He served as editor of the student-owned and managed newspaper, the "Cornell Daily Sun". Sale was one of the leaders of the May 23, 1958 protest against university policies forbidding male and female students fraternizing and its "in loco parentis" policy. Sale and his friend and roommate Richard Farina, and three others, were charged by Cornell. The protest was described in Farina's 1966 novel, "Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me."