September 18, 1959: Paul V. Coates — Confidential File

September 18, 1959: “The only trouble with a woman who ‘wants a man’ is that everybody knows it,” Dear Abby says.
Paul Coates writes of Richard Swanson’s death: “At SC, for example, there are 32 fraternities. I’m told, on excellent authority, that at least 90% make hazing an annual practice. There’s a university regulation forbidding it. Now, there’s even a state law against it. Yet the students make no secret of their ceremonies. I’m not so naive as to believe that the school administrators didn’t know what was going on. They did know. But, in spite of a growing list of pointless deaths which result from the practice, they did nothing to stop it.”

September 18, 1959: Paul Coates writes about hazing pranks that end in death, including the case of USC dental student Richard Swanson.

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About lmharnisch

I am retired from the Los Angeles Times
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