During the late 1970s, when the campus atmosphere was growing less libertarian, I gained a partner in crime in the person of a NYC anarchist. In hindsight, I now recognize this was pretty obnoxious, but at the time we told ourselves we were conducting an experiment in Evergreen iconoclasm. In seminar, we decided to offer the following opinions not for the sake of discussion but simply to see how long it would take for our classmates to blow their collective fuse.

--Picasso was a bald fraud. He drew merely for money. There is a story that Pablo visited a collector who was very proud of his Picasso painting. The Great Man viewed it and said it was a fake. The collector was beside himself with fury. "You mean I paid all that money for a counterfeit?!" "Oh, I painted it alright," Picasso supposedly said, "But I produced just for the cash. It's a fake."

--Bob Dylan was the musical equivalent of Picasso. He had just converted as a Jew for Jesus at this time, which freaked out the class anyway.

--Emma Goldman, as her autobiography proves, was highly dependent on men for her self-esteem.

--Carl Jung had a highly questionable relationship with the Nazis.

--And so on.

Yes, you guessed it. Statements like these elicited the predicted response. Rage. The faculty knew full well what we were doing, but I think she egged us on anyway. But at least no one got hit (see Evergroove Trivia pt. 35)