By special dispensation of the Dean's Office, all students living farther West than Chicago were allowed for the first time to leave school early enough in December to arrive home in time for Christmas. Harvard was growing beyond the bounds of New England, and she was willing to be nice about it, though warning that "absence from Cambridge by no means excuses the student from responsibilities of written work."
In their senior year, nineteen-twelve continued their treeks to the athletic grounds, but they complained about it. "There is no reason why climate-harrassed throats shoul be further insulted by the steady cloud of dust and filth that rises from the pavement on the way to Soldiers' Field," they grumbled, and issued a plea for "the effective use of an oil-cart on the street near the field."
Another sign of the time: a British suffragette, one Mrs. Pankhurst, was barred from the use of a Harvard building for a speech. Some undergraduates protested, and Mrs. Pankhurst, hailed by one (male) enthusiast as the most proficient orator of the day, ended by speaking in Brattle Hall, now the Brattle Theatre.
President Lowell, wanting seniors to get to know each other tried to induce them to live in the Yard under his new senior dormitory system, Accordingly, Yard halls had modern plumbing and steam heat installed, and seniors were permitted to group together by entries. Hints of Lowell's House system, begun during the Depression, were beginning to emerge from all the President's changes in undergraduate living conditions.
Meanwhile, construction was begun on the President's $80,000 residence on Quincy Street, and the cornerstone was laid for the Bush-Reisinger Germanic museum.
The Titanic crash brought the only other major change to Harvard that year, with the bequest of the Widener collection which included first editions of Shakespeare, Milton, Spenser, Johnson, Goldsmith, Gray, Keats, and Shelley. There were also volumes of the modern authors: Dickens, Thackeray, Eliot, Meredith, and Stevenson, which in many instances were personally associated with their authors. Some copies contained presentation inscriptions; others, manuscript corrections and annotations.
By June of 1912, the senior class faced a portentous era. The present was fairly secure: the Republican party, big business, and the trust era had not yet faltered, and a gentleman's education was still to be had.
One undergraduate publication mentioned "the sense of intellectual triumph that comes from a thesis written between 11 p.m. and 4 a.m. on the night before it is due"--helped along, no doubt, by a consoling Fatima Turkish Blend Cigarette, which purported to be of assistance in times of crisis like "writing to HER" or studying in exam period.
For all their football songs, for all their fiinesse at the academic game, four years at Harvard from 1908 to 1918 were a serious business. No undergraduate could fail to be affected by the changes of a thoughtful, farsighted president; none could fail to realize that "the noblest institution in the land" had effected a change in his life. Clarence Randall, Joseph P. Kennedy, Kermit Roosevelt, and Frederick Lewis Allen, Associate Editor of Harper's were all members of the class of 1912, along with William L. Laurence, science editor of the New York Times; Raymond S. Wilkins, an Overseer; and Harry Wolfson, a Harvard professor. They were witness with their fellows to the beginning of a chapter of the College's history and the end of a certain gracious style of education in a gracious, secure world.