Grinnell College - Cyclone Yearbook (Grinnell, IA)

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To protest the banning of Grinnell College- 1966 by President Glenn Leggett, the book's photographers, Henry Wilhelm and John Phillips, and the editor of the college newspaper, Krystyna Neumun, picketed the college commencement exercises May 26, 1967. The entire editorial staff of the college newspaper resigned in protest of the college's handling of the yearbook situation, and the newspaper ceased publication. IsEm- a -- A WAYS mm 355W? -

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I ntroduction - Here at last, after a twenty-year delay, is the Grinnell College Yearbook of 1966. But the reader is hereby forewarned. This is not the college yearbook that you may have been expecting for the past two decades. College annuals traditionally follow a set pattern - smiling portraits ofdeterminedly extroversive admin- istrators to serve as the frontispiece, sentimental and prettified shots of the campus which are largely unrecognizable to the inhabitants of that campus, unsmiling portraits of determinedly introversive faculty neatly compartmentalized into disciplines, and column after column of unusually still life pictures of graduating seniors surrounded by margins wide enough to accommodate the inscription of such immortal sentiments as iiGood luck, Chuck, Good-bye. Betsy, I love ya,., and uThink of me whenever you chug-aalug a brewn a totally predictable bits of Americana which end up gathering dust on attic shelves along with commemorative Worldls Fair plates and bronzed baby shoes. This is not that kind of book. Nor is it. as some may have hoped during these long years of waiting, the sensational exposure ofthe underside ofcollege life that the brouhaha over the college's refusal to publish the book in 1967 seemed to have promised. There is little here to appeal to prurient interests, no nudity tnot even the carefully staged and draped shower scenes which are obligatory for most college annualsi, very little sophomoric crudity that passes as college wit, n0 shots of torrid embraces on sorority steps or in dormitory doorways which are used to enliven some college yearbooks. It is not that kind of book, either. It is simply what the title states: Grinnell College - 1966. a single short year in the life of a small institution in the Midwest. But as the contents graphically demonstrate, it is a remarkable record of what we can now see in retrospect was a remarkable year. The photographs by Henry Wilhelm, John Phillips, and Bob Hodieme are of a quality which alone would give distinction to this book and make it truly outstanding among college annuals. In Wilhelmls design and editing of the book. there are carefully and aesthetically planned pictures juxtaposed with unplanned and spontaneous candid shots to provide the vitality of variety so often lacking in such publications. There is also a variety of moods expressed in these photographs - the warmth of com- panionship that a young couple experiences while standing barefoot in a recently plowed farm f ield outside of town, starkly contrasted with the cold loneliness of death as it exits on a stretcher at night from an old menis nursing home adjacent to the campus. The poignancy of these captured moments penetrates deeply and leaves a permanent scar of remembrance. Many of the pictures need and have no captions. What text there is generally avoids the purple passages so precious to most college editors. The prose by Wilhelm and John Wolf is lean and tough. At times, it has the detached objectivity of an anthropologist commenting upon the curious rituals of an alien people. liFreshman initiation at Grinnell is a hanger-on of some of the primitive traditions and idiocies of college life. It takes various forms, some of which are psychologically rather brutal to the new studentfi Or consider the abrupt summary con- clusion t0 the section on the Homecoming football game. It calls that annual ritual a peculiar combination of hysteria and violence. ii If the captions are terse, they are not devoid of occasional flashes of humor and the more frequent acerbic bite of editorial comment. For example, the caption for pictures of a water fight between two of the menis halls reads simply, This is hall spirit at its finest hour? And for the caption under the picture of the crowning of the Homecoming queen, the notation: Jerry Goddard, student government president; Mary G. J ones. alumni secretary; and Glenn Leggett, the new college president, all made short, iiTelevant speeches befitting the occasion. i Even more than the quality ofthe pictures and the pithiness of their captions, however, it is the overall concept and structure of this book which distinguish it from college annuals of that time. Grinnell College - 1966 makes no attempt to achieve that all- inclusive personnel coverage which most yearbooks seek. Not every college administrator and faculty member is given picto- rial recognition and a captioned title. Even more surprising was the decision not to portray every senior tnot to mention every junior or underclass student at the collegey - a failure which most college editors would consider inexcusable if only for reason of violating a sacred marketing principle for yearbooks. But ifthis book is highly selective in personnel coverage, it is far more inclusive than most of its genre in its institutional coverage. It does what I have not seen any other college annual do. It places the college in the larger context of the small Midwestern town and the rural environment within which the college exists. Most college publications, be they admissions brochures, catalogs, or yearbooks, encapsulate and isolate the institution from its immediate surroundings. The college or university becomes truly an ivory tower or at best an enclave Hoating rootless in its own ethereal space. This book is concerned with the larger community in which the students. faculty, and staff must perforce live. Indeed, I find that some of the most compellingly interesting photographs are those of the town and country, rather than those of the campus: a country Grange hall framed by American elm trees tyes, there were still elm trees in Grinnell in 1966; downtown Grinnell on a rainy night portrayed by photography that equals that of Peter Bogdanovichis The Last Picture Show in its stark, lonely realism; the straight, surgical scars of Interstate 80 cutting across the rounded belly of the Iowa countryside; a motelis YES

