John Harvard's Journal
Yesterday's News
From the pages of the Harvard Alumni Bulletin and Harvard Magazine
1912
Noting that the $50,000 maintenance fund necessary for a new music building to replace Holden Chapel is $15,000 short, the editors remind readers that “ a healthy and useful university is forever uncovering new needs….”
1927
Economics surpasses English as a concentration choice for the first time, with more than 400 freshmen entering the field.
1937
Courtesy of NBC and the BBC, the Harvard Club of London hosts a live broadcast of The Game, including Harvard and Yale cheers transmitted back to the teams in the Harvard stadium. (Harvard won, 13-6.)
1947
Professors attempting to separate “the sheep from the goats” (as the editors remark)—by locking classroom doors at exactly seven minutes past the hour—run afoul of the Cambridge fire department, which notifies lecturers that obstructing emergency exits is illegal.
1952
In a straw poll of undergraduates, loser Adlai Stevenson nevertheless gets the largest slice of “Harvard’s normally Republican majority” since Woodrow Wilson beat a split G.O.P. in 1912. The faculty members who are polled go for Eisenhower, 379-298.
1967
The Program for Science in Harvard College gets under way; one goal is a $14-million science center north of the Yard.
1982
MIT pranksters disrupt The Game with a balloon that erupts from the earth and inflates in front of the Crimson bench—but Harvard wins 45-7.
1992
Harvard has “locked the doors and [thrown] away the keys” for the Yard dorms, the editors report. The installation of card-reading devices there will likely be extended to the Houses to crack down on crime, despite occasional glitches—a door held open too long for a good-night kiss summons a University police car to investigate.
