Days of upheaval

Frustrated by the inconveniences wrought by their House renovations, a group of Dunster House seniors recently spearheaded a joke campaign to "put the mortar back in mortarboard." They hung a sign-up sheet in their dining hall asking how many classmates would be willing to go through Commencemment exercises sporting hardhats. About 40 volunteered. If you had to pick one symbol for the Class of 1984's four-year stay in Cambridge, it would have to be a hard hat.

During their last week at Harvard, an assortment of seniors and officials summoned up the most memorable images and moments of the past four years, and construction crews were prominent among them.

Kirkland and Eliot had also been overhauled this spring, as have three other River Houses in the past two years. And for those undergraduates who have managed to escape the House renovations, the construction in the Square has provided sufficient disruption.

Dean of Students Archie C. Epps III has observed Harvard College for 25 years, and he notes that over the past four "there hasn't been a sense of the Square as a front yard for Harvard. That cafe life is a very important part of the College experience. It really hasn't been a important part recently."

To be more specific, the House renovations have meant scaffolding in idyllic courtyards and hammering early in the morning. In Lowell House two years ago they triggered a spate of false fire alarms. In Adams House this year they left rooms without phone service several weeks into the first semester. Ari W. Epstein '84 says in Dunster "people have had glass broken into their rooms." Leonard I. Ganz '84 of Lowell House recalls of his sophomore year: "you would hear a bang on you door at 8 o'clock in the morning, five construction workers would come in, smoking cigars, sit down on your couch and watch TV. Eventually one would pull out a razor and start scraping paint."

Work in the Square has created similar unpleasant memories. Some students have approached the ruins with intellectual curiosty, such as Ryan C. Reetz '84, wo crawled into the Mass. Ave. ditch one night freshman year to look around.

Others express irritation at the extension of the subway red line and a concurrent development boom, which have generated constant noise, levelled century-old buildings literally overnight, and closed sidestreets. Traffic patterns--as well as the location of Out of Town News--have changed almost daily.

Another disadvantage of the march towards progress has been the loss of favorite hangouts. One Potato, Two Potato fell victim to the wrecking ball in March and was mourned by one senior as the only "decent, somewhat respectable restaurant" in the area.

Other changes seniors remember have not stemmed directly from the construction projects, but fit in with the drive for increasing respectability. Brigham's trimmed its daily hours from 24 to 12. Harvard Pizza--the only pizza place open past 1 a.m.--was replaced by a used bookstore.

To Kevin J. Avery '84, "what hurt the most was what they did to Harvard Square Theater." It used to be a run-down, one-screen auditorium which featured only second-hand double features and occasional live productions--such as the stage version of Rocky Horror Picture Show, which came in October of freshman year.

"We used to go every weekend," Avery says. "The place had a lot of character--holes in the seats, paint falling off the ceiling, drunken bums." After sophomore year the cinema was renovated, and split into three screens, two for first runs. "Suburbia," he scoffs.

Since freshman year, seniors have seen the number of ice cream establishments increase from six to 10--and Belgian Fudge was transformed into Emack and Bolio's. The most profound change came when Somerville-based Steve's opened up branch on Church St. It made the much-heralded ice cream more accessible, yet to some the move took away its romantic appeal. "It used to be an expedition, like after finals were all over," says Ann L. Shalof '84, "now it's like 'where do you want to go for ice cream?' 'Well I went to Herrell's yesterday, let's go to Steve's.'"

Within the Yard, the Class of '84 saw a Henry Moore statue placed in front of Lamont, land a designer guardhouse by Johnston Gate. Sever Hall got a facelift, and lost the blackboard with "Do Problem 2A Only" mysteriously painted on it.

Nothing, however, provoked a reaction comparable to the announcement spring semester of sophomore year that the ivy would be stripped from the walls. University botanists contended that the plant's tendrils hastened building decay and recommended permanent removal. David T. Stern '84 helped organize "Save Harvard's Ivy," a grassroots movement which sponsored a rally, circulated petitions, met with alumni and administrators, and generated a lot of national publicity.

"It started out on a humorous level, but it got very serious once we started thinking about it," Stern says. "One of the resons people feel comfortable about Harvard is the seenery. It's nice once you step inside the gates to see ivy on them. Ivy has turned into a symbol for the school itself." The next fall administrators reversed their decision.

The forces that have shaped the Harvard Class of '84 go deeper than the structural level. Epps calls the graduating class the "Reagan generation," not because of the ideological solidarity--far from it--but because the style and substance of campus politics has been powerfully shaped by President Reagan.

Just six weeks after they arrived at Harvard. Reagan won the presidency and the Republicans captured the Senate. The coincidence of a sharp break in their personal lives and a sharp change in the country's leadership has indelibly marked November 4, 1980 in their minds. Like the assassination of John F. Kennedy for an earlier generation, almost every senior knows where he was and what he was thinking the night of that election. For the largely liberal student body, the reaction was shock. James Orenstein '84 was in the middle of a play rehersal when "someone broke in and said that Carter had conceded and Reagan had won. Everyone was stunned, they just stood there."

