The B&S is saddened to report that, in light of recent events, four of its veteran staff members have been fired. See the messages below for more details:
Author: B&S Staff Page 1 of 16
By Carter Ottele
I’ve been remarkably lucky to edit the B&S for the last two years. Most schools don’t pay their students to print articles with headlines like “Tenured Professors Celebrate 1,000 Days by Selling Souls, Engaging in Wild Orgy” or “Grinnellians Die Alone”; the fact that SPARC continues funding the B&S remains a marvel and a mystery. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed my time with this publication, and I look forward to seeing it grow under new leadership.
By Sarah Reif
One morning a couple of weeks ago, I was walking through the HSSC when I crossed paths with a horde of jabbering youths, all adorned in red lanyards. It was, as I soon discovered, Admitted Students Day.
I always reserve judgement until I am confident that I truly know and understand the subject matter. That being said, I immediately knew I didn’t like them. Ambling around like thieves casing the scene of the crime. Fraternizing among themselves. Answering questions about prepositions in my German class (that I also knew the answer to, I just didn’t raise my hand as quickly because I’m not competitive). The sight of these possible future students instantly sickened me.
By Elke Calhoun
Another sun sets across the ever-expanding Iowa skies. You rest contentedly on your post, satisfied after another long day of guarding your expanse of asphalt. Three people turned correctly down your avenue. You are satisfied; you have purpose; you are the High Street sign.
Suddenly, you hear rustle, a bustle. From the bushes emerge three figures swathed in darkness and bright red Grinnell Men’s Basketball merch. You tense in all of your metallic glory. You have been THE HIGH STREET sign throughout living memory (since the 2021 derecho), and you are no fool to what happens to good upstanding signs when sportos come lurking.
By James Applegate
CATACOMBS—Two weeks ago, President Donald J. Trump signed the Sticker-Vinyl Act, which couples a demographic tax on all users of the vinyl stickers popular with merchandise offices with a massive tariff on the vinyl used to make such stickers. To understand the impact that the Sticker-Vinyl Act has had, the B&S reached out to Dr. Rita Banna Bouhques, Professor of Political Science and History. The author of New York Times bestseller “A Sticker a Day Keeps the Dictator Away”, Dr. Banna Bouhques teaches such courses as “Political Stickers as Resistance” and “Political Stickers in American History” at the college and recently demonstrated for sticker-user rights alongside thousands of protestors at the Iowa State House.
By Catherine Terelak
At forty-eight years old, I never thought I’d be faced with the decision to aboyt my nineteen-year-old son. Pathologically useless, Brody graduated high school with no plans for employment, vocational training, or further education. For a year now, he’s been huffing paint in the garage, online gambling with an account attached to my credit card, and watching Israeli floor hockey videos at maximum volume on the family television. His intellectual challenges are such that he cannot perform the basic tasks of daily living, including feeding and hygiene. He cannot regulate his emotions and spends eighteen hours a day in a weed-induced trance, rarely leaving his childhood bedroom. His friends are similarly delayed and have become an additional burden for our family, perpetually sneaking in through the back door with thirty-racks of Twisted Tea.
By Henry Coen
Dear Binston Swongo,
I accidentally set my scale to kilograms instead of grams when I was measuring my mushrooms for Alice, and I think I might have broken my brain. People’s faces now look like monsters, all music sounds like farts to me, and the voices in my head have gotten so much louder. What should I do? Is there any way to fix this?
—Oliva Dosa ’26
By Josh Emrys Payong
The cracks in the mask that hid DAG’s ambitions for world domination started to show when, on the day of our time-honored Grinnellian tradition of Relays, the “nerds” of the Duels and Games club showered Mac Field with spiked foam balls using homemade trebuchets constructed from the wooden scraps of the bookshelves they stole from all our desks at the beginning of this academic year (fucking bastards).
By Elke Calhoun
B and S reporters have been alerted by increasingly concerned French majors about the mental state of their own SEPC. Over the course of the semester, they have fallen increasingly into psychological states of ruin. Thus began a covert sting operation in which one brave B&S reporter went deep undercover and took a French course, in order to gain insider access to the French psyche, strategy, and (most importantly) mailing list. This reporter has battled through nicotine addictions, fashion faux pas, and a horrible case of contagious pretension, but returns victorious with a compilation of emails that follows the transgression into total madness of an SEPC that was already teetering on the brink.:
By Dale Bell
Plat Du Jour: You enjoy missionary sex and once referred to the Beef Bourguignon as “ethnic food”. Your first-year friend group still meets for dinner three times a week. You have never felt real emotion.
Honor G. Grill: You’re obsessed with investment. You think that sometimes with regard to gender/racial equality, the pendulum has swung too far in the opposite direction. You build your identity around a sports team that got blown out 85-3 last fall.
Pizza Parlor: As a child, you thought being a grown-up meant eating pizza at every meal. You were right. You are a happy and well-adjusted person and will continue to be until you die at 35.
