Radcliffe College - Yearbook (Cambridge, MA)

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CONTENTS THE COLLEGE 6 RANDOM THOUGHTS ON FIFTY YEARS 16 HARVARD EDUCATION 18 WHAT HARVARD DOESN'T TELL YOU 22 THE HONORS THESIS 28 ALL-NIGHTERS 34 UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES 40 FACULTY 50 Talcott Parsons 52 Jorge Luis Borges 56 Toshihiro Kalayama THE WAR 62 THE WAR COMES TO HARVARD 70 DOW 74 THE DEBATES 80 TEACH-IN 86 NATHAN S RESTAURANT 88 RESISTING THE DRAFT ARTS AND ACTIVITIES 94 VIEWPOINTS 100 UNDERSTANDING ACTIVITIES 102 PORTFOLIO 112 ANYONE FOR CROQUET? 116 THE HARVARD CRIMSON 122 THE PRODUCTION OF PRINCE ERIE SPORTS 130 VIEL SPASS 138 FOOTBALL: 4th and 1 from the Yale 32 146 BAND:... Because It Eats Its Young 152 SOCCER: Overcoming Injuries, A Major Feet 156 CROSS COUNTRY: Why They Run 160 HOCKEY: A Cold Beanpot 166 GOLF 1967: The Putt Runneth Over 170 BASEBALL 1967: A Stretch in Time Saves Nine 174 CREW 1967: The United States Eight 182 THE RADCLIFFE SKI TEAM 186 FORM 190 BOX SCORES THE HOUSES 196 THE MASTERS 198 THE HARVARD HOUSES 202 ADAMS HOUSE: The Music Men 206 DUDLEY HOUSE: Roost of the Radicals 210 DUNSTER HOUSE: The Organizers 214 ELIOT HOUSE: Master John Finley 218 KIRKLAND HOUSE: A House that Works 222 LEVERETT HOUSE: Problems of Size 226 LOWELL HOUSE: The Senior Common Room 230 QUINCY HOUSE: The Great Divide 234 WINTHROP HOUSE: The Arts Festival 238 THE RADCLIFFE HOUSES 244 EAST HOUSE 246 NORTH HOUSE 248 SOUTH HOUSE 252 The Roar of the Grease, the Smell of the Chain 5 INC A

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RANDOM THOUGHTS ON FIFTY YEARS By ELLIOTT PERKINS '23 The origin of the following remarks was a request that I contribute something along the lines of Fifty Years of Harvard'' (it's actually forty-nine) to the Yearbook; what it's been like, and what people have thought about it; how it has changed, and not changed. The undertaking has been more complex than I had anticipated — which, since I hadn't anticipated any complexity at all, is not surprising. Lots more has’ happened that I know something about than I realized, and excision has been a problem. My first idea was to follow out a line developed last year in a casual conversation in which someone posed the question How many Harvards do you think there have been since we were Freshmen? We ultimately fixed on five. The first was the Harvard of the '20's and '30's, which stands all of a piece because it was the Harvard in which Mr. Lowell's great measures to save the College, Concentration, General Examinations and Tutorial, which reached full stature in the '20's, and the House Plan, which was not wholly effective until the mid-thirties, under Mr. Conant, dominated the scene. The second was War Harvard, which really began in 1943, when full mobilization transformed the College, and was followed by the Reconstruction Harvard, that fantastic Harvard of veterans and recent schoolboys all jumbled together in fantastic overcrowding, optimism, and achievement. The fourth was Harvard of the '50's, which the pundits christened apathetic and I found sensible, and, finally, that Harvard for which I am writing this, a Harvard dating from, I guess, 1965, and much too close for christening. But it will not be called apathetic . A nice line, I think, but not one to pursue here. Space and the reader's patience forbid. So in the end I have taken as my base the first of these Harvards, a good point of reference for much that concerns us today, when people are questioning the operation, and even the validity, of General Examinations, Honors Theses, and residential education. When you start taking a machine apart it helps to know something about why and how it was first put together. Harvard College of 1919 was, to me and my companions. Old Harvard, rock-solid, rooted in tradition and excellence. To Mr. Lowell, and I know now but did not suspect then, it was in shaky shape. Ten years before it had emerged from the Presidency of Mr. Eliot, who cherished the University and, according to some, endured the College, with a lackadaisical attitude toward study and a weak social structure. In his Inaugural Address Mr. Lowell had laid down his lines of campaign. The opening paragraph reads: Among his other wise sayings, Aristotle remarked that man is by nature a social animal: and it is in order to develop his powers as a social being that American colleges exist. The object of the undergraduate department is not to produce hermits, each imprisoned in the cell of his own intellectual pursuits, but men fitted to take their places in the community and live in contact with their fellow men. This may sound trite in 1968, but it didn't in 1909, when strong currents of American opinion urged that the object of the undergraduate department was to train prospective graduate students without wasting time or effort on the development of their powers as social beings. Later in his address Mr. Lowell spoke of the chasm that has opened between college studies and college life. The instructors believe that the object of the college is study. Many students fancy that it is mainly enjoyment, and the confusion of aims breeds irretrievable waste of opportunity. The undergraduate should be led to feel from the moment of his arrival that college life is a serious and many-sided thing, whereof mental discipline is a vital part. So were his objectives defined. Ten years later the first post-war Freshman class found a college considerably, but subtly, affected by his ideas. I don't know how many, if any, of us took much note of the Lowell changes. Harvard had a strong atmosphere of opportunity and tradition, opportunity to make about what you liked of your Harvard experience, tradition to guide you in the ways of doing it. I was more conscious of opportunity, and the responsibility for using it, than of restraints unknown before The War. In his annual welcome to newly registered Freshmen classes Mr. Lowell often likened Harvard to a buffet, a set-out of many-flavored dishes from which they not only might but must pick, and the soundness of choice was up to the picker. He could get advice, but he must weigh the advice. Nor were the dishes all academically flavored; Harvard was a many-sided place, and they should look to get something like thirty-five percent of tbeir education outside the curriculum. Whether or not he said that to '23, that was the attitude we early acquired. That Harvard was akin to this in many essentials. It had no approved pathways to success, to being Big Man on Campus. For one thing, we never used campus in connection with Harvard, for another we didn't think in terms of Big Men. To illustrate terminology and attitude: a militant President of the Crimson once said to me, God damn it; down at Yale the President of the News is the uncrowned king of the campus. Up here the President of the Crimson is crowned by everyone around the College. Then as now Harvard was a place in which men of varied interests followed their own lines for their own reasons. Then as now the public acclaim man, the would-be shaker, did appear — and in time disappear. But there were differences. One was in the attitude toward study, and it is important, affecting the whole attitude of the student to his college experience. In this first Harvard , which endured until 1943, men did not feel the community compulsion to graduate with honors that they feel today. There are understandable reasons for today's attitude; but it does bring a sense of strain. The acceptance of a direct correlation between academic achievement in college and ultimate achievement in 7