Rhonda L. Karol '84 was walking back from the library when we saw a group of students sarcastically singing "God Bless America." Laura A. Haight '84 remembers "getting drunk with a friend of mine who had never gotten drunk before. A bunch of us went around wearing black."

Eliot T. Kieval '84 joined 200 other students the next day in a hastily organized "Unite Against the New Right" rally by Memorial Church. "We chanted and sang songs, but I left early because I realized it wasn't going to do anything."

The long-term effects of that election are difficult to assess. The Reagan Administration has sparked a lot of criticism, and in the spring of freshman year 2000 people marched through the Yard and the streets to protest the United States policy toward El Salvador. Two years later, several hundred students showed up at a demonstration against draft registration.

Yet some have suggested that the last four years saw a relative calm descend on campus. Haight says the Reagan years "have just made people more cynical and disillusioned. It almost seems silly to spend time on one issue when everything's going wrong."

Ford Professor of Social Science Emeritus David Riesman '31 concurs that the long shadow of the Reagan presidency has fostered a sense of "futility," especially on the issue of nuclear weapons. He notes that while the issue has sparked intense interest around the country, it has attracted little political action here--a sharp contrast with the late 50s and early 60s when Riesman and some colleagues drew hundreds of students to fight for the test ban.

When Dr. Helen Caldicott, one of the leaders of the anti-nuclear movement, appeared at the Quincy House Dining Hall earlier this spring, "she got a polite round of applause from some of the people there--half the people didn't even turn around to stop eating," says Steven R. Swartz '84.

Epps finds the change encouraging. He says the Class of '84 represents a new generation that is "less idealistic and more wise," a group which "strikes a balance between passionate commitment and practical use." The seniors are "less a part of the national and international struggle than their predecessors, college is a time to be apart from the world."

While that may be true, interest in campus issues has remained strong and perhaps even intensified. One movement which practically every student or administrator cites as dominating the past four years has been the women's movement. Two highly publicized cases of prominent male professors sexually harassing women students and faculty, as well as a survey showing that a very high proportion of women at Harvard have been threatened is some form, brought unprecedented attention to the question.

John R. Marquand, assistant dean of the College, says that a "change in consciousness has permeated social relations between men and women. People are more self-conscious about being alert to these issues." Swartz says that when he first came to Harvard. "I wasn't sensitive to or as knowledgeable about harassment." He says he first thought the specific cases were isolated incidents, and that he was surprised by the studies. In the fall, as news director of WHRB, he talked to the staff and told them "to be extra careful of how they treated the compers, that they were in a special relationship," Swartz adds. "I wouldn't have ever broached that subject with people if it hadn't been for the news over the last year."

Campus political procedure has also changed during the class of '84's tenure. The disjointed, ineffectual student government centered around the Student Assembly died at the end of sophomore year, and was replaced by the centrally funded Undergraduate Council the next fall. With student-faculty committees and the power to fund student activities, the Council earned the respect of many administrators and undergraduates. Kieval remembers March of his sophomore year, when plans for the nascent organization were placed under students' doors. "I always thought that student government was a joke," he says, adding that when he read the Undergraduate Council charter, "something in my mind clicked. I said this is it, this is good. I must get involved. This was a way for students to start expressing their opinion and maybe be taken seriously." Kieval won a Winthrop House seat the next fall, and went on to become Council historian and treasurer.

The past four years have seen the evolution and establishment of the Core Curriculum. Dean of the Faculty Henry Rosovsky's pet project. Many seniors have praise for the new course offerings, but some of the more memorable aspects of the program have been the problems affiliated with its growing pains.

Most of the horror stories resulted from over-subscribed courses. One of the most infamous was Moral Reasoning 21 taught in spring 1982, which Visiting Philosophy Professor Ronald Dworkin taught as a discussion course before 800 people in Sanders Theater. Another was Literature and Arts B-16, which in the spring of 1983 drew 600 students to a 400 maximum course. Flip-flops in the admissions policy, with lotteries cancelled as fast as they were created, caused mass confusion up until the study card deadline.

And for the first time in many years, varsity athletics set the campus on fire. In the past four years, several men's and women's teams snagged championships, converting hundreds of undergraduates known for the relative lack of enthusiasm into wildly cheering fans. Many seniors cite athletic events as their most vivid Harvard memories--including the victory over Yale in the hundredth edition of The Game to snag a part of the Ivy Title, and the heartbreaking loss to the Penn football team on a last second field goal.

The hockey team's hot streak, culminating in a second place NCAA finish in 1983, generated the most electricity. Andrew A. Bernstein recalls the first sign of success the Beanpot victory of 1981. "The Harvard band played on the subway on the way back. People did not want to let people on who were not from Harvard because they wanted to sing Harvard songs."

In Bright Arena during the following two years, there were probably more seniors assembled as a single place than there had been since freshman week, and more than there would be until this morning. "You could feel as if you were a part of it," says Berstein. "The crowd got the team going as much as the team got the crowd going."