His rational was that in a crisis the ripcord would be where everyone had always been trained to pull, and the cut away pillow would be on the left. It seems that back then, quite a few people pulled cut away handles thinking they were pulling ripcords, a problem that still exists with some modern student rigs. In any case, by about 1980 expert level rig design froze with the cut away handle on the right and the reserve ripcord on the left, perhaps because of the initial popularity of the Wonderhog in which this was the stock set up. But in 1980 AFF was just starting out, tandem didn't exist, and the vast majority of students were doing static line jumps on military surplus rigs. Main deployments on the right chest, belly, or leg.
Reserve handles on the lower right or upper left.
For example, I might jumpmaster a load of static liners on military gear in the morning, train someone to transition to a Para Commander around noon, and steer in an AFF student on our dz's one student square in the afternoon. My own gear transition was straight from a ripcord deployed, piggy back Para Commander with Capewells to a belly band mounted throw out with a three ring system. By the mid 80's square mains and piggy back rigs became common for students. For one thing, it didn't occur to people right away to move the student ripcord from it's traditional location on the right chest. Even when ripcords started moving down to the hip the cutaway handle was too close to the ripcord for comfort.