Still in College at Reunion Time

After World War II, some men who had left the University to serve in the army found themselves still in College when their class was expected to hold its first reunion. The war also threatened the financial part of the College's alumni program.

Previously men had tended to know best the students in their class but persons in a half dozen College classes were graduated many years apart and their circles of friends varied widely.

With even less class unity than Harvard students normally have, these classes may have difficulty raising the traditional $100,000 that the 25th reunioning class gives the University to help make up the difference between what the students paid for their education and what it cost the University to provide it.

An annual appeal from a class agent towards this goal is the second way the University will enter into a College graduate's life. The Fund Council holds the principal for the class until its 25th reunion while the College spends the interest. After the 25th reunion the class agents continue to ask for gifts, but these are put to immediate use by the College while the $100,000 gift is added to University endowment.

This 25th anniversary gift has been a tradition since the early years of the twentieth century when a College class paid for the cost of the stadium. In over 45 years since then, no class has failed to give at least $100,000.

Before the Harvard Fund was started in 1925, the graduates would get together a few years before their reunion and pledge the money. Now with heavier taxes, the work of raising the money begins as soon as the men leave College.

The Fund Council solicits each alumnus, unless especially asked not to, and was involved in the Putzi Hanfstaengl incident in the middle '30's because of this.

Fund Appeal Goes to Germany

Hanfstaengl, an aide of Hitler, offered the University a scholarship shortly after Hitler took power. President Conant refused it because of what Hitler had done to German universities. Later Hanfstaengl got a routine appeal from the Fund Council and from this got the impression that the University would now take his money. He was turned down a second time.

The Fund Council letter in the spring, which last year included a message from the Provost, provides the only direct news of events in Cambridge for those persons who do not subscribe to the Alumni Bulletin.

The Bulletin, a bi-weekly, sells around 14,000 copies per issue and is regarded as one of the better alumni journals in the country. Last year it won the prize as the best alumni magazine in America.

A self-supporting publication, the Bulletin does tend to follow the University on most issues, but last spring it showed an instance of its independence when it bitterly opposed the idea of a new Varsity Club.

Founded over 50 years ago, the Bulletin today contains just what you would expect in an alumni magazine--the events at the University written in news-magazine style, letters from graduates, details on athletics, feature stories, and, finally, pages of alumni notes.

A Harvard alumnus in New York City may well have heard Conant speak more recently than his son in Cambridge, for University officials and professors often tour the Harvard clubs. In one of the years just after the war when alumni affairs were getting active again, Conant talked at 15 widely-scattered club meetings.