1972-1976: Our Times in Cambridge

Twenty-Fifth Reunion Opening Session

Harvard-Radcliffe Class of 1976 - Wednesday June 6, 2001, Sanders Theater

Think back to December 1971 or April 1972. Love Story played in movie theaters as a thick envelope arrived in the mail. An invitation to join the fellowship of educated men and women. Veritas and a financial aid package. Celebration.

Freshman Year, September 1972

Freshman Orientation. Women living in the Yard. The Gauntlet. Students for a Democratic Society. The Harry Elkins Widener Memorial Swimming Test. Professor Daniel Patrick Moynihan on Schumpeter. Comparing SAT scores. Matina Horner and Derek Bok. General Education requirements. Dark green canvas book bags. The Coop. The war in Vietnam. The Lottery. The Freshman Union. Teddy Roosevelt’s antlered chandeliers. Morning Prayer in Appleton Chapel. Professor John Kenneth Galbraith in Lowell Lecture Hall. Professor John H. Finley, Jr. in Sanders Theater. George Wald of Nat Sci 5 wins a Nobel Prize. Hourlies. Long hair. Bell bottoms. Nixon/Agnew defeat McGovern/Eagleton-Shriver. In football, Harvard 17 Yale 28 at Harvard Stadium. Articles and books on reserve in Lamont and Hilles. Reading period. Mid-Year exams. Memorial Hall. Mr. Test. Harvard Men’s Squash wins National Championships. Radcliffe Heavyweight Crew, including five members of the Class of 1976 win the National Championship and represent the USA at the European Games. Harvard wins the Basketball Beanpot. Harvard Trust. Hasty Pudding Pots awarded to Liza Minelli and Jack Lemmon ’47.The Hasty Pudding Show is Bewitched Bayou. The Lampoon publishes Cosmopolitan. Professor Robert Nozick lectures on The Meaning of Life. Spring arrives. Choosing a concentration. Choosing a House. Finals. Most of us have survived Freshman year; some of us have thrived.

Sophomore Year, September 1973

We are upperclassmen. Move to Quad and River Houses. Senior Tutors. Masters’ Teas. Checking green canvas book bags in the libraries. Wellesley, Wheaton, Lesley. The Harvard Crimson. The Harvard Lampoon. The Harvard Independent. Gilbert and Sullivan Society. Collegium. Krokodiloes. The Bach Society Orchestra. Pre-Med. Economics. Biology. Social Studies. Viz Stud. History and Literature. Yo-Yo Ma plays cello in Currier. Biochemistry. Government. Head of the Charles. In New Haven, Harvard 0 Yale 35. Agnew resigns. Don’t Blame Me, I’m from Massachusetts. The Saturday Night Massacre. Archibald Cox returns to Harvard Law School. If the Titanic hadn’t sunk, Harvard wouldn’t have Widener Library. Exams after Christmas break, so what kind of a break is it, after all? Casablanca at the Brattle Theater. Mallinckrodt. The Science Center. Swimming naked in the Adams House pool. Crimson baseball goes to the College World Series. Men’s Lightweight Crew wins the National Championships. The Peabody Museum. The Bio Labs. Watergate committee hearings. Hasty Pudding pots to Faye Dunaway and Peter Falk. Mark O’Donnell’s first Hasty Pudding Show is Keep Your Pantheon. Another set of Finals. Halfway to the finish line.

Junior Year, September 1974

Nixon resigned over the summer. A Yalie football coach in the White House. Junior Tutorial. Holyoke Center. Ferdinand’s. The Blue Parrot. Elsie’s Sandwiches. Café Pamplona. The Hong Kong. Tommy’s Lunch. Bartley’s Burger Cottage. The Jimmy Fund Skating Show. At Harvard Stadium, Harvard 21 Yale 16. Harvard shares the Ivy Football Title. Dean Fred Jewett. William Alfred. Cottage cheese, yogurt and ice cream at every meal. The energy crisis. Pipes freeze in dorms when heat is turned off during Christmas vacation. The death of Nick Minard. Harvard Men’s Hockey wins the ECAC title, qualifies for the NCAA Frozen Four. Radcliffe Junior Parents weekend. The war in Vietnam ends. Institute of Politics. Phillips Brooks House. John Dunlop. AMCATS. Association of Afro and Afro-American students. WHRB. Committee on Shareholder Rights and Responsibilities. Men’s Lightweight Crew once again wins the National Championship. Pudding Pots to Valerie Harper and Warren Beatty. Mark O’Donnell’s second Hasty Pudding Show is Put Up Your Dukes. The 1812 Overture. The Adams House Raft Race. Education for Action. Padam Aram. The Advocate. The Radcliffe Choral Society.

