The Harvard student is a downtrodden animal. Instinctively fun-loving and hell-raising in his search for excitement, he has at every turn been clubbed, flogged, gassed, rusticated, jailed, admonished, severed, and expunged.

In the painful process Cambridge society has come to take for granted the propensity to riot of their guests and with good reason; it happens every spring, not to mention fall and winter.

This is not to indicate, however, that all of the riots that have marked Harvard's history have been big. Most of them were mere bush league skirmishes, and none has been half so serious as its write-up in the nation's newspapers. If any groups have relished the disturbances more than the participants, they have been the tawny tabloids, the provincial press, or others of the hyperbole-monger ilk.

University and Cambridge authorities, viewing the proceedings less favorably, have reacted vociferously and violently. They tend to forget the advantages of rioting, however, for if the police weren't on student firing lines, they'd be out of work.

Such unemployment is unlikely to occur, however, as students and their superiors have always cooperated in a mutual harrassment program. "Boys will be boys," and have been since the year 1 or 1636.

Harvard's first head, the controversial Master Nathaniel Eaton, flogged disobedient undergraduates, and in 1639 he clobbered a faculty assistant with a "walnut tree cudgel," compared to which the modern billy club would be a toothpick.

Eaton was soon hailed into court to answer charges about his so-called "School of Tyrannus." Since then, the College's misbehaving students have taken to the courts more often than its tennis teams.

In those puritanical days there were no athletics. Radcliffe, or other amusements, and peace disturbance was the only outlet, window-breaking and petty larceny in Cambridge became major sports. The year 1658 saw the first town-gown fight, and from then on, students were obliged to obey local police.

A frequent punishment administered by the College in the 17th century was rustication, a short cooling off period with farm chores in the country for the offender.

In 1675, President Leonard Hoar set a precedent by calling in the local gaoler to settle a school problem. An undergraduate was "publickly whipped" by the outsider despite the stormy protest of a frightened student body and an indignant alumni.

Shortly thereafter, President Increase Mather reportedly ordered the boys to gather in the yard and burn a book attacking the witchcraft belief of his on Cotton. The College's first riot of a political nature went off with the usual rehearsed spontaneity.

Food was the most frequent cause of revolt in those days, however. Commons fare was austere, and the diners hardly got an egg in their beer. As a matter of fact, one morning they even had a tartar emetic in their coffee, thanks to the famous efforts of two chem students.

Commons disturbances included fights, walkouts, throwing of dubious edibles, and subjecting attending tutors to miscellaneous humiliations. Although the "Bread and Butter Rebellion of 1805" and the "Cabbage Rebellion of 1807" have gone down in history, none was so famous as the "Butter Rebellion of 1766."

The latter was a protest against the serving of rancid butter, which had been imported from Ireland. A Lampoon type of the time expressed his ire in a Biblical satire, which included the immortal line, "Behold our butter stinketh, and we cannot eat thereof."

Half the student body received suspension that year; Samuel Eliot Morison '08, Jonathan Trumbull Professor of American History and the University's authorized historian, commented on the incident as follows: "It is clear that the Governing Boards would stand for almost any individual misconduct, but that a concerted effort must be vigorously suppressed lest the students suppose that 'in union there is strength.'"