Class of '32: First Two Years

Memorial Hall loomed large before 900 hesitant and expectant freshmen on the morning of September 21, 1928, as they filed before "the huge Gothic pile" to register as members of the Class of 1932. The eyes of Burke and Chatham looked severely down upon them, the jealous gargoyles stared angrily at the Yard behind them, and the clangor of the bell seemed to make time itself revert to the 19th century as they enrolled.

But by the time these freshmen graduated, the eyes of Chatham and Burke guarded little more than a storeroom for University files, the gargoyles gazed upon a College that was almost unrecognizable as the Harvard of 1932, and the bell, tolling too slowly to keep up with the changes that had been made, had been stolen in disgust.

Leaving the gargoyles behind them after registration, the freshmen strolled down Dunster Street, passed the green and white freshman athletic building, looked over at the little white colonial Hicks House on Holyoke Street, and disappeared into the Smith Halls, or walked down further, past the power plant on Boylston and Memorial Drive, to gaze at the Charles through the windows of Gore, Standish, or McKinlock. They ate in the separated dinning halls, met each other in the common rooms, and in a couple of months were so contented that they looked forward unhappily to having to leave their secluded dwellings with the Charles rolling alongside.

Mem Hall Had Gargoyles

Classes eventually began, and the routine that was soon to be sharply broken began. Those who cringed with memories of the gargoyled Mem Hall as they passed forbidding Boylston took heart that their chemistry courses would be in the spanking new Mallinckrodt Laboratory instead. Wandering by the Law School, they saw the rising additions to Langdell Hall which would eventually make it "the biggest Law library in the world" Right now, however, they were not particularly interested in the Law School.

The Hygiene Department announced to the Class the happy news that it would no longer have to take a Hygiene course which ended at Thanksgiving--it would end in January instead. The extension did little good, however: it was found in January that there was "a decided retrogression in the virility and quality of constitution of members of the Class of 1932 as compared to those of 1931."

Election Year

1928 was an election year, and the Class of '32 soon became embroiled in the not-too-enthusiastic politicking for a soft-spoken Quaker from California or a sidewalks-of-New-York-spoken Catholic from the Bowery. There were other suggestions offered; a senior from Hollis under the cryptic cognomen of "Number Ten" announced the formation of a King George-for-President Party, one of whose platform planks was to exchange Memorial Hall for the Houses of Parliament. The gargoyles growled.

Elsewhere, Franklin D. Roosevelt '04, candidate for governor of New York, spoke in the Union, was later swept into the Albany State House, and returned to the Yard in the spring to deliver the Phi Beta Kappa oration. Herbert Hoover was not so generous with his time; he was able to speak for only a few minutes on his way through the Square, but, in a CRIMSON-sponsored poll of the University, he was found to be the most popular candidate among Harvard men anyway.

Republican Corruption

Wise old Albert E. Hart '80, Eaton Professor of Government, solemnly announced that he was "strong for Hoover" because "the most important thing is that he is a real businessman and knows our economic situation perfectly." It is hoped that if Hoover had known the political situation at Harvard, he would not have been pleased: the Hoover-for-President Club was found to be padding its membership rolls and placing on it signatures of non-Hoover supporters. Although all of the political clubs were somewhat corrupt, it was found that the Republican Club did more padding than the others. At least one aspect of Harvard has not changed, anyway.

The Poll behind them, the freshmen returned to athletic pursuits. The team forgot its rout by the varsity and treat softly into the monolithic Stadium to beat a green Dartmouth team, 11 to 0, It was the first time a freshman team had played in the Stadium, and the '32 eleven was properly impressed. Harvard was changing, and the old and the comfortable had to give way to the broad vision of the mustachioed president in University Hall, who knew much and told little, and who had many new ideas for Harvard.

The Class of '32 also had ideas, and early in November it became the first freshman class to establish its own governing body. The nine representatives of the four freshman dorms met under the chairmanship of the Student Council, and elected W. Barry Wood as its head. The Council had just discovered that it had a $1,500 outstanding debt, and so it was happy to be able to do something to give it some favorable publicity.

