Panty Raid - History

History

Panty raids were the first college craze after World War II, following the 1930s crazes of goldfish swallowing or seeing how many could fit in a phone booth.

The first documented incident occurred on February 25, 1948, at Augustana College in Rock Island, Illinois. Around 260 men led by the Omicron Sigma Omicron fraternity entered the Woman's Building (now Emmy Carlsson Evald Hall, a classroom building); the first party entered through heating tunnels beneath the building. Once inside, they unlocked the door for the remaining raiders to enter, locked the housemother in her apartment, and cut the light and phone lines. Although a few women reported missing undergarments, the goal was to cause commotion. The police arrived, and although no pranksters were charged, the news traveled, making headlines in the Chicago Tribune, Stars and Stripes, Time magazine, and the New York Times.

The next incident was on March 21, 1952, when University of Michigan students raided a dormitory. This led to panty raids across the nation. Penn State's first raid involved 2,000 males marching on the women's dorms on April 8, 1952, cheered on by the women, who opened doors and windows and tossed out lingerie. By the end of 1952 spring term the "epidemic" had spread to 52 campuses.

At a number of colleges, panty raids functioned as a humorous, ad hoc protest against curfews and entry restrictions that barred male visitors from women's dormitories. This was particularly the case at colleges that had recently started admitting women in large numbers for the first time after World War II, where the role of female students on campus had not yet been worked out. At some colleges the large, leaderless crowds which gathered around panty raids were co-opted by student politicians into protest and activism against dorm curfews and parietals. These stirrings of student protest against restrictive campus rules fed the sudden emergence in the late 1950s of liberal activist parties in student government, such as SLATE at Berkeley.

Generally, the girls welcomed the raiders and in some cases raided men's colleges such as Georgetown University. At the University of Washington, though, raiders broke windows, and coeds at Columbia College and Stephens College fought raiders from the University of Missouri.

Raiding continued, such as the raid by Princeton University men on Westminster Choir College in spring 1953. The University of Nebraska was credited with the first panty raid of 1955, when hundreds raided the women's dorms, resulting in injuries and seven suspensions. The University of California, Berkeley had a 3,000-man panty raid in May 1956, which resulted in $10,000 damage. At the University of Michigan panty raids were associated with fall football pep rallies in addition to being a spring ritual in the 1950s and early 1960s. The spring ritual continued in the 1960s. Three students were expelled from the University of Mississippi for panty raids in 1961.

By the 1970s, mixed dorms and less inhibited attitudes to intercourse on campus led to fading of panty raids. In 1969, the Governor of California, Ronald Reagan, decried permissive attitudes to protesters on the Berkeley campus during the People's Park riots, saying "How much further do we have to go to realize this is not just another panty raid?"