New York, April 28—It is now a national story that Miss Linda LeClair, twenty, of Barnard College, has been living off campus in New York with Mr. Peter Behr, 22, of Columbia, and that a general story on such practices by the New York Times flushed out the cohabitation and put the authorities of Barnard College on the spot. Complications came swift and fast. Dozens upon dozens of Miss LeClair’s classmates stepped forward to admit that their living arrangements were similarly loose-minded, and that therefore it would be unfair to penalize Miss LeClair simply because she happened to be the one who was caught, a defensive doctrine which is not exactly airtight.
The authorities, visibly disconcerted, demonstrated from the outset a total lack of conviction about the significance of Miss LeClair’s sexual habits, and decided instead to focus on her having lied in the college form she had filled out giving the required details on where she was domiciled. All of a sudden, all of Barnard was rising in indignation over the false entry in the form, which is rather like being indignant at Iago because he was rude to Desdemona. And then, to make opera bouffe of the whole thing, after meeting solemnly to consider the disposition of the LeClair case, the authorities voted to deprive her of access to the school cafeteria, which was joke enough for a public unfamiliar with the school cateferia, but for those who are forced to patronize it, it was apparently something in the nature of black humor.
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