It's been an eventful year. To help preserve the life histories of the events we've seen this year--Soc Rel 148, the Harvard crew, merger with Radcliffe, Marines in sanctuary, the University in the Community, ROTC at the University, Presidential campaigns, student protests -- the CRIMSON has prepared a day-by-day summary of this year at Harvard. The information came from the CRIMSON files and was compiled by James M. Fallows.
September
September 22: The year opened with talk of money, Harvard spending it and Radcliffe getting it. Dean Ford announced that Harvard's teaching fellows would get an immediate pay raise of 17 to 25 per cent. At the same time, the Corporation said that undergraduate tuition would have to go up by $400 -- from $2000 to $2400 -- in the 1969-70 school year. At Radcliffe, Mrs. Mary I. Bunting announced that the college had received the largest grant in its history -- a $5.4 million donation from Mrs. Alisa Mellon Bruce--to help finance Currier House, the new dormitory complex.
Political action also began early. On the 22nd, an AWOL Marine, Paul Olimpieri, took sanctuary in the Divinity School Chapel. On September 23, the Divinity School faculty met but postponed taking any action on Olimpieri or the other Divinity students who sat chained with him in the chapel. "We'd rather be wise and sensitive than clear," that school's dean, Krister Standahl, said after the meeting.
Early on the morning of September 24, military police entered the chapel and arrested Olimpieri. They took him to a Marine base and shaved off his moustache and goatee. That evening, Olimpieri accused the Divinity students of using him as a publicity gimmick.
September 26: The long struggle over Soc Rel 148--an experimental course on "Social Change in America"--began as course directors dropped early plans to let undergraduates and non-Harvard students act as course section men. Although the Committee on Educational Policy had already approved the course, Dean Ford said that the CEP didn't know about the undergraduate-sectionmen plans.
News came from Hungary on the 26th that Henrietta Blueye, a Radcliffe junior, was being held in Budapest on charge of trying to smuggle people out of Hungary.
September 27: The staff of Soc Rel 148 met for three hours to discuss the "compromise" decision to drop undergraduate sectionmen. Disaffected members of the staff complained that Thomas P. Cottle '59, the course director, had not consulted widely enough before making the decision. They also pointed out potential manpower problems, saying that nine of the course's 16 sections were being led by undergraduates and others not eligible for official appointments.
After a series a pickets and leaflets from undergraduate groups, Harvard announced on the 27th that it would stop buying California grapes. L. Gard Wiggins, the administrative vice president, said that the University was not taking a stand in the grape boycott. "We just don't plan to have grapes on the menu," he said.
Another California product cancelled plans to appear at Harvard. Eldridge Cleaver, Presidential candidate of the Peace and Freedom Party and author of Soul on Ice, had been scheduled to speak under the auspices of the Kennedy Institute. But on the 27th, Cleaver's lawyers called to say that California entanglements -- including an upcoming trial on murder charges--would keep Cleaver in the West.
September 29: The Soc Rel 148 staff voted not to give up its original course plans, including having several undergraduates serve as section leaders. To avoid overt conflict with Harvard rules that bar people without Corporation appointments from having "formal responsibility" for a course, the Soc Rel 148 staff said that Cottle would give final approval on all section grades.
September 30: Eldridge Cleaver couldn't come to Harvard, so part of Harvard's rule went West to meet Cleaver. At UC Berkeley, where sponsors of a course on racism wanted Cleaver for their lecturer, the college administrators said they were relying on "an old Harvard tradition" in refusing to let Cleaver give more than two guest lectures.
At a meeting of the Harvard College Fund on the 30th, Dean Watson said that student disruption at Harvard was the work of "a very very tiny group of people, including two or three sons of active Communists."
Seeds of larger things were also sown on the 30th when the Harvard Undergraduate Council voted to start some kind of action to limit ROTC's status at Harvard.
October
