The year is 1970. The civil rights, anti-war and women’s liberation movements spilling on to the campus have created an atmosphere of awareness – and marijuana smoke, nudity and freer sex.

In addition to activism, the campus saw many changes in style, fashion and drug culture during the decade. An April 18, 1974, Washington Post article sums up the attitudes that changed the university climate as Americans moved further into a decade defined, in large part, by hippie culture.

“An estimated 1,000 students turned out at the University of Maryland’s College Park campus for a marijuana smoke-in yesterday afternoon,” the article states, “but a streaker, bubble blowers and Frisbee throwers grabbed the spotlight.”

According to the article, the notably peaceful smoke-in was originally intended to protest a series of on-campus drug raids.

Student protests coincided not only with national social issues, but also with on-campus policies. University historian and history professor emeritus George Callcott writes in his book, The University of Maryland at College Park: A History, that many rules – such as curfew for female students and requirements that women wear skirts to class – were removed from university policy in the ’70s.

Changing social attitudes led to changes in resident life as well. A section titled “Doin’ it Together” in the 1970 university yearbook takes a satiric look at the co-ed seventh floor of Hagerstown Hall. Students called it the “7th Heaven of Hagerstown.”

Callcott states that, during the 1970s, “head shops in College Park sold bongs, hash pipes, hookahs, peace symbols, [and] buttons with political slogans.”

In addition to drug use, streaking was also briefly popular from about 1974 to 1975, Callcott writes.

An earlier Washington Post article published on March 9, 1974, reported the streaking phenomenon had spread to area high schools after 533 university students stripped nude and blocked Route 1 traffic for at least an hour.

According to The Post article, more than 2,500 people gathered to watch. Students hoped to set a national record for participation in a streaking event, but those dreams were smashed when the University of Colorado at Boulder gathered more than 1,200 streakers. The only repercussions were felt by two people arrested in College Park for throwing rocks.

Contact reporter Bethonie Butler at butlerdbk@gmail.com.