russel K. Osgood, President of the College poses for a portrait outside Nollen House. - Ben Brewer

The S&B sat down with President Russell K. Osgood to discuss a variety of issues encountered during his time here at Grinnell. What follows is the last part of Osgood’s Q&A. In this week’s edition of the Q&A, RKO lays out his views on college presidents and what he expects from the transition process.

When you laid out your views about college presidents, something came up that I’ve heard students talk about, I don’t know the particulars on the issue or even the sides, but you said “don’t stay for too long.” What is too long?

In my view, ten years is plenty. In retrospect, there’s nothing wrong with twelve. The logic when we got to ten was that we were just starting the athletic building and we were just starting the strategic plan. If I could just make it to twelve then we would have finished the building and finished the strategic plan and we had no other buildings scheduled, so that was sort of the logic.

How is the strategic plan, have you accomplished all of the goals?

I think so. I think there are still some things that need more work. Diversity is one of them. I think the big goals have been accomplished. One of the goals has been negatively impacted, that’s the goal of revenue balance. The endowment fell and our expenses have, we’ve controlled them well, but our overall fiscal situation is no more balanced than it was at the beginning of the plan. Having said that, we are in excellent, I won’t even say that, we are in superb financial condition. But the long-term issues for running a college financially are very tricky and this place will have to maneuver them. We are very dependent on our endowment. If it were to drop again it would be a very serious matter.

Try to make it a little more light, we were talking about Dr. Kington, and you said that we wouldn’t hear anything critical.

And I probably won’t think anything critical, so it won’t be that I’m hiding something.

Good! But what sort of role are you playing in ensuring that his transition goes smoothly?

Again, my view is that I should sit in my office and answer all of his calls, and if I think I see a disaster happening, I’ll call him up and tell him about that. But I shouldn’t be there calling any of the shots. He’s been around, he’s had major jobs, this is a capable man or he wouldn’t be where he is. In my time here, I had three living predecessors that I was close to, and they were incredibly valuable to me. But they all had kind of different approaches. One of them would tell me exactly what he thought. Pam Ferguson would listen to me respectfully and then she would put her arm around me and tell me “It’s up to you, Russell.” Just talking to her helped, you know what I mean, because I would have to collect my thoughts. And then George Drake is just a tremendous resource, with the history of the place. I have been incredibly blessed with predecessors. When I was at Cornell by the way I had five living predecessors all on the faculty and that was fantastic too. So I hope I could be of some use, but I have no intention of sticking my nose in anywhere.

Besides lengthy Q&As like this one, is there anything you’d like to warn Dr. Kington about?

Let me just say, before I came, people gave me all kinds of warnings about this place: “Be concerned about this, be concerned about that.” They were all wrong. One of them, someone told me the students were very different, nothing like Cornell, and that was completely wrong. Someone said, “Well the Board of Trustees is very bossy and will micromanage you.” Wrong, there was no truth in it. The one bit of advice I would give Dr. Kington would be, if someone tells you that something is a huge problem, investigate it, but don’t believe it’s necessarily true.

You should tell him to always say yes to Scarlet & Black interview requests.

As you know, I believe that, and I believe in doing it immediately, because bad things happen when you try and hide from the press, and when you don’t fully talk about it. That doesn’t mean you talk about every detail.

What will you miss most about Grinnell?

Basically, I like dealing with undergraduates a lot. I think it’s an absolutely fantastic period in life. Because you’re pretty well grown up, you’re more grown up than your parents think you are. But you’re also in a formative period where you’re figuring out what you want to do, and that’s fantastic. Law students, I’ll probably continue to deal with students, but it’s not as intimate as when you’re president, so I’ll miss that a lot. I will also miss being in this town. I like it. I like running in the cornfields. But I’m going to back to my hometown where I grew up. My wife grew up there.

What town is that?

Rockport, Massachusetts. And, as I said, I will continue to teach. I’m going to teach for Grinnell next fall, I’ll probably teach in a law school in Europe or in the United States next spring.

You don’t even have to plan?

I’ve been asked by a bunch of places. My goal right now is to not say yes to anyone, just think about it. I’ve been so busy for so long that I’m just going to figure it out carefully.

-Interview conducted by Marcus Eagan and Eliza-Eve Leas

Karen Cochran poses for a last portrait for the S&B outside of the South Forum. - Cait De Mott Grady

Russell K. Osgood is not the only important figure to leave our midst at the end of this school year—after serving the Grinnell community for 22 years, Director of Health Services Karen Cochran will be retiring at the end of this school year.

“I think it’s a good time in my life to retire,” Cochran said. “I do a lot of things outside of work and it feels like the right time.”

Cochran announced her retirement to the college on August 10, 2009, prior to the start of the new academic year. Though Cochran and her caring demeanor will be missed, the administration decided to utilize this opportunity to implement some changes to the College’s Health Center. Starting next year, the Health Center will not only acquire a replacement for Cochran, but will also add new position as well.

The College has hired Stephanie Brown to take on the responsibility of being the Director and Lead Psychologist of Health Services.
“It’s the model they decided to set up now because of Grinnell [College] getting its own Mental Health Services instead of staying in the contract with Powesheik [County],” Cochran said.

According to the media releases emailed to the Grinnell student body in late April, Brown hails from the University of Arlington at Texas, and wields a Ph.D. in Adult Clinical Psychology from the University of Georgia. She additionally holds a B.S. and M.S. in General Psychology from the University of Illinois and California State University, Los Angeles.

As stated in the press release, Brown believes that “growing the program will allow us to tailor the services we provide to meet the specific needs of Grinnell students.”

Alongside the arrival of Brown, there will be newly established mental health counseling that will be offered directly from the Health Center itself.

Some students strongly believe the campus would directly benefit from having a fully-staffed mental health services.

“I think that [mental health services] is a valuable resource,” said Scott Klas ’13. “It should be here.”

Klas was not the only Grinnellian who believed that mental health services should already be incorporated in the health services of the College.

“That would be amazing,” said Hanan Romodan ’13. “Especially since a lot of first years need this kind of resource.”
Romodan addressed the fact that the transition to academic and social culture of Grinnell can be intimidating. By hiring a lead psychologist, the Health Center can start to more effectively address this issue in the coming years.

“All of [the students] need someone to talk to, to talk about their classes,” Romodan said. “A lot of [them are] frustrated and lonely.”
Cochran has frequently been asked why she has chosen to stay at Grinnell for such a large part of her career.

“Whenever someone asks me why I’ve been here so long, I always say ‘I love the students,’” Cochran said. “The students are wonderful here. It has always been the students.”

In light of Cochran’s retirement, all of the nurses and administration within the Health Center will be organizing a retirement party for Cochran. The reception will be open to all students and will be held on May 17 from 3:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m.

Editor’s Note: Stephanie Brown could not be reached for comment.

What were some of your goals when you first came into the college?

I did think the place needed to do better on diversity. There was so much rhetoric and the results were so poor, that was one thing. Second thing, we obviously had a lot of ferment of planning that started actually before I came that revolved around buildings at first and then was also about­—was the curriculum in need of augmentation or change or modernization. I think those were second and third goals. I always thought that this should be a town that contributes to the community in which it exists. A healthier city of Grinnell will be good for Grinnell College and also again it’s the appropriate thing to do. Those were probably the four biggest goals.

It’s interesting, because something came up when you were talking about your goals. In a February piece for Forbes, you advocated for fewer large-scale buildings, yet the college is finishing the construction of a $77 million athletic facility, and during your tenure, there’s been $260 million of construction.

This has been Grinnell’s history. Grinnell is not like a lot of places. We’re not a constant construction zone. We have tended to build a lot of things all at once and then not build very much. When I came in, we had essentially gone 40 years without major construction. We had done two significant projects, when my predecessor was in office. One was to start the Science Center Project, she did about half of it. The other was Bucksbaum—the fine arts center. But our facilities were in need of significant renovation. Why? For one thing, students no longer like to live in quads, so you had to add more residence halls and reduce the number of students in the rooms. I think students are right. You had to add more bathrooms.
The way people live their lives has changed. Most of our residence halls are seventy, eighty, one hundred years old. We had to modernize. A third of the residence halls are not accessible for students with a disability at all. Fourth, our class size has changed dramatically since the close of War II. We used to teach classes of 60. 70. 80. We don’t do that anymore. All of our classes are 25 or less. Our average class size is 16 […] And the shape of them is off. We no longer lecture. Most of it is discussion. Third, a lot of the legal rules, like our athletic center, have changed. Our pool is not long enough, not wide enough, to technically host a competition. Our indoor track cannot be used as an indoor track because of the design of it, which is uncorrectable. It’s too narrow and it encourages people to develop injuries because there is too tight of a turn.
So some of it was necessary. The goal of all of this was not to turn a small town in Iowa into Manhattan, but to make sure that the buildings continue to serve the needs of a residential college of about 1,500 students, and that didn’t change.
I remember one student said to me, at an open forum at the beginning of the residence halls, “Why the heck are we building more residence halls, why are we wasting that money?” So I said “how many people [are] in your freshman room?” and he said “Four,” […] I said what did you think and he said “I wanted to drop out”.
That’s no one’s fault, that’s just how society changes. When I grew up, kids shared bedrooms with their brothers and sisters all of the time. The average student who comes here has some experience, but much less experience, so that reflects itself in the kind of housing.
Having said that, we might do one or two more projects, but I think we’re going to enter a non-building period, and it should go on for a long time. Because we’ve done a lot, and it’s time to step back, not spend money on that. Absorb these new buildings.
What are we doing with our library, should it be bigger, should it be different, should it be replaced? That’s a very expensive project. Two, we need more classroom modernization in ARH and Carnegie, and more sophisticated computational labs.

In your time here, a lot of money has been put toward financial aid as well. Can you tell us why that’s been a focus?