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sign blinking its bleak welcome of vacancy to young lust and old weariness; a farmer counting out his coins for a six-pack at a supermarket check-out counter. Here is the land. and here are the people. Having placed the college firmly within its proper setting. the book turns to the major task at hand - the portrayal ofone year at Grinnell College by means of what can only be called a series of photographic essays. The story begins with the arrival of a small young woman with a very large suitcase at the graceful. old, Queen Anne style railroad depot, now, unfortunately. a disgraceful, old, disintegrating ruin abandoned by the defunct Rock Island line. Yes, there were still passenger trains as well as elm trees in Grinnell in 1966. In fact, the railroad was a conspicuous part of the campus landscape and life in I966. The story line carries us briskly through the opening days of the college - freshman orientation Classes, registration. flu shots. frantic book buying in the then quite inadequate bookstore. outdoor classes in the bright sunshine of Indian summer. It is when the general movement forward through the calendar year stops for an in-depth look at the particular that the book fully realizes its potential as an artistic recorder of collegiate life. Most of these pictorial vignettes are crisply efficient in their depictions of particular facets of college life. They presentjust enough to convey the message desired without belaboring the obvious. Surely the finest ot'these photographic essays is that of the speech therapy session conducted by Marilyn Drake for a severely handicapped little girl. There can be no more effective a presentation by means of a camera of a meaningful relationship than this. The final shot of Marilyn watching the child on crutches. guided by her mothers hand, hobbling down the barren corridor of Alumni Recitation Hall a so like the many hospital corridors down which the child must have trudged a has the emotional impact ofa Renaissance pieta painting. Curiously enough, we see no faces in this photograph - only the backs ofthe three persons involved a and we realize with a shock how wonderfully communicative the human back can be. We need no facial expressions to convey the mixed message of sorrow. resignation, and bravery that is painfully present in that scene. I might quarrel here with some 0fthe editorsa priorities. The section on the annual Homecoming game. for example, is by far the longest in the book, covering twenty-one pages, nearly one- tenth 0fthe entire book. This particular event was not then, nor was it ever. significant enough in the ongoing life of the college to warrant s0 extended a treatment. But such lapses in editorial judgment are rare. The quality of the photography in this book would alone justify publication twenty years late, but in addition to satisfying the desire of the Classes of 1966 and 1967 to have at long last their own yearbook. is there any other reason to bring out a 1966 annual in 1986? lthink there is. For the social historian this is an invaluable piece of primary source material. History is, of course, a record of movement through time and the interpreta- tion of that record. Whether that movement is cyclical or linear in pattern will always be a matter of dispute among historians. but for those living in any particular period, history generally appears to be the passage oftime along a continuum. Historical periodization can only be done in retrospect. People awakening on New Yearis morning in the year 1500 did not exclaim, ltAha. we are no longer a medieval people. we are now modernlil The year 1500 seemed very much like the year 1499 to those who were living those years. But there is the occasional dramatic break in the history of any group, be it an institution, a community, a nation, or a people, when we can perceive a sudden change in the flow of history. The moment before is quite different from that which comes after. And it is important to the historian to look at that moment before, when the stream is apparently still running quietly even though, if one listens carefully. one can hear the roar of the rapids that lie just ahead. The year 1966 was just such a year for the history of American higher education in general and for Grinnell College in particular. This surely was the last year at Grinnell in which this collection ofpictures could have been taken as being representative of the college. There is, of course, the obvious matter of student dress and appearance which in these pictures now seem far more dated in style than the automobiles that were then parked on the streets of the town. The young women are wearing dresses. skirts. and dress shoes; the young men, some of them actually dressed in suit coats and neckties, are beardless and with haircuts that would pass a military muster. It was the last year in which parietal rules were still believed in, not only by the administra- tors of those rules, but by a majority of the students a the last time one could take a picture of such an official notice as the one posted on the bulletin board outside a womenls dormitory: llThere will be a Bed Check after any Spring tdisturbances, even in the event that House Presidents are lremovedl from campus!w It must have been the last year that a Grinnell College president could with equanimity state publicly that llstudent government exists because it provides an arena of training and a way of communication between faculty and students, not because of any genuine political necessityW It would be the last time for many years that a student editor would be able to declare in self- righteous indignation that Grinnell was unusual for colleges of its stature in its lack of active interest in the Vietnam war situation. A faculty-student group on Vietnam that was formed in November dissolved after only a few weeks. ll Although the stream of history was beginning to flow faster in this year, it did not move with the rapidity that the editors of the yearbook would have liked. We are repeatedly informed