APRIL 7, 2025 – (Cont.) Since we were the “Class of ’76,” Jeff and I figured we’d play on the Bicentennial theme. Conveniently, as I pointed out to Jeff, my first name was nicely embedded in “Am(Eric)a.” In short order, we adopted a four-pronged campaign, consisting of (a) a personal outreach to every single classmate, (b) a letter-to-the editor[1] of the universally read weekly student newspaper, The Orient (“The oldest continually published college newspaper in the country,” as represented by the statement under the banner of each issue), (c) attaching campaign signs to the front of classroom lecterns, and (d) hanging an enormous campaign banner, accompanied by “lots of noise” between Hyde Hall and Appleton Hall, the two old four-story brick dormitories that straddled the sidewalk leading straight to the Moulton Union across the street from the dorms.
We roped in a few happy volunteers to help us with the grunt work. After I’d composed a short letter appeal[2], we made over 400 mimeographed copies and delivered them to our accomplices in the student mailroom for distribution to each member of our class. It read (in cursive),
Dear Classmate,
As a candidate for President who is serious about winning and eager for action, I would greatly appreciate your vote on Tuesday, Feb. 23rd. Light a firecracker by marking an ‘X’ beside my name.
Thank you!
/s/ Eric B. Nilsson
The classroom campaign signs were high-grade. I borrowed a pile of old plastic yard signs that my dad had saved from the day before his job as Anoka County District Court Administrator way back in Minnesota had been converted from an elective position to an appointed one. With the position, his first name and the “Re-“ in “Elect” cut out, leaving only “Elect” and “NILSSON,” the bold orange and bold signs worked perfectly for my purposes. I discovered that they were the same width as most classroom lecterns. Volunteers helped me mount them on lecterns in a couple dozen classrooms to which the entrance was in the front of or behind the lectern, so that Professor wouldn’t catch sight of the sign but for the entire duration of each class—at least an hour; in some cases 90 minutes—“Elect NILSSON” would be etched into the memory of every student.
The outside banner required considerable effort. We had to sew two white bedsheets together, then paint the all-important campaign message onto the cloth:
Elect
AMERICA NILSSON
’76 CLASS PRESIDENT ‘76
Several volunteers worked on the manufacture of this large sign, and I insisted that they sign their names in a corner. They gladly did, and since I still have the sign after all these years, those names have been preserved for posterity.
On Election Day, with jerry-rigged ropes and clamps, our crew raised the big sign into place just before the last morning classes were dismissed. By noon each weekday, the largest concentration of students invariably appeared along the walkway under the spot where the sign was displayed. To ensure that even the most oblivious, “non-political,” lackadaisical students would receive the message, I enlisted several very willing friends to light off firecrackers and toss them out of the dorm windows to which the sign ropes had been secured. The whole affair worked just as we’d envisioned. The scene we created was straight out of a real political rally.
PJ was unable to compete with any of this, but it motivated him to purchase advertising space in The Orient[3]—using money that could have been used on an extra pitcher of beer at the Stowe House just off campus. (Cont.)
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© 2025 by Eric Nilsson
[3] Formerly the home of Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and her husband, Rev. Calvin Ellis Stowe, who taught at Bowdoin in the 1850s. The future Union General and Governor of Maine, Joshua Chamberlain, was a Bowdoin student at the time Harriet was writing the serialized version of her famous book. On campus, he attended public readings by her.
