<strong>CAL SNYDER<br/><em>Rockford City College, Boyd Hall, ground floor<br/>Room 104-A, ASTR 201: Introductory Astronomy</em></strong><br/><br/>Yes, there were horror stories.  Police getting overrun.  Firefighters in harm's way.  Kids being trampled.  Cal had heard a few such stories already that day, and he would hear -- and see -- many more before the day was through.  But there were other stories too:  acts of heroism, large and small.  Quick-thinking rescues.  Unlikely alliances formed.<br/><br/>Professor Tom Cardoza witnessed one such story after pulling himself off the floor of Room 104-A in Boyd Hall, where his early afternoon Astronomy class had been interrupted by a pair of campus-wide announcements, followed by what he could only describe as a human stampede.  He had waded bravely into the midst of the nearly 110 students trying to squeeze simultaneously through the front left exit of the lecture hall (the front right exit was chained up and, as always, blocked by an overhead projector and stand; they'd never needed to use both exits before).  He had grabbed shoulders, barked orders, then shouted them, all to no avail, before getting swept into the press of torsos and elbows, and inevitably knocked down by someone.  The shove that took him down had been inadvertent -- they usually were in these situations -- but that was precisely the problem.  No one was thinking, just reacting mindlessly:  getting pushed and pushing in turn, without considering what could happen to the people in front of all the pushing, or what happened if someone slipped to the ground, with everyone packed too tightly to even see what they were stepping on.<br/><br/>Dr. Cardoza had been lucky; a brief, loud noise from somewhere in the room had caught the attention of those nearest him, stopping their forward progress just long enough for him to climb back to his feet.  He was clear-headed enough to recognize the very real danger of someone getting injured by the mindless throng, but he couldn't get anyone to listen to reason, with all the chattering and shuffling, and the ponderous wail of the city siren in the distance, raising the blood pressure of everyone within earshot.  Shaken by his own near-injury, he paused in his futile crowd-control efforts and glanced over to see where that loud whistle had come from, the one that might have saved him from getting trampled.  Shortly, his glance became a slack-jawed stare.<br/><br/>Over near the locked exit at the other side of the front of the room stood Cynthia Cartwright, a sophomore theater major, on top of a table, holding a big neon sheet of poster board, upon which someone had written the word "STOP" in large capital letters.  She positioned the sign in front of her so that it covered the bottom 2/3rds of her body.  Just above the sign were her fully-exposed 19-year-old breasts.<br/><br/>Cal Snyder had needed a minute to process the full import of the announcements, so he'd remained seated while the stampede had begun; his mind was on his Aunt Ginny, home alone in Rockford's south-central residential area, which the dean had just advised everyone to avoid.  His fit of worry gave way immediately to a moment of alarm, and then astonishment, as he realized what he was witnessing from his seat in the middle of the hall.  He was just far enough away to really pay attention to all the voices in the din, including the ones who were protesting -- urging others to stop, back up, back off -- even a shout or two for help, which went either unheard or unheeded by the members of the crowd.  Like the professor, Cal recognized the first signs of an impending catastrophe, right in front of him, and his keen intellect went to work.  Something had to be done; something fast, and something more than the obvious tactics a few others were trying.  Ben Thompson, Sasha Fullerton, and a few others had come to the same conclusion Cal had, that the evacuation was getting dangerous, but their shouting from the back of the crowd was ignored by the single-minded mass of fleeing students.<br/><br/>A few seconds of observation brought Cal to the realization that the largest and most aggressive pushers were the male students.  Seeing his friend Cynthia lingering near the back of the crowd, outside of the press, he hatched an instantaneous scheme.  Cynthia was an aspiring actor whose love of spontaneity and lack of inhibitions made her well-suited for her chosen field.  Besides those enviable traits, she was also smart enough to need relatively little convincing from Cal that drastic measures were needed if they were going to prevent a disaster from occurring.  By the time he found the magic markers and sheets of poster board under the long counter/table at the front of the room, Cynthia had agreed to his plan to stop the males of the herd in their tracks.<br/><br/>And it<em>almost</em>worked.  The problem was that by the time Cynthia took to the tabletop sans bra and blouse, everyone's eyes and attention were directed toward the doorway at the far left in the front of the room, while her perch was more to the right, closer to the opposite, unused exit, and completely out of everyone's line of sight.  Cal's best two-fingered wolf whistle turned the heads of a few at the rear of the crowd but failed to penetrate to the front, where the noise and press was worst.<br/><br/>That's when the real story took place.  Senior Sasha Fullerton was fairly well-known around the campus as the captain of the Rockford City College Women's Volleyball team, which she had led to top-five showings at the AVCA Division III championships for two years straight.  With her tight, toned physique and fresh-faced good looks, she was just the kind of divine stunner Cal was used to admiring from afar, but whose exclusive social circles were completely closed off to him.  In this situation, however, the sexy sports star found common cause with the lowly math major.<br/><br/>As a natural leader, Sasha knew a good idea when she saw one.  Abandoning her fruitless attempts to verbally convince everyone to calm down, she grabbed her friend and teammate Cassie Howard and dashed over to Cal's side.  Sasha smirked gamely at the sight of Cynthia's B-cups, showing her competitive nature.<strong>"Not bad, toots, but it looks like you could use some help.  Got some signs for us, smart guy?"</strong>she asked Cal, while pulling her shirt over her head to reveal her shapely C's.  In a final bit of inspiration, Cal went from whistling to high-pitched hooting and whooping, which was immediately picked up and echoed by other males throughout the crowd.  With a quick turn of their heads, suddenly they had six excellent reasons to walk slower, maybe even dawdle for a while ....<br/><br/>It wasn't long before the topless trio became a foursome -- D-cups this time -- and finally a quintet, when one of the girls lured her frat-boy significant other into taking a stand for gender equity and<em>fully</em>disrobing.  The final row of signs read:  "STOP" "THINK" "SLOW" "=" "SAFE" -- a succint reminder that registered successfully with everyone, once their attention had been drawn by a little nubile nudity.  The math geek, the budding thespian, the frat boy, and the girl athletes banded together and turned what might have been another tragedy into a cute anecdote told around campus for the rest of the day, after the last gawkers drifted safely away from Boyd Hall.  Apart from a few scrapes and bruises, not one person was hurt.