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Gender Bender

Subversion was in the air at Northeastern in the early weeks of 1970. In January, one group of students demonstrated against General Electric recruiters, another protested a campus appearance by conservative S. I. Hayakawa (and were beaten by police in retaliation), and a letter to the Northeastern News defended those who "seek a revolutionary change of society." Then, in early February, a panel of student judges selected Everett Nau, Ed'71, as Winter Carnival Queen. Campus leftists labeled Nau a reactionary when he said that he wanted to be queen in order to "update the role of male supremacy." Yet when the new monarch was introduced to the crowd at a home hockey game against Army, an enraged cadet tried to strike a blow for American manhood by coming after Queen Everett with a hockey stick. After his foray into sexual politics earned him international media attention-including a denunciation from the Soviet newspaper Izvestia-Nau brought his deceptive brand of counterculturalism before a national television audience with a panel-stumping appearance on To Tell the Truth. When the queen posed with some courtiers at the statue of King Husky, he was flanked by his own newly wedded, plaid-skirted king, Mary Levins Nau, Ed'72. Despite their initial rejection of traditional gender roles, the Naus remain married-if not actually crazy-after all these years.