Un-American Activities

James Estes reminisces about the 60s when he was a graduate student at The Ohio State University in Columbus. Remnants of McCarthyism were still much in evidence at that time. The State Legislature had an Un-American Activities Committee, and in the city, where the John Birch Society was flourishing, there was wide-spread suspicion that the university was a hotbed of left-wing subversion. In the autumn of 1961, The Lantern, the daily student newspaper at OSU, published two letters to the editor, signed only 'A Staff Member' and 'A Professor,' demanding action against the 'comsymps' (Communist sympathizers) on the faculty. It was a situation made for parody, and I could not resist writing a letter to the Editor in turn:
 
Inspired by the courageous examples of "A Professor" and "A Staff Member," I am going to take pen in hand to expose another element in the Communist conspiracy to undermine America.
I am sure it will be deeply shocking to all true lovers of their country to learn that the University Library is participating in a nation-wide Communist-led plot to undermine religion in America!
The comsymps who organized the Library of Congress cataloguing system have placed the Bible under the classification "BS"!  Only an atheist could have perpetrated this insult on God's Holy Word, the foundation of America's evident superiority over the other nations of the world, all of which are either collectivized or well on the way.  And, as we know, atheism is virtually synonymous with Communism. 
What more proof do we need that atheistic Communism has penetrated even our great national library and the hundreds of libraries throughout the country that use its cataloguing system?  Are the members of our library staff conscious agents of this conspiracy or only dupes? …
A Paranoid
 
After the letter was published on 18 October 1961, I was told that the text, minus the signature, had been read over the air by a local right-wing disc jockey as a fine example of 'the kind of patriotism we need at Ohio State.'