San Marcos Grad Gives New Meaning to Radical Chic: ‘Squat or Rot’

It’s nice to know some things never change.

Students at Berkeley are protesting. The Barrington 40 have semi-barricaded themselves inside a cooperative dormitory just off the University of California campus, a few blocks from People’s Park.

At the center of the storm is an honors graduate from San Marcos High School: Rebekah Ekberg, a sophomore majoring in dance, music and physiology.

She has emerged as the spokeswoman for the group that refuses to leave Barrington Hall despite an eviction order from the student-run cooperative association.

She’s credited with coin-

ing the rallying cry that now appears on tie-dyed T-shirts: Squat or Rot. She was quoted: “This is my home. This is an environment I choose to be in.”

The student association says Barrington Hall is a hotbed of rowdy parties, acidheads and freeloaders. Somebody threw a washer and dryer from the roof.

The Barrington protesters say that’s all hooey. They say the eviction move is a ploy in the never-ending factionalism of student politics.

Protesters are allowed to go to classes, but once back at Barrington, they get no visitors and no phone calls.

“Rebekah is radical but not radical destructive like the old days,” says a Daily Cal reporter. “She’s radical new wave, sensible, goal-directed. She developed her own major.”

Randy Wilson, head counselor at San Marcos High, remembers Ekberg having “great passion” for anything she tackled, from honors English to cheerleading.

“What I remember best about Becky was her willingness to be different,” Wilson said. “She didn’t fit into any mold, which is hard to do on a high school campus where there is so much peer pressure to conform. Becky was always herself.”

Marv Glusac, the principal, also recalls Ekberg fondly. And he has some paternal advice, straight from the 1960s.

“If you talk to Becky,” he said, “tell her this protest stuff is OK but not to let it interfere with her education.”

As I said, there is comfort in continuity.

St. Mary’s Fertile Fund-Raiser

Grab bag.

* Just when you thought every possible method of school financing had been tried.

St. Mary’s Catholic School in Oceanside just held a successful “cow-plop” fund-raiser. That’s where a field (in this case, the football field) is marked off in squares, the squares are then sold, and a cow is let loose.

If the cow drops a plop in your square, you win a prize.

The St. Mary’s event took a little longer than anticipated. The first two plops were in unsold squares.

Finally, on the third plop, success: A man from Orange County won $3,000.

* It’s election year, so out-of-town politicians are making their pilgrimages to San Diego.

The latest is San Francisco Dist. Atty. Arlo Smith, quietly talking up his campaign for the Democratic nomination for attorney general. His opponent is L.A. County Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner, snared in the McMartin mess.

* Escondido Councilman Jerry Harmon, a member of the ruling slow-growth coalition, will announce today that he’s a candidate for mayor.

The June election will be the first time Escondido voters have elected a mayor.

* The first rule of advertising is “know your market.”

Which brings us to a San Diego man who sells mini-stun guns, $47 each, 65,000 volts, 5 inches long, 2 inches wide.

He’s got ads plastered on the door to the portable potty above Black’s Beach, the city’s unofficial playground for nudists, where peeping Toms are a constant problem.

What Goes Around, Comes Around

Small World Deptartment.

In February, 1988, students from two Oceanside high schools threw a Champagne bottle overboard while taking an ocean-going field trip. They put a note inside.

Bottle and note just washed ashore 6,000 miles away in Guam.

Into the waiting hands of Don Carlson, 52, an emergency landing specialist with NASA who was in Guam to prepare for the shuttle landing.

Carlson was born and raised in Oceanside and graduated from Ramona High School.