As the Class of 1938's sophomore year drew to a close, History of Science was added to the University's 25 fields of concentration. Another event in the academic world: its foremost Shakespearean scholar, George Lyman Kittredge '82, resigned from the University's faculty after several decades as Gurney Professor of English Literature. Alfred North While head, distinguished philosopher and teacher, followed Kittredge into retirement at the end of the term.
The next fall was perhaps Harvard's most exciting since the closing days of World War 1. The Tercentenary celebration took up three days--51 colleges sent representatives and 15-000 people descended on Cambridge to take part in the festivities.
The Crimson lost to Yale again--but scored against Princeton for the first time since 1920 and the prebreach days, tying that year's game at 1 points apiece.
Attack on Tutoring Schools
The CRIMSON launched an attach against the private tutoring services parasitically lodged around the Square; and with this move it inaugurated a campaign which all the College's organizations and publications maintained jointly for over three years, until the tutoring schools were finally forced to close down.
Undergraduates cooked up another campaign that year--for the official formation of the Ivy League. Along with the six other