The end of a school year does not mean the end of The Crimson White. It doesn’t mean that in 2017, and it didn’t mean that in 1973. News kept happening and the CW kept reporting on bad Beach Boys performances, ROTC hair problems, and gay liberation. As such, we flip back to mid-April, 1973 for this week’s Tide Hop.
Beach Boys bust: After waiting three hours to see the Beach Boys perform in Coleman Coliseum, University of Alabama students were disappointed to find that the performance was less than stellar – none more disappointed than CW music writer Courtney Haden.
“If you happen to see the Beach Boys’ sound engineer, you might ask him where [the great show] went, but you’d better ask him loudly, cuz that dude is deaf as a post,” her review read. “Only a total maladroit could have butchered a sound mix as consistently and as awfully as their sound man succeeded in doing.”
And she was just getting started.
“Raw, ugly, screeching filled the Coliseum, thanks to the blissful incompetence of the Beach Boys’ audio stooge, and the resulting bad vibrations and excitations were hardly alleviated by the delightful contempt of certain of the Boys,” Haden said. “It was a real treat having you, too, Dennis.”
Haden lamented that the “amiable cabbage-headed” Beach Boys themselves gave a fair performance, though they didn’t fully recreate the joy of their early music.
“But who the hell can judge their performance with any clarity?” Haden asked. “What little rock there was, was ground to fine pumice through the dedicated stupidity of that anonymous sound mixer.”
Haden had no nice things to say about the Boys’ opening act, Focus, either. Nor was she impressed with the audience of UA students.
“Scores of crazed zombie vegetables were seen giving this quasi-concert ovations and acclaim,” the review said. “It’s unclear what they were applauding; they may have been giving themselves a hand for enduring such a sleazy, annoying, vacuous, thoughtless, miserable sloth of a concert as was evident. These people deserve no acclaim for having endured such a dreadful, dreadful experience. They deserve exactly the sleazy, etc. show they got.”
ROTC hair troubles: ROTC students who thought joining a “Special Students” program would allow them to keep whatever hairstyle they like, were surprised to find out that joining the program would cause them to lose their draft deferment.
“I heard no mention in class about losing deferments,” special student Mark Strunk told the CW. “…The main thing that was emphasized when we were told about the ‘Special Students’ program in class was that we wouldn’t have to get a haircut.”
The hair policy was in fact only one facet of the program. An administrative officer for the Air Force ROTC program explained to the CW that a “special student” in AFROTC takes the courses for academic credit only, isn’t authorized a uniform, can’t go on field trips, attend field training, receive a scholarship or travel at government expense. These students are not full AFROTC members, and thereby lose their ROTC deferment.
“One purpose of the program is to interest undecided young men in ROTC, without making them comply with our special standards,” Administrative Officer Major Kenn Ellenburg told the CW.
“Special students” alleged, though, that these parts of the program were not made clear to them. According to the CW, over 90 percent of the students questioned signed up for the program for the liberal hair rule and had not heard that they would lose their deferments.
Ellenburg insisted that the deferment loss aspect was made clear, though staff members and students claim otherwise. Upon receiving re-classification notices, several special students switched back to AFROTC.
“I got into the ‘Special Student’ program so I wouldn’t have to get my hair cut,” an anonymous student told the CW. “I didn’t know anything about losing my deferment [until] I got that [notice]. I figured I’d better get back in because my [draft lottery] number is pretty low.”
Gay liberation: When doing the initial skim-through of this CW, we at Tide Hop found a line that stopped us in our tracks:
“I’m afraid though that this will be just one more C-W page that’s read and soon forgotten.”
As the job of Tide Hop is to remind readers of what was printed in early CW’s, we would be remiss if we didn’t bring this column back to life.
The column, written by Patrick McGough, was headlined “On Gay Liberation: Bama a gay place to be? Only if you make it so.”
“On a quiet little campus like ours, I don’t suppose the subject of gay liberation is a particularly popular one,” McGough started. “…But I bring it up because its only a matter of time before it happens here; I’d just like to speed it along.”
McGough explained that he wouldn’t use precious space getting “bogged down in movement rhetoric,” but that he wanted to discuss the need for gay pride and a gay student organization.
“If I may be so bold, I’d like to think [this column] will cause a spark somewhere, will maybe give other gay students the encouragement they need to begin to come out of the closet and to somehow join with their sisters and brothers,” McGough said. “…A lot of beautiful things can happen when gay people get together out of joy, pride, and even anger, instead of hanging on to closeted little in-groups out of fear.”
McGough felt a gay student organization could bring fellow gay students out of the closet and together and help them stand up against an oppressive straight society.
“We will continue to be persecuted (and I don’t think that’s too strong a word) and prosecuted (your LOVE-making is illegal, remember) until we do something about it ourselves.”
McGough then mentioned a meeting on campus several months ago in which members of the National Gay Student Center came to talk. He said the meeting was well-attended and that there seemed to be hope of organizing, but that that hope had since died.
“…I wonder what happened to that brief spurt of ‘revolutionary fervor,’” the column said. “I’d say it was killed by the traditional Alabama disease: apathy, with a not-so-new twist from the 70’s: fear.”
The column concluded with a call to action, both on the parts of students and gay teachers to come together and form an organization to support one another.
“I think we at least need to form the skeleton of an organization before this semester is over,” McGough said. “…I hope this at least started a few people thinking. Maybe those few are the ones who best realize that, as Warren Blumenfeld said, ‘School is not a gay place to be,’ but that it ought to be.”
