Linda the Light Housekeeper

Pert, lank-haired Linda LeClair, 20, from Hudson, N.H., enrolled as a freshman at Manhattan's Barnard College in 1965. Soon afterward, she met Peter Behr, a Columbia University freshman from New York City, at a dormitory dinner. Romance blossomed, and when Linda became ill and had to drop out of school a few months later, the couple moved into a West Side apartment together. Last year, still living off-campus with Peter, Linda resumed her studies.

Plenty of other student couples share co-ed flats--so many, in fact, that the New York Times last month decided to run a story on students' light-housekeeping arrangements. To a reporter for the paper, Peter and Linda freely explained that they began living together because they regarded marriage as "too serious a step." As for Barnard's strict housing regulations, which require that noncommuting students under 21 live in supervised housing unless they have live-in jobs, Linda explained that she had simply given the college a false address where, she told the school, she was employed as a maid.

Victorian Drama. That neat little lie was too much for Barnard. Although the Times did not use Linda's real name in its story, the school had no trouble identifying her, and promptly charged her with violating the residence regulations. "I'm old enough by law to live anywhere and with anyone without my parents' permission," said Linda--and promptly turned the charge into a crusade for cohabitation. She and Peter, a draft resister who has dropped out of Columbia, began cranking out mimeographed leaflets calling the case a "Victorian drama." They also distributed questionnaires asking other Barnard students whether they had violated the housing regulations in any way, triumphantly reported to newsmen that 300 girls had answered yes. Linda also insisted that her hearing before Barnard's nine-member Judicial Council (five students, two professors, two school officials) be open to students and faculty.

By the time the hearing began, Linda found herself far too busy to attend classes, and had become something of a campus celebrity. Conducting her own crossexamination, she pressed Housing Director Elizabeth Meyers into conceding that if the LeClair family lived within the 50-mile commuting limit, the college would have had nothing to say about her housing arrangements. Linda also took issue with the college's right to act in a parental role. She received impressive support from a Barnard philosophy professor and two Columbia religious counselors. Arguing that Barnard's housing rules should be changed, Rabbi A. Bruce Goldman testified that they "cause a great deal of guilt because everybody breaks them."

After deliberating for five hours, the council last week agreed, and proposed a "thorough revision" of the housing rules to eliminate "any suggestion of discriminatory practice or infringement." The council also found Linda technically guilty of disobeying regulations, lamely recommended that she be denied the privilege of using such Barnard facilities as the campus snack bar and cafeteria, an action that the Columbia student newspaper lauded as a "suitable nonpunishment."

Pointed Letter. Linda's moment of immoral victory was uncomfortably brief. Initially sympathetic to her cause, Barnard girls began to complain that Linda was nothing but a publicity seeker, and that her high-powered campaign for sexual freedom was giving the college a bad name. Barnard President Martha Peterson, who must act on the council's recommendations, was cooler still. She sent a pointed letter to Linda asking her opinion, in view of the fact that she had lied on her residence registration, of "the importance of integrity among individuals in a college community." Miss Peterson also told Linda that she would like to receive a letter from the girl's parents. "I am particularly interested," she wrote, "in knowing whether they consider you an emancipated minor legally or in fact. At what age and for what reason did they grant you the freedom you now enjoy?"

To make matters worse, Linda's parents back in New Hampshire now admitted that they disapproved of her living with Peter and that they were no longer supporting her financially. Explained Paul LeClair, assistant vice president of the Nashua Trust Company: "She doesn't believe in marriage, she says, and it happens I do." As for Linda, she dismissed President Peterson's questions as "petty," but said she would answer the letter in "one fashion or another." She also hinted that she might quit school for a new adventure. Unless Peter is jailed over his refusal to serve in the Army, they hope to establish a rural commune, where they and other couples can bear and raise children and, says she, "educate them ourselves"--without, of course, getting married.

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