Two years ago this week, four Grinnellians left Mardi Gras in St. Louis at 3 a.m. to drive through the night back to school. Just outside of Iowa City, the student driving fell asleep at the wheel and the car rolled into a ditch, sending Liza Colburn '09 and Yuki Goto (formerly '08) through the car's back window.

Following last year's shooting at Virginia Tech and a shooting this year at Northern Illinois University, Grinnell College security continues to adapt to the possibilities for violent events on campus. As shootings occur in colleges and universities around the country campuses are discovering the difficulty and importance of creating effective response plans.

Grinnell's plan for responding to hostile situations on campus calls for individuals to get to shelter as soon as possible and to wait for the members of the Grinnell Police Department, who are armed, to arrive on campus.

This week, Iowa joined the numerous states and cities that have passed public smoking bans in the last few years. A bill to ban smoking in all public places, including bars and restaurants, was passed earlier in the month by the Iowa State House and yesterday passed in the Senate. Smokers in Grinnell may soon be feeling the heat.

t was not a calm night at Joint Board on Wednesday, Feb. 20. The prospect of bringing hip-hop artist Jean Grae to campus this Saturday generated both excitement over the concert and fighting over where the funding should come from.
Debate lasted over an hour, moving through several amendments and touching on issues of overspending and diversity in concerts. The semester budgets of two committees were taxed; one Cabinet member reportedly left in tears. How the concert became one of the biggest SGA controversies of the year boils down to money, jurisdiction, and communication.

Wednesday evening, Free the Planet (FTP) hosted a dinner and write-in to promote environmental justice. Participants ate local foods, including Iowa honey, while writing letters to political leaders as part of FTP environmental justice symposium.

Bursting the bubble of self-governance, an incident involving unauthorized entry into a professor's office has raised questions about the nature and procedure of punishments at Grinnell.

Nancy Baumgartner and Mary Kissinger may not be familiar names for those who do not participate in athletics at Grinnell. Neither Nancy nor Mary, both secretaries who are both slightly over the NCAA eligibility age limits, hold school records or have smiling pictures in Grinnell sports programs. But behind the stories of wins and losses, coach hirings and firings, teams and individuals, Nancy and Mary help keep Grinnell Athletics flawlessly moving while making students and staff feel a little more at home.

During the fall, Ian Young '08 was injured in the leg and was denied access to the athletic trainers, and did not want to pay the doctor fee. The pain did not go away and eventually he went to the doctor and found out that he had a hematoma. "The doctor gave me the impression that if I had caught it sooner, I might have had a faster recovery time and not had these fragments," Young said.

To remedy this and similar problems plaguing students that are uninvolved with varisty athletics at Grinnell, Young wrote a successful student initiative to provide all students access to athletic trainers.

This is not the gym class game of your youth--when it comes to Grinnell intramural dodgeball, teams play for keeps. The intramural dodgeball season has come into its own as a competitive entity, but hilarity, fun and tradition remain at its core. The teams take dodgeball seriously, suiting up on Monday and Wednesday evenings for intense matches. A defined strategy is the key to winning.

"We aim for the head ... and the balls," said "Team Manatee" member John Bruns '10.

Much like the surprise encounter between Kermit Washington and Rudy Tomjanovich, the unexpected flurry of NBA deals has left me floored. In a league where recent deadlines have come and gone with little of interest occurring, it was a pleasant surprise to see several important deals made on or before Feb. 21.

The men's basketball team ended the season just like they began it, with a thrilling victory on the road. The Pioneers began their last conference game slow, going down by as much as 17 to the Blueboys of Illinois College.

For most students, college graduation denotes the end of one experience and the opportunity to embark upon a completely new journey in a new setting. But for many current Grinnell faculty and administrators, commencement was not their final goodbye to Grinnell, IA.