Harkness Millions

November 9 dawned cold, and though the rain from the day before had stopped the overcast sky seemed to predict snow and possibly something else. The something else arrived, staring the freshman, the sophomore, the junior, the senior in the face as he opened his door and picked up his usually staid, quiet-looking CRIMSON. Black headlines leaped up at him:

GIFT OF $3,000,000 LAUNCHES RADICAL EXPERIMENT IN UNDERGRADUATE LIFE

The "radical experiment," he was soon to discover, was the House Plan, which would be begun by the building of "a dormitory or 'House'" with the first anonymous grant, which was later revealed to have been given by Edward S. Harkness, Yale '87. President Lowell assured everyone that no change in teaching would result from the plan, only the "breaking up" of Harvard into "smaller social units in order to secure at the same time the advantages of the large and small institutions." Tutors would live in the House, undergraduates would join them in the dining hall, and athletic and library facilities would be supplied.

The College gasped. Although the grant was made for only one House, it was assumed that if this was successful eventually all undergraduates would be lodged in Houses. Few liked the idea. Students felt that their prized individualism, "completely self-wrought," would be taken away once they were forced to live and dine with a group of people chosen by Faculty members. The CRIMSON attacked the plan, and the Lampoon published a "Protest of the Masses Number" which heaped the full wrath of the Faculty and Administration upon its head. An apology to Mr. Harkness was demanded, and the 'Poonies, moaning that no one understood them, grudgingly gave it. Later, it was reported that the University was so angered by this issue that they were planning to take up the Lampoon's mortgage and turn its great baronial hall into a dining room for one of the Houses. Nothing came of this, however.

Professors C. N. Greenough and J. L. Coolidge were chosen the first House Masters, and by this time students began to become resigned to the fact that no matter what they said the House Plan was going to be.

Police Censor Drama

But there were other things to occupy a freshman's mind then; the varsity had trounced Yale, 17 to 0; Smith Halls had captured the interdormitory football crown; and the city of Cambridge was doing its best to prevent the College from seeing the Harvard Dramatic Club's production of "Fiesta," which was reported to be "crude, immoral, and unfit for production." Three policemen were sent to observe the play and report on its fitnss, and all agreed that it was much too harmful to the citizenry to be produced; the three "experts" ordered that it be closed. Another annoyance, an influenza epidemic, drifted into Cambridge, and by early January 1929 there were 57 men in the infirmary. There was, however, little chance that College would be closed down as a result.

Spring, through it did not feel like it, was not too far away, and plans were already being made for Jubilee. Charles Cunningham was chosen to head the committee to prepare the festival rites, while Joseph Collins was to head the Smoker. Winter sports were winding up, and the undefeated hockey team dropped its last meet to Yale, 1 to 0; Smith Halls captured the interdormitory winter title; and a large number of freshmen wandered out to Soldiers Field for spring football practice.

Spring had finally really arrived, and at various places around the Square and the Yard it was beginning to show. Passing the Music Box record shop on Holyoke Street, one could see two Harvard men sit down before a phonograph and begin to listen to all the 5000 records in the store. The one who went to sleep first lost, but got $10 anyway; the winner received $25. Paramount and M-G-M sent news cameramen and Fox Movietone was reported to be interested in recording the event.

The Cliffdwellers

Jubilee dates from Radcliffe might have proved somewhat persnickety that year, since they felt they had come of age: the 'Cliffe was about to celebrate its fiftieth anniversary. The Edgeworth Tobacco Company, realizing that this attitude was indicative of national womanhood, kept cheering up Harvard men by telling them that, no matter what else the women had taken away, they could take away his pipe. "She'll never smoke a pipe," the company crowed in countless CRIMSON ads; that item is "one pet diversion our little friends keep their fingers off."

And suddenly, the Class of '32 realized that it had taken its last examinations and that its freshman year was over. It prepared to move out of the dormitories on the Charlesbank, though many had a faint premonition that they might return to them again. Glancing cautiously over its shoulder at University Hall, 1932 realized it could never be sure that was to happen.

June passed, July passed, August passed, and finally enough of September passed so that it was time to leave the beaches and the clubs, pack up the $350 raccoon coats (bought from Gunther's on Fifth Avenue, of course) and trudge back to Cambridge. The Class moved into Claverly, Westmorly, Russell, Drayton, and a hundred little boarding houses around the Square and settled down to a year of concentration and speculation on what the man with the white mustache would do next. There were some new sights to see around the Square: the Langdell addition had been finished, and the Indoor Athletic Building was well on its way to completion. There was a large open lot across from Gore Hall on which concrete and steel were rising to become House Plan Unit No. 1; on a triangular plot of ground on Memorial Drive a similar scene would soon be transformed into House Plan Unit No. 2.