Senior Year September 1975

We’ve Made It This Far, Only One More Year To Go! The Lampoon’s 100th Anniversary. Applications for fellowships and graduate schools. Rhodes, Marshall, Rotary, Fiske, de Jersey. LSATs. GMATs. GREs. OCS_OCL. Senior Theses. Yo-Yo plays on. No bicycle riding in the Yard, but sheep may safely graze there. Red Sox lose The World Series to the Cincinnati Reds in seven games. In New Haven, Harvard 10 Yale 7. Joe Antonellis holds the football for Mike Lynch’s winning Field Goal with seven seconds to go. Harvard wins its first Ivy League Football Championship in ages. Dan Jiggetts is a football All-American. Lampy secedes from the Union (do they mean the Freshman Union?). Men’s Squash wins the National Championship. Bogart Film Festival at the Brattle Theater. Singing La Marseillaise. Hasty Pudding Pots to Bette Midler and Robert Blake. Mark O’Donnell’s THIRD Hasty Pudding Show is Tots in Tinseltown. Still a Pudding record. The Lampoon gives its “Conspicuous Consumption Award” and a pink Cadillac to Professor Galbraith. Last set of Final Exams. Suddenly it is all over. Ronald Wade and Teresita Alvarez are First Marshals. It never rains on Harvard Commencement. Pictures in front of John Harvard. Daniel Patrick Moynihan speaks. The Twenty-Fifth Reunion Class of 1951 sits on the stage. We thought we would never be that old.

1972-1976 Harvard Radcliffe Significant Events

By Nicole B. Usher, CRIMSON STAFF WRITER

Published: Tuesday, June 05, 2001

September 1, 1972 Assistant Professor of Clinical Psychology Martina S. Horner assumes Radcliffe presidency. She presides over a Radcliffe dealing with the aftermath of the “non-merger merger,” which gave Harvard control of Radcliffe’s daily operations and finances.
September 1, 1972 Women integrate the Yard as 200 reside in five freshmen dorms.
September 28, 1972 A record 600 students enroll in Chemistry 20, Organic Chemistry, surpassing the 1971 figure by almost 300 students. The grade a pre-med receives in the course is thought to be the decisive factor in medical school admissions.
October 3, 1972 A Registrar from the Board of Elections comes to Harvard to argue with students about their commitment to the state of Massachusetts. Three students were not allowed to register to vote and over 100 students left due to the long line.