Grinnell’s history was that it wasn’t as well off as it is today. We were not need-blind. And then at some point—probably near the end of George [Drake ‘56]’s presidency—the endowment started to rise, and we started being more generous about financial aid. It’s a set of policies that we now articulate as being need-blind. When I came, those policies were in place—this tremendous consensus for those policies for domestic students. But my observation was that our students were graduating with too many loans, even with those policies. So my own focus has been to try and figure out how to push down the amount of loans, because ideally I think everyone should graduate with undergraduate college with no loans, zero, if I could control the world that’s what I would do.
You have so many choices to make in your life—[such as] graduate school, and you’re going to borrow for that. Or, you might want to go to work for Teach for America and I know you get loan deferral for that, and your life should not be hemmed in by big overhanging loans. So it’s a combination of our history and my own views. And I think it’s a broad community consensus that generous financial aid is a hallmark of this place. [With] international students, it’s more complicated. When I came here, we were covering roughly 50 percemt of the [financial] need of international students. That’s been increasing. But it’s a daunting prospect to cover the full need of all admitted international students and no one does it. We’re one of the few who does it for domestic students. A lot of our peers have jettisoned it in my time—including Oberlin, Carleton, and Macalester—those are our three biggest overlaps, and they‘ve thrown it away.

Talk about Oberlin, Carleton, and Macalester. Two of those three schools’ presidents were recently featured in the Wall Street Journal. As were you—you wrote an admissions essay, which I thought was very important for prospective students trying to get a leg up on the competition— on how to write an essay. I think that did a lot for Grinnell’s national reputation. Why did you make that decision, to write that essay?

We reach out to the national media a lot. We have a media firm in New York that advises us because that’s how people like the two of you make decisions although you may not know. A lot of students say “Oh, I don’t like [public relations] stuff,” so I say “How did you decide to come here?” and they say, “Well, I was reading this book about undergraduate colleges and it sounded like a neat place.”
Well you’re not crazy. We have to be constantly reaching out [to] all media, not just the Wall Street Journal, but digital media, the web, everything, to say, “Well, this is a neat place, if you want to come. It isn’t necessarily for everybody.” So when this opportunity came up I immediately wrote about it.

In the Forbes article I mentioned earlier, I also noticed this “three-segment academic calendar” idea. We’ve talked a little bit about financial aid and about your belief that students should graduate with no loans. To make that a more feasible idea, maybe the three-segment calendar would help us graduate earlier. Would you like to elaborate on why that would be beneficial and the specifics?

Let me just say that the president in places like this does not set the calendar, generally. It is mainly a faculty responsibility. I am not convinced, I’ll just be honest, that two fourteen-week semesters is the best way to deliver the education, forget whether it would save money, just educationally. Now, every place I’ve taught at has used the fourteen-week segment. I have done accreditation reviews at places like the University of Chicago, which has the three segments, and I’m pretty impressed with it. I would like this place to consider the calendar. If I were president still, I would not be able to and would not want to dictate the solution. But I would shorten the academic year, I think we’re here too long, I think the winter break is too long; i think it should be a substantial break but not as long as it is now. I’m not convinced we should have a two-week break in the spring. And I would look hard at, should we have a trimester approach?
But it has strong opponents, typically; interestingly I’m lead to believe in the sciences, who like the fourteen-week system better. But in the courses I’ve taught in history and political science, I think shorter courses might be a better option.

Is this something you would recommend to Dr. Kington? I know you told him coming in that you wouldn’t necessarily tell him to pinpoint that issue.

Here’s my view of college presidents—I don’t think you should stay in office for too long. I think you have a lot of power when you’re in office, and I think it’s great when someone new comes in with all new ideas. No one will ever hear what I say to Dr. Kington. And I will be honest with you, I’m not going to press him hard “do this do that.” I don’t think that’s how the system should work. I think he should come in, should listen to you guys, educate himself. He brings a whole set of life experiences different than mine, and that’s fantastic. He’s a doctor and I’m a lawyer, that’s fantastic. He’s African-American, I’m not, that’s fantastic. It would be presumptuous of me, if he called me up and said “Russell, there’s this guy named Marcus who’s driving me crazy, tell me about Marcus,” I would respond to that sort of thing, but I would be unlikely to tell him, “you should do this.” and by the way if anyone ever calls me after he decides something and says “do you think that’s a terrible idea?” you’ll never hear me say a critical word about Dr. Kington. My job is to support him completely.

Look out for the final part of this epic interview in next week’s edition of the S&B.

-Interview conducted by Marcus Eagan and Eliza-Eve Leas

Thank you for taking the time out to sit with us.

Not much longer will I be President Osgood.

I think you stay president forever.

That maybe, but I’ll be Russell Osgood again, which is very pleasing to me.

The weather’s been beautiful. Have you and your red shorts been out, with the dogs?

Yeah, I have as a matter of fact. I showed up at the track meet with two dogs and red shorts and then I went home and had to come back with blue shorts and the dogs because I went swimming in the red shorts.

Did you get those dogs while you were here?

All of my dogs are Iowa-bred farm dogs. They are Cairn Terriers. C terriers are big in Iowa, probably bigger than in any other state. Probably because they are too little to bug farm animals, but they are great ratters so they kill rats on farms. So they are very common.

Did you start collecting the red shorts when you came to Grinnell?

Here’s the real story. I run early in the morning, really early. And I refuse to put a reflector on. Someone said, “No one will ever see you.” I thought, “Well what can I do?” So I started wearing red shorts, or for a while I had white shorts that I would wear running. That’s how it got started.

When was that?

I started running when I was a freshman in college, are you ready for that, 1965.

A more serious question, can you tell us a little bit about your time at Yale as an undergraduate, then the Navy, then law school, then Cornell.

Yeah, I could fill your tape for hours. I was a happy undergraduate. The one kind of cloud on the horizon was the Vietnam War was building up. I can’t say I had given a lot of thought to what I was going to do right out of college. I thought I was going to go to law school or graduate school in history.

So it came to my senior year and the war was at an [apex]. But Nixon was elected president. And no one here remembers this, but Nixon was sort of promising he was going to end the war. That seems odd for a Republican, but that was in effect what he was saying—maybe in a violent way, but he was going to end the war. In my senior year, the draft was there, so I was drafted, but just before I was inducted I volunteered to join the Navy.

By the way, then the war starts to really end, so by the time I go on active duty, they don’t want me, or anyone, they’re trying to get rid of people. So that turned out to not be a big thing, but I was in the Navy then. It was the most important experience of my life. Because, I grew up, not in a rich family, but in a moderately well-off family, in a suburb. There were never poor people. I had all of my grandparents, it was a big, successful, extended family. The only two racial minorities in my town were two daughters of black maids, and they were in high school with me. There were no Asians.

So I go into the Navy, and I’m in this division of 25 sailors. None of them had graduated high school. They were all kinds of people—African-Americans, poor Appalachians and southerners. I had one guy with no teeth. I had guys who were in bankruptcy, who were being divorced. And here I am, 21 years old, and as I said, it was the most important experience of my life. I really liked them, we had a great time together, and I learned that there is this whole world that I don’t know much about.

I learned a lot about life and how you relate to people in those two years. I was only in the Navy two years because they threw us all out eventually because they had too many soldiers. All of my sailors were trying to stay in because it was a job.

I came out, very suddenly. I didn’t know I was going to come out, and I made a snap decision to go to law school. I went to Yale Law School because it was very small. I got into Harvard and Yale law school and I went to Yale Law School because it was very small. And I had gotten married to my junior high school, high school, college sweetheart and we already had 1.5 kids. So, I thought, law school is shorter than graduate school, this is how I make decisions in life. And I think it was the right thing.

Then I became a tax lawyer in Boston, then I became a faculty member and the rest you know about. As an undergraduate, I majored pretty heavily in English, History and literature, and then I took a lot of math courses. All of the jobs in my life have revolved around math and English history. So the thing that I would say to students here, you think, “I don’t know where I’m going in life” and that’s true in a minor sense, but in a major sense, you understand yourself better than anybody else, and you’re usually pretty close to accurate about what you’re interested in.

At some point after I had been teaching a long time, I became the Dean of the Law School, so I did that for 10 years, and then 12 years as the President here. I am ready to never be an ever administrator again. I’m not at all unhappy with it. I just, when I started out, if someone had said to me, “It’s going to be 22 years,” Wow. I always assumed I would go back and be a faculty member and that’s what I’m going to be doing.

How did your 10 years before Grinnell in an administrative position prepare you or not prepare you for working here?

It was pretty good preparation. It was a little bit different. I’m not trying to ingratiate myself with you, but I basically like dealing with undergraduates better. They are more interesting than law students, and I love law students, so this is not a negative comment about them. I knew that before I came here because I had taught undergraduates at Cornell as well as law students. So that was a good change. Having more of an array of disciplines is something that I like because I like lots of different things. To be honest, I like the liberal arts format a lot because you’re not trading off good things at one school for good things at another school. It’s one school, and I like that.

One of my favorite things about your tenure here is that you’ve managed to compete with all of these other nationally acclaimed liberal arts colleges that are located in densely populated, coastal areas. Grinnell is in the middle of the cornfields, one of the most ethnically homogenous states. How have you managed, and why is diversity so important?

I would just start off and say that, one of the irritating things when I came here is that you would hear two things about diversity. One group would say, “We are at ground zero, we haven’t done anything.” That was true by the way. And then shortly thereafter they would say, “It’s hopeless.” Because, fill in the blank—we’re in Iowa, we’re not near a big city. Well the most ethnically diverse liberal arts college has always been Amherst College, which is not in a big city, although it’s in a more populated state. So the idea that your precise geography makes it impossible struck me as a bad excuse for not trying.

