The Big Ride

During the hazing season last week at Columbia University, when kidnaping freshmen becomes a popular extracurricular activity, Freshman H. Gordon Butler, 20, of East Providence, R.I., unwittingly set something of a record. One afternoon, a group of sophomores, including Peter Douglas, 19-year-old son of Actor Melvyn Douglas and ex-Congresswoman Helen Gahagan Douglas, dragged Butler to a car and drove him down to the Douglas apartment on Park Avenue. They bound his hands, taped his mouth, wrapped his face and head with bandages, and whisked him off to La Guardia airport. There they plunked him on a plane, strapped him in his seat, explained to an attendant that he was "horribly burned." After Butler had wriggled uncomfortably for a while, a fellow passenger released him, but by that time the plane was in the air. At 1:30 a.m., Butler found himself in Chicago--where police persuaded Columbia to wire $51 for his return fare.

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