Friday, May 2. "6'

By KEN HICKS

As it mmed out, last Friday’s com-
munication crusade wasn’t even thera-

eutic for its participants, which is too

ad, because it there is anything Grin-
Vieli needs it’s a thorough cleansing and
flushing out of the cerebral portions of
its student body,

The petition to invert the tlag had been
circulated. That was groovy. You speak
but in any way you call, right? Then the
flag flying majestically upsidedown, and
that was groovy too. Somebody hadn't
had anything to do on a nice afternoon,
ﬁnd he'd turned it over. Fine. And then
watching the tratjock boys come to
raise the thing right by God and all else
what is dear. Confrontation! Just like TVl
Gooi. And to top it all off, oops on cam-
pus. Boopigsgobomdtheilapbelongsmthe
people. Out; of sight! it real happeningl

The only problem was, you see, that
Qven for the people who stood around
the pole lor so minutes yelling at each

ther, it was a game. it it hadn’t been
‘ust another little intellectual exercise,

e wouldn't have just stood there talk-
iiig. We would have moved like Chief
Peters, or moved like the jerk With the
gun, or moved like the people i met
downtown, or moved somehow. I’m try-
ing to say nobody tllere took the thing
seriously, even if we thought we did, For
us, it was just a mental workout.

We should have taken a him from Chief
Petals. Mall, that guy was mad. But no,
we just chalked it up to his being a cop,
and we said, “Gee, won‘t you talk to uS
about our symbolic intent," and we got
mad when he didn't give a damn what
our symmlic intent was. That should
have told us something about the mood of
the town, right? Sure.

To be honest, I talked to two people
at the Home Show. This is two out of
perhaps forty attempts, With them, i
tried to eiipl in what the students who'd
committed t s sacrilege were trying to
say by 't nd wasn't this attempt at
oommurllcattun great? And they said
yes, that's line, but don’t screw around
with the (lag, because then you just turn
everybody off. Which was the case of
course.

But th were only the two people who
would talk to me. There was also the
lady who delended herself against me by
ﬂailing her arms in my direction, and
hissed, ”Keep away from me, you just
keep away from mei” And another lady,
with the file in her eyes I saw all after-
noon: “I hope you students don’t think
you can whitewash the Grinnell people—
I hope you like the Russians!”

It doesn't make much sense, does it?
They’re not being very rational, are
they? No, But in another way, a less
cerebral way, it makes perfect sense,
and the violence of their reactions was to
be expected. The interesting thing is

KEN HICKS was one or many students
who talked to townspeople last Friday.

SCARLET AND IL'ACK

iHicks: “Nobody Took It Seriously"

that we, with all our intellectual proWr
ess, couldn’t predict it. Why not?

Just like the Playboy incident, even
more so, we found it impossible to real-
istically judge the effects our actions
would have on the real people in the
real world outside. To us, a body can be
simply. objectively, beautilul. a dag
can be simply, objectively, a piece or
cloth. Our celebrated liberal arts exper-
ience has not taught us that to real
people these things are tied up in the
shame of the daughter who had to get
married and the grief over the son killed
in Korea.

To strip, to invert a ﬂag; i.e., to at-
tack these things which are Such a basin
part of the personal identity at so many
people, is to create animosilies which
cannot be salved by an aftemoon‘s leal—
let campaign. These people lelt threat-
ened in every little corner of their being.
and it's amazing that we couldn’t see this
would happen, amazing that we thought
we could actually talk to these people,

I thought Grinneii was supposed to
prepare us for the outside world, not im<
munize us to it. The only people we could
talk to were those we didn't need to
talk to, and the ones we should have
talked to were the ones we couldn't talk
to. That might be something to think
about, next time we turn over a flag.

Z:

} Cops
(Continued from Page 1)

scene, accompanied by Pdwesiliek Coun-
ty Sheriff Wayne Callison and another
uniiormed officer of the Grinnell Police
Department. None of the officers was
wearing a gun.

Peters strode through the crowd, low-
ered the ting, crumpled it under his aim,
and carried it away over the loud pm-
tests of Click and other students.

One student shouted: “You can’t take
that flag! It’s the American flag, and
we’re Americans, too "

“Are you? I doubt it!" Peters respond—
ed sharply. “Maybe someday when you
grow up you'll want a flag like this.
Folks are getting out of here all the
time, and I wish to hell you'd all leave,”
he shouted.

As Peters walked away with the flag,
several students asked him to discuss
the meaning of the symbolic protest
with them. “Baldney! Don’t talk to me!"
Peters told them.

Peters told the 5&1} that he made no
arrests because he ”didn't knew Who
did it." He added, “I’m going to take
the flag down to the station, fold it up.
and treat it the way it should be treated."

Shortly after Peters left the campus.
an unidentified student raised another
American flag upside-down, halfway up
the ilagpole, The second flag was lowered
and folded up after several minutes by
Mlss Mary Kay Taylor, an instructor
in biology.

About ten minutes later 30 students
walked to the police station to retrieve
the llag at the suggestion of freshman
Phil Sasich.

The students explained to Peters that
the ﬂag was inverted as a symbol or
distress over the Vietnam War.

