BUZZ BOX: ‘Hidden Lives’: Alumni offer contrasting views

“Hidden Lives,” the April 3 cover story about the lives of gay students at Princeton in the 1950s and ’60s, prompted a lively conversation in comments posted at PAW Online as well in the Inbox letters that begin on this page. 

JEFF RICHARDS ’74 *77 *78 found the story “extraordinarily superficial, woodenly schematic, and naive to the point of bordering on historical fiction” and said it failed to cover topics including “the anti-feminist subculture of Princeton” and sexual harassment of male undergraduates by male faculty members.

“Definitely the article is a start, but a very skewed one,” said KEVIN HEPLER ’76.

DICK LIMOGES ’60 said the article “never was meant to be a complete history of homosexuality” at Princeton, but vignettes of the experiences of ­specific alumni. JAMES M. SASLOW ’69 took a similar view. “A fully researched, historically grounded account of homosexuality at Princeton would be very valuable,” Saslow said. 

ALICE LYMAN MILLER ’66 wrote that the difference in comments between alumni of the ’60s and the ’70s “reflects the changing social context between those decades,” including the rise of gay-rights activism.