The twentieth century, when judged by its predecessors, has been comparatively mild. In the first decades of the 1900's the only disturbances were wrought by students in small numbers, easily handled by proctors in larger numbers.
At the turn of the century it had been the custom of students living in the Yard to go to the bottom of an entry and call out the names of friends in the building so that they would come out for talks on the steps. One student living in the Yard was particularly devoted to his studies and had no friends to speak of. In the spring it bothered him that so many names were called at his entry but never his own, which as it happened, was Rinehart. Eventually he devised the scheme of going from building to building shouting his own name, hoping to become well known. He was discovered in his plot, and for many years thereafter whenever a civil disturbance was desired the name "Rinehart" was cried through the Yard. No notable revolts ever developed from this practice although the signal was heard in the Yard as recently as three years ago.
The first great riot of the twentieth century started May 18, 1952, when several students met in the Yard to await an appearance of Walt Kelly at a "Pogo for President" rally. Charges of police brutality arose from Cambridge's handling of the riot that ensued, and 28 students were arrested and taken to court. With the assistance of defense attorney Joseph A. DeGuglielmo '29, then Mayor of Cambridge, they managed to escape sentences.
'We Want Vellucci'
In May of 1956, Alfred Vellucci introduced before the Cambridge City Council three unmistakably provocative resolutions in the spiteful breadth of one week: that all of Harvard's property be confiscated and converted into parking space; this failing, that Harvard be declared an independent metropolis separate from Cambridge; and this failing too, that Harvard's liquor licenses be revoked. Although the confiscation proposal was defeated by only a -54 vote in the Council, Vellucci later claimed that he merely wanted to dramatize the city's parking problems and truly did not covet Harvard's land. But in the meanwhile, some 350 undergraduates had formed a vigilante committee and ran through the streets shouting "We want Vellucci," The Vellucci Riot was colorful enough but still somewhat meek.
Two years later, as Vice-President Nixon was returning from the anti-American riots in South America, he Class of '62, then freshmen, scheduled a week of rioting of their own, distributing anonymously mimeographed programs and arranging sundry insurrectionary functions. The demonstrations, intended to include a burning of Gen Ed books on Widener steps and a panty raid on Radcliffe, were designed for the sake of undergraduate "mental health," to let off the steam of a year's study; but the plans fizzled for several nights in a dreary row and were finally, sadly abandoned.
In January, 1961, a large crowd of students stationed in the Yard to watch President-elect John Kennedy leave an Overseers meeting in University Hall managed to trap him for about 15 minutes, demanding a speech and upsetting the United States Secret Service a good bit; but it was not until the spring of 1961 that another true riot occurred. The great revolt of that year was occasioned by the changing of diplomas from Latin to English and became, in its three day duration, the famed Latin Diploma Riots.
The riots of the first night seized the imagination of the Boston newspapers, and their somewhat large headlines prodded hundreds of Greater Bostonians into Harvard Square for the second night. The activities on that occasion were finally quelled by tear gas and the arrest of the more obvious and obnoxious offenders