Then, the other thing I learned a long time ago in life, is if you say something will never happen, it will never happen. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. The other thing about Grinnell that was odd is that we actually had a more diverse past. Back in the 1950s we had many more African-American undergraduate students. We had never had a lot of Asian students, and there weren’t that many Hispanic students. So those were areas that we would grow inevitable, but there was no reason why we couldn’t have more African- American students.

The other thing I would say, and some would disagree, is that there was never any opposition here in the faculty or among students. You think, “Well, there are barriers.” The barriers here were strictly psychic. The people thought that we couldn’t succeed. Having said that, that was one thing. The second thing is, I think before I came and people started to think more about it, we hadn’t done enough to focus on processes by which we hire people and look for students. Everyone says, “Let’s get more diversity.” Well, how do you do that.

I think that the faculty have done an excellent job in making that processes more likely to turn up candidates and then more likely to hire them. The students were always going to work out more quickly, why do you think that?

Because it takes seven years.

Exactly. The number of diverse students in the applicant pool is changing dramatically every year. If we couldn’t do better, we were losers. That has now also begun to happen in the faculty pools, but the student pools change more quickly than the faculty pools. You also pick all of your students in four years. You pick all of your faculty in a period of 25 years, so you’re not turning over as many people at once.

Why do you think it’s so important to maintain a diverse education community?

There are several reasons. For one, I think it makes, and this is actually the most important reason—it makes for a better educational experience. You learn from your fellow students, you learn from the faculty and you learn on all kinds of different dimensions. You don’t just learn what they assign you for class. You learn in the dynamic in the classroom and in the dynamic in your residence halls. If there are more different people, you learn from that.
Little experience, one of my close friends at Yale College, this doesn’t sound like diversity but it is, he was in a horrible car accident while we were in college. It left him substantially disabled. I learned a lot helping him learn to live a new life, which was a life in which he was disabled. If you expand that out to people of different races, coming from different countries, different religious backgrounds, you learn more. The educational argument is the strongest one.
The second argument is that it is a just thing to do. People have been oppressed or denied equal opportunities and society is here to ensure that everyone can be on a path to success in his or her life. Grinnell should and has made a contribution quick to that.

The interview was conducted by Marcus Eagan and Eliza-Eve Leas.

Real Men, which started in the fall of 2009, aims to spread awareness about sexual assault, and take much-needed steps to reduce the number of cases that occur at Grinnell College. According to the Campus Climate Assessment conducted in fall 2009, 17 percent of students thought that sexual assault was a problem at the college.
“[Real Men]’s purpose is to empower men, and all genders, really, but specifically men, to band together and help prevent sexual assault as opposed to being the perpetrators of it,” said P.J. Mahaffey ’11, the Senior SA in Clark Hall who was one of the original members of the group.

The idea for Real Men came from Dan Hirsch, the East Campus RLC, who had done similar work at USC. It was found that 90 percent of sexual assault cases of sexual assault cases are perpetrated by the same four percent of men at USC.

“We’re trying to empower the rest of the men that are not that four percent to take a stand and do something about it,” Hirsch said.

Assault cases and violent crimes associated with USC’s athletics and fraternities prompted the university to create a group, called Men Care, to address the situation. After coming to Grinnell, Hirsch decided to continue the work, adapting it to the unique setting of the College.

“Grinnell is much more aware, of things like gender neutrality and male-to-male violence, and other things like that, that were not as big of a part of the workshops [at USC] as they need to be here to make it fit with the socially just culture and the way Grinnell functions,” Hirsch said.

Hirsch spoke with Greg Wallace, Director of Athletics, about the possibility of creating a group similar to Men Care on the Grinnell campus, and approached a couple of students to begin meetings last fall. Currently there are eight student members representing athletes, students and social justice groups on campus.

Real Men is funded by Student Affairs, the Center for Religious Studies and Social Justice, and the Athletics Department, and sought out members to reflect this diversity.
Real Men first appeared at the Wellness Fair in February, where they passed out buttons, posters and shirts to kick off their campaign against sexual assault, and to challenge common perceptions of what it means to be a “real man.” Recently, they also held a workshop for Student Advisors, as a preliminary exercise for feedback, and to prepare themselves for future events.

Despite the name, Real Men’s membership is not restricted by gender, a significant detail given the group’s commitment to campus outreach, and students and groups are encouraged to contact them at [realmen] and get involved.

“We’re ending our formative stage, but we’re still kind of getting our feet on the ground and figuring out how we interact with this campus, and people are already reaching out to Real Men,” Hirsch said.

The main focus of Real Men over the summer will be preparing for an NSO workshop aimed at incoming first-year male athletes. They will also be partnering with AJust and the Stonewall Resource Center to raise awareness of the issues of sexual assault.

“The main thing right now is getting our name out this spring,” Mahaffey said.

The group is still somewhat unknown, but it was looked on favorably by a number of students.

Students also liked the fact that this social justice project targeted a group whose perspective is often the one that is discounted.

“Sometimes I think that Grinnellians, and this is not necessarily a bad thing, but we’re very focused on social justice and equality for minority groups, and groups that are disenfranchised, and I think that the male perspective, the ‘wasp’ perspective, can get left out sometimes here,” Hannah Lytle ’11 said. “I also think it’s really neat, because I think it can help correct some of the perceptions people might have of athletes or the general masculine phenotype, which I think will be great for everyone, hopefully.”

Last Saturday in Harris Center, Student Organization of Latinos/Latinas (SOL), presented the Grinnell Community with this important tradition—a coming-of-age celebration that recognizes and honors a young woman’s passage from childhood to adulthood at the age of 15.

“Quinceañeras are a really important facet of becoming an adult in Hispanic culture particularly if you’re a young lady,” said Graciela Guzman ’11, who organized the event. “Because half of that event is a celebration and we thought, here’s a great opportunity to incorporate a Grinnell aspect, which is Harris, give it a context, and still have fun.”
The event presented the different traditions and information regarding Quinceañera celebrations, in addition to providing food, music, a photo booth and a make-your-own recuerdos—mementos—booth.

Since the Quinceañera was a new event at Grinnell College, SOL faced some challenges in planning, such as how to best depict a Quinceañera. There was a danger of making a mockery of a cherished ceremony if the event’s festivities overlooked cultural significance.

“Before they had started the presentation they asked people if they’ve been to a Quinceañera or knew what it was and majority of the people [said they] didn’t know what it was,” said Harpreet Singh ’12, who attended the event. “I think it’s really important that SOL is doing this so they can bring Latino culture for more integration of the different cultures on campus.”

Originally, a Quinceañera began as a Catholic ritual involving a mass or a blessing in the church. Today, Quinceañera celebrations can vary greatly in practice.

“Quinceañeras range from very personal backyard BBQ with close family [to spending] hundreds of thousands of dollars like you see on MTV that’s kind of influenced how people see Quinceañeras,” said Gustavo Arambula ’10, one of the organizers of the event. “It’s become this pan-Latino concoction, tradition, that everyone celebrates. It’s very much infused with U.S. consumerism but a lot of people still stick to the traditional aspect of it.”

One of the goals of SOL’s Quinceañera was to debunk popular notion of a Quinceañera as an extravagant party—as seen in MTV Tr3s’s “Quiero Mis Quinces”—by emphasizing the traditions of the event. A Quinceañera is a process that requires extensive preparation, not just organizationally, but also mentally, according to Guzman.
“You have all these adults who are telling you, be ultra-religious, follow this path, or this is what a young lady should do, [and] you kind of get to pick a little bit of what you want to take and create yourself,” Guzman said. “It’s the process of molding yourself and I think that’s what makes it so special.”

Guzman recalled her own Quinceañera, which was a simple affair without the ostentation of the media’s portrayal of a Quinceañera.

“My family is ultra Catholic so we had a traditional mass and I had a really small gathering with my family and we just had lunch and that was it,” Guzman said. “For me the most important part of it was my transition through my faith and it was very evident through what was focused on and what wasn’t, with the biggest part [being] the Mass.”

Though Quinceañeras do vary from person to person, Arambula pointed out that the gendered nature of the event’s traditions can be seen as problematic.

“For a Quinceañera, traditionally, the Quinceañera—the girl—has to wear a dress,” Arambula said. “It has to be puffy, like gender representation, and you have to wear makeup. Sometimes the father, when [the girl] comes into the party and she’s wearing flats, [he] changes her shoes into high heels and it symbolizes womanhood.”
Guzman emphasized the importance of understanding the complex social milieus that shape each Quinceañera.

“I hope people understand that traditions are multi-faceted things,” Guzman said. “Traditions are influenced by the same factors as everything else in our lives, class, race, gender, etc. that are going to influence what you do, and we wanted to get people to have that sense that traditions aren’t fixed.”

There are those certain moments in life, that although it may sound cliché are life changing, and ones where your life takes a dramatic new direction. This experience that took place on March 18 at about 6 p.m. was truly one of those moments for me.

I realize now how colossally idiotic my decision was, and how indestructible a force the train is that runs through Grinnell.

Kane and I had been working on our Titular Head film for weeks, and the part with Danger Train—the name of our new movie—wasn’t even going to be in it. Originally, we were making a time-travel movie.

Yet, on that Thursday afternoon, we both were attempting to include an extra scene, and I myself know that I didn’t listen to my conscience, that was grasping for air against the euphoria of the moment.

I rode that ladder feeling like my boyhood hero Tom Sawyer. Then as I prepared to descend, my right shoe wobbled and before I could think, Kane screamed “NO!”

Grasping for air in that grass I finally felt an unbelievable sense of respect for the Midwest and all of its glorious trains. I realized then there is no Brooklyn comparison, and this is truly a beast worth being wary of.

With the second chance that I have been given I feel it is my obligation to give back to the rest of society. At the immediate time, my society or community is Grinnell College, and therefore I feel like God wanted me to live so that I could impact the College in a dramatic way.

