When Blair, Natalie and Jo tease Tootie for being the youngest, she feels left out. This leads her to experiment with alcohol by downing an entire bottle of wine.

Mrs. Garrett learns that the company that she worked for, for years has gone bankrupt thus canceling her pension fund. This prompts her to get a second job, one that pays more that the job at Eastland. She ultimately begins thinking of quitting her job as school dietician.

Blair is thrilled that her name is going to be part of Eastland, since a large amount of money from her grandfather's estate is being donated for the building of a new library. However, while doing a story on him for the newspaper, Natalie uncovers a shocking truth, Blair's grandfather was a member of the Ku Klux Klan.

Jo stands up for her rights. She protests that books which are believed to have a bad influence on people are being banned.

Natalie makes up a source for the topic of her newspaper article on abortion and if she doesn't reveal who the source is, she could be kicked out of school. However, little does she know, that their is someone at Eastland who could fill the shoes of the ""made up source""

Jo interviews an Eastland alumna. After her interview Jo changes her mind about giving money to the school.

When the girls learn the Mrs. Garrett has high blood pressure, they do everything in their power to lessen the load. Their attempts include, getting Mr. Parker to plan his own party and take care of a banking problem. However the exploits only make matters worse when Mrs. Garrett wonders why Mr. Parker doesn't want her to plan the party and Blair's attempt at trying to fix the bank problem leads to Mrs. Garrett's car being stolen.

Jo and Blair have a hard time adjusting to college.

Ms Garret decides to re-open an abandoned department store and turn it into her own.

Natalie is allowed to enroll in a college course at Langley College and she quickly gets an overblown ego which quickly threatens her friendships with Blair, Jo and Tootie. Things get even worse when she learns that if she can keep her grade point average up she will be allowed to graduate early and enroll at Langley in the fall.