Through the doors of academia.

Byline: Mark Baker The Register-Guard

If you know anything about rock 'n' roll, then you know The Doors got their name from Jim Morrison's fascination with Aldous Huxley's 1954 book, "The Doors of Perception," in which the English author details his experiences under the effects of mescaline.

Huxley got the title from a line - "If the doors of perception were cleansed, every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things through narrow chinks of his cavern." - in William Blake's "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell."

Where Homer Simpson got it ... well, who knows.

If you traverse all nine floors of Prince Lucien Campbell Hall, better known as PLC on the University of Oregon campus, you'll come away with a better perception of some of the school's professors. They hide nothing on their doors, opening themselves up, even when their doors are closed, for all the world to see. Or, at least, for most all of the UO student world to see.

Quirky stuff. Bizarre stuff. Just plain weird stuff. And a lot of stuff that does nothing to disguise that the UO, like most American campuses, is no place for a right-winger to feel comfortable.

"Bush Lies Who Dies?" ... "Eracism" ... "He belonged to the left which, as they say in Spain, is the side of the heart as the right is that of the liver." ... You'll find all of those words on PLC doors.

"I'm just so curious what kind of research you're doing," a graduate teaching fellow walking the seventh-floor hallway tells a reporter and photographer. Told that it's just a story on UO office doors, she says, "Oh, I bet you got my door!"

Which one would that be?

"W with the bong."

Oh, that one. Sure enough, Room 622 has a "Photoshopped" image of President George W. Bush puffing on a certain plastic smoking utensil.

"I put things on my door that I think will help the students pass the time," economics professor Jo Anna Gray says by e-mail. Her door at 474 PLC includes a postcard that explains "Where Jerky Comes From."

That particular goody shows a cowgirl lurching over some sort of roadkill on a desert highway.

It "tickled my funny bone and I thought it might affect others in the same way," Gray writes.

One of the relatively newer buildings on campus (built in the 1960s), PLC has always been this way, as far back as any of the professors can remember.

Philosophy professor Cheyney Ryan has resided in the building - which has its back to Kincaid Street and sits across from the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art - since the mid-1970s. And he cannot remember a time when PLC doors could be seen with nothing on them.

Of course, you do find the occasional bare door. PLC 611 simply says "Mr. O'Brien" above an empty holder for the occupant's card. It's the rear door of his office, explains sociology department head Bob O'Brien. "Now another explanation is my Quaker background, and the tradition of simplicity," he says.

PLC, however, is not the only building on campus where professors decorate their doors. On the contrary, professors in just about every building do. But the tastes and decor vary. As do the professors' attitudes.

The openness of PLC fades away as you enter the Onyx Bridge building on the east side of campus, one of the UO's science buildings. Upon seeing that we've taken an interest in the "somatic chromosome" poster that describes "microbe fish cocktails" on her door, a professor asks: "What are you doing?"

When it's explained to her, she mumbles something about burglaries and swiftly shuts the door so we can no longer jot down notes, nor figure out what is on her door. In her defense, this part of campus has been sabotaged in past years by animal activists and others.

If professors in Allen Hall, where the UO School of Journalism and Communication is housed, don't understand a slow news day, then who will?

There, we find Joan Crawford, ax in hand and looking maniacal as ever in a still from some "creepy, campy horror movie she made late in her career," professor and author Lauren Kessler explains by e-mail. It is there "because I talk a lot to my writers about how good editors edit good writers with a scalpel, not an ax," Kessler says.

Under her nameplate, on the wall by the door, is the red lipstick mark of someone's smooch. That is a mystery, Kessler says.

"It just showed up one day. Makes me smile every time I see it."

Kind of like all those doors back in PLC and elsewhere on campus.

"Enjoy the doors," sociology graduate teaching fellow Mikhail Balaev says as we walk away from his office at 729 PLC. "They're very interesting."