Crimson History

Englishmen at Harvard

The English track team drove out to Cambridge yesterday morning at 11 o’clock, and was met in front of Massachusetts Hall by about three hundred men. After the cheering, the guests were taken about the yard, and then to the Museum to see the glass flowers. They then went through the gymnasium and to the Union, which they inspected thoroughly....

President Eliot welcomed the visitors to Harvard, and spoke of what American athletes should learn from the English. In the first place, they should learn to prepare for athletic contests with a shorter period of training. Judging by English experience, training in American colleges covers a period unnecessarily long; and athletics are taken too much as hard work and not enough as genuine pleasure. In England men go into athletics primarily for pure sport, and are not inclined to overestimate the value of victory, as we are. We should also learn from the English to keep our games the same from year to year, without attempting to vary them by new and tricky plays which have to be practiced in secret behind high fences.

—Oct. 1, 1901

45 Years ago

Four Professors Attack Removing of Honors Latin

Four Faculty members yesterday attacked the removal of the Latin requirement for English honors candidates.

“I can only deplore the action,” J. Petersen Elder, professor of Greek and Latin and Dean of the GSAS, said last night. “A knowledge of Latin literature is necessary for a knowledge of English literature.”

Elder was supported by John Finley ’25, Eliot Professor of Greek Literature. “It is a mistake, he said. “I don’t see how anyone could study English profitably without some knowledge of Latin.”

—Oct. 3, 1956

25 Years ago

Council Extends DNA Experiment Ban

The Cambridge City Council voted unanimously Tuesday to extend its three-month moratorium on controversial “recombinant DNA” research at Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) for an additional three months....

The Council’s original resolution to initiate a recombinant DNA research moratorium in June followed considerable local and national debate on the potential environmental consequences of such research.

Among the proposed experiments that have sparked heated debate are those which would examine genetic control mechanisms in higher-level organisms.

In these experiments, researchers would transfer loose strands of DNA-—the basic molecular unit of heredity—from warm-blooded animals into specimens of E. coli, a commonly-utilized laboratory bacterium, in hopes of producing a new species with heretofore unknown characteristics.

—Sept. 30, 1976

Tutorial Grades Decline; Mansfield Still Unsatisfied

Despite his efforts to combat “grade inflation” in the Government Department, grades last year declined less than anticipated, Harvey C. Mansfield ’53, chairman of the Government Department, said yesterday.

Mansfield said that he was especially disturbed by statistics for Government 98, the junior tutorial, which show that the number of A’s given in the course last year only declined 5 per cent from the previous year. Ninety-five percent of those taking the course received honors grades.

Mansfield, who called last year for a “general deflation” in grades and for a return to the tougher grading standards of the late 1960s, said that he has been “exhorting members of the department who haven’t noticed the upward creep in grades to pay attention to what they’ve been doing.”

—Oct. 1, 1976