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Back to college; rape culture concerns; Ithaca Diaries update

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rape cultureWith  students now heading back to college, I’m reminded of my arrival at Cornell University freshman year–when some  guys holding a sign “girls dorm” directed us into the parking lot of what turned out to be their frat–AKA “Theta Zoo.”

A few weeks ago (45 years later) some frat guys at Old Dominion in Virginia hung signs outside their frat proclaiming “freshman daughter drop off”..and inviting moms, too. The frat was suspended by its national due to concerns about “rape culture” and the  episode made the national news. Is it that some things (young men?) never change…but others do?

Re Ithaca Diaries, I’m pleased that:

  • Several people I don’t even know called me to talk to me about Ithaca Diaries and how much it meant to them.
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  • The Glen Haven Historical Society held a discussion of Ithaca Diaries in Skaneateles, NY,  not far from Ithaca; Organizers Marilyn Reiner Levine and Lauren R. Jastermski turned out to have gone to my high school, tho we had not met. Friends Joyce Carey and Scott Drahos reported a lively discussion.
  • The long-awaited video of my April reading for the Cornell Club of Boston is now..posted in segments on You Tube . Let me know if you can spot my wardrobe malfunction. Or, better yet, don’t.

Ithaca Diaries has gotten some great reviews!

Book Cover Final Augie Magazine 11-11-14

  • Historian Carol Kammen writes in the Ithaca Journal, “honest, funny, naïve and wise, and very much of the era. Her diary is about boys, and it is an account of her coming awake politically, socially and sexually….” 
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  • Editor Jim Chaisson writes in the Ithaca Times  “When you get a first-person account that chronicles the quotidian details of a woman’s daily life, and she juxtaposes them abruptly within the narrative against the headlines of the day—both on and off campus—you experience how innocent these young people were compared to the social changes that were being wrought by drugs, social movements like feminism and black liberation and global politics .”    For the record, I did work summers. My parents did not send me to the shrink until sophomore year.

Great if you’d buy a copy on Amazon or Kindle–if you haven’t already– or ask your library to do so. Positive reviews welcome.

And–please follow me on Twitter. Evidently, the only way to get followers is to HAVE followers! @anharris.

Again, thanks to my kickstarter supporters,  interns, and the many others who  helped bring Ithaca Diaries to life.

Comments welcome!
Anita

Anita M. Harris is the author of Ithaca Diaries, a coming-of-age memoir about college in the 1960s. It’s available on Amazon or Kindle as is a new edition of her first book, Broken Patterns, Professional Women and the Quest for a New Feminine Identity.

New Cambridge Observer is a publication of the Harris Communications Group, an award-winning PR and marketing firm based in Cambridge, MA.