Male Liberation

PHILA.; DANBURY, CONN.-Another barrier has fallen in the struggle for equal rights and opportunity. Men have begun entering-and winning-homecoming day beauty contests on college campuses.

Goateed Mark "Marge" Frantz defeated ten female contestants in the homecoming queen contest at Temple University with 64 per cent of the votes cast. Conceded one student, "Homecoming never amounted to anything. Now it's really something."

In the princess contest at Western Connecticut State College, Joe "Tiny" Sacca, a 270-pound defensive lineman on the football team, received more votes than any of the five girls officially in the contest. The college administration refused to let him be princess, but Tiny, wearing an ankle-length pink gown, was crowned Fairy Godmother.

Going, Going,...?

WASHINGTON-Senate Republican Leader Hugh Scott, in a weekend radio broadcast, predicted that President Nixon will cut the nation's armed forces by more than 30 per cent by the end of 1972.

He also anticipated a 300,000 man reduction in U. S. troop strength in Vietnam, but set no date for that forecast.

A 30 per cent troop reduction would mean a decrease of one million men in the armed forces, which now total over 3.4 million.

The Pentagon already has announced manpower cuts of nearly 200,000 troops. Secretary of Defense Melvin R. Laird has indicated his target is a reduction to a total of 2.6 million by the end of 1971.

Dirty Air, Dirty Water

SACRAMDNTO, CAL.-Oil-fouled beaches and "the right to breathe clean air" have made conservation a heated legal and political issue in California.

George W. Milias, chairman of the state assembly's Natural Resources Committee, described the fight of residents to preserve nature as a "revolution."

"Government and business must begin to realize that only so much can be withdrawn from our natural resources before the process becomes irreversible," he said.

Residents of Santa Barbara so far have been unsuccessful in their attempt to convince officials to ban oil drilling in the Santa Barbara Channel, despite their pleas for "freedom from pollution."

The "right to breathe clean air" has been invoked in the Los Angeles District Court by 40 Congressmen, mainly Democrats, seeking to prevent the Nixon Administration from settling out of court an anti-trust suit charging that major auto-makers have "stalled" the installation of anti-smog devices. Hearings on the case will open tomorrow.