Friday, January 10, 1997
By Stephanie Salter
San Francisco Examiner
As the years accumulate, I sometimes forget why I turned out the
way I did. I mean, for instance, why I became a Democrat instead of
a Republican or why I moved to California or never got married or
prefer scotch to bourbon.
But I rarely forget for long. Something from the past always
seems to pop up and remind me why (and when) I took a particular
sociological fork in the road.
Recently, I rediscovered just such a something: the official
35-page "guide" to my college dormitory.
Why did I, a typical ’60s, boy-crazy, hair-tossing, conformist
teenager do a 180 and become a placard-waving feminist? Early
answers are in the guide.
Page 22: "PET PEEVES OF PURDUE MEN. Here are some of the things
that Purdue men do not like:
1. A girl not waiting until her escort opens the door of the
car.
2. A girl not stepping aside so that her escort can get near the
door to open it for her.
3. A girl not saying ‘thank you’ to a boy who shows her a
courtesy, such as opening a door for her."
As bad as this imposed Alphonse-and-Gaston routine might be,
there are worse peeves:
"6. A girl who ignores his suggestions when they are out for
dinner. This is his subtle way of letting you know how much money
he has with him. If nothing has been said, it might be wise for you
to ask, ‘What would you suggest this evening?’"
If I must submit but one piece of evidence, one crystal-clear
example of why  in the America of the mid-1960s Â
something had to give between the sexes, let it be pet peeve six.
In this single piece of advice lies much of what was soooo warped
about relations between females and males back then.
Deliberate dishonesty. Crude manipulation. Attempted
mind-reading. Accepted economic imbalance and dependence. Rampant
passive-aggression. Fake female stupidity for the sake of fake male
superiority. ("What would you suggest this evening?")
No matter how far science may extend the average span of
existence, life will never be long enough for this sort of idiotic
gavotte. The good news is, while we are far from an egalitarian
gender utopia here in the late ’90s, pet peeve six is now viewed as
absurd.
How do I know?
My 18-year-old niece is living in the very same dorm I was in at
Purdue. She nearly spit her Coke across the table when she read the
1967 guide.
"Whoa. Listen to No. 14," she said. "’A girl who fails to tell
her escort that she has enjoyed the evening after a special event
or date.’ What if she had a crummy time? Is she supposed to
lie?"
I told my niece the boys didn’t get any list. Just as they
didn’t have a curfew but we did. More amazing, females of all ages
were prohibited from walking through the student union in slacks.
No skirt, no passage.
The supreme irony is on page three: a biography of the woman
after whom the dorm was named. Widowed at age 31, she immediately
"assumed full responsibility for the business management of their
400-acre farm and several herds of valuable cattle."
For the next 40 years, created the Department of Home Economics
at the University of Minnesota, taught women and men about farm
management and was the first woman to be appointed by the governor
of Indiana to the Purdue Board of Trustees.
Boasts the guide: "She became nationally prominent because of
her aggressiveness in an era when women were seen but not
heard."
Sounds like a good women’s libber to me. One who would never sit
across a table and coo to her date, "What would you suggest this
evening?"