EILEEN Yacknin

One awesome adventure just popped into my mind. It was Spring, 1971, freshman year, when the various anti-war groups organized the national May Day demonstration in DC , where we, like everyone else, were determined to shut down the entire US government. My buddy, Ellie Shapiro, and I didn't have enough money to join the buses which went from Oberlin, so we, along with several others, rented an enclosed U-Haul truck, cushioned it with straw, and spent the entire trip to DC in this enclosed dark and stuffy space. When we arrived in DC the next morning, the protests had already begun, and we joined the throngs as the police just tear-gassed us out of the neighborhoods, so we never got arrested.
The most amazing part of this story for me was that i had to get back to school for a test, but couldn't figure out how I could do that, and I had no money to fly. But someone suggested I ask my professor, Jere Bruner, who was also the Harkness Coop faculty resident, if he could lend me the $$ to fly back, and amazingly, he instead just gave me the money and thanked me for going! And thanks to him, I got back in time to pass the exam!