Harvard University - Red Book Yearbook (Cambridge, MA)

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year the draft came to Harvard. The Crimson ran countless stories in a game effort to keep the home public up to date on what Congress and the President and General Hershey were doing to its vital interests. Colonel Summerall of the Col- lege ROTC was pushed unwillingly into the lime- light, where his every word became a matter of absorbing interest to a large part of the popula- G. brings home the engravings in record time during Crimson self-improvement campaign. tion. The armed services were included for the first time in the career conferences, though few of the men that attended that particular conference were warmly disposed towards the army as a career. Even the Council launched itself into the turmoil, with a demand that the ROTC unit be brought up to the size of other college units. Men would disappear for days and return with the news that they had been seeing llpeoplel, in Wash- ington. You couldnlt pass a day without hearing something about the draft. But the draft W'asnlt everything. It hovered over the college like a bird of prey, and no one could mistake its shadow on the ground, but since it did not swoop down, everything below went on much as usual. The undergraduate returned in the fall to an incredibly messy room, with an armload of new junk to add to the pile, and a new checkbook. He registered in the now usual two minutes Hat, found the local merchants as cooperative as ever and the course catalogue as uncompromising as ever. The little men who draw up the course schedules had succeeded once again in having all the best courses meet at the same time. It was not surprising that the soon-captioned llKnow Your Enemyll courses were flooded: Social Sciences 111 lChina and Japanl with Professors Fairbanks and Reischaurer, Professor Hopperls Russia and the Far East, Professor Fainsodk Dictatorship, and Mongolian I and its brethren were as popular as any but a few basic courses. They were, however, rivalled by a few exceptions, notably Professor Mac Leishls poetry course; one of his early lec- tures, Mac Leish delivered on the steps of Memo- rial Church to an overflow crowd. There is always something physically new about Cambridge after a summer vacation. 1950 was no exceptionein fact it produced one of the most startling architectural novelties in a long time: the new Graduate Center. Cinderhlock rooms, venetian blinds, rolling book shelves, inclined

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Center of the squareecorner of y Mass. and Boylston is more 1 familiar than Mem Hall. seen the beginning of the new era: every man a potential dra'flce. The fact that the Korean crisis arrived when the College was just completing deconversion from World War II added a touch of irony to the situ- ation. In the fall, only 4147 veterans registered in the College; Housemasters were hoping to decon- vert the last of their crowded rooms in the spring; Radcliffe had been successfully integrated into the Harvard educational tnot to speak of its sociaU system. The postwar problems were just about solved when along came a new crisis. Two or three years from now a new crop of veterans will no doubt be returning and the cycle will start again. Almost any way you looked at it this was the Science of the many.

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ramps, and other modernislic devices made the Center a tourisfs paradise. What drew the most attention for a time, was a large green mural of no, or at best, hidden meaning. A contest was held to give the thing a suitable name; but named or nameless, it took a lot of getting accustomed to. The mural, however, was shoved into the back- ground by the arrival of an even stranger monster over Christmas vacation,Athe nWorld Tree? This was its omcial name, but its spindly, stainless steel shafts reaching in all directions, made it look very much like at Sears and Roebuck clothes drier. Comment ranged from a nervous raucousness to a charming poem by a grad student, T. A. Lehrer: New Lecture Hnll saw everything-from lhe March of Time makers . . . . . . to Carl Sandburg I think that I shall never see A poem weird as a world-tree A tree to brighten every meal With fragrant boughs of stainless steel A tree that may in winter grace A skating rink around its base A tree Whose stark and spiked busem Will scare the birdies, hand confusemL That needs not rain, nor sun to rise, That needs but love, and Simoniz Of all the thoughts of Mr. Gropius This cosmic hatrack is the dopius.