On May 20, 1952, about 1,000 male students at the University of Washington stage a panty raid, storming women’s dormitories and sororities and shouting "We want panties!" Panty fever also struck Washington State College (now Washington State University) and more than 50 other campuses around the same time, in what Time magazine called "the first really daffy outbreak by U.S. college students since the days before World War II" (June 2, 1952).
The panty craze hit American colleges in late May 1952, beginning in the East and quickly spreading west. "Night after night from coast to coast," Time reported, "college boys leaped and howled like Comanches under the windows of squealing coeds." It was a source of great irritation to many of their elders -- whose own collegiate rites of spring had been limited to swallowing goldfish or seeing how many students could fit into a telephone booth.
"We Want Panties!"
The UW "disturbance" began at about 10:30 p.m. on a Tuesday night, when approximately 70 male students entered Austin Hall, a women’s on-campus residence. The crowd quickly grew and then surged toward the sorority houses along "Greek Row," a few blocks north of the campus. Students shouted "We want panties!" as they tried to force their way into the women’s quarters. By 10:45 p.m., the crowd was estimated at 300, and a few minutes later at 700. By 11:15 p.m., about 1,000 "marauding college boys" had joined the party ("1,000 Youths").
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported that at least 20 city police cars stood by in the vicinity but the officers did not enter the fray because of some confusion over the chain of command. At least one officer said he was staying in his car because he was afraid of what would happen to it if he left. In any case, "the raiders went unmolested" ("1,000 Youths").
The UW raid was a relatively mild affair compared to some of those elsewhere, but it had its moments. A coed armed with a baseball bat swung and missed at one would-be lingerie looter, smashing a window and breaking its frame instead. In another incident, one student’s nose collided with another’s elbow, to the detriment of the nose. A housemother at Austin Hall was hit with a dust pan but escaped uninjured.
The Search for Unmentionables
The most serious incident occurred at the Delta Gamma sorority, where two girls held off the raiders with a tennis racket and a broom, beating them back down a stairway after they had gotten halfway to the second floor. Then a banister gave way and dropped down onto the raiders below. However, according to the P-I, "Bruises and wounded feelings were the worst injuries" ("U.W. Pantie Raid").
A much smaller crowd of pranksters, estimated at some 250 male students, invaded women’s residences at Washington State College in Pullman that same night. The Associated Press reported that the men managed to get into the laundry rooms of four houses, "in search of unmentionables," but "girls at one sorority house would have none of it. They kept the raiders out by dousing them with water" ("250 W.S.C. Men").
Police were called in to disperse the crowd. Two students were arrested but released to acting dean of students Arthur McCartan, who commented that the crowd had been orderly and little damage done.
Few panties were actually taken in either raid, but that was almost beside the point. The goal was to make a commotion and annoy the authorities. The affair certainly caused a fuss in Seattle. Indignant officials at the UW promised a thorough investigation. In early editions published the morning after the raid, the P-I gave it an eight-column, two-line banner headline in the size of type usually reserved for wars or earthquakes. "Hard to say whether it was the mention of unmentionables or simply a slow news day," one P-I writer commented, years later ("Dirty Laundry").
