John Harvard's Journal
Yesterday’s News
From the pages of the Harvard Alumni Bulletin and Harvard Magazine
1935
College seniors and juniors are again allowed to cut the last class before, and the first class after, Christmas recess, “but if the records of students who take advantage of this privilege subsequently become unsatisfactory the excuses they offer therefor will be carefully examined.”
1940
The Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS), which already gives credit for each year of military or naval science completed at Harvard, extends the privilege to students enrolled in the Civil Aeronautics Administration’s pilot-training program or the 90-day Reserve Midshipmen’s School.
1955
The Corporation orders the replacement of the Memorial Hall tower’s rooftop railing and other metal ornamentation removed in 1945 because of deterioration [unwittingly setting the stage for the conflagration that destroyed all but the base of the tower in 1956].
1960
Addressing the National Interfraternity Conference, Arizona senator Barry Goldwater praises the fraternity system as “a bastion of American strength” and asserts that in colleges without fraternities, such as Harvard, “Communism flourishes.” In response, the Bulletin’s Undergraduate columnist reports, a group of students decide to form a chapter of “Iota Beta Phi” and elect Goldwater its Honorary Grand Wizard.
1970
FAS approves a degree in special studies, enabling undergraduates to structure their own fields of concentration.
1980
The “first United States Croquet Association-sanctioned intercollegiate American croquet competition in modern times” (according to a press release) takes place on the Radcliffe Quad a day before The Game. Yale prevails, 30-27.
2000
Moores professor of biological anthropology Irven DeVore delivers his final lecture in Science B-29, “Human Behavioral Biology” (popularly known as “Sex”), which he has co-taught since 1970, attracting close to a third of all undergraduates during that span with his showmanship and devotion to teaching.