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In the spring of 1901, a sensational incident put Potter College in the news.  It began around midnight on March 30, when two hired hacks arrived in front of the college carrying five young men, members of three well-known Bowling Green families:  

Harry Nahm, 24, and Floyd Nahm, 26 (at left); Roland Fitch, 19; George Willis Potter, 20; and Pleasant J. Potter Jr., 17, grandson of the college's benefactor.

That afternoon, they had arranged a rendezvous with five young ladies from Potter College.  The boys later claimed that they had intended to escort the girls to a restaurant for a private "duck supper."  The girls' version would be slightly different: the boys were merely delivering a "lunch," to be eaten in the buggies at the foot of the hill.

Unfortunately, the girls could not leave the building in the conventional way because at night locked gates at the head of the stairs prevented access to the ground floor.

With this in mind, the boys climbed the hill toward the college building carrying an extension ladder on their shoulders.  But they also carried pistols in their belts.

When they reached the building, two of the boys raised the ladder up to a second-floor window while the others established a lookout.  Waiting for them were the five young ladies:

Lena Hopkins, a student from Louisiana;

Bessie Boyer, 17, from Harrisburg, Illinois;

Bessie Simpson, 20, from Nicholasville, Kentucky;

Florence Cottrell, 18, Florida-born but living in Cloverport, Kentucky;

and Ruth Haynes, 17, from Cloverport, Kentucky.

Unfortunately, the young people were being watched.  Two teachers had learned of the plot and were stationed in the first floor library directly underneath the girls' rooms.  They roused President Benjamin Cabell, who took up his double-barrelled shotgun loaded with birdshot and ran out to confront the boys.

No one knows who shot first, Cabell or the boys, but whoever heard the first gun discharge promptly returned fire. In the confusion of battle, the five boys and three of the girls scattered down the hill to the waiting hacks, while the two other girls, still descending the ladder, retreated to their room.

Unhurt, Cabell summoned the police.  Before help arrived, however, the telephone rang.  It was Roland Fitch, asking permission to return the three escapees to the college.  When they arrived, police officers were in attendance, but Cabell sent everyone home and the girls upstairs to bed.

Cabell tried to hush up the incident, but the public was exasperated with young men carrying weapons. A grand jury indicted the five boys on charges of committing a riot and shooting at President Cabell with intent to kill. The Associated Press conveyed the story to newspapers in several states and outrage grew, more over the attempted cover-up than the incident itself.

Cabell did not help his own cause. He elicited further outrage by treating the young people unequally, appealing to the Governor to grant the boys a pardon--while summarily expelling all five girls from Potter College.

"We are forever hearing a lot of rot about protecting women," thundered the society editor of the Louisville Times, "but don't you listen to this fairy tale, sister." She imaged the girls "packed off with great big freckles on their character" while "several fatted ducks" were roasted in celebration of expected pardons for the boys.

What happened?

The Governor declined to interfere in the case.  The following September, a judge (who happened to be a trustee of the college!) acquitted Pleasant Potter, Jr. (who had not been expelled from his school) on the charge of riot and fined the other four boys $100 each.  On the charge of shooting with intent to kill, which carried a prison sentence of up to five years, the judge granted a motion to dismiss for lack of proof because no one could say for sure who had shot at whom.

What about the girls?

They do not seem to have suffered as much as the Louisville Times feared. Within a few months after the incident, their names began appearing again in the newspaper society pages. Ruth Haynes enrolled at another young ladies' college in Ohio. The former cohorts even continued to keep in touch with one another.

Several years later, a Potter College student wrote, "Nothing could induce a man to steal or commit murder because custom has said that these things are not to be countenanced, but the same custom has established one set of morals for men and another for women." Could she have been thinking of her former "duck supper" classmates?