Remembering is always tricky. It’s human nature to give ourselves more credit than we deserve. But hey, our youthful rebellion changed Carleton, didn’t it?
Though change was a highlight of our lives, did it occur because of us? Or did we simply arrive at a time of inevitable social transformation? Given the state of the world today, I have to ask: Was my resistance overrated?
I was anti-establishment before I reached Carleton, and the liberal (arts) environment encouraged my rebellion. Later life tempered me, as it tends to do when we get comfortable. Look backing at one long-ago episode, I’ve come to see the role of a change agent differently.
I’m talking about the Great Beanie Rebellion that eradicated that oppressive practice forever.
You remember. The green beanies helped us identify other freshmen in our new community. Their introduction created a pretext for shy men to meet women who were supposed to stitch our names into the fabric. Of course, beanies also marked green frosh for harassment, although upperclassmen had no trouble picking out the newbies.
The college beanie tradition was once kind of sweet. To our cabal on Fourth Musser, it was a degrading outrage.
In protest, my floor proposed a beanie burn on the Bald Spot. We’d set a giant replica aflame and toss the offending fabric into the conflagration. We must’ve planned speeches and put up posters, but I can’t recall an actual plan to build the effigy. For that, we would’ve needed women.
Scouring the archives, I can find no evidence of our plot, nor mention of its suppression. Like the beanies, our rebellion simply disappeared.
On the afternoon of the event, my roommate Terry “Hippy” Mazurak and I were captured, bound, and held for a few hours. (There may have been a third captive, but neither of us can remember who.) As evening fell, the abductors pulled pillowcases over our heads and shuffled us into an illegal car.
We were deposited in some dark woods, with no idea where we were. We made our way to a farmhouse. Terry remembers me telling the farmer that his hippy hair had been grown for a role in a play. The farmer decided we were harmless and kindly drove us from Nerstrand back to campus well after the protest was to have occurred.
When I called Terry to reconstruct events, I had remembered him as the ringleader; he thought I was the leader. Like Bill Barr on his college draft status, I don’t remember.
Aside from the fallibility of memory and the rooster taking credit for the sunrise, is there another takeaway here?
I want to think, yes. Historic changes can sometimes occur without heroes and landmark battles. Resistance may seem futile until quietly it becomes the change.
– Charlie Quimby