Indignation

HISTORICAL NOTE

In 1971 the social upheavals and transformations and protests of the turbulent decade of the 1960s reached even hidebound, apolitical Winesburg, and on the twentieth anniversary of the November blizzard and the White Panty Raid an unforeseen uprising occurred during which the boys occupied the office of the dean of men and the girls the office of the dean of women, all of them demanding “student rights.” The uprising succeeded in shutting down the college for a full week, and afterward, when classes resumed, none of the ringleaders of either sex who had negotiated an end to the uprising by proposing liberalizing new alternatives to the college officials were punished by expulsion or suspension. Instead, overnight — and to the horror of no authorities other than those by then retired from administering Winesburg’s affairs — the chapel requirement was abolished along with virtually all the strictures and parietal rules regulating student conduct that had been in force there for more than a hundred years and that were implemented so faithfully during the tradition-preserving tenure of President Lentz and Dean Caudwell.