Walking into State Street's Bowladrome on a Sunday afternoon, your ears will pick up unsurprising sounds: the crashing of each ball against pins, casual banter between friends, and the occasional high-five and bellow of jubilation accompanying a strike...

Usually any mention of the Oscars elicits little response from me besides some discontented muttering about self-congratulatory, insipid Hollywood-centrism. This year, though, the bigwigs made the right call when they awarded Best Picture to No Country for Old Men. It certainly was the best film I've seen in the past year--in quite a few years, for that matter.

High Noon is regarded as one of the benchmarks of the early 20th century's Golden Age of Westerns. Yet the movie encompasses qualities characteristic of the revisionist Westerns that wouldn't come until the 1960s: a questioning of traditional morals, a cynical tone and a more realistic conception of the hero. It helped pave the way for the contemporary Western subgenres that exist today, where films like Brokeback Mountain and Serenity find a home.

Brace yourself ladies and gentlemen: this is the mother of all adventures. Watching the eleven-hour The Lord of the Rings trilogy, faithfully based on the novels of the same names (The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers and The Return of the King) by J.R.R. Tolkien, might seem like a Herculean task, but it is well worth the time and effort invested.

Whether it is the student body or the variety of activities available on campus, diversity is Grinnell College's calling card. For the week of Feb. 24 through March 8, Hip-Hop Unit is hosting a two-week long program, Hip-Hop Evolved, meant to expand that diversity by raising awareness of the hip-hop genre.

Singer-songwriter Kazutaka Nomura, also known as PWRFL POWER, takes his homespun lyrics and elegant acoustic guitar playing to Bob's Underground on Feb. 29.

Moving, exciting and upbeat, Sierra Leone's Refugee All-Stars will be playing Harris on March 5, for a concert blending the contradictory forces of tragedy and celebration.

The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center may not inspire in-your-seat dancing like the Refugee All-Stars or hipster quirkiness like PWRFL POWER, but that's not to suggest that their concert will be underwhelming in any way.

My face hurt so I slapped it; when Mom saw me do this she took me to the hospital. At the hospital, a nurse congratulated Mom because her tummy looked big. Mom wasn't pregnant; she was just constipated. As the doctor messily scribbled some hip hop lyrics on parchment paper (my prescription,) he winked at me with an eye made of galvanized steel.

"I used to rap with my mum and wear baggy pants," he said with a British accent as his hand methodically patted my back.

The hate crime perpetrated in Haines Hall last Friday came as a shock to most everyone at Grinnell. Our community--known for its socially progressive policies and liberal student body--faced an unpleasant truth. Namely, that intolerance and hatred still exist on our campus.

Isn't it exhilarating walking around campus after a fresh snowfall? The overwhelming presence of white and that peaceful, post-snow quiet should make any morning walk to ARH a calming and enjoyable experience. And it would, if we weren't all terrified of slipping and breaking our necks.

Even with two days to vote last week, student initiatives barely managed to pass the 50 percent participation mark required for initiatives to pass regardless of whether or not people vote yes. Many would blame student apathy, but maybe the real concern should be student government.

I've won many dubious awards in my time. In third grade, my Church of England elementary school gave me an actual certificate for drawing (wait for it) the "most accurate picture of heaven." A few problems: first, as far as I know, my third grade teacher was not actually God. Second, my super "accurate" picture of Heaven featured dead people lying on velvet-lined coffins under a huge, floating, bearded face. Paradise!

The most enjoyable aspects of living in a one-hundred-and-fifty-year-old edifice are apparent only when one tries to conduct the business of life in said building. Unless we are mistaken, no building on the college campus is older than our house. When Goodnow Hall was naught but a glimmer in J.B. Grinnell's eye, the residents of our little house on High Street peered out into verdant forests brimming with button-eyed woodland creatures, unconcerned that a kegger in Soccer House would bump an erstwhile Bunsen burner in Meth House, triggering a chain reaction that would bring the chemical apocalypse and sterilize our grandchildren.