Here the influence of Dean Bundy becomes strongest. His general idea has been that Harvard students are not working hard enough, and he has tried to devise ways of getting them to work harder and more efficiently. Of course, this has not been a one-man operation, and Bundy has worked through the Committee on Educational Policy, and spent much of this fall soliciting opinion from anyone who cared to give it.

Course reduction started very slowly, and though it has picked up some momentum while '58 has been able to take advantage of it, it is not a widely utilized program even now. Many departments have been very slow to push it, and the publicity on the idea was nonexistent. And further many students seemed very hesitant to accept the responsibility for studying where there would be no grade to reward them.

New Honors Proposals

But in this last year a broad new program began to form, Its underlying idea was that many more students were capable of Honors work than now elected it, and the program passed this May proposed to treat every student as an Honors candidate, at least until he failed to meet certain departmental standards.

The Natural Sciences excluded themselves from this system early, but it covered almost all the fields in the Social Sciences and the Humanities. Basically, it would require graded tutorial in the sophomore year, emphasize more indidvidual work and independent study, and establish more frequent departmental examinations.

The object--a heightened academic pace--dovetailed closely with another way for Harvard to help solve the problem which would be created by increased pressure for college admissions. This was the view that saw the Faculty of Arts and Sciences--both the College and the Graduate School--as an upper-level teachers' college, a Ph.D. mill to supply the nation's college instructors.

Expansion threatened a bigger, more impersonal College, and one way the Administration hoped to deal with this danger was by a strengthening of the House system. One method would be to reduce overcrowding, and figures like Elliott Perkins '23, Master of Lowell House, insisted that overcrowding should be reduced before College enrollments swelled. Another was to re-examine the basic amount of soul-searching about this issue.

Among the substantive changes in the operation of the House system were the House sections held in Winthrop, a new science "tutorial" in Kirkland, a senior thesis "forum" in Lowell, and, of course, the much talked-of "Ford money." "Ford money" meant an allotment of $1,400 last year and $2,400 this year, given to each House, to be used to promote the intellectual and cultural activity within the Houses. Some money was devoted to contests, small dinners, or even building renovations, and to inviting distinguished guests to live in the Houses for a time--some who came here were author John P. Marquand '15, poet Robert Frost '01, writer Edmund Wilson, poet Marianne Moore and British civil servant Sir C. P. Snow.

Constant Discussion

The reexamination continued, and certainly no definite answers were reached (the Houses often had trouble spending anywhere near all of their Ford money). But with an eighth House under construction and a ninth and tenth to come, it seemed clear that the discussion was far from concluded.

It would seem that these developments--along with the creation of the College Scholarship Service, and the growing interest in urban renewal around Cambridge--were the matters of University policy which had the clearest portents for the future.

To them might be added, speculatively, two more. One was this year's campaign for joint membership in Harvard-Radcliffe organizations, a plan to give Radcliffe student equality within Harvard organizations. After considerable delay and mutterings about Radcliffe's independence, whatever it is, the Annex acceded to these pressures and approved the change in policy. The long-term implications of this event were clouded, and while they might lead to nothing less trivial than a 'Cliffie president of the Lampoon, the change might turn out to be an important step toward the realization that Harvard College is coeducational, and that Radcliffe might as well give up.

The other matter is football. '58 had heard all sorts of rude things about Harvard football before it entered, and after UMass dumped the Crimson in 1954, is was ready to believe them. But then three big wins, over Princeton and Yale (13 to 9 in a thriller in a rainswept Stadium) in 1954, and over Princeton in 1955 made things look better. But that rainy, 7-6 victory over the Tigers was the last Big Three victory '58 would witness as undergraduates.

Just as '58 returned from its junior year Christmas vacation, one startling change was made as Lloyd Jordan's contract was bought up by the University. Nobody ever made it very explicit as to why Jordan was fired, but the two main interpretations were that he sounded off against Ivy code admissions regulations, and that his teams did not win. The University said he was fired as a "poor teacher," but did not define what a good teacher was.

After a two-month search, the University plucked John M. Yovicsin, the young (and successful) coach at Gettysburg, and hired him to replace Jordan. Yovicsin's first team was badly hobbled by injuries, yet won three games, gave Princeton a bad scare before bowing, 28 to 21, but just did not have enough for Yale. The result was a humiliating 54-0 beating in New Haven.