Social Activities and Organizations
The organizational structure of the Student Government Association, wielding a yearly budget of over $360,000 and unusually strong administrative influence, covers almost all aspects of student activity and campus life. There are no sororities or fraternities.
Founded in 2004, the student-run Student Endowment Investing Group (SEIG), actively invests over $100,000 of Grinnell College's endowment in the stock market. The group's mission is to provide interested students with valuable experience for future careers in finance.
Service organizations are popular. The Alternative Break ("AltBreak") program takes students to pursue service initiatives during school holidays, and as of 2005, Grinnell had more alumni per capita serving in the Peace Corps than any other college in the nation. The college also runs its own post-graduation service program known as Grinnell Corps in Grinnell, China, Namibia, Lesotho, New Orleans, and Thailand, and has previously operated programs in Greece, Macau, and Nepal.
The Scarlet and Black is the campus newspaper and KDIC (88.5 FM) is the student-run radio station. The school has a monthly satirical newspaper, "The B&S."
In April 2007, Grinnell college students founded the Social Entrepreneurs of Grinnell, a student operated microfinance lending institution. The group collects donations for the purpose of making small loans at zero interest to business owners and artisans in developing nations. It is affiliated with kiva.org.
Grinnell also has an entirely student-run textbook lending library on campus. Aimed at the economically disadvantaged yet open to all, it allows students to check out books for the semester for free, defraying the high cost of college textbooks. The library has no funding, relying solely on books donated. Since its founding in 2005, the collection has grown to thousands of books due to the generosity of the campus community. The library has expanded to include caps and gowns, which are lent out to graduating seniors every spring.
Grinnell hosts the Titular Head film festival.
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Famous quotes containing the words social and/or activities:
“How strange to have failed as a social creature—even criminals do not fail that way—they are the law’s “Loyal Opposition,” so to speak. But the insane are always mere guests on earth, eternal strangers carrying around broken decalogues that they cannot read.”
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940)
“Both gossip and joking are intrinsically valuable activities. Both are essentially social activities that strengthen interpersonal bonds—we do not tell jokes and gossip to ourselves. As popular activities that evade social restrictions, they often refer to topics that are inaccessible to serious public discussion. Gossip and joking often appear together: when we gossip we usually tell jokes and when we are joking we often gossip as well.”
—Aaron Ben-Ze’Ev, Israeli philosopher. “The Vindication of Gossip,” Good Gossip, University Press of Kansas (1994)