Students come to the Summer School undoubtedly looking for damage from the renowned "Diploma Riots" or wondering whether America's oldest university is still standing after President Kennedy's raid of the personnel.

The year at Harvard was characterized by issues slightly more crucial than what language to have on diplomas and by problems perhaps more acute than the mass withdrawal to Washington. Dean Erin N. Griswold of the Law School was troubled most by the Kennedy Administration, which took about one-eighth of his faculty, but even one Harvard dean could complain louder. Don K. Price, Dean of the School of Public Administration, was heard to say that President Kennedy stole 100 per cent of his full-time faculty--i.e. Secretary of the Public Administration Faculty, David Bell, who was named Director of the Budget Bureau.

Thousands of undergraduates and graduate students returned to Harvard in the fall of 1960 to find many of their professors already actively engaged in advisory roles for the chosen candidate--Sen. John Fitsgerald Kennedy '40. The switch from Adlai Stevenson was made with only a few bruises. The New Yorker cartoon aptly showed a messenger running into a smoked-filled room, "it's Harvard, professor, they went last June's exams corrected."

At a Hillel Society round-table discussion in the fall, McGeorge Bundy, Dean of the Faculty of Arts of Sciences and an erstwhile Republican, announced that he was supporting Kennedy; but few people took note of the endorsement. Only William Y. Elliott, professor of Government and former Director of the Summer School, and Lon L. Fuller, professor of Law and a close Nixon advisor, remained on the Republican side.

After Kennedy won the election (with a campaign that included a speech via telephone to students and "brain trusters" at the University--"the only audience that can understand my accent"), students viewed with pride the increasing favorable publicity upon Harvard. "The Crucible That Turns out Presidents," headlined an Associated Press story throughout the nation.

Chayes, Cox, Bell, a few former faculty members, and several alumni (Dillon, Robert Kennedy, Nitze, Tobin, Weaver) were appointed by the 25th President, and Harvard was on top of the world. Then Kennedy chose Bundy his Special Assistant for National Security Affairs on New Year's Day, and undergraduates began to think that the New Frontier was striking too close to home. Bundy was the popular lecturer of an American foreign policy course and the most influential force in the University Administration.

Immediately the Harvard Crimson and members of the Faculty began speculating about Bundy's successor and about President Nathan M. Pusey's new role as Acting Dean. Pusey, however, chose to study the whole administrative structure of the University during the Spring Term and remained quiet about a permanent Dean of the Faculty. Pusey bacame the center of attention even in educational policy decisions and undergraduate affairs formerly handled by his right-hand man since 1953.

Then Schlesinger, Galbraith, and Reischauer,--three professors close to undergraduates--were picked for high positions and Harvard men took mixed views of the New Frontier's talent search. Reaction around the nation remained highly favorable, until the inevitable first mistake by the Kennedy Administration (Cuba), while response at the College was one of pride--mixed with frustration over the loss of top instructors.

Perhaps students needed a new issue in the spring, perhaps they had latent animosities to release; perhaps they were more "conservative" or "traditional" than they like to think. In any case, the furor over the language and format of diplomas shook the College for several weeks. During Commencement Week ten days ago, the diploma issue was mentioned everywhere--from the Ivy Oration to the President's talk to seniors--even by administrators who a month earlier had desperately hoped that the whole matter would be suppressed.

In April a Radcliffe girl on the Crimson discovered that diplomas would be written in English for the first time this year and published the story. Immediately petitions were circulating protesting the change, and, when seniors discovered the new-style diploma looked like what they termed "a YMCA certificate," they yelled louder.

The Senior Class Committee's arguments and a barrage of letters from alumni and students to Pusey and/or the Crimson made little sense to the powers that be. Pusey stode firm on the decision--made casually at a Faculty meeting in October--and even the Overseers could promise only that the format would be "studied" next year. The language would stay the same--English.

Before the Overseers met, a Harvard junior attracted a gathering in front of Widener to bemoan the abandonment of Latin. The group marched on the President's house in good spirits and heard Pusey quip. "What's pet in Latin/ Or chic in Greek,/I always distinguish/More clearly in English." The 2000 students paraded around the Square for a while, then went home.

The next night--April 28, 1961--a casual gathering around 7 p.m. developed into a yelling, chanting gang of 4,000 students, who marched through the streets and then camped in the Square. Cambridge police thought that the fun was over and decided that tear gas would send the boys home to their books. It did, Groaned a dean, "What a night!" Tension mounted, six students were thrown into paddy wagons, and the deans were "disgusted." Either before or during the furor, College officials searched through the records under "R" for suitable public statements on riots; later they quoted remarks that sounded amazingly like those by deans in former years.

Afterwards, Bostonians wondered whether Harvard boys were really upset about diplomas or were simply looking for a spring-time excuse. Harvard observers generally agreed that the first demonstration was a genuine protest against a change made without student consulation; the second night's gathering was a full-fledged spring riot using the diploma issue as a suitable reason for parading the streets.

Harvard students, being Harvard students, had other things on their minds last year. National magazines were wondering whether a wave of conservation or at least of political activism was sweeping college campuses, and their correspondents looked first to Harvard. Were Harvard students becoming more conservative? More politically active?