I know that if I had died that day the College would have been impacted, but I don’t know if the feeling would have lasted. Now that I am alive I can for the rest of my career at Grinnell, educate people, as a living example, for why jumping on the train is a horrible, dangerous and life-risking idea.

I feel like it is only human for us to make mistakes in life, and that has been proven throughout the history of mankind. Although what is most important is not that you made the mistake, but that you change your actions due to their consequences and you truly learn that this is a mistake that you should never repeat again.

I realize that what happened to me that day, didn’t only impact me, but impacted the entire Grinnell community, as well as my family and friends back home. I want to take the chance to apologize to everyone from President Osgood, to Security Guard Russ, to my Cross Country Coach and everyone in the Grinnell Community and thank you all, for helping me march onward and continue my life here.

From this experience, I feel like I have gained a new set of grandparents, and will forever have so much love for Nancy and Al Maly, who took me under their arms, and gave me a place to stay after leaving the hospital.

Finally, I would like to thank all those doctors, nurses, ambulance personnel and police that acted swiftly and confidently in Grinnell and then at the hospital in Iowa City.

Since I returned to campus I have not watched the train pass through, but I have visited the hospital, last Thursday, for another surgery.

The last surgery went well, although it ended up being seven as opposed to three hours, and I experienced horrible nausea, and piercing pains all along my arms, because of how my arms had been tied down.

I now have 16 pin sites, where metal connects through leg to bone, two haloes around my lower shin, a metal ring around my foot similar to Shaq’s shoe-size and a permanent metal plate in my fibula.

My doctor told me on Saturday that he believes we have a miracle on our hands, the like he is not too familiar with. After all, the original x-rays looked like a definite amputation, and the ones after the third surgery look much improved.

My best friend, Omar, who has always known me, asked me if I thought this would change how I have always been. I was a risk taker, one ready for adventure, not satisfied with staying put.

Some good that has come from these characteristics, namely that I had the audacity to come to Grinnell College, when many of my friends stayed near home and were amazed that I’d go to a school in Iowa. In light of this recent incident this trait has also brought me some very poor results.

So I answered, “You know, now that I’m 18 and in my first year of college, I feel that it is about time that I tone down my Tarzan act, and be much more cautious, but at the same time I will not try to force myself from enjoying life, but find the perfect balance.”

Through Kane and my video, my radio show, my writing here and the conversations I have, I want everyone to know how much I respect the Grinnell train, as should all of you.

On the final day of the Poverty Symposium this past week, the ISO presented “International Perspectives on Poverty,” a panel in which six members gave firsthand accounts of socioeconomic conditions in their home country.

The reports illustrated the many and varied face of poverty, while also subverting Western notions of what makes an impoverished foreign nation.

“We are hoping to raise awareness about how what is defined as poverty, looks different in every country.” said ISO Social Coordinator Wadzanai Motsi ’12. “We want people to be aware that the image of starving women and children you see on TV is not universal, yes it happens but there is so much more to the story and we think people should understand that.”

As part of the presentation, ISO displayed a number of items from across the globe that could be bought for one U.S. dollar in hopes of demonstrating that cultural habit should dictate the definition of poverty, rather than a fixed monetary amount.

Items on display that amounted to one dollar included a bunch of bangles from India, a can of Coca-Cola, a newspaper and a pack of cigarettes from Egypt, as well as a bag of chips from the U.S.

“We’re trying to show a dollar can range from a good meal to a pack of cigarettes to a string bracelet. We’re trying to show that a dollar is not cheap in other countries and the definition of poverty is not properly defined,” said ISO member Shivani Santoki ’11.

ISO member Biva Rajbhandari ’12 of Nepal said the “dollar exhibit” lends itself to a more refined portrayal of poverty than the statistical indicators that many of us use.

“Poverty depends on culture. In Nepal, we don’t have washing machines because people wouldn’t use it—they would say washing machines are less effective,” Rajbhandari said. “To classify the Nepalese as impoverished because they do not have washing machines would be inaccurate.”

Rajbhandari carried with her an elegant Nepalese picture frame that cost almost a dollar.

In the reworking of the Western notion of poverty, the ISO presentation casted a strong indictment against the Western image of the impoverished foreigner. They said the pervasive media representations of poverty neglect cultural customs and create a fallacious notion of a universal poverty.

“In Latin America, farmers don’t wear shoes. It’s not they are impoverished—they have a lot of food and trade amongst other farmers,” said ISO member Luis Vallejo ’13. “If the image of a shoeless farmer is on TV, people will assume the farmer is impoverished.”

Although “International Perspectives on Poverty” may be ISO’s most visible contribution to the Poverty Symposium, their ambition to portray the experience of poverty in a realistic and culturally informed manner extends far beyond the presentation.

On Friday, the group will be holding a fundraiser for “Every Child is My Child” and next week they will be screening a series of documentaries that deal with issues of international poverty, all are encouraged to attend.

“The No Limits Project has come a long way since the 14 demands were proposed by kind of a core group of students, and supported by over 200 students who expressed their support in a petition we circulated. I think within 48 hours we got over 300 signatures,” said Margie Scribner ’10, an NLP member, said.

Three large demands have been met since the group was first active, including the creation of AJust—a peer education program created to tackle social justice issues in the community.
AJust, many of whose members are also in NLP, has worked closely with Student Affairs to secure funding and to bring in facilitators to assist training peer educators.

“We’re obviously looking for a greater financial commitment from the administration, but right now we’re able to do the types of programming we want to do with the money that we’ve been allocated,” Scribner said.

The administration said they have lent support to AJust and supported them throughout the process.

“The first two projects (social justice training—AJust—and hate crimes/bias incident response) were ideas that we had hatched and begun working on in Student Affairs before NLP existed,” said Vice President of Student Affairs Houston Dougharty in an e-mail.

NLP also demanded the drafting and implementation of a Bias-Motivated Incident and Hate Crimes Response policy—which was finally created last semester and enacted in November 2009.

A further demand called for Grinnell to renew its commitment to environmental sustainability and power the campus with a wind turbine. While the turbine itself has been approved, and planning for it is in its initial stage, the greatest obstacle to work on the turbines is the prohibitive cost.

“I can’t snap my fingers and find $7 million, which is roughly what it will cost,” Osgood said.
To address this, NLP worked with SGA, Free The Planet and the Senior Challenge Committee to add a Green Giving option to the senior challenge form.

Progress on the demands has not been without setbacks, as NLP encounters the challenges of dealing with any bureaucratic administration.

“I think especially the demands that don’t involve any financial commitment are ones that could’ve been and probably should’ve been acted on faster,” Kaitlin Alsofrom ’10, who is involved with NLP, said.

The Hate Crimes Response protocol along with the wind turbines were seen as prime examples of demands that some members of NLP thought could have been met in a more timely fashion.
“[It’s frustrating] when people say, ‘Well, we’re working on it,’ and that’s the end of it, as though we’re just supposed to accept that without asking for any notification of any results of whatever it is that’s being worked on, or being included in any of the processes that are being worked on,” Jared Rubinstein ’10, a member of NLP, said.

However, there has not been official collaboration between NLP and the Office of the President nor Student Affairs within the last year.

“Nothing official with NLP folks,” said Dean of Students Travis Greene.

“I know the premise of No Limits was here are some things from their perspective that could’ve immediately been done or implemented, but things are organic and they do take some time,” Greene said.

Despite such obstacles, the project will continue by recommitting itself to a one of their original demands—need-blind admission for international students.

“Several years ago we actually did have need blind admission to international students,” Alsofrom said.

Now, only domestic students are admitted on a need-blind basis. Although the college maintains its commitment to meeting 100 percent of demonstrated need to all students, that need is taken into account when international students are admitted.

“We’re in the initial works of this, figuring out why that policy was changed, what we would need to do to get it back to need-blind admission where it was several years ago,” Alsofrom said.

Student response to the No Limits Project and its methods was initially mixed—despite much obvious support through the signatures, many students felt that the organization was being too aggressive, or acting unnecessarily, an idea that appears to have faded with time as the organization’s successes and goals have become more clear.

“I just remember going to Joint Board when the No Limits people were presenting, and they were being very aggressive in their language towards SGA. I just remember them saying, ‘We demand this, and we demand that,’” Ana Mancebo ’12 said.

These sentiments manifested through the formation of an opposing group entitled No Shame, which attempted to shift student focus towards beneficial things that the administration had done for students while still acknowledging that work needs to be done, refer to the April 10, 2009 S&B for information.

However, now, seeing that progress has been made in many areas, there is acceptance of them among students who were dubious of NLP, although alienation due to their perceived aggression remains, and many underclassmen have no idea who they are.

“In retrospect, it seemed like they were asking for a lot and potentially in the wrong way when they started off, and I guess after seeing they have made some compromises that have given them some of the things they asked for, I can see that it may have been useful,” Isaiah Iboko ’12 said.

Las Fajitas, Grinnell's newest Mexican restaurants, recently opened up in the old location of Grinnell Fiberworks. - Cait De Mott Grady

Taking a stroll through downtown Grinnell, it is easy to feel somewhat out of place. Jimbo’s and Grinnell Coffee Company are gone and where once stood the entrance to Grinnell Fiberworks is Grinnell’s newest Mexican restaurant—Las Fajitas.

Despite the sudden explosion of similarly themed restaurants, Las Fajitas stands in a league of its own. Walking inside, one is greeted with a spacious restaurant in a space only prolific knitters and crafters had previously occupied. The staff is friendly, the décor is wonderful, and the environment is comfortable.

However, it is the food that truly separates Las Fajitas from its competitors. Creating a twist on a classic favorite, all meals are accompanied with not only the usual combination of chips and salsa but also a bowl of refried beans.

