'Baby Dean' Epps Manhandled by Students, Saw Fateful Decision Made

When student protestors took over University Hall in 1969, Archie C. Epps III was a "baby dean" in the College administration, closer in age to many of the protestors than to the administrators who called in the police to eject them.

But his resistance to the protestors made him a symbol of the administration and shaped his attitude toward the University he served.

"I decided Harvard gets the benefit of the doubt in close calls," says Epps, who will retire this July from his position as dean of students, a post he has held for the past 29 years. "You can be a conserver of institutions but also have progressive views...Harvard isn't perfect. It was flawed. But it gets the benefit of the doubt from me."

Epps--who attended the meetings where administrators decided to use police to storm University Hall and eject the protestors--says that while that choice cast a shadow over relations between students and administrators for years to come, many University officials saw it as their only option.

Few thought a takeover would actually occur at Harvard, Epps says. But after hearing a presentation by Professor Archibald Cox '34--later famous as a special prosecutor who investigated Nixon--about similar actions at other schools, the University began to prepare anyway.

Administrators favored a "quick bust" response over waiting out a standoff, which administrators feared would lead to a "a slow blood-letting" and divide students and Faculty.

This consensus was put into action with no real opposition, Epps says. But it would soon become one of the most controversial events in Harvard's long history.

The Takeover

On the day of the takeover, just three days after his wedding, Epps was meeting with other administrators in University Hall.

"We were meeting and heard this rush of a lot of people and the hanging of chains," Epps says. "We rushed out and I went upstairs to tell the ladies upstairs to leave because it was going to get rough."

On the way upstairs, Epps was grabbed by six or seven students and forced out of the building.

"I've never been treated like this even though I was born in the South," says Epps, who describes the protestors' behavior as appalling.

A Harvard legend has it that Epps said "Unhand me, mother fuckers," while struggling with the protestors, but he denies this account.

"This is a total legend," Epps says. "I would never say such a thing, but some people swear that I did."

"I remember being beet red, but I don't think I said this," he adds.

Epps went back into the building through a different door and was again forced out. A picture of the struggling young dean being pushed out of the building ran on the front page of the New York Times.

After going to the designated rendezvous location, the Harvard police station then located in Grays Hall, Epps went to Loeb House, the residence of University President Nathan M. Pusey '28, for a meeting. There the deans discussed how to respond to the situation.

"We had plainclothes people inside and we were getting reports," Epps says.

WHRB was also broadcasting from within the building. Administrators were upset to learn that the protestors had broken into the files stored in University Hall.

"The problem with them getting in the files was they were going to find out who in the Faculty was in the CIA, an embarrassing development," Epps says.

Pusey and other top administrators, who had favored a quick bust all along, were spurred on by these reports from University Hall.

"Pusey said he thought the only way out was to call the police and he asked if there were any objections," Epps says. "No one objected."

The Bust

Administrators called the state police and the police from seven surrounding towns to organize the raid. Epps says this had been planned in advance because of the preparations spurred by Cox.

Epps and then-Dean of the College Fred L. Glimp '50 also met with House masters at the Faculty Club to inform them of the administration's decision to send in police.

"Some masters felt that they had been stabbed in the back because we hadn't told them about calling the police," Epps says.

At 4:30 a.m. Epps headed down to the police station in Grays, where he had been told the mobilization would take place.

But when he arrived at the police station, Epps learned the mobilization was actually taking place elsewhere, so he was left to watch the goings-on from the steps of Widener Library.

Glimp read a warning to the protestors over a bullhorn at about 5 a.m., but the crowds gathered in the Yard made it possible to hear the announcement from inside the building, Epps says.

"The bullhorn announcement wasn't strong enough," Epps says. "That moment for me was emblematic of the limited capacity we had and the lack of actual preparation for the takeover."

"We started that defense of Harvard with too little forces," he added.

Even as police surrounded the building and 500 state police officers disembarked from school buses, Glimp tried to convince the students to leave peaceably.

"He was at the front of the line to issue a warning: 'Please leave the building or you will be arrested,'" Epps says.

Epps says he was struck by Glimp's tenacity in entering the building.

"'What courage,' I thought," Epps says.

Epps watched from afar as Glimp's final attempt to end the standoff was unsuccessful, and the state police began to force their way in.

"I was standing on the corner of Widener wondering, 'What am I doing here now that everything's started?'" he says.

After University Hall was reclaimed, Epps was one of the three University affiliates chosen to present disciplinary cases against the 300 students involved in the takeover.

"We presented them in heavily guarded chambers in the Holyoke Center," Epps says. "Our role was to present the evidence."

Although the takeover and its aftermath were controversial, Epps says he felt confident about his role in disciplining students for their involvement.

"I had no qualms about presenting it," he says. "The people were wrong. It didn't matter what they thought about Vietnam. What was wrong was the attack on the University."