Another reaction to Harvard was expressed by visiting Cambridge Fellow, Arthur Darby Nock, who said that the Yard had a unique atmosphere which he found "charming." Nock today is the Frothingham Professor of the History of Religion at Harvard.
That winter many members of the class attended the trial of bookshop proprietor James A. DeLacey who had been charged with selling a prohibited book at his student news stand. The novel was D. H. Lawrence's latest, "Lady Chatterly's Lover."
Harvard's most sensational fire broke out immediately after vacation that January when a three-alarm blaze completely destroyed the Soldiers Field Licker Building before a crowd of 4,500. The loss meant almost nothing to College athletes, however, since Clarence Dillon '05 had already offered the University a sum large enough to build a new and adequate building. Little attempt was made to determine the cause of the $125,000 fire after Dillon phoned the University the next day and urged that the new structure be started immediately.
The spring's theatricals included "Face the Music," the Hasty Pudding Show written by C. M. Churchill '30 with music by H. C. Adamson '30. The HDC gave the American premiere of Galsworthy's latest London hit, "'The Show."
After the hockey team upset a heavily-favored Yale team in overtime, undergraduates were determined to get something with which they could legally celebrate the joys of college life. Thus began the monster college campaign against Prohibition.
The CRIMSON organized Harvard's bid which extended to 15 colleges and 24,000 students. Only Johns Hopkins refused to aid the College in forcing the issue of Prohibition.
Over 600 undergraduates attended a mass meeting on Prohibition at the Union and only ten raised their hands to indicate they were in favor of retaining the 18th Amendment in its present form.
On the day of the poll, a majority of 15,000 (out of 24,000) wanted modification of the Amendment; almost 5,000 admitted that they had, during Prohibition, been drunk on different occasions. Of the 15 colleges participating, Princeton and Harvard polled the wettest vote.
Soon after the polling was over, undergraduates began to take up more violently the cause of 20 scrubwomen who had been fired from the staff of Widener Library without advance notice or advance pay. Immediately students began to organize the Square Deal Association, whose members marched out into the Square attempting to solicit funds for the fired scrubwomen by holding out wash buckets to passers-by. Sufficient funds for the women were finally raised at the "Scrubwomen's Ball."
The new pool in the I.A.B., meanwhile, was dedicated, Harvard's first rugby team took the field, and a Crimson mile relay team of V. L. Hennessey '30, F. E. Cummings '30, Vernon Munroe '31, and E. E. Record '32 set a Triangular Meet record of 3:20.6. Also in the record-setting class, cyclists A. T. Gray '30 and K. G. Pender '30 pedalled from the Lampoon to New York in something just over 24 hours to establish another record--of sorts.
Most important nationally that spring was the discovery of a new planet just beyond Neptune. The discovery was made by the Lowell Institute in Arizona, which had been started by President Lowell's brother, Percival Lowell '76. Suggested names for the new planet included Kronos, Constance (after the founder's widow), Percival (after the founder), and Atlas.
Most of the spring's activities centered around the Lampoon. After the Ibis had been annually stolen, the comic organization published its Tercentenary number, which was followed with threat of a suit from Boston Mayor James Curley.
A parody of the Massachusetts Bay Charter referred to Curley as "J. Curley, alias J. Crookyde," and mentioned that the mayor "left jail to serve another term as mayor." 'Poon President Paul Brooks '31 hastily rushed to offer the magazine's apologies to the mayor. The mayor, because of "the complete and abject apology of the president of the Harvard Lampoon, in view of his extreme youth and the effect that court proceedings might have on his future . . .," accepted the apologies.
In studies, the Class of '30 moved to the front early in its career and gave evidence of finishing with one of the University's most outstanding scholastic records. It placed Despres, Doob, Hurwitz, Koetzle, Landy, McKeever, Schoen-Rene, Smethurst, Watkins, and Wood in Group I at mid-term of the senior year.
In June, almost 25 years ago to the day, the Class of 1930 set its only real Harvard mark. Including graduate students, it graduated 1,965 men, more than ever before. Even if the movies of the time were still only talkies, the total would have filled a giant-size Cinemascope screen.