“[What separates us] is the water service, the beans with the salsa and chips and the larger selection of seafood on the menu,” said Luz Niño, who started this business with her husband.

Niño and her husband moved to Grinnell in 2000, after time spent in Minnesota and Northern Iowa. Since moving here they always had aspirations of opening a restaurant.

“My husband has always dreamed of having a restaurant,” Niño said. “He loves Grinnell and downtown is a great spot.”

Aside from the quite pleasant surprise of beans, the menu is full of unique and adequately priced choices. While the food took longer than at other similar restaurants, it was well worth the wait. The Grande Burrito is aptly named and unlike at many other places, is not overly smothered in cheese. The fajitas were delicious due to them being doused in lime and cilantro sauce. The chef’s special, like most of the dishes, came with ample amounts of food and easily brought smiles to our three open-mouthed faces.

Of course, like any new restaurant, Las Fajitas does have some drawbacks. Going through the menu, the lack of margaritas is quite evident. Because of delays, the restaurant has yet to get a liquor license.

“A lot of college students have been here, but a lot of people say daily that they like alcohol,” Niño said. “But we are getting a license soon, hopefully within the month.”

While Grinnellians now have a myriad of options to choose from when going out for their favorite Mexican delicacy, Niño is hopeful that the uniqueness of Las Fajitas will win them over.

“Its kind of like playing Russian Roulette, you just give it a try and see,” Niño said. “It is going well, we love to serve the community and be as friendly as we can be.”

While the town may be best known for The Oxford Project—a book of stories and photographs of 100 Oxford residents (1/7 of the current population of the town) taken 20 years apart, by Oxford native Peter Feldstein—it was Augusta that brought us to Oxford on this particular night.

Augusta was at first hard to find, since its sign is placed on a side street wall facing away from the interstate to the south, looking north up the main street toward Route 6. If this is indicative of Augusta’s attitude—in contrast to the tourist hungry Amana Colonies and Kalona, which make good use of signs on the nearby interstate—it’s hard to tell.

Entering the restaurant through the ring of curtains that protect the interior from cold drafts as people enter and leave, you might think that you have walked into a trendy restaurant in downtown Iowa City. The room was small but high ceilinged, covered in wood paneling, dimly lit and crowded with well-dressed middle age diners. We were ushered to the bar and then quickly seated.

Augusta is a Cajun restaurant, co-owned and operated by Jeri and Ben Halperin, who were driven from New Orleans in 2005 by Hurricane Katrina. They came to Oxford via Chicago, opening Augusta in this unlikely place in 2008. Unlike places with more dubious connections to New Orleans—e.g. Bourbon Street—Augusta does not try to overwhelm you with its Big Easy connection.

The name comes from the street it sits on in Oxford, spelled with the “T” replaced by a traditional fleur-de-lis symbol. Jazz from New Orleans is played softly over speakers in the restaurant. Some Mardi Gras beads adorn the light fixtures along the wall. Art and photographs from local artists and town history decorate the walls. What Augusta does try to do is serve all fresh, homemade food, down to the salad dressing, mayonnaise and pickles, from as many local sources as possible.

It’s not cheap, but Augusta was still awarded the Best Affordable Meal by the Iowa Source in 2009— a testament to the fact that the quality is equal to the price. Augusta has also won an award for the Best Breaded Pork Tenderloins from whom else but the Iowa Pork Producers Association.

We ordered sautéed oyster mushrooms as a split entrée, salads and four sides—sweet potato chips, sugar carrots, stewed greens and fried grit cake. The fried grit cake, the least familiar of the four, in particular was very good, as were the sweet potato chips.

The mushrooms were not only the most delicious mushrooms we’ve ever tasted but one of the best foods I’ve ever had. The only problem was that there were so few to eat. We finished dinner with chocolate filled beignets, cherry bread pudding and chicory coffee, which is made of chicory root and tastes mostly like coffee.

All the food was very memorable and the whole atmosphere of the restaurant—which included five Happy Birthday songs while we were there—was congenial and relaxed. It is easy to understand why people are flocking to Oxford to visit Augusta—a Cajun restaurant that has found a niche in a small Midwestern town.

They have ranged from proposed dining hall changes­—a common request—to a proposed name-change for the school itself–in 2006, 25 percent of students voted for Grinnell to be re-named the “Richard J Walker ’04 Conservatory of Awesomeness.” Over 100 student initiatives over the past 11 years have called for a plethora of various actions— the construction of a bordello, the devotion of a room in the JRC to bean bags, and the restoration of peace to the galaxy.

Various students under the moniker Wedge Antilles requested that Grinnell restore peace to the galaxy in 2006, but it was Grinnell’s own Brooks Brunner and Kate Ottesen who asked students to “be less dumb” in 2003. Both initiatives failed, although an initiative to increase the frequency of nachos in the dining hall passed in 2007 with 67 percent of the vote. Grinnellians seem to have surprising priorities. SGA President Harry Krejsa ’10 noted that student initiatives are used to measure priorities such as these, as well as achieve changes.

“[They have] served as a barometer of student opinion,” Krejsa said.

The student initiatives do get “real things” done as well, though. Last year, an auto-fryer was successfully installed in Lyle’s Pub–which, by the way, gets its name from an initiative, as the original name was “the Wedge,” in reference to the still-infamous Wedge Antilles. This year, students attempted to build an ice rink before the snow melted, despite not being completed the students will have the opportunity to construct it next year. When the snow is completely gone, tetherball courts will be erected as a result of another initiative.

The initiatives that have historically been most successful are those that make small changes to student life.
“Where it has been most effective are in bite-sized improvements to student life, [with] things like the ice rink or the swing set or bean bags around campus,” Krejsa said.

Students have been very interested in a more literal take on “bite-sized improvements.” The most common initiatives by far have concerned changes to the dining hall, such as nutrition labeling, ingredient labeling and a focus on local foods. Changes in the marketplace are difficult to implement, however.

“A lot of the things that involve the dining hall are harder [to see through] than people would expect,” Bill Mogavero, Chair of StiFund, said.

For example, labeling food in the dining hall has been requested in three separate initiatives, and passed in both votes for which data was available. Yet, labeling is still not available next to each product. Lyle Bauman, Dining Hall Supervisor, said that providing such detailed information with each meal would require significant work.
“It could be done, but it would be quite a task,” Bauman said.

He did point out that nutritional and ingredient information is available for all regular meals in the binders by the front of the Dining Hall. Dining Services has tried to implement other student initiative requests, such as greater local foods, as described in the Feb. 19 issue of the Scarlet & Black—see “GALFA restarts, aims to change the way Grinnell community eats.”

The concrete figures of initiatives that have been successful is different to find, both those concerning the Dining Hall and those about campus issues in general. While the Student Initiative Committee (STIC) has records of student initiatives and those that passed and failed, it does not have precise records of which passed initiatives were actually put into place.

“In the past there haven’t been particularly good records of what has happened to initiatives once they got into [STIC]. That’s something that we’re trying to improve on this year,” Mogavero said. “I think in the past there might have been times that things slipped through the cracks… It is a shame when things like that get lost, because they are good ideas.”

“We’ve been talking about building a culture of service at Grinnell for a long time, and this is something where we’re really seeing that,” said Doug Cutchins ’93, Director of Social Commitment.

Over 100 students applied for at least one social justice trip over Spring Break. 75 students applied for only 32 spots between the four Alt Break trips—trips the school offers for students interested in doing volunteer work over their break. 53 applied for 40 places on the ReNew trips—where students can help rebuild in areas affected by natural disasters. The Chaplain’s trip will only take 12 of its 18 applicants.

Karl Kremling ’10 is an Alt Break Coordinator and is leading the Alt Break program this spring in Texas. He attributes the high involvement rate to the nature of the program.

“Not only does Alt Break allow you to do some pretty unique volunteering,” Kremling said. “It allows you to live communally with a group of people you might not otherwise have known.”

Cutchins thinks dedicated student leaders—like Kremling—are responsible for the increased student involvement.
“They’re the ones who really move the program forward,” Cutchins said.

According to Kremling, Alt Break supports Grinnellians who want to take initiative during their Spring Break. Because trips are chosen based on student proposals, they represent the issues that students most care about.

“We can quickly adapt to the volunteering interests of the campus community,” Kremling said. “I like to think of [South Texas] as possibly a pretty sexy topic.”

In addition to the volunteering options over breaks, many Grinnell students get involved while at school. The new Community Service Coordinator, Rabbi Howard Stein, supports student efforts on campus. Stein is working on setting up new programs to provide more options to students, including a possible tutoring program with local schools.

“Seeking out those opportunities is part of what I do, so that I can engage more students in this kind of work,” Stein said.
Anna Friel ’10, who will work next year as a high school math teacher in New Orleans with Teach For America, believes Grinnellians take the values they learn at Grinnell with them when they graduate.

“At Grinnell, [students] become committed to these issues, and they stay committed after they graduate,” Friel said.
At Grinnell, she was a co-leader of the Feminist Action Coalition and a peer mentor with the Sexual Health and Information Center. She also went on a ReNew trip over Winter Break.

According to Cutchins, a record 55 students applied for Teach For America, 15 percent of the senior class. 46 students applied for Grinnell Corps, for only 10 positions. Cutchins sees this as a spike in an already increasing trend of student volunteer work.

“That doesn’t happen overnight, that doesn’t happen all of a sudden. That doesn’t happen without reason.” Cutchins said. “Some people would like to say it’s the economy… I don’t think that’s true. This is something that Grinnellians have always taken seriously.”

Cutchins himself did full-time volunteer work after attending Grinnell. He joined the Peace Corps two years after graduating.
Stein hopes social justice work will continue spreading. He said that he hopes to “make this something that reaches all parts of the campus.”

