Student Newspaper of Grinneﬂ College

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By BARRY ANCONA
5&3 Special Writer

Things will get a lot worse
it something isn’t done about
racial incidents, the City Coun<
oil was told Monday night by
Negro students irom the Col-
lege.

“Unless something is done
'now by the City Council and
the Police Department, things
are going to get a lot worse
around here and somebody is
going to get hurt,” predicted
Hubert Farbes, a North Youn-
ker junior.

More than half of the Col-
lege's ﬁfty-one Negro students
attended the meeting.

The student's complaints —-
most of which were listed in
last Week’s 5&3 — included
many instances of verbal
abuse, physical threats, at-
tempts to run them over with
automobiles, having bottles
thrown at them, and the apathy
of proprietors of local busi-
nesses where incidents have
occurred.

“This is not a case of insti-
tutional segregation,” explained
Grady Murdock. West Norris
sophomore. “Only a portion oi
the population is antagonistic.“

Murdock also Cited tavern
and Cate owners as being reluc-
tant to act impaltially when in-
cidents occur: “The manage
ment can do more than tell
Negroes to leave when trouble
starts," he said. Murdock also
told the council that a white
townsman had threatened him
with a baseball bat.

Several Negro girls irom the
South agreed that they are bet-
ter treated on the streets of
their hometowns than in Grin-
nell.

Lucy Pollard, a sophomore in
Loose. told of being propo
honed while walking don't
, The harrassment has not

been limited to students. Denis
M. deCoteau. a Negro Protes—
sor of Music, was threatened
in downtown Grinnell by sev-
eral white persons wielding
baseball bats. De Coteau’s two-
year old daughter was with
him at the time.

Other Negro members of the
faculty have also reported be-
ing threatened while in the
town.

Greg Coggs,

East Norris

sophomore, told of being called -

a "nigger" by a three-year old
girl. “I'd been told Grinnell
was a liberal town." he said,
"but now I wouldn't tell my
friends to come here.”

Farbes told the council he
didn't feel the City was aware
of the problem. Mayor Beaver
agreed noting that the council
would have discussed the prob
lem earlier it it had been
brought to their attention.

Police Chief Bill .Peters ad-
mitted that he “didn't believe
it was as had as it was,” and
added that he would do all he
could to alleviate the problem.
He indicated he thought the
blame lay in “a iack oi com-
munication between the college
students and the Police Depart<
ment," that had “allowed this
thing to get out of hand.”

A major difﬁculty, the Police
Chief noted. was that he has
had no direct complaints irom
Negro students at the time the
incidents have occurred. The
students had been making their
complaints to college authori-
ties, and the complaints often
reached the police department
two or three days later,

The council meeting was at-
tended by over 70 citizens,
some oi whom asked why the
problem had never been
brought up before in the cerr
tury Grinnell College has been
in its present location. Mayor
Floyd Beaver agreed that “this

is the first time in the 115 year
history oi the city or Grinnell
that anything of this nature has
arisen,"

Sammie Fletcher, Loose
sophomore, noted that there
were more Negroes on campus
than ever before, and that the
civil rights struggle had been
brought into national aware-
ness.

Allen Jones, Protessor of His-
tory, and a Grinnell City Coun-
cilman concurred. ”Until
now," he said, “the people or
Grinnell have been sheltered
from the problems of Negro
students.”

The Negro students asked
for better protection from the
city’s police department (Proi'.
dc Coteau said earlier in the
sat; that he thought Chiet
Peters had a tendency to play
down everything that has hap<
pened as unimportant), and al-
so improved service irom Grin-
nell businesses.

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FLOWER PO WER
EXPLODES

LAWRENCE, Kan. (ACP)—
it happened at a Vietnam
speakout sponsored by the lo-
cal Students for a Democratic
Society (SDS) to protest Marina
recruitment on the KU cam-
pus. The visit at which the pro-
test occurred was the second by
Marines in three months,

Just belore the antiswar
speeches began, SDS members
rolled out a red paper tank,
constructed at old peace posters
and powered by an electric mo-
tor with a reversed tan blade.

The tank also had a can-

non. The ammunition? Five do- .

zen roses.
The cannon was fired . . .
and it nlisfired, spewing petals
and pulp out its sides and onto
everything within range.

CONSTITUTION OKAYED

By DAVE HORWATT
S 8: E Special Writer

A new Student Government
constitution will come up for
ﬁnal ratification in a student
referendum on February 13th.

The work on the proposed
constitution, which would re.
organize Grinnell‘s present Sen-
ate -— House Council Student
Government into a 13 member
body, was started last Novem-
ber by Tom Thomas. Thomas,
a member at the Constitutional
Reform Committee set up by
the Senate, felt Ihat there should
be a complete restructuring of
Ihe Student Government.

Early in November, at the
second meeting of the Consti-
tutional R are rm Committee,
Thomas presented a drait of
his new constitution.

At the same meeting, the com-
mittee also considered a bill
presented to it earlier by Neil
Fischer.

Fischer's bill would have cre-
ated the position of Ombuds-
man in the Student Guvem—
ment.

An Ombudsman is a people’s
protector in Scandinavian na.
tions who scrutinize: complaints
by individuals who think they
have been wronged by the
bureaucracy. Two student gov.
ernments, N.Y.U. and the u.
of Colorado, and several states
in the Union have proposed
Ombudsman or Public Protec-
tors.

Both Fischer’s bill and Thos
mas’s drait were accepted by

the constitutional committee and
drawn up into one constitution.

The members of the commit-
tee, Phil Bertenthal, (chairman
and Speaker or the Senate)
Tom Thomas, Tom Triplett, Bert

OKAYED—
(Continued on Page 2)

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FOLKFATHER
PERFORMS

Singing was only a hobby for
Tan Mitchell until he wrote All
American Folk Song Mass. Pub-
lished in 1958, this folk-style
musical setting oi the Com-
munion service has steadily in-
creased in popularity and draw1

its composer into a iull-tima
concert career.

Since his ordination to the
Episcopal priesthood in 1953,
Mitchell has worked in an inner
city parish in Chicago and u
an indian reservation in Utah.

reaching his Folk Song Mass
to a group or Navajo parish-
ioners early last year, he was
visited, quite unexpectedly, by
Steve McQueen and invited.
even more unexpectedly, to ap-
pear with the actor on the To-
night Show.

How did the Mitchells get
into show business? “Well, we
started with Mass," explained

MITCHELL—
Continued on Page 4)

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Features Index

, ~ ~ ZELTE ON THE PROBLEM -—
Younker Resident Advisor Zelte
‘ ‘ Crawford reconsiders the Town vs.
Negro Student problem ....PAGE 3

TAKING A CONSTITUTIONAL
look ahead at Grin
the Senate dis-
plays the body of
the new Constitu-
tion. Background
on Page 1.
and con opinions

by senators, text

of the Constit

tion, and Consti-

tution Girls Cathy

Debbie

Gentry, Leslie ..
Knowlton, and Connle Kueter

AND . . . A Republican from Dixie on Campus; Focus
on the German SDS; Buckley on Senator Dodd; A >
Holy War Between Ditierent Brands of Socialism >
in the Middle East; Editorial on a Pterodactylic
Hex at Grinnell r . . and more . . . inside the

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lGo ernrne t,

Pro

_____ PAGES 6 and 7

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