“There is distress up there (at the
College), but not the same way you and
I are thinking,” Peters told them. ”Don't
take this ﬂag out and defile it."

Peters said that Section 32 of the
lowa Code prohibits llying the ﬂag up-
side down, except in cases ol distress.
He returned the flag to the students
when they agreed to raise the ilag right-
side up. The students told Peters that
they could not be responsible if tlle flag
was inverted again by other students
once it was raised.

The students then walked to President
Leggett’s office in Burling Library to

discuss the flag incident with him.

Page Thru

med the college cdmmunity at Friday

ailemoon’s anti-war rally. At right1 Professor Ray Horton watched the pro.

ceedings.

 

Sieinhorn: “We Got What We Deserved"

By RON STEINHORN

"It’d be a good thing for this town if
the college would just get. the hell outl”
This type of reaction and others even
more blunt greeted some of us who went
out into the somewhat hostile world of
Grinllell on Friday to talk about the up-
side-down American flag and the war —
ill that order usually.

It's an amazing thing to see what that
ilag evokes in some people; the closest
analogy might be waving a red flag in
front or an enraged buiiiyou can’t rea-
son with either of them. Even “rational
discourse" doesn’t work. But, anyway,
we went to talk about the war, and it was
very hard to talk about because people
were much more interested in talking
about what a dastardly thing it was to
put a flag (THE flag) upside-down in
such a disrespectful fashion.

One man said he had fought for the
flag in WW II and had seen many of his
buddies killed for it, one woman had had
three sons in the service who had fought
for the flag, one's son had been killed
in the Army in Korea lor the ring, still
altotller’s boy was even now in the Army
in Vietnam lighting for the flag. Al-
ways fighting and dying and being in-
jured, and always lor the flag. Never tor
the always unfulfilled promise which that
nag supposedly symbolizes.

So people would latch on to the llag
issue and demand that Ted Glick get
hung up himself, be kicked out of school,
or sent to jail # or all three prelerably.
Then, having succeeded in talking about
the war and still having someone to talk
to — three people walked out on me —
another entire set of reactions could be
seen.

The general tone was that the United
States has to be in Vietnam because Rus»
sia and China are all set to attack us
and by bombing Vietnam to pieces we're
showing what Russia and China can eX<
pect if they try to mess over us. One
man even spoke of an anti-v.5. alliance
between France, Germany, and ltaly
which is all set to move as soon as we
appear vulnerable.

Another reaction was that Nixon was a
good, smart man who understood things
so Well [ha/t if he felt we should continue
to fight, well then ._. we should fight.
Stock responses or having to tight com-
munism again in another place it we
didn't here, and the domino theory were
so numerous they are not even worth
mentioning.

And so it went all afternoon. I walked
around the downtown streets for about
one and a half hours and then stood
in front of the Home Show for awhile.
It was obviously a real trial to be con—
rrdnted with us like that, representing
those who had defiled their Symbol,
questioning their belicls, ultimately iorc<
ing them on the defensive; and those of
us who expected that it might be better,
easier, aiid more rewarding got when
we deserved.

Just one example typilied the whole
thing for me. When i finally got sick 0!
the inistradcn of talking on the streets.
sick at viewing what I thought might be
an enjoyable change, i decided to go
over to the Rock Island depot and talk
With the guys there since I know the
men who run the station. When i walked
in, there were two operators who I
know pretty well and two sectionmen I
didn't know. The fil'st thing out of one
of the operators to me was, “Were you
one of them that turned the flag around
yesterday?” And train that moment I
was placed on the defensive along with
my values, having to justify why I
thought the war more important than the
flag; how could anyone ever tillilk that,
why that was anarchy?!

i never really did get to talk about the
war, And that's how things went for me
on Friday. It was discouraging at the
time, but in retrospect, it was much as
could have been expected. I didn’t hear
or anyone being beaten up, that old
man who came on campus didn't shoot
anybody, and I was invited back to the
train station to play chess and talk any-
time I felt like it.

z:

} Leggeii

(Continued from Page 1)

with what you're doing?" Leggett re—
plied. ”I don’t Want to do it, it’s as
simple as that."

“Okay, that’s why the war con-
tinues,” Glick commented. He then
told the president: “1 sort of pity you
that you can’t stand up for what you
think is right because you feel so
bound to the institution. You aren‘t
free."

“I pity myself sometimes," Leg<
gett responded. “i agree I‘m not free,
but. that's the job. You don’t respect
that; do you?"

“No, I don‘t," answered Glick.

The students complained to Leggett
that Chief Peters had no right to com
on campus and take the flag.

“What I have with Chief Peters is a
gentleman's understanding," Leggett
said. “He calls me when he's coming
on campus and I call him and ask him
to Come when I think it's necessary."

Leggett said, however, that Peters
hadn’t called him about the flag inci<
dent until atter he had come on campus
and taken the llag in response to a com-
plaint phoned to the police station by a
student.

Asked about the “gentleman's under~
standing" on Friday, Peters said, “I
don’t have that. agreement with him '
He added, however, “i guess I'd call
the president before I hit anywhere on
campus."

Leggctt also told the students: “This
place Isn’t. a sanctuary. ii an individual
Calls the police and tells them some-
thing illegal is happening, there's noLlls
ing I can do.”

 

