Epidemic

MANNERS & MORALS

The newest and noisiest college craze--the pantie raid--reached the epidemic stage. Night after night from coast to coast last week college boys leaped and howled like Comanches under the windows of squealing coeds; by week's end, despite arrests, expulsions, editorial blasts, and the best efforts of police riot squads--a few of whom even used tear gas--pantie raiders had made night hideous at 52 different colleges and universities.

In most cases and on most campuses girl students seemed to welcome and even abet them. Georgetown University, a Catholic men's college in Washington, B.C., was invaded, in fact, by an automobile caravan of squealing females. Scores of students poured out after them before faculty members stepped in and sent both forces into sheepish retreat.

As the week wore on, the pantie raid--originally a noisy but generally good-natured affair--seemed to get rougher and more destructive. At the University of Washington the raiding mob broke windows at a sorority house to get in. When University of Missouri students raided nearby Stephens and Christian Colleges, the girls fought back with Coke bottles, mops and plumber's helpers. The male rioters broke windows, doors and screens, damaged furniture, threw eggs and potatoes and stole silverware, cigarette lighters and lamp shades.

Members of the older generation greeted the new craze--the first really daffy outbreak by U.S. college students since the days before World War II--with unconcealed irascibility. "It's going too far," said 34-year-old Teacher Gordon Southworth of Riverdale Country School in New York. "This pantie snatching is a case of sensualism . . ." Considering the source, it was a crushing rebuke, for on March 31, 1939, when an undergraduate himself, Gordon Southworth had made his contribution to the craze of the year by swallowing 67 live goldfish at one sitting--and had eaten a peanut butter sandwich afterward.

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