to all parents on July 3. Noting that while he and the majority of adults on campus disapproved of the growing number of “unkempt” students who were “extreme in their hairstyles,” Kemper conceded in the letter that “we have been ambivalent about whether and how to enforce the existing dress code.” He revealed that “candidates for admission” are finding the “appearance of our students offensive.” Moreover, he wrote, the straggly style has left faculty, alumni, some fellow students, even Kemper himself with a “feeling of antagonism.” He encouraged parents to talk with their sons about the rule, which insisted upon “neatness, cleanliness and the avoidance of extremes.” “It may be that even this will seem intolerable to some of your sons. If so, they may not wish to return to school in September.” Kemper said he would now be the “final arbiter in interpreting these provisions.” Parents responded to the letter most positively, one hoping the memo finally would cure “this infection of our lads.” Students replied, too. One warned he would not cut his hair before returning, but that “if you find it extreme, I shall cut it. My PA education is too valuable to sacrifice over such a small issue.” Another boy wrote that if the school paid attention to the “hirsute faction,” it would find “the vast majority of its talent, creativity, and intelligence is housed inside shaggy heads.” A new acceptability checkpoint In fall 1969, students returned after a tumultuous summer: Stonewall, the moon landing, Woodstock, and the
“hair and dress memo.” Not that all the news was bad: for the first time ever, boys were allowed to wear turtlenecks with jackets, and, after May 1 of each year, jackets and ties would be optional at chapel. Associate Dean of Students Bill Bennett ’51 greeted the returning boys on September 21, as they cued up to have their pictures taken for the directory. He directed any white boy with “excessively long hair” to confer with Mr. Kemper. The boys scheduled appointments with Kemper’s assistant, who sat just outside his office. Dean of Faculty Simeon Hyde ’37 couldn’t resist pointing out the irony of the setting: “The folly of assuming that one style is inherently right is daily demonstrated in your office by the long curly locks of Samuel Phillips, whose portrait hangs just above the point at which boys stand to make their haircutting appointment with the headmaster.” Kemper met with 18 boys that first week. For each, he kept notations of their hairstyle and the type of trim required: incipient beard…trim sideburns (left two tufts)…take off an inch …eliminate the curl. Calling himself the “czar of haircuts,” he marveled at “how hard the boys will fight for every last quarter inch of hair!”
Kemper’s file of offenders By January 1970, the czar’s rule had softened, now demanding a boy take off a bit “to show that his heart’s in the right place.” Eventually, just as he had hoped, the hairy campus controversy petered out: long hair, briefly a subversive statement, quickly became the mainstream “norm.” A voluminous file labeled “Hair, Dress, and Appearance,” kept by Kemper, can be found in Andover’s archives, with the last hair complaint dated 1971. As for McClendon, he credits the Times story with making him a “marked man.” A library book infraction, in spring 1970, earned him probation. The demerit stripped him of his title, ensuring he would be in the Commencement procession but not leading it, as is the honor of senior class president. The editors of the 1970 Pot Pourri devoted a full page to McClendon: Three candid portraits, on a white backdrop, arranged like the portraits in the “wooly minority” photo essay from one year prior. Three portraits of a bespectacled boy with a warm smile and a large crown of hair, and beneath him, a single word: Confrontation. “Andover could’ve dealt better with the hair issue, to say nothing of the race issue. But, the point was, and is, that it dealt with it, and it did so head-on. In many ways, it was ahead of the times. It didn’t always get it right, but it tried,” says McClendon.
Exeter and Choate closely tracked Kemper’s policy, since they, too, were sprouting longhaired boys. The issue for administrators was not just contentious but potentially litigious. More than 100 Special thanks to Paige Roberts, director cases involving high school boys and hair of Archives and Special Collections, for regulations were heard in federal courts archival support. of appeals between 1965 and 1975.
Andover | Winter 2014
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