The administration, too, began to look at the world differently because of the veterans on campus. In 1946, Conant used this annual letter in the register to address the issue of compulsory military service.

This worldliness translated into other forms on the College's campus. The number of social science concentrators soared--from 31 percent of students in 1941 to half the student body in 1947--as science and the humanities dropped significantly.

This fascination with the way the world works was a direct result of the horrible battles the veterans had fought in the years before college.

"Some of us had some very difficult experiences [in the war] and either consciously or unconsciously we were looking for answers," Harriman says. "War was a very unsettling experience."

The maturity brought about by war had the veterans throw themselves into their studies.

"The professors used to call on [the veterans] a lot, and while that annoyed some, it showed that we were still pretty young people," recalls Janet S. Ellis '50, who entered Radcliffe after attending public schools.

Academic honors were at all-time highs as the Class of 1950 progressed, and its freshman year was the best performing class in decades--almost a third of the students were named to the Dean's List. Discipline problems--especially among veterans--hit all-time lows as well.

The "no-nonsense" soldiers pursued their studies vigorously, and were less intimidated by professors, according to Lionette.

"There was an eagerness on their part to learn and think but there was a different framework," he says. "They sure as hell didn't want to waste any time."

And the veterans kept to themselves, not out of isolation, but because they shared common experiences--and because they did not fit into the world of their non-veteran classmates.

"Sometimes they found it hard to understand the guys coming in from high school, who viewed entering college more lightly," Lionette reports.

Kicking Up Your Heels

While there were academic distinctions between the veterans and younger undergraduates, social lives were even more stratified.

One of the most basic divides was based around Massachusetts's drinking age of 21--freshman veterans could drink while their secondary school counterparts often had three years to wait.

The traditional undergraduate social arenas--social clubs and Radcliffe mixers--often remained the domain of the younger students.

While Woolverton joined the Owl and Hasty Pudding Club, he came "in some maturity to question those clubs."