From numbers to basic observation, it is evident that social justice is spreading throughout the Grinnell campus. “A lot of my friends have applied for TFA,” Friel said. “And I know a lot of people doing Grinnell Corps.”

This past Thursday a number of students took their clothes off and got their picture taken as a way to celebrate not only their own beauty but also to commemorate one of these aforementioned unusual protests.

On Feb. 5, 1969 a representative of Playboy magazine came to Grinnell as part of tour across different college campuses. But not every student was exactly fond of Playboy magazine and its portrayal of naked/nude bodies. During the representative’s speech 10 students stood up, started to sing and began to undress as a way of protesting the magazine. The students were later found guilty of public indecency in 1971.

Members of the Grinnell Ultimate Frisbee team poses during the optional clothing study break on Thursday. - Lucy Schiller

Forty years later, in 2009, the public display of discontent in the form of nudity came back to Campus in form of a Naked Photo-shoot. A brain-child of Emma O’Polka ’12, the Naked Photo-shoot was initiated last year as part of Media Awareness Week.

“I learned about the Playboy-incident for an independent project in my tutorial,” O’Polka said. “I was surprised that with Grinnell having a history of political and social activism as it is, that no one had picked up on it.”

So she initiated the first naked photo-shoot to occur exactly 40 years after the original protest on Feb. 5, 2009.
“It was not intended as a demonstration against pornography,” O’Polka said. “But as a way to celebrate beauty and social activism.”

Everyone on campus was invited to have their picture taken in whatever state of undress they felt most comfortable, while eating food and hanging out with other like-minded students. With the consent of the photographed person the pictures were later used in a public display contrasting the difference between reality and the media’s portrayal of body image.

“Of the over 50 people who got their picture taken more than half let us use their pictures for a public display,” O’Polka said.

Even though it is not completely ruled out yet, there are no definite plans to use the pictures for any kind of presentation this year.

“Last year was a commemoration of the Playboy incident,” said Zoe Schein ’12, who is also involved in the planning of this year’s naked photo-shoot. “But the main point of it was and still is to celebrate different kinds of bodies and make people feel comfortable in their own skin.”

Of all the key themes running through the shoot, comfort level is the most important.

“There is a lot of peer support but no pressure to do anything,” Schein said. “People can take their shirt off, but keep their pants, or lose both, whatever they feel most comfortable with.”

Students who participated last year confirmed it could definitely have a certain excitement to have one’s picture taken, while being in any state of undress.

“I was positively peer-pressured into participating and it was worth it,” said Adam Lange ’11, who participated in the photo-shoot last year. “It felt liberating to not care for a little bit and appreciate everyone’s unconventional beauty.”

By and large, students have readily embraced President-elect Kington, citing confidence in his leadership experience.
“Some people joked, after his speech, that his honeymoon period is already over,” said Ben Offenberg ’11, SGA Vice President of Student Affairs. “There were jokes about that, but in reality I haven’t heard much other than praises and excitement that we’ve got someone of his caliber to come here.”

Students have read Kington’s online bios, and heard his speech in Herrick Chapel, but few have had any real contact with him. Many were impressed, not only by his resume, but also by his views on issues pertinent to the community, and his strong support for social justice.

“He said a lot of positive things in his speech, I think, a lot of salient issues like the campus climate report last semester.” Liting Cong ’11, said. “There isn’t enough of support for minority staff and faculty, and he said everyone’s contribution will be recognized,”

Offenberg relayed the same sentiments.

“He talked a little bit about social justice, and how this is a mission-based institution, which is why I feel like we could recommit ourselves to our mission and social justice in a lot of areas.” Offenberg said. “It seemed like in past years we’ve focused on some other things, which is fine, but I think it’s time that students want to focus back on our mission, and social justice, which is one of our core values,”

Reactions among the staff were similarly glowing, but more skeptical. Professor Wayne Moyer, Political Science, raised some very pertinent questions as the school awaits the arrival of Kington on the campus next August.

“He has an incredibly strong background. His appointment certainly sends a very good message in terms of diversity,” Moyer said. “[But] his background is primarily as a scientist. I know he will be conscious to the needs of the scientists. But will he be equally conscious to the social scientist and the humanities?”

According to Moyer, while his colleagues have been impressed and stamped their approval, Moyer senses a certain ambiguity about Kington’s plans for the College. “What is his academic vision for the college? We don’t know yet,” Moyer said. “What are his priorities? We don’t know that yet.”

Megan Goering ’08, former SGA President, leveled this challenge at Kington.

“For a long time, Grinnell has failed to capture the potential of its most powerful resources,—its people—by following its peers and minimizing liability,” Goering said in an email. “The next chapter in Grinnell’s history must involve active engagement, bold leadership and the kind of introspection that will challenge Grinnellians to globalize their goals, extending the reach of their knowledge and the impact of their work. If Dr. Kington can accept that challenge, Grinnell will most certainly rise to meet him.”

Her view is echoed within the student body.

“Students are willing to help him assimilate into the Grinnell environment, which is unique, in that respect, because he is putting a lot forward, I think we should respond with the same enthusiasm,” Cong said.
—Additional reporting by Jumi Bello ’13.

Alum Ian Roberts '87 takes a moment to do a Q&A with Matthew Bachtell. - Contributed

How long have you been working on “Players”?
We filmed it for about six months. It’s all improvised, the dialogue. We have scenarios for 10 episodes, where we act out the plot of each scenario, and make up the dialogue as we go along. We finished quite a while ago, but it’s only airing now. There were a number of considerations for pushing it back.

Considerations like what?
Well one was the Winter Olympics, actually. Because, you know, it’s about sports, the Spike network, so you want to think about something that gears towards college, spring break. There were all kinds of things—one was that they were getting the rights to re-run Entourage. Thought that would be a good lead-in, so we had to wait until they got those rights. That didn’t happen ‘til the New Year. There was another show they put on that they wanted to air first, so there were all kinds of considerations, really. We finished up last summer, and now it’s airing.

And you’re really happy with how it turned out?
Yeah. It’s really great when you get with a network who’s younger in their original programming, because they tend to be very open to letting you get you’re way. And they were fantastic, and they really basically let us do whatever we want. I can remember how the show used to be, because it’s what we wanted to do. And it kind of really bugs you when network producers kill the show, and you really want to know how it could’ve gone if you’d done it your way, but that’s not the case.

Over the course of your career, have you worked with any big comedians?
Well Amy Poehler is pretty successful these days. She was on “Parks and Recreation,” she was one of the people on that TV show. Adam McKay, who is a writer-director, who directed a bunch of Will Ferrell movies, “Anchorman,” “Talladega Nights,” “Stepbrothers.” He was one of the founding members of the Upright Citizen’s Brigade. Horatio Sanz was one of the founding members who was on SNL for about seven years. Who else? Oh, Tina Fey. We both came out of Improv Olympics together, and she’s performed regularly at our theater in New York. I know a bunch of guys I took classes with have done pretty good stuff.

I’m a little curious now—why was it called the Upright Citizen’s Brigade?
It was kind of an ironic name. We used to do shows that were pretty crazy, right, we’d take people out of the theater, stage a fake suicide or run the audience down the block to a friend’s house and have them watch a murder through the window of the house, and so we thought a name like that sounded like we were very strict, and proper, and socially conscious. I think we just kind of thought it was a funny name.

During your time working with them, have there ever been any roles that you’ve just really liked performing?
I liked this sketch Ass Pennies that I had. It’s something that has always been kind of a role I really enjoyed doing the sketch on-stage. Yeah, maybe that. We played all different roles. We weren’t the kind of sketch show that had a lot of recurring characters.

“I really hoped to go to MBLGTACC and further leadership experiences, learn about new outlooks, get workshop information…and bring that back to campus and implement some of the things that I learned,” Nik Jameson ’11 said.

Others were excited to have the chance to interact with a large number of queer students from all over the Midwest.
“I really wanted to go to an event where I got to meet lots of other queer people,” a student who wished to remain anonymous said.

Grinnellians attended workshops such as “Bi-Curious?”, “The Idiot’s Guide to Asexuality” and “Gender Queer 101.” During these workshops, they met queer students and found out more about life on campuses across the Midwest.

“I wanted to learn more about where gay rights were in undergraduate institutions,” Jon Richardson ’10 said.
It seemed like Grinnell does pretty well by its queer students compared to other institutions.

“We’re very lucky to have a lot of resources and a lot of knowledge. It was really interesting to see people from other schools and get a feel of where they are at with their programs…it made me realize how lucky we are,” Elliot Karl ’12 said. “We have a greater knowledge and vocabulary to be able to talk about these issues more specifically.”

Quite a few students voiced a desire to help other campuses to reach the same level, but simultaneously noted that a lot of the workshops designed to aid this process were superficial.

“They could have done a better job making the sessions a little more advanced for people who are more well-versed in queer issues already,” Richardson said.

According to several students at the conference, the conference lacked nuanced explanations and understandings of complex issues, especially those related to trans people and queer people of color.

According to one student, the QPOC caucus also voiced complaints of being tokenized throughout the conference, a problem that spilled over from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

The issues students found at MBLGTACC, and what they learned about other campuses, sparked greater interest in working to change things. Jameson mentioned bringing back Bifocal, a bisexual student group on campus, and increasing discussions about sexualities outside of homosexual and heterosexual, such as pan- or asexual.

“A lot of the first and second years will carry these issues forward after getting inspired to work and advocate for queer people,” Richardson said.

Karl was definitely inspired.

“It made me more passionate about these issues,” he said.

Ladora Bank Bistro in Ladora, Iowa - Contributed

Its classical stone architecture and the triumphant engraving above the entrance—“the wealth of this community embodies the richness of her soil, the integrity, frugality and diligence of her people”— are a reminder of an earlier time in Ladora, the year 1920, when high grain and land prices drove a prosperity and straightforward optimism that has long since disappeared, along with Ladora’s main street businesses. Even by the time the bank opened in the summer of 1920, the post-World War I affluence that drove its construction was drying up.

