Cole's article, "American Youth Goes Monogamous," addressed the potentially problematic tendency of young people in the late 1950s to commit more seriously to relationships than past generations had done. "It would be better," he suggests, "for [Amherst men] to go out with fifty or one hundred girls than just one or two."
Cole was an economist and a historian who had taught at Columbia University prior to assuming the presidency of Amherst College in 1946, a title he held until 1960. In his article, he examined the romantic trends of the time in relation to their historical context, essentially viewing them as social regression: "The oddest thing about the revolution in the social life of youth in the last twenty years is that it constitutes the triumph of rural nineteenth-century American mores in the urban and suburban society of the mid-twentieth century." Cole's journalistic experience extended all the way back to his attendance at Amherst in the late 1920s, when he was editor-in-chief of The Student.
Apparently, Cole was not the only administrative official condoning "free love." According to The Student, Trustee Francis Plimpton '22 "attacked 'going steady' as a violation of the Sherman Act outlawing monopolies." In Plimpton's opinion, "It is better to be a polygamist who doesn't polyg than a monogamist who doesn't monog."
The Student noted that Cole, despite his liberal views on romantic and sexual activity, dated a Smith College undergraduate during his college years whom he married shortly after graduation. However, his secretaries informed The Student reporters that he was unavailable for comment on the article because he was "touring Europe with one of his wives." In the words of the 1957 Amherst Student, that "old roue."