In order to point out these unhappy circumstances and perhaps t inspire a remedy, the Bulletin of March 12, 1949 printed in a prominent position a letter from Hamilton T. Brown '48 entitled: "My Son Won't Go to Harvard." Brown, who had just finished four years at the College after previously attending a state university, found "shocking deficiencies" in the University's Faculty and its undergraduate life, and concluded his letter:

For those who regard prestige, athletics, social life, family tradition, scholarships, and personal convenience as the primary criteria in choosing a college, Harvard College has much to offer. But for the man seeking the best education possible for his undergraduate time and effort... Harvard College, as presently constituted, is not worthy of serious consideration.

Although the Bulletin gave no evidence of agreeing with Brown's sentiments, and indeed, in its next issue carried many replies under the heading: "Some Sons Will Go to Harvard!," high University officials considered publication of the letter extremely ill-advised, and said so privately.

Perhaps the sharpest clash between the Bulletin and Massachusetts Hall policy occurred in the spring of 1950, when the University proposed to build a new Varsity Club.

Should the University build a new Varsity Club with part of the unrestricted legacy of the late Allston Burr? (the magazine asked in a May 27 editorial). The Bulletin feels it should not. There are few matters on which the Bulletin takes issue with the administration, but this is one of them. The project should be abandoned...

Opposition by the Bulletin, together with that of many enlightened alumni and of various other parties, finally succeeded in defeating the new Varsity Club, even though the Corporation had already approved the project and architectural plans had been drawn. The legacy of Allston Burr '89 was used instead to finance the present system of Allston Burr Senior Tutors.

That the Harvard Alumni Bulletin should ever oppose an improvement of the College's athletic facilities might have seemed preposterous, however, to someone reading the publication back near its founding in 1898. For the Bulletin was born with an admitted athletic preoccupation, and in a sense its history has been simply a gradual transition of interests from Soldiers Field and the river to University Hall and Widener.

Two other Harvard magazines, one the brash but impressive creation of an undergraduate and the other the dull official publication of the College administration, had already been unsuccessful as vehicles of University news when the Bulletin began its try. It was formed in 1898 under editor Jerome Greene as the weekly publication of the Athletic Association of Harvard Graduates, a group whose purpose was "to increase alumni interest in Harvard athletics and, as a by-product, to interest promising athletes from the preparatory schools..."

November 7, 1898

The first issue of the Bulletin, which appeared November 7, 1898, gave the following as the new magazine's objectives:

First, to give selected and summarized Harvard news to graduates who want it; secondly to serve as a medium for publishing promptly all notices and announcements of interest to graduates; thirdly to unite graduate and undergraduate interest in all the athletic sports.

The statement of policy added, however, "The Bulletin will not be an athletic paper... in any exclusive sense."

Yet despite this last sentence, and despite Greene's discontent with the publication's athletic affiliation, the early Bulletin was little if not an athletic paper. The very first issue, for example, subordinated its statement of objectives to a congratulation of the football team for defeating Pennsylvania, and the third issue, following a victory over Yale, carried a typical lead editorial urging readers to

... remember that the best way to commemorate our (football) victory will be to get ready with equal vigor for baseball and rowing victories in the spring. Help Captain Higginson on to victory with the same noble support that has been given to Captain Dibblee.

It was very rare indeed in the early years for an issue of the Bulletin to neglect to congratulate, console, or exhort some Crimson athletic team.