October 5, 1972 Politicos Martin H. Peretz, Daniel P. Monyihan and Richard Goodwin meet to discuss the issues of the 1972 presidential campaign between Richard Nixon and George McGovern at South House.
October 12, 1972 George McGovern defends his plan for peace in Vietnam to over 6,000 people at the Armory in Boston. The same day, the U.S. mistakenly hits the French embassy in Hanoi.
October 27, 1972 Riots erupt in an East Cambridge housing development to protest the death of 17-year-old Lawrence P. Largey who died while in policy custody a few hours after being arrested.
November 3, 1972 The Committee on Undergraduate Education starts to request evaluations of its most popular courses.
November 7, 1972 Composer Leonard Bernstein ’39 begins his year on the Harvard Faculty, serving as Norton Professor of Poetry. Of his appointment, he said, “The basic function of the Norton lecturer is to be involved with students.”
November 8, 1972 Nixon is re-elected President . McGovern garners a mere 17 electoral votes from Massachusetts and D.C.
November 15, 1972 A Harvard junior, Michael C. Obuchowski ’74 becomes the second youngest representative in Vermont’s statehouse at age 20.
November 27, 1972 The day after Yale trounces Harvard Football 28-17, the Yale Daily News publishes a fake Crimson announcing Kissinger’s return. The farce “fooled students, many of whom were still hung over from post-game partying.”
November 29, 1972 Nixon names three alumni to his cabinet, Elliot L. Richardson ’41, Former Crimson President Caspar W. Weinberger ’38 and Roy L. Ash Harvard Business School ’47.
December 4, 1972 Harvard’s Memorial Church ordains its first female minister. The ordination marks the first time a woman has been named a minister by the university since its founding in 1636.
December 15, 1972 The board of Harvard Student Agencies vetoes selling contraceptives in the Freshman Union.
December 17, 1972 Nixon orders stepped-up bombings of Vietnam despite assertions that the United States and North Vietnam are near a cease fire.
December 19, 1972 Marxist Economist Arthur MacEwwan is the fourth radical economist denied a new contract by the Unversity’s Economics Department.
January 11, 1973 Dean of the Faculty John T. Dunlop resigns to take a post in the Nixon administration
January 24, 1973 The Harvard Crimson turns 100.
January 26, 1973 The military draft officially ends.
February 10, 1973 Harvard’s administration assuages fears that the energy crisis gripping the northeast will affect the University. The University is heated by waste steam created by the Cambridge Electric plant.
March 19, 1973 After voting in the beginning of the month to revive a union, graduate students and teaching fellows begin a strike to protest a new financial aid plan.
March 27, 1973 Marlon Brando refuses to accept an Oscar for best actor, citing the treatment of American Indians by the film industry.
April 6, 1973 Greek coins stolen from the Fogg Museum. The coins, from 5th and 6th century BC, are valued at $90,000.
April 14, 1973 The Crimson discovers the location of Cambridge’s CIA office, located at 545 Technology Square
May 1, 1973 Nixon accepts the resignation of his top four aids. He says that he must bear the ultimate responsibility for his staff.
May 14, 1973 Harvard women decide to form an employee’s organization to discuss affirmative action and create task forces to study women’s issues.
May 18, 1973 Archibald Cox ’34, Williston Professor of Law, is named the special Watergate prosecutor.
September 1, 1973 Henry Rosovsky takes over as Dean of the Faculty.
September 1, 1973 Students return to find Pusey, Currier and Canaday under construction. Overcrowding also reaches crisis levels with six River Houses converting office space to bedrooms.
September 24, 1973 Shuttle buses from Radcliffe to the Yard begin out of security concerns. The buses will run from 4 p.m. to 2 a.m.
September 27, 1973 Ec 10 enrollment reaches a record 1,200 as students cram Lowell Lecture Hall.
October 1, 1973 War breaks out in the Middle East as tank battles rage along the Suez Canal and the Golan Heights.
October 6, 1973 Harvard breaks a 71-year tradition and endorses three women for the formerly-male restricted Rhodes Scholarship.
October 10, 1973 Spiro T. Agnew resigns as Vice President, pleading no contest to charges of tax evasion.
October 13, 1973 Gerald Ford is nominated Vice President.
October 20, 1973 A crime wave at Harvard begins, with three assaults and two armed robberies over the course of the week. Nationally, Nixon fires Cox in the Saturday Night Massacre. Warburg Professor of Economics John Kenneth Galbraith says, “This is it. Nixon will be impeached.”
November 3, 1973 Dean of Students Archie Epps III considers hiring more police to combat the wave of muggings by Mather, Dunster and Leverett.
November 10, 1973 Harvard announces that power cutbacks are likely to take place over the winter. Brownouts, typically seen during the summer, are predicted for the winter season.
November 16, 1973 In a letter, the Harvard Republican Club asks Nixon to resign.
November 19, 1973 American Indians at Harvard demand funds from the University and question the admission office’s recruiting practices.
November 29, 1973 Harvard allows secretaries to leave work before dark after a secretary has a brick thrown in her face.
December 3, 1973 Thieves net 5,000 coins in a heist at the Fogg. Their value is reputedly close to $5 million.
December 5, 1973 The Committee on Housing and Undergraduate Life discusses a proposal to put all first-years in Yard housing.
December 21, 1973 Harvard announces a plan to begin “mothballing,” or keeping Harvard rooms at 62 degrees in rooms over the extended winter break.
January 29, 1973 The John F. Kennedy Library releases the assassinated president’s personal files.
January 30, 1973 Martin H. Peretz, A lecturer on Social Studies and Master of South House, considers buying the New Republic.
February 4, 1973 Professor Robert J. Keily, Master of Adams House and Professor of English reveals two questions on the final exam for his class on the contemporary novel to a small group of students in an Adams House review session.
February 6, 1974 Harvard defends its minority admissions policy to the Supreme Court in a brief that contends universities have the right to make decisions while consciously considering race as a factor.
