The Williams Record seems to have awoken from its Winter Study slumber. The lead issues of the day are the forthcoming war in Iraq and the recently instituted smoking ban on campus. There must be some clever quip that joins these stories together, but I am at a loss to come up with it. The smoking policy bans smoking within 25 feet of any college building. The money quote from the smoking story, however, is:

The College will also work towards “devising a system to enable those who choose to smoke to dispose of used cigarettes outdoors in an appropriate way.” Other consequences of the new policy will become apparent once it goes into effect, but Boyer, for instance, is already anticipating telling security officers who work at all-campus parties that they will not be able to smoke because of the required distance from buildings.

That certainly brings back memories for me of the Williams security guards working the Carter House parties. Somehow, I suspect that that hasn’t changed much in the last 15 years.

My favorite recent op-ed piece is on Anti-War Poetry and is by Cassandra Cleghorn, professor of English (at least that is how the Record lists her, connoisseurs of faculty politics will recognize that she actually has a different status — although, of course, I am still jealous). Professor Cleghorn noted that:

In Goodrich last Wednesday, twenty poets and readers of poetry gathered to share poems of protest against war. The group included students and members of the community: from Richmond, Stephentown, Petersburg, Pittsfield, North Adams and Williamstown. Poems of Kipling, Yeats and Owens, and of American poets Jane Cortez, Kenneth Patchen and others were read, as were poems written only days before the reading.

Now, I want to be pro-Cleghorn for a host of reasons here. Poetry is cool. My youngest daughter is named Cassandra. I know what it is like to be a lecturer. Most importantly, Kipling rocks. The Kane girls get a couple of pages from his collected works of poetry each evening (after their Harry Potter). Michaela’s “signature” poem is The Female of the Species and Cassandra’s is If. But, alas, I can’t quite pull it off. She notes:

Whitman wrote, “Something startles me where I thought I was safest…” Even before Bush’s policies bring actual violence upon the people of Iraq, and upon American troops, and upon the others who will be drawn into this war, he has done violence to our civil rights, to the idea of truth, and to our language.

The President treats the American people with the derision he offers to the world. Poised as we are on the verge of killing tens of thousands of people, and of creating (according to the latest UN estimates) 2.5 million refugees, Americans should brace themselves for violent news, and for more rage, fear and grief. As Langston Hughes wrote, “There’s liable to be confusion/when a dream gets kicked around.”

It’s hard to know where to begin with these sorts of sentiments and, remember, no politics should go into the blog. But, since not a single person sent in her reminisces, I’ll have to do my best with the material at hand. Suffice to say, that it’s tough to know how the people of Iraq feel about the coming conflict. I vividly recall getting in disputes with people during our time at Williams about what the “people of Poland” wanted — after all, who was I to say that they were probably not in favor of being ruled by Communists subservient to Moscow? With luck, we will have a better sense once the war is over. I would certainly bet a lot against 2.5 million refugees. But the point on the violence of war is well-taken, as Kipling pointed out long ago. Whether or not Professor Cleghor would appreciate these lines from Kipling:

Yes, makin’ mock o’ uniforms that guard you while you sleep
Is cheaper than them uniforms, an’ they’re starvation cheap;
An’ hustlin’ drunken soldiers when they’re goin’ large a bit
Is five times better business than paradin’ in full kit.

Then it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ “Tommy how’s yer soul?”
But it’s “Thin red line of ‘eroes” when the drums begin to roll,
The drums begin to roll, my boys, the drums begin to roll,
O it’s “Thin red line of ‘eroes” when the drums begin to roll.

is an open question. I’ll ask her and report back what she says.