The Ladora Bank was only able to survive as a bank for 11 years, closing down in 1931 during the onset of the Great Depression. Since then it has played many roles—a community center, an insurance office, a civil defense shelter, a voting station, a place for truckers to sleep (before the completion of I-80 in 1964 drew commercial traffic and business away from Highway 6 and Ladora), an attorney’s office, an antique shop and a drapery business. The bank’s latest one, a wine bar and bistro, may be the strangest and most fitting one of all.

Brad Erikson, a Grinnell resident, first saw the bank on a motorcycle ride through the country in 2003. “Look at this jewel in the middle of nowhere,” Erickson recalled, recalling spotting the bank for the first time. It is an impression probably shared by many travelers on Highway 6 over the years. Brad Erickson, unlike other passers-through, decided to buy the bank in 2004, intending to make it a home. As he worked to restore the marbled, high-ceiled interior of the bank, he found visitors wandering in and peeking through the windows, thinking it was museum. He eventually had to lock himself in when he was working and rethink how he was going to use this 85-year-old edifice.

After four years of restoration work, he and his wife Colleen Klainert opened the Ladora Bank Bistro in May 2008. At a glance its easy to think that an upscale wine bar and bistro, with wines ranging in price from around $20 to $190 a bottle and appetizers running between $8 and $10, would be a gentrified establishment in a place like Ladora. Although Brad notes that they rely on a far-ranging customer base from urban areas like Iowa City, Cedar Rapids and Des Moines, with people coming from as far as five hours away to visit, locals and out-of-towners alike have embraced the Bistro.

There is even a group of local farmers who formed a club based on Dom Perignon, the Bistro’s most expensive grape delicacy. Brad also noted that the Bistro has become a halfway meeting point for Grinnell College faculty and their colleagues in Iowa City. He hopes more people from Grinnell, including students, will make the drive out to Ladora.

While the Bistro serves only drinks and appetizers, rather than entrees, Brad and Colleen encourage customers to stay for while, to savor their food and drinks and to share. The appetizers incorporate a number of local ingredients, including Maytag Bleu cheese, Dayton Locker meats and Amana Colony preserves.

We tried the artichoke spread and mini mushroom tart—both were excellent. There are wines and beers from around the world, enough to suit many tastes and price ranges, but this a place to appreciate quality, not quantity. It’s also a place to appreciate the building itself, with the bank teller’s windows still dividing the central room in half and lettering around ceiling spelling out common-place wisdom like “frugality is the parent of fortune.”

From the local farmer enjoying some of the finest champagne in the world, or Iowa natives traveling long distance, looks like the Ladora Bank finally has a resident that is there to stay.

Jerl Fields ’11, Jeremy Johnson ’11 and Victor Golden ’13 were all recruited by Jacks in their senior year of high school in the suburbs of Chicago. Through the persistence of Jacks, all attended the Chicago bus tour to Grinnell, which ultimately resulted in their decision to attend the school. “If it weren’t Marlene Jacks, I probably wouldn’t be at Grinnell,” Fields said.

Throughout their three years at Grinnell, Johnson and Fields both frequented the John Chrystal Center to simply talk with her. “She was authentic. Every aspect of her,” Johnson said. “She’d tell us about her family, about her kids[...]. It felt very natural, I think. Almost like a mother figure. Which I think for people coming from a huge city, like Chicago, going to a small town like Grinnell, it really felt good to see that someone had your back.”

Jacks’ involvement with Grinnell students extended far beyond her as admissions counselor—she also took on the role as of the CBS sponsor. Charisma Montfort ’11 encountered Jacks on an entirely different path than most of Jacks’ mentees: she sought out Jacks to be the CBS leader during her first year. Jacks lived over two hours away from campus but whenever Montfort called her, Jacks would come. “We developed a friendship, a mentorship. I remember at times we sat down and she would say, ‘tell me what you want to do with your life. talk about your career path,’” Montfort said. “She actually sat down with me and my resume before and said, ‘okay, if this is what you want to do, you’re lacking in this area.’ So I just felt that she was that person. One of the few on campus that I could just go to and say, ‘okay, I need this.’”

Montfort wasn’t the only student Jacks advised over her time at Grinnell. According to Golden, Jacks was spotted time and time again in the dining hall, having lunch with a student to simply find out what was happening in their lives and of course, to check up on their academic progress. “Marlene is always at lunch with someone, always bringing in new students and so much,” Golden said.

The news of Jacks’ removal began as a rumor, according to Monfort. She then went to a number of different college officials before she received confirmation from the Admissions Office. “I felt like we deserved to know. I want to know who’s going to fill in that gap,” Montfort said. “No, we don’t have to be guided and have somebody to hold our hands but somebody to understand that sometimes Grinnell really is an uncomfortable place.”

With Jacks’ absence this semester, students are beginning to realize the repercussions of no longer having her at Grinnell. “Where do all the students of color go to? That’s a big deal. I have no one to go to now,” Golden said. “If I needed help, who do I go to? I don’t know anyone from administration or anything. Marlene was my person I go to, the only person I confided to so well at this campus. So, who do I go to now?”

Originally, Mr. Horn, father of Lauren Horn ’12, and his business associate David Schield thought that this pun was funny enough to be put on a T-shirt, so they began putting together a marketing campaign to sell the idea.

However, their business model and overall objective for the campaign changed shortly thereafter when they saw an article in their local newspaper in Middletown, about the increasing rate of STIs among adolescents. Being that they are both parents of teenagers, the article convinced them to change not only their business model, but the whole meaning of the alliterative phrase as well.

“Camo has taken on a whole new meaning for our campaign. Now it is ‘Camo Condoms: they’ll never see it coming!’ referring to the prevention of the STI,” wrote Mr. Horn in an email message.

The mission statement for the campaign reads: “To further social awareness in the prevention of sexually transmitted infections (STI’s) and unwanted pregnancy, and change sexual behavior using a unique marketing, advertising, and merchandising campaign.”

One of their unique strategies is a fun website: camocondoms.org. Here, visitors can find games, cartoons, FAQs, links to resources and where to find help, and useful general information on STIs.

Mr. Horn says there is also potential for a blog to go along with the site, and has plans to include an online store to sell condoms and other Camo Condoms (CC) Brand merchandise. Merging his original business model with his current one, Mr. Horn says that the T-shirts and other CC Brand merchandise will have “humorous and flippant yet pointed phrases about the use of condoms to promote the safer sex message.”

Mr. Horn will also take Camo Condoms to college campuses, where he plans to distribute complimentary condoms to a few campus social organizations, such as fraternities and sororities.

If you’re interested in helping spread the word about Camo Condoms, contact Lauren Horn or show up to the next sporting event, and be prepared to chant “Camo up!”

Also part of the campaign is the catch phrase “CAMO UP!” which is to provide the same connotation as the phrase “wear a condom.” Mr. Horn plans to film a commercial with an army of Grinnell College students chanting this catch phrase at future Grinnell Athletic
event.

“The commercial idea was hatched when my wife and I were at the Midwest Conference Soccer Tournament at Loras College. A group of Grinnell students did the condom cheer and I was so impressed that I asked my daughter if she could film it to put on YouTube. We are also thinking we would like to have a contest on YouTube to develop a commercial for our products and campaign.” said Mr. Horn.

If you’re interested in helping spread the word about Camo Condoms, contact Lauren Horn or show up to the next sporting event, and be prepared to chant “Camo up!”

Correction:
The online story originally published stated that the online store is coming soon, rather it is already open and students can currently go and purchase merchandise. Further, the video that will be filmed is not necessarily a CAMO UP video, rather a general cheer for the support of the use of condoms.

February 14 takes Grinnellian awkwardness to another level. The weeks leading up to it can end up being a nasty Russian roulette of finding love. To take away from the frustration, students have taken somewhat ingenious approaches to embracing the holiday.

Some students find single to be sexy. After experiencing two Valentine’s Days in a relationship and one year clinking glasses in Spain with her “single ladies”, Asia Sample ’10 will be taking herself out to the movies to see Valentine’s Day.

“I think that the movies that come out on Valentine’s Day are exciting,” Sample said. “I’m excited to see Ashton Kutcher, fellow Iowan, on screen.” Sample’s choice reflects the tasteful perspective that seeing a movie alone can be self-rewarding. Whoever said you couldn’t be your own Valentine?

Others have taken a more daring approach—confessing their love. Harpreet Singh ‘12 will be inserting a dozen roses into the mailboxes of those he finds closest to his heart. According to Singh, during high school he kept up a regular practice of giving roses to people who had effected his life positively due to a father figure advising him to let people know he cared about them.

“I’m gonna show them, ‘Thanks. You’ve been a good friend to me,’” Singh said. He also will be leaving a note for a special someone. Singh wouldn’t reveal the person’s identity—he wanted to keep it off the record. “One person is gonna get that note that says, ‘I’m feelin’ you,” Singh said. “‘I hope you feelin’ me.’”

Jerl Fields ’11 is also writing letters to special someones— his mother and grandmother. Every year, Fields sends cards back home. “Those are the first ladies,” Field said.
But one Grinnelian has taken Valentine’s Day and given it an entrepreneurial bent—a lesbian dating service. Bateman calls his quasi-business CLIT—Crazy Lesbians Introduced by Thomas.

Bateman operates under the opinion that sooner or later, throughout a women’s four years here, she eventually becomes queer. But she doesn’t know who’s queer, so in comes Bateman.

