Education: First Week at Harvard

The dean of freshmen was pleased to find them “well lopsided.” The dean of admissions glowed over their “fascinating mix of talents and interests.” Brighter, taller, leaner and more bespectacled than ever, 1,216 freshmen marched into Harvard last week.

One-fifth were sons of fathers who never went to college; 57% came from public schools. Almost 10% entered as sophomores; 30% had scholarships, with a total value of $462,000. Confidently donning crisp chinos and loafers or white sneakers, they set out frankly to acquire “the Harvard label.” Said one boy blandly: “After you get out of Harvard, your contacts are the leaders of the country.”

Harvard has a way with such upstarts: it puts them through a first week so dizzyingly busy that newcomers can hardly think straight.

Join, Join, Join. No sooner had each boy been hit with his first-term bill ($1,307.50) than he was deluged with requests to rent sheets and refrigerators, teach slum kids and visit mental hospitals. There were endless tests, physical and placement, pep talks from coaches and proctors, two presidential teas, and tryouts for everything from the Crimson to the Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra. There were endless forms to fill out, and endless appeals to:

Join the Harvard Young Republicans campaign against Ted Kennedy.

Join the Wireless Club. Join the Music Club. Join the Harvard Band.

Join Tocsin’s program for peace and disarmament, backing History Professor H. Stuart Hughes for U.S. Senator from Massachusetts.

Join the Harvard Esperanto Club: “Learn to read 10,000 volumes and join 1,000,000 to 10,000,000 who speak the same language.”

Join the Harvard Yacht Club: “We’ll use a brand-new fleet of 15 dinghies.”

Join the Harvard Humanists, “to bring man’s intelligence to bear on the problems which have been so inadequately dealt with by traditional religions.”

Join the Natural History Society, “the least controversial group at Harvard.”

Buy, Buy, Buy. It was all so wondrously confusing that a couple of upperclassmen peddling “a used dollar for 75¢” worked their way down a long line of waiting freshmen before they got one taker. There was too much to buy:

The Radcliffe Freshmen Register: pictures of all the girls. $1.

The Harvard Review: “Articles by distinguished Harvard men in Cambridge, Washington and around the world.”

Comment: “43% of the Harvard student body lead lives of quiet revolution. Another 30% read about it and go on to Business School. If you are in either of these groups, Comment, the magazine of politics with a Harvard accent, fills your need.”

The Crimson’s “Confi-Guide”: inside scoop on all courses. Sample: Government 130, taught by Presidential Adviser Don K. Price, who “can usually be found in Washington,” with the result that “his appearances usually seemed unprepared, were often unintelligible and practically never interesting.” Or: “Philosophy 140 explores deductive logic to the immense boredom of everyone, including Professor Willard Quine. The lectures are insulting, the homework assignments mechanical, the sections poor, and the reading-period selections juvenile.”

“Very excited and very scared,” freshmen went on to cope with seven high-octane discussions based on a summer reading list of nine books, from The Fox in the Attic to The Nature of Violent Storms. Setting the Harvard tone at the first class assembly, Law Professor Mark DeWolfe Howe ripped apart Creeds in Competition in the presence of its author, noted Lawyer Leo Pfeffer. The first real relief: a “Grant-in-Aid Mixer” dance (happily no longer called a “jolly-up”) with Radcliffe freshmen—themselves reeling from swimming tests, fire-rope tests, placement tests and a film on The Life of the African Bushman.

At week’s end even that consolation vanished. Upperclassmen arrived, took over the Cliffies. But such are the rigors and rewards of getting into Harvard.