The Panty Raid Read Free Page A

“The big companies are always on the lookout for promising young men.”
    “What about a promising young woman?” Dot suggested. “I would really like to meet these people.”
    He looked up at her then, his expression hard as nails. “Oh, I’m so sorry, Miss Wilbur,” he said. “The list of students they’ll be meeting has already been put together and I’m afraid you’re not on it. Maybe if you’d mentioned your interest sooner.”
    Dot’s own expression hardened.
    “I did tell you sooner, sir,” she said. “I spoke to you about it the second day of class, as soon as the rumor went around. I mentioned it again to you two weeks ago and last week as well.”
    “Oh, did you? Well, I’m sorry. I must have failed to make a note of it.”
    He picked up his book again. “You’re dismissed, Miss Wilbur,” he said, without even looking at her.
    Dot knew she couldn’t just let that go. She needed Dr. Falk. Without his support, his recommendation, there wouldn’t be a chance for her, as a woman, to find a job in research. She was a senior. Most of the men in her class, certainly the men with grades nearly as good as hers, had already been scouted for positions by major companies in the chemical or pharmaceutical industry. Her name had never been suggested to anyone.
    And if Dr. Falk had his way, she was fairly certain it never would.
    So she’d called the office of the Dean of Women and made an appointment. All the way across campus to Chariker, she’d practiced what she was going to say. She chose her words carefully. She phrased, rephrased, stopped to make notes about it and then practiced expressing it all again.
    By the time she got to the dean’s office it was such a total jumble of thoughts and ideas that her mind could hardly keep it in a linear direction of conversation. Dot had no problems remembering every element on the periodic chart. But the fears and emotions that swirled inside her defied any attempt to be compartmentalized in a neat, ordered fashion.
    The panty raider who interrupted her thoughts in the hallway was an unexpected respite. Laughing had forced her to relax, approaching the problem more academically and less emotionally. She found she was still smiling as she walked in to give her name to the secretary. She was shown right in.
    Dr. Barbara Glidden, the Dean of Women, was a tiny little woman with such unflagging energy she reminded Dot of a hummingbird. She was in her sixties, bright eyed, with silver-gray hair piled in a bun on the top of her head. She seemed to always be smiling, but there was a strength in her that drew young women. They felt confident that she would be on their side.
    Dot hoped that would be true today.
    Calmly, accurately, she explained in detail the unpleasant reality of life in Dr. Falk’s class. Dr. Glidden listened quietly until Dot was finished. She was nodding.
    “Dr. Falk is very old-school,” she told Dot. “And his department is so overwhelmingly male, he has very little experience with women’s education.”
    “But surely he can’t be opposed to it,” Dot said. “It’s unfair not to treat me with the same respect and offer me the same opportunities that a man would get.”
    Dr. Glidden smiled. She had a beautiful smile. It was rumored in the dorm that she’d been a beauty queen in her youth. Now, however, she was a tenured professor, university administrator.
    “If someone told you that life was fair, Dorothy,” she said with a certain amount of humor, “then, my dear, I’m afraid you’ve been lied to.”
    “Is there some way I can make it less unfair?” Dot asked.
    “You have to think of it from Dr. Falk’s perspective,” Dr. Glidden told her.
    “What’s his perspective? He hates women?”
    “He doesn’t hate women,” Dr. Glidden assured her. “He simply believes that with limited time and facilities, it’s a mistake to waste effort on those whose education will come to nothing.”
    “My education won’t come to