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

My son went to Reed -- two e's. There was no need for panty raids 
because the bathrooms were co-ed and skinny-dipping on hikes was the 
norm. Classrooms were a place for serious intellectual skinny-dipping. 
The panty raid was a bourgeois undertaking.

But the story about Hatfield was terrific, and I too hope he recovers.

Harold Hungerford

On Sep 27, 2004, at 9:17 PM, David Ritchie wrote:

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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