100 years ago in Eastern Washington: Whitman College mandated smallpox vaccines within a week, and not everyone was welcoming

Whitman College in Walla Walla mandated that every student must get vaccinated against smallpox within a week or face expulsion.

Stringent steps were necessary, the college said, because 34 cases of smallpox had broken out in Walla Walla since Nov. 23.

Hundreds of students were now submitting to the order. The college ordered that students had to show proof of vaccination within the last seven years.

The order was met with some resistance. “A large portion of unvaccinated men stated they would allow college authorities to dismiss them from the institution before submitting” to the vaccine.

From the court beat: Lenore Fuller loudly voiced a controversial opinion in the American Legion club room – and ended up being fined $5 in court.

She complained that U.S. “buck privates” (soldiers) should not have gone to a Cannon Hill home to rudely “drink up all of the fancy liquor” that had been set out for members of Marshal Ferdinand Foch’s entourage a few days before.

This apparently set off a heated argument. Then she began to criticize the legion itself. Someone asked her whether she was some kind of Wobbly, and she said, “Sure am,” or words to that effect.

Police arrived and arrested her for disorderly conduct, They said she was a known radical.

Also on this date

(From the Associated Press)

1984: Thousands of people died after a cloud of methyl isocyanate gas escaped from a pesticide plant operated by a Union Carbide subsidiary in Bhopal, India.