February 11, 1974 Harvard’s hockey team beats Boston University 5-4 in the final minutes of the Beanpot finals, winning the championship for the first time since 1969.
March 1, 1974 A federal grand jury indicts seven top White House aids on charges of conspiring to impede the Watergate investigation.
March 1, 1974 Record numbers of first-years apply to live in Leverett and Mather House in an effort to outsmart a new computerized housing program and avoid living in Radcliffe housing.
March 11, 1974 Several hundred people, mostly Harvard students, demonstrate against Vice President Ford while he is in Boston accepting his Man of the Year award from Harvard’s Young Republicans Club.
March 21, 1974 Harvard’s Economics department refuses to accept a committee recommendation to require Marxian theory for graduate economic students.
April 9, 1974 Thirty-two of Harvard’s Printing Office workers go on strike for a wage increase.
April 27, 1974 About 150 students demonstrate in Forbes Plaza in support of the striking printers, who now demand a 5.9 percent increase in wages.
May 7, 1974 Typesetters join printers in their strike for wage hikes. The typesetters voted to join the local printer’s union.
May 15, 1974 After watching the printer’s strike, clerical employees consider forming a union.
June 7, 1974 Architect I. M. Pei promises to scale down plans for the JFK library, eliminating the 85-foot glass pyramid and the two 350-seat theaters. The changes were made in response to the outrage by community members against the large size of the library.
September1, 1974 First-year students move into Canaday Hall. The newly completed dorm is equipped with wall-to-wall carpeting and soundproofing.
September 17, 1974 Twenty Harvard summer school students face disciplinary action for using prepared exam codes for the Physics S-1 exam. On the same day, Reverand Peter J. Gomes is named minister of Memorial Church and Plummer Professor of Christian Morals.
October 4, 1974 Seven thousand protestors march on Broadway in South Boston, protesting integrated busing efforts. School attendance drops by 50 percent during the first day of the mandatory busing efforts.
October 28, 1974 Harvard Dining Services begins to check student identification cards.
November 5, 1974 Michael S. Dukakis becomes Governor of Massachusetts.
November 20, 1974 HMS professor emeritus Dana K. Farnworth suggests drug law reform so that possession of less than an ounce of marijuana is no longer a criminal offense.
December 2, 1974 Derrick A. Bell Jr., the only black professor at Harvard Law School, threatens to resign if HLS does not substantially increase efforts to hire minority faculty.
January 15, 1975 Ford’s State of the Union Address proposes tax cuts, higher fuel costs and ways to alleviate recession.
February 6, 1975 After 10 years of conflict, the Kennedy Library Corporation decides not to build the museum portion of the complex on the Cambridge site.
March 23, 1975 Four undergraduates are assaulted outside of Leverett and Mather house in separate incidents.
April 17. 1975 After a woman is raped in Lamont, women’s bathrooms are moved to the first and fourth floors and combination locks are installed on doors.
April 28, 1975 The U.S. withdraws its last personnel from Vietnam.
May 17, 1975 Thousands swarm the Boston Commons calling for an end to public school segregation.
September 1, 1975 Harvard and Radcliffe admissions merge, as same standards apply to both male and female applicants.
September 1, 1975 Dean Archie C. Epps III announces course reviews for minorities in order to overcome the “barrier” preventing blacks from communicating freely with professors.
September 24. 1975 The Senate Intelligence Committee discloses that the CIA was monitoring some Harvard mail.
October 4, 1975 Harvard and 14 other colleges release the first version of the Common Application.
October 7, 1975 Boston Red Sox sweep win the American Leaugue pennant, sweeping the Oakland A’s, the reigning world champion.
October 17, 1975 Harvard Medical School researchers suggest that marijuana may be the most effective drug to relieve nausea for patients undergoing chemotherapy.
November 15, 1975 Muhammed Ali visits Harvard Square and spends his afternoon signing autographs .
November 20, 1975 Generalismo Francisco Franco, ruler of fascist Spain for 36 years, dies.
December 9, 1975 F. Skiddy von Stade Jr. ’38, Dean of Freshman and Master of Mather House, announces his retirement after over 30 years of work at Harvard.
December 9, 1975 Ex-Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter predicts win in ’76 presidential race. He says, “The next president of America will be a nuclear engineer who grows peanuts in Georgia.”
December 13, 1975 Harvard claims that Law School student Spiro M. Pavlovich used false transcripts to obtain admissions to the Law-Business program.
December 14, 1975 Doris Kearns, associate professor of Goverment weds Richard Goodwin, a political writer and a former top aid to Presidents Kennedy and Johnson.
January 12, 1976 Harvard students return after winter break to find more than 20 suites in four River Houses flooded after pipes burst over break.
February 9, 1976 Magnetic strips are added to students’ bursar cards in order to limit access to University facilities. The University plans to experiment later in the spring with shoebox-like readers that scan the magnetic strip to determine the validity of ID cards.
February 13, 1976 Six students are evicted from South House for disorderly conduct.
February 18, 1976 Harvard’s Office of Admissions begins early acceptance.
February 27, 1976 Michael L. McHugh ’77 is elected president of the D.U. Club. He is the first black president of a final club.
February 1976 Scott Meadow ’77, an “esthetic bodybuilder,” wins Mr. New England, aided by a diet of egg whites and water.
March 5, 1976 Shuttle bus service is extended to daylight hours. “I felt guilty at first about not walking,” Meredith Beth ’76 told The Crimson.
March 16, 1976 A group of Radcliffe juniors send out letters to alumni asking for help starting a female final club.
March16, 1976 A study finds Radcliffe women play dumb in order to boost the ego of their male counterparts and maintain a “normal heterosexual relationship.”
April 20, 1976 High jumper Mel Embree ’76 qualifies for the Olympic trials with a 7’2 (1/4) jump.
May 5, 1976 John H. Finley ’25 gives his final lecture in Humanities 103 on the “Great Age of Athens.” Finley says he is “about to embark on God’s freshman year.”