GIFT OF $3,000,000 LAUNCHES RADICAL EXPERIMENT IN UNDERGRADUATE LIFE

The "radical experiment," he was soon to discover, was the House Plan, which would be begun by the building of "a dormitory or 'House'" with the first anonymous grant, which was later revealed to have been given by Edward S. Harkness, Yale '87. President Lowell assured everyone that no change in teaching would result from the plan, only the "breaking up" of Harvard into "smaller social units in order to secure at the same time the advantages of the large and small institutions." Tutors would live in the House, undergraduates would join them in the dining hall, and athletic and library facilities would be supplied.

The College gasped. Although the grant was made for only one House, it was assumed that if this was successful eventually all undergraduates would be lodged in Houses. Few liked the idea. Students felt that their prized individualism, "completely self-wrought," would be taken away once they were forced to live and dine with a group of people chosen by Faculty members. The CRIMSON attacked the plan, and the Lampoon published a "Protest of the Masses Number" which heaped the full wrath of the Faculty and Administration upon its head. An apology to Mr. Harkness was demanded, and the 'Poonies, moaning that no one understood them, grudgingly gave it. Later, it was reported that the University was so angered by this issue that they were planning to take up the Lampoon's mortgage and turn its great baronial hall into a dining room for one of the Houses. Nothing came of this, however.

Professors C. N. Greenough and J. L. Coolidge were chosen the first House Masters, and by this time students began to become resigned to the fact that no matter what they said the House Plan was going to be.

Police Censor Drama

But there were other things to occupy a freshman's mind then; the varsity had trounced Yale, 17 to 0; Smith Halls had captured the interdormitory football crown; and the city of Cambridge was doing its best to prevent the College from seeing the Harvard Dramatic Club's production of "Fiesta," which was reported to be "crude, immoral, and unfit for production." Three policemen were sent to observe the play and report on its fitnss, and all agreed that it was much too harmful to the citizenry to be produced; the three "experts" ordered that it be closed. Another annoyance, an influenza epidemic, drifted into Cambridge, and by early January 1929 there were 57 men in the infirmary. There was, however, little chance that College would be closed down as a result.

Spring, through it did not feel like it, was not too far away, and plans were already being made for Jubilee. Charles Cunningham was chosen to head the committee to prepare the festival rites, while Joseph Collins was to head the Smoker. Winter sports were winding up, and the undefeated hockey team dropped its last meet to Yale, 1 to 0; Smith Halls captured the interdormitory winter title; and a large number of freshmen wandered out to Soldiers Field for spring football practice.

Spring had finally really arrived, and at various places around the Square and the Yard it was beginning to show. Passing the Music Box record shop on Holyoke Street, one could see two Harvard men sit down before a phonograph and begin to listen to all the 5000 records in the store. The one who went to sleep first lost, but got $10 anyway; the winner received $25. Paramount and M-G-M sent news cameramen and Fox Movietone was reported to be interested in recording the event.

The Cliffdwellers

Jubilee dates from Radcliffe might have proved somewhat persnickety that year, since they felt they had come of age: the 'Cliffe was about to celebrate its fiftieth anniversary. The Edgeworth Tobacco Company, realizing that this attitude was indicative of national womanhood, kept cheering up Harvard men by telling them that, no matter what else the women had taken away, they could take away his pipe. "She'll never smoke a pipe," the company crowed in countless CRIMSON ads; that item is "one pet diversion our little friends keep their fingers off."

And suddenly, the Class of '32 realized that it had taken its last examinations and that its freshman year was over. It prepared to move out of the dormitories on the Charlesbank, though many had a faint premonition that they might return to them again. Glancing cautiously over its shoulder at University Hall, 1932 realized it could never be sure that was to happen.

June passed, July passed, August passed, and finally enough of September passed so that it was time to leave the beaches and the clubs, pack up the $350 raccoon coats (bought from Gunther's on Fifth Avenue, of course) and trudge back to Cambridge. The Class moved into Claverly, Westmorly, Russell, Drayton, and a hundred little boarding houses around the Square and settled down to a year of concentration and speculation on what the man with the white mustache would do next. There were some new sights to see around the Square: the Langdell addition had been finished, and the Indoor Athletic Building was well on its way to completion. There was a large open lot across from Gore Hall on which concrete and steel were rising to become House Plan Unit No. 1; on a triangular plot of ground on Memorial Drive a similar scene would soon be transformed into House Plan Unit No. 2.

Watch and Ward

The evil eye of the puritan Watch and Ward Society opened as the year began and, represented by Cambridge Mayor Nichols, decided that a local production of Eugene O'Neill's "Strange Interlude" was not suitable for presentation. Censorship further plagued the University when several orders of books for French and other foreign literature courses were forbidden to be shipped to the Phillips Book Store because they were "obscene." Among the restricted works: Rousseau's Confessions, Rabelais's Oeuvres, and Boccaccio's Decameron.

But generally, the year had a pleasant beginning. The Student Council discovered it had paid its debt, the University was permitting students to cut classes the day before and after vacations, and students could buy crimson and white Corona Portable typewriters with "H U" on them at the Coop. Kellogg's All-Bran was prescribed (by the Kellogg Company) as the way to end the "widespread evil" of constipation causing most of the ill health which harms effective studying. The little Psychological Clinic was forced by the needs of House Plan Unit No. 1 to move from 19 Beaver Street to 62 Plympton Street. After 26 years in its new location, the clinic is now being forced by House Plan Unit No. 8 to move again.