Harvard Yard was busier than a Filene's basement clearance sale yesterday, as students packed up their belongings and headed for home after meeting their final academic commitments for the year.

The chaotic atmosphere was enhanced by the heavy volume of traffic in the Yard, which was so thick that University police had to station an officer by Johnston Gate to direct students' parents who arrived to take their children home until next year.

"This place is like a parental tourist attraction. It's packed with sightseeing parents and their oversized cars. And they're all trying so hard to act impressed with Harvard," Martin A. Sullivan '80 said yesterday.

A major problem for movers involved the procurement of boxes in which to put a year's accumulation of junk.

"It took me two hours to get four lousy boxes out of the raunchiest trash bins you've ever seen," a sophomore who wished to remain unidentified said yesterday.

Meanwhile, the dorm crew did its best to sanitize student rooms in preparation for the occupancy by alumni attending their respective reunions.

"The rooms seem to range from fairly clean to completely nauseating. Some of them are one step behind the Board of Health." Dierdre Donahue '80, a dorm crew worker in Winthrop House, said yesterday.