Watch and Ward

The evil eye of the puritan Watch and Ward Society opened as the year began and, represented by Cambridge Mayor Nichols, decided that a local production of Eugene O'Neill's "Strange Interlude" was not suitable for presentation. Censorship further plagued the University when several orders of books for French and other foreign literature courses were forbidden to be shipped to the Phillips Book Store because they were "obscene." Among the restricted works: Rousseau's Confessions, Rabelais's Oeuvres, and Boccaccio's Decameron.

But generally, the year had a pleasant beginning. The Student Council discovered it had paid its debt, the University was permitting students to cut classes the day before and after vacations, and students could buy crimson and white Corona Portable typewriters with "H U" on them at the Coop. Kellogg's All-Bran was prescribed (by the Kellogg Company) as the way to end the "widespread evil" of constipation causing most of the ill health which harms effective studying. The little Psychological Clinic was forced by the needs of House Plan Unit No. 1 to move from 19 Beaver Street to 62 Plympton Street. After 26 years in its new location, the clinic is now being forced by House Plan Unit No. 8 to move again.

J. P. Morgan: Alumnus

This to be the last year of the booming, shouting, rollicking twenties, and seemingly to mark the peak of the boom, the Harvard Alumni Association chose as its president financial magnate J. Pierpont Morgan, symbolizing in a way what was often attacked as the American "worship of business." Hotels bought full page ads in the Crimson, advertising their "exclusive Fall Dansants," warning the wavering sophomore that "the smart folk will attend," or that "you'll find the best crowd in the college there." Boston was the center of Harvard social life, and for many this social life was the center of Harvard.

Football enthusiasts at Harvard were stunned one morning to learn that the Carnegie Foundation had criticized the University for subsidizing athletes and for permitting vendors at Soldiers Field concessions to realize as much as $1,000 profit for the season. This had been changed before the report was published, however, and at the time of the issuance of the report, the concessions had been divided among a number of undergraduates and placed under the supervision of the Employment Office.

The New Houses

The football season over, the House Plan began in earnest. House Plan Unit No. 1 was named Lowell House, after the then President of Harvard; House Plan Unit No. 2 was named Dunster House, after the first President. Coolidge, a mathematician, who bore a rather striking resemblance to President Lowell, would head Lowell House; Greenough, an English professor, would head Dunster. Out of disgust for the group's recent plans, and to avoid any confusing of duties, Coolidge resigned his membership in the Watch and Ward Society the "arbitrators of citizens' morals." The Houses would be Georgian in design, the dining halls would not have student waiters as the Union had, and, although there would be a separate table for the tutorial staff, they would be expected to dine with the students much of the time. Architect's drawings of the sprawling Dunster and the imposing Lowell, were published, and discussion immediately raged regarding the aesthetic quality of the towers atop each of the Houses. The Lowell tower was generally approved, but the Italian Renaisance quality of the Dunster spire was frowned upon by many in the College. Boston architect William Aldrich poo-pooed this unenlightened criticism, asserting that Lowell and Dunster "will be by far the best buildings architecturally in the University."

As applications poured in for Lowell House, Master Coolidge probably breathed a thankful sigh that he resigned from Watch and Ward when he did. Two members of the society, giving false names, had repeatedly tried to buy a copy of the Boston-banned Lady Chatterly's Lover by D. H. Lawrence, from the owner of the Dunster House Bookshop (no relation to the House), and, when he finally sold them one, the good Watchers and Warders took him to Court, and, with little pricking of conscience and much soft hissing from the Harvard spectators, openly revealed their deceit. The little bookseller was sentenced to four months in the "house of correction" and an $800 fine, a sentence which, after much ensuing court action, was finally remitted.

John Dewey Arrives

About the time of 1932's sophomore mid-years, four memorable events occurred: John Dewey was appointed William James Lecturer for the second semester of 1930-31; Russian sociologist Pitrim A. Sorokin, now director of the Institute for Creative Altruism, was appointed to head the Committee on Sociology and Social Ethics; 90 men were arrested in a mass subway riot; and the charred plot of ground on Soldiers Field where the locker building had stood before the January 14 fire, was being prepared for the new Dillon Field House, designed by the omnipresent Messrs. Coolidge, Shepley, Bulfinch, and Abbott.

As the second semester opened, the Class of '32 learned that, in President Lowell's opinion, "there was no such thing as a Harvard type." He also declared that "in the Harvard administration4The partially-built Indoor Athletic Building is shown above as it stood in 1929.