[lit-ideas] Re: The Politician and the Panty Raid

Last week I attended a scholarly presentation on the history of student
activism on Western small college campuses in the Vietnam protest era:
specifically Whitman and Pomona Colleges, and Willammette University.  There
was much talk of Reid's expererience in the discussion period, and of the
breakaway group of faculty from Reid who subsequently joined the fledgling
Evergreen faculty, history that Robert Paul may or may not want to tell us
about.  The thesis of the presentation was that activism in small colleges
was comparable in proportional numbers to activism at say Berkeley and UCSD,
but was different in kind, more like a family fight than a political
confrontation.  You may want to take issue with the thesis.  Here is what I
took from the talk: one slight image from history that might make a good
scene in a work of fiction.

We are witnessing a "panty raid" at Willammette University.  Youngster that
I am, I hadn't heard of "panty raids."  As I understand what I was told,
women would hang trophy undies from forbidden windows, so encouraging
transgression by males, encouraging a crossing of lines that marked "go" and
"no-go" zones of the "in loco parentis" era.

Rumor flew around campus that a major incursion was being planned, a trip
into the demilitarized zone of under garments.  Males lined up at the
jump-off line, only to be confronted by...Dean Mark Hatfield, who put a stop
to the venture by using skills that would later stand him in good stead as a
politician; he identified individually many of the students who lurked in
shadows.

Senator Mark Hatfield currently lies in intensive care, having fallen after
visiting a medical facility in Washington D.C., named in his honor.  I wish
him well.


David Ritchie
Portland, Oregon

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