Letter from home: Paul Ode '51 on his cot on the balcony of the Indoor Athletic Building, September 25, 1947. The arrival of veterans had led to serious overcrowding.Harvard University Archives

Another Way to Keep in Touch
The Harvard Alumni Association (HAA) has yet another high-tech tool to improve communication among alumni. Sean Buffington '91, assistant director for clubs and programs, has established listservs--electronic mail distribution lists--for Harvard-Radcliffe College classes from 1985 to 1996 and the reunion classes of 1972, 1977, and 1982. Now all members of these classes can subscribe to their affiliated listserv and instantly post public announcements to any other classmates also enrolled as subscribers.

One might think alumni would use listservs primarily to catch up on news of old friends, but Buffington says the evidence from similar programs at Princeton and Yale indicates that many people use the list to discuss important issues of the day as well. In cyber talk, Buffington describes listservs as potential "non-real-time discussion groups." With this in mind, the HAA hopes eventually to develop lists serving specific alumni interest groups, as well as regions and Harvard clubs.

Listservs offer several advantages over other interactive media. "A website," Buffington says, "is essentially a publication." Listservs' contents, on the other hand, are completely determined by the interests of their readers, and you don't need access to the World Wide Web to subscribe. Listservs are also more private, since all class lists are closed: when Buffington receives a request to subscribe, he checks to ensure that the applicant is a bona fide member of the class.

Naturally, Buffington expects listservs to be more popular with recently graduated classes. The theory seems to be borne out by the class of 1996 which had more than 200 classmates subscribe within the first three weeks their list was available, without any formal advertising of the new feature. The HAA hopes to add each graduating class to the program and to accommodate other interested classes in the coming year. (To get more information about setting up a listserv for your class, contact Buffington at Wadsworth House, Cambridge 02138 or e-mail him at "sbuffing@harvard.edu".)

To subscribe to a class list, alumni should send an e-mail message to "listproc@camail1.harvard.edu". No subject line is necessary. Type the following in the body of your message: "sub haa-hr[class year] [your name]". ("Class year" is your degree year; "your name" is your full name, not your e-mail address.) Do not use brackets in the message. Send any questions to "sbuffing@harvard.edu".

HAA Winter Meeting
The HAA winter meeting, on January 31 and February 1, focuses in two sessions on "Harvard and the Community." The first session, devoted to undergraduate initiatives in the community, features speakers from Phillips Brooks House; the second session examines institutional involvement in Cambridge and Boston.

Comings and Goings
Under HAA auspices, many bright Harvard professors and administrators follow the sun to Florida and

Why are these people smiling? Because they're the happy few voted in as marshals of the class of 1997, elected by their Harvard-Radcliffe classmates in mid October. Left to right they are: (front row) Christine M. Perez of Kirkland House and Dix Hills, New York; Millicent Ugochi Jaymes Odunze of Leverett House and Orem, Utah; Radcliffe first marshal Allyson Vanessa Hobbs of Adams House and Morristown, New Jersey; Vivek Maru of Pforzheimer House and Danbury, Connecticut; (back row) Harvard first marshal Eli Aheto of Cabot House and New York City; Marcia M. Turner of Lowell House and Wenatchee, Washington; Kevin Charles Scott of Lowell House and Baltimore; and John William Turner of Eliot House and Crockett, Texas.Photograph by Kris Snibbe

Texas mid winter.

President Neil Rudenstine leads a delegation of faculty members to Florida in Harvard Comes to Sarasota on February 15; he continues on alone to the Harvard Club of Miami on February 16. On February 22, Provost Al Carnesale visits the Harvard Club of Dallas when Harvard Comes to Dallas. Lecturer on social studies Carol Saivetz, executive director of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies, speaks at the Harvard Club of Miami on January 23, and the Harvard Club of Central Florida, in Orlando, welcomes Renaissance drama specialist Jeffrey Masten on February 9.

Externships and Internships
There's still time to post a summer or spring break (March 22 to 30) internship for undergraduates. The Office of Career Services and the HAA's Harvard Career Internships Program accept listings from alumni until January 6. E-mail Nancy Saunders at "nesaund@fas.harvard.edu" or call (617) 495-2595 to have your listing included in the OCS catalog. To post a paid or unpaid summer internship at the Student Employment Office, Byerly Hall, 8 Garden Street, Cambridge 02138, call (617) 495-2585, or fax a description to (617) 495-8422. You can also advertise your internship electronically on the SEO's website at "https://www.seo.harvard.edu".