Ellen Erlanger, Barnard student
Barnard is across Broadway from
Columbia which is not very far but
Far enough to be different from what
Barnard would be like if there were
One unified campus for both sexes.
For example, on one unified campus
Panty raids probably would not exist:
Mobs of CU cretins marching across
Broadway to Barnard late at night,
Weather permitting of course.
They come through the gate and chant
Show us your tits and believe it or not
Some Barnard girls actually do that
In the windows of their dorm rooms
And a few also throw panties and bras.
If it goes on long enough cops arrive
And the girls chant the cops eat shit
And the boys wander back across
Broadway with the girls’ underwear
To treasure for the rest of their lives.
What annoys me about a panty raid
Is the corny boola-boola college boy
Frustration and foolishness it shows,
Like eating goldfish or trying to cram
All the frat boys into a phone booth.
Well, today we’ve got Vietnam
And Johnson and Ronald Reagan
And the Doors and the Stones
And if we want to fuck, we fuck.
Simple! I was fucking in high school.
I believe the last panty raid as described took place in Fall 1967. I was living in Hartley Hall and there was a rush and cry and suddenly the words "panty raid" filled the air. There was a lot of sexual energy on both sides that needed to find expression, a rite of late adolescence. But in 1968 Barnard junior Linda Leclair and her Columbia boyfriend shacked up in a story that made the front page of the New York Times (Below the fold). No more panty raids after that. --DL
Posted by: The Best American Poetry | November 20, 2019 at 02:28 PM