“I know a lot of people and have taken several GWSS classes. Lesbians are very likely to be found in GWSS, Theatre, Environmental Science, the Birkenstocks section of shoe stores and the flannel section of Second Mile,” Bateman said. “So, between these five general locations, I am able to find quite a large dating pool and start to introduce lesbians.”

According to Bateman, he’s had a few successful matches. Two of his friends, Erica and Becca, were CLIT’s first success. He’s now taken pride in his new subspecialty, lesbians with the same name—such as Anna and Anna. After graduation, Bateman hopes to expand his faux-business in the big city and expand the CLIT franchise. “I’m gonna host scissor suarees,” Bateman said. “Lesbian ski-getaways at Lodge Lesbo. My lesbian lodge in the Alps!”

Whether you’re at the cinema, writing a secret on Plans, going on a CLIT-arranged date, getting ready to spend your work-study money at the Phoenix or settle in with a bottle of wine and your friends, the S&B urges you to be your own Valentine if you don’t have a person to share it with. This third year couple put it the best—“All kinds of love can be celebrated on Valentine’s Day,” said Maia Larson ’11. Charlie Zimmerman ’11 corrected her—“Conglomerate love,” he said.

Kum & Go, located on 5th and West reopened with new features like a milkshake machine but less condiments. - Ami Freeberg

After returning from Winter Break, however, all can delight in the new, improved and finally open Kum & Go, which officially opened its doors to the Grinnell Community in mid- January. But WTF is the difference between the old and new Kum & Go?

“In all honesty, it feels like you can’t go in there drunk,” said John Burrows ’10, Kum & Go aficionado. “It’s a lot brighter and has more cameras.”

“It looks too fancy. I feel out of place,” said Kum & Go frequenter Dylan Naylor ’13. “I feel unwelcome. I’m not classy enough.”

This description of “classy” stems from the freshly tiled linoleum floors that grace the entire inside, along with the significantly larger Kum & Go clothing selection, possible due to the increase in square feet of the actual space.

“They offer a wider Kum & Go apparel section, which is nice,” Burrows said. “I’m saving up to buy the PJs.”

In addition to clothing, the beverage selection has been vastly expanded, offering an array of coffee blends and flavors. The massive soda machine allows a customer not only to add flavored syrups, such as cherry and vanilla, to a carbonated beverage, but also added a mysterious dispenser marked “lean,” which one can only assume helps boost fat-burning while sipping your 64-oz mountain dew and chomping down on your low-fat frozen burritos.

If frozen treats are your jam, in addition to burritos and burgers piled high in the freezers, the new Kum & Go also comes complete with a milkshake machine. Initial reviews of this machine, however, are shaky at best.

“They don’t taste like milkshakes,” said Emily Evans ’13. “I strongly doubt there was any milk product.”
Naylor agreed, “They really could be more milky and more shake-y. They were neither.”

However, the new Kum & Go, despite its advancements in milkshake technology, lacks the extensive selection of hot dog accoutrements that the Kum N Go of yore boasted.

Seriously, I just want some jalapeños.

Ed Levine ’73, a Grinnell alum and founder of SeriousEats.com, lists the Coffee Cup as one of 10 great places in the United States to eat pie in a recent article in USA Today (he discovered the Coffee Cup while attending Grinnell). When RAGBRAI (Register’s Annual Great Bike Ride Across Iowa) passed through here in 2006, Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong was at the Coffee Cup eating a piece of pie, as the many photographs and newspaper clippings on the bulletin board at the restaurant can attest.

The Coffee Cup’s local and national reputation is built on more than just pie though—as their menu says, they take “extreme pride” in all their “made-from-scratch cooking.” The café is ranked by the Des Moines Register as one of 100 places to eat before you die and named one of 500 best places to eat before its too late in the book Road Food.

Tucked into a short row of businesses on one of Sully’s main streets, the Coffee Cup is a small place, a few booths and tables squeezed into the main dining room, well-lit by a wide front window. In the sort of industrial furnishing that you might be familiar with from The A&M Café, indicative of the building’s relatively recent past (the Coffee Cup was founded in 1970), the ceiling and the front of the bar are made of sheets of gray corrugated metal.

There is further homage to history in the walls filled with framed black-and-white photos of turn-of-the century Sully. The café was full of the local, lunch-time crowd when we arrived. Vegetarians should take notice: this is a meat-centric restaurant. We discovered that even the seemingly meat-free Dutch Lettuce (one of 100 foods to eat before you die, according to the Des Moines Register) had bacon in its homemade dutch dressing.

Other highlights on the menu include a Garbage Salad, ground beef and carrots over lettuce, and the 3 lb Cowboy Burger served on Texas toast for $7. In fact everything on the menu was $7 or less, and all the appetizers were $4 or less.

After our main dishes, we got straight to the pie. We tried healthy slices of banana cream (purportedly their best kind), German chocolate and rhubarb, $2.25 each, hoping to get a good sampling of their pie variety. The banana cream was a slight disappointment for its lofty reputation, but the German chocolate, and especially the rhubarb, were fantastic.
I think the Coffee Cup is worth visiting multiple times just to see what pie they’re offering. The cheap menu, great pie and comfortable, local feel make this an excellent place for an out-of-Grinnell excursion, for breakfast, lunch or dinner (make sure you check their hours and remember to bring cash). Plan on going there soon, if not before you graduate, than at least before its too late.

La Cabana 4/5- Walking into this brand new institution, one can already feel a welcoming atmosphere. Not only is the layout of this place wonderful but also the food. The Taco’s are delectable and they do not put a pinch on your wallet, I would recommend the Super Burrito during lunch along with Jumbo Margarita—all for under 10 dollars! And unlike its closest competitor it is located just minutes from the Grinnell College campus.

Taco John’s 1/5- Its right down the street on the sixth avenue, and has wonderful hours, yet chances are you have never heard the statement “Guys, I think I am going to Taco John’s tonight instead of the D-Hall” Truth be told, the D-Hall put this place to shame. Anyone who has taste buds would certainly agree, as I ate what they call a “Tex-Mex” creation I was wondering if they were playing a practical joke on me. I recommend staying away or walking the extra block to Kum and Go and getting the frozen burrito, your stomach will thank you.

Taco Bell 3.5/5-The most popular taco place in the country is adored by many for its late hours and cheap eats. Certainly, you are not going to get the quality of food that Casa Margaritas or La Cabana offers but you will get the best bang for the buck. I recommend going on Tuesdays when hard shell Taco’s are only 65 cents!

Casa Margaritas 3.5/5- The house of margaritas is certainly that, if you are looking for a good night out, no place in town serves a better or bigger marg. The food is plentiful for its price and can warm you right up in these cold winter months. While the tacos are not as good as La cabana, they certainly give you much more for the price. Go during lunch for some superb deals, or on Friday or Saturday night as a great pre-game to the night.

There are many places around Grinnell where you can get gifts to give to your friends and family back home, whether it be for the upcoming holidays or simply because you miss them and want to show your affection. Whatever the reason may be, here are a few gift ideas for your gift-giving plans.

Shirts from Local Establishments
Many of the local eateries and establishments around town offer their own unique tees that patrons can purchase typically for under $20. Lonnski’s Pub and Deli have shirts in a variety of colors for $15, while Paglai’s Restaurant and Kum & Go offer hoodies along with their tees. Pick them up for you friends—unique shirts, especially ones chock full of light sexual innuendo, are generally popular with the younger crowd—or for you parents, especially if they’ve taken you out to eat there before.

Maytag Cheese
If you’ve got the time, head on over to the Maytag Dairy Farm in nearby Newton to pick up some tasty, locally made cheese. Pick up a 4 oz. wrapped wedge for $3.75, or for that special cheese lover in your life, there are 4 lb. wheels of cheese for $37.50. And if you don’t have time to make it all the way to Newtown, you can pick up Maytag Cheese at local supermarkets like McNally’s and Fareway.

Grinnell College Student Publications
Share with your friends and family what’s on the minds of Grinnell students by picking them up one—or all—of the many student publications offered through the Student Publications and Radio Committee (SPARC). If your friend or family member likes interesting literary pieces, there’s the Grinnell Review or the newest publication, GoGo, or if you want to show them a taste of Grinnell humor, there’s the B&S. They’re free, so pick up as many as you want from the JRC Mail Room.

Digital Art from the CCL
Remember in elementary school when you would make art and bring it home as a gift for your parents? Well guess what—you can still do that! Show family and friends back home your artistic abilities by giving them something you made. The Creative Computing Lab (CCL) is located in the forum, and offers Photoshop and other applications to help bring out that creative side in all of you.

Local Art from Saint’s Rest
If you have a little extra pocket money, consider some of the local art offered at Saint’s Rest in town. They offer plenty of fine photographs, posters and prints taken by local photographers. Unframed photos are $35 and posters are $10.

Recordings and CDs of campus musical groups
Con Brio, G-tones and Grinnell Singers offer studio-recorded, high quality recordings and CDs of their music—a great gift idea for the music lovers you know back home. Also make sure to check with Freesound if they have any recordings or compilations of campus bands that could be worth checking out. Or—for you cheapos—just go to the KDIC Website (kdic.grinnell.edu) and burn some off the Internet.

The Grill
Not exactly your typical go-to stop for gifts, but if you have a few extra dining dollars you need to burn before they expire at the end of the semester, check out the Grill for some sweet stocking stuffers. 

THE CAMPUS BOOKSTORE
If all else fails, head down to the bookstore and pick up some good, ol’ Grinnell-logoed merchandise for your friends and family back home.

OR…
If you’re looking for a special gift that doesn’t require you to walk anywhere and won’t cost you money, consider a jar of melted snow from Grinnell’s first blizzard in a number of years.  It’s a gift that says “I love you enough that I want you to have a piece of my Grinnell College experience – just not enough to freeze my ass off walking into town for a real gift.”

Note: All additions and/or modifications are welcome