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Letters to the Editor

Staff editorial Perplexes prof.

I would like to thank the S&B for its thoughtful exploration of the proper curriculum for a 21st century liberal education in last week's editorial. I am particularly grateful for the illuminating comments on the English and foreign language departments. My colleagues in the foreign languages have operated under the impression that we foreground communicative skills over grammar-centered pedagogies.

Your well-researched and responsible opinion piece makes it abundantly clear, though, that we have not gone far enough in eliminating grammar instruction from our courses. Whom needs grammar, after all? And literature? No one reads books anymore. Let's watch more TV.

I am perplexed on one matter that the editors could perhaps help me understand. I had the notion that proper instruction in a foreign language that includes grammatical accuracy might be one of the more practical elements in a Grinnell College education.

Similarly, I assumed that the cultural competency one gains from an encounter with other cultures' literatures might be of practical value, even if that is not the only benefit. I was clearly wrong. I shall try to convince my colleagues to retool. Rather than teach courses on African-American literature, French civilization, Spanish colonial legacies, Russian culture and the like, we should offer courses such as "Grammar-Free Business German."

-Daniel Reynolds,

Associate Professor of German

Party parodies stereotype

Thugs Life party intended to poke fun at pop culture, not perpetuate prejudice

In "Living in a Gangstas Paradise" which was printed in The Salad, the author is disturbed that a white male Grinnell student would make a poster with himself dressed as a gangster, inviting students to a party called "Thug Life, Keepin' it Gangsta."

Throughout the article, we are never sure whether the author believes it is possible to separate black culture from pop culture. Rap is not black culture, which is why Method Man does not represent Malcolm X.

Pop culture does not create a positive image of blacks through rap. In fact, rap reinforces negative stereotypes, but rap is only racist if you use it to represent more than pop culture, and generalizing all rap as racist is equally ignorant (see Talib Kweli).

The idea behind the Thug Life party is to be a parody of a parody. I can understand why this would be disturbing to some people, because there is no way to determine that the motives of the participants are pure.

I felt the party had a respectful festival atmosphere with a DJ, ridiculous chains and a lot of toy guns with sound effects. The funniest part as I recall was a particular prospie from the suburbs of Chicago who genuinely believed that he was gangster. He kept on shouting "630" and talking about how we did not know how ghetto he was.

Racism festers in places that we do not reflect on, and so I respect the author of "Livin in a Gangstas Paradise." Yet I can not pretend that the success of groups like Three-6 Mafia and their racist, sexist and materialistic views are not a symptom of the absurdity our pop culture. Therefore, I must question the author's expectation for everyone to ignore these ever-present images of rap.

Pop culture is such a powerful tool in our global society. Sometimes, people need to openly mock and defy the system so that they are not incorporated.

-Ben Schrager '08

Reconsider racy ads

One of these days, you're gonna see me walking down the South Campus loggia, and I'm going to utter a yelp of surprise. "Hey Max," you might ask me, "What are you yelping about?" And I'll say to you, "Reader of the S&B, I just saw a series of posters advertising a Grinnell women's sports event, and none of the posters invoked the sexual appeal of the female athletes' bodies as a reason to attend the event."

When the women's soccer team wanted to advertise a match, they told us to come check out their calves. When the women's cross-country team had a big meet, they said to come see the short-shorts. When the women's water polo team was looking for spectators, they put up pictures of a female water polo player exposing another player's breast. I could go on.

Before I go on, let me make a couple of defensive statements:

1) I am no puritan. I enjoy calves, breasts and short-shorts as much as the next guy.

2) I am not saying that women at this school should be condemned for marketing their sexuality. They own it; they can do with it what they will. Furthermore, I understand that sexuality can be a means of empowerment, and that it is patriarchal to say that a woman marketing her sexuality is necessarily cheapening herself.

3) When I use the phrase "women's sports teams," as in "A woman's sports team put up posters of several of their members naked," I'm referring to whichever persons were involved in the creation of the posters. I understand that the majority of any given team has nothing to do with these things and probably doesn't give a shit either way how an event is advertised.

4) I understand that these posters are not 100 percent serious, that the women's water polo team doesn't really want us to think that they're gonna pull each other's swim suits off this Sunday.

But if these posters are meant strictly as a joke, I have a hard time figuring out why it is made with such consistency.

5) I don't want to censor anything; I just think maybe we should give this some thought.

Look, I'm not trying to condemn anyone. This stuff just makes me depressed. To me, women's sports seem like a place, maybe the only place, where women can step out of the horrifying, objectifying x-ray of the male gaze and be valued for what they can do, not how they look.

My beef is not with female athletes, but with whatever makes female athletes feel like they need to advertise a peep show to get guys to come to a track meet.

-Max Postman '08

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