 The only (somewhat oblique) reference in the novel to the student takeover at Cornell occurs when the women protesters are depicted as being inspired by thoughts of what black students might do in a takeover situation similar to theirs.In "The War Between the Tates", moreover, the repercussions are strictly personal, Brian Tate's, not Dibble's, professorial pomposity is punctured.Tate gets mixed up in the demonstration, at first on the side of the women, and then by unadvisedly trying to rescue his colleague, the terrified Dibble, from their blockade of his office.