Servicemen and Civilians Mix To Make Up Wartime Harvard

In its peculiar conglomeration of civilians and servicemen, Harvard has lost much that made it the Harvard of peace-time; traditions and practices have succumbed is the axe of Mars not only in University Hall, but on Mt. Auburn and Plympton and Holyoks Streets.

Perhaps the best signpost to the trend of the times is the plight of Pudding, now the Hasty Pudding Service Club, for the use of officers stationed here. Then there's the Yard, with a play-pen for officers' kiddies next to Hollis Hall, and civilians seance as hen's teeth among the ancient elms.

Service Schools

The roster of the service schools now includes some three all-Navy schools, four Army schools, and two Army-Navy groups, with one more Army group coming in the fall. They include everything from Apprentice Seamen in the V-12 unit to high ranking Army officers in Overseas Administration ration. And then there are two branch units in Harvard's neighboring girl schools; Radcliffe with its well-established contingent of WAVES and Wellesley, with a group of overflow students from the Navy Supply Corps due to disembark on the Wellesley hills in October.

The Navy holds the edge in numbers. Its three huge units and affiliates total almost 4000 men and women, while the smaller and more varied Army schools run to well over a thousand men.

Civilians

The civilians look a bit puny beside the hordes of servicemen but are attempting valiantly to hold their own with 1000 undergraduates and a fluctuating contingent of grad students running at present at about 700. College activities have naturally taken a nosedive, but since the Guardian folded last spring, only the Advocate has passed away.

Dying Mother Advocate is really only going into suspended animation. Its last issue for the duration comes out this summer, probably within a fortnight. That other so-called publication, the Lampoon, is still going along at its usual pace and has three issues a term of the publication schedule.

The Network is under some handicaps mainly a greatly reduced audience, but the airwaves still hum with "Swing Out" and "Shangri-la." The Student Council and PBH, of courses, stand like arm rocks in the heaving sea; but a student council meeting today looks more like a civilian Navy parley as V-12 and NROTC men fill many seats.

Activities, etc.

Looking just about as active as it ever did is the Post-War Council. It has held one forum with Senator Pepper on the rostrum, and is planning several others, one for this week. Meanwhile, the language clubs have been going along pretty well; a new French club may be formed as a revolt against the exclusive, strictly French-speaking Cercle Francais.

Small, but not lost, the four-columns of twice-weekly SERVICE NEWS are fighting to fill the bigger shoes of the Crimson. This is its first extra. The paper has a strange audience, varied and separated, so that a lot of changes are in evidence in its pages.

"Hardest hit" are the clubs and societies. They have extra space and war time Cambridge needs it. Besides Pudtling, Delphic and Speakers are giving up their rooms to officers, Signet Society is closed, and not a restaurant is still open. Elections are still going, but closure looks likely for the handful of "exclusive" organizations still running.

More Service Schools

And still there are all those service schools. They work hard. But they play hard, too. The biggest, and one of the oldest, the Navy Supply Corps School is also the most conglomerate. Under its broad wing it harbors its Senior and Junior classes, a group of ex-Midshipmen, recently commissioned, some regular Midshipman, an embryo Wellesley branch, and 104 WAVES.

The Naval Training School (Communications), last summer's Yard invaders, now fill the Freshman Halls. Their rapid turnover produced another graduation last week and the new class has just arrived.

The V-12 unit holds a peculiar place in the University lineup. They are undergraduates, they join activities, in fact, run a lot of them, and still live under Navy discipline. This group of 900 is now almost as big as the civilian College, and with their added Medical School wing actually outnumber the civvies.

Army Covers Map

The Army units are all over the map. The Army Specialized Training men in Winthrop and Leverett have been most active in College life. These students of Military Psychology and Foreign Areas and the Med Students in Boston will embrace Harvard's new school when it arrives in October. Called the AST reserve, this new bunch will be 17-year-olds, sent to college, housed and fed free, but with no pay until they get inducted. They will wear civilian clothes to classes, get some discipline, and take engineering courses.

The Army Supply Officers Training School, and the Army Air Force Statistical School are busy over in Allston, but some of them manage to get over to live at Cleverly. A rather secret group of high-ranking officers are studying Overseas Government in a school headed by Carl J. Friedrich, professor of Government.

Another hodge-podge school is the Electronics group over at the physics lab. Taught by civilian physics professors under Emory L. Chafee, professor of Physics and head of Crufts lab, it has Army and Navy students, all officers. Studying hard at Radar, these men play hard according to formula. Their parties in Sanders Theatre have been hilarious high-spots this summer.

Veritas Forever

But the picture is not completely filled by servicemen and civilians tied to their books, there's some life in the old bird yet. The servicemen prove it every Saturday night when they hit town on liberty or pass. The civilians tried to prove in this week when they marched on Padcliffe "to protect the fair damsels," after Eliot Hall had been robbed and 11, girls had chipped in a total of 39 dollars to satisfy a pair of second story workers.

But as the Boston papers cried out the next day, it should be out for the war. And so it is with a lot of other things. Harvard is learning.