Campus Play Grounded

The Sexual Liberation's Nervous Breakdown

I recall my excitement as a child whenever several young cousins and I would be dropped off at a large playground for a couple of hours' play. When the car doors opened, we spilled out and ran for the first thing that caught our fancy. Big swings, various towering slides, jungle gyms, "monkey bars," and other brightly painted playground equipment facilitated our enthusiastic play.

In the 1960s I encountered a similar scramble of excitement at my freshman orientation at a large state university when some incoming students realized that their overnight room assignments would be unmonitored and unsupervised—any boy and girl who wanted to could have a recreational one-night stand....