in a confrontation we had in his of ice that Jewish girls tried to
get pregnant - thus the problem with pregnancy on campus.
That was a new one. He considered the faculty blameless.
Feeling under siege by this gray, gray man, students elected
me to the Judicial Commit ee of the college. It was clear that
he was looking for a scapegoat, someone to expel for defying
parietal hours especially but also for smoking dope and
having girl-girl sex. The students knew I could stand up to
him, and I could. The scapegoat he wanted to punish was my
best friend, and he just fucking was not going to get the
chance to do it.
She had been seen kissing another girl on the steps inside
the house in which she lived. I’ve rarely met a Bennington
woman from that time who does not think that she herself
was the girl being kissed. Someone reported my friend for
shooting up heroin in the living room. I recently asked her if
she had, and she said no. In the thirty-five years that I've known
her, I've never known her to lie - which was the problem back
then. The college president confronted her on marijuana use,
and she told him the truth - that she only had a joint or two
on her right then. Knowing her, I’d bet she offered to share.
The house where I lived, Franklin House, was a hotbed of
treason, so first we had her move there. She could not quite
grasp the notion of turning down music while people were
sleeping, and in our house that was a crime. One could shoot up
heroin or kiss girls, but one could not be a nuisance. Nevertheless, everyone knew a lot was at stake and so the music blared. To protect the personal freedom of each person living
in Franklin we seceded from the school. We declared ourselves
entirely independent and we voted down parietal hours. So
stringy, hairy boys were in the bathrooms at 4 a. m., as one of
the few female professors noted in outrage at one of the many
public meetings. If they weren’t bothering anyone, it was no
crime. If they were, it could be bright and sunny and midafternoon and it was a crime. We elected an empress, an oracle, and other high of icials. (I was the oracle, though I
preferred the tide “seer. ”) This was a pleasant anarchy. No one
had to live there who didn’t want to, but my best friend was
not going to be homeless because some rat as was upset by
some deep kissing.
The secession heightened the conflict between students and
the administration. It was just another version of adults lying,
having a pretense of order, as the foxes on the faculty sneaked
into the henhouse with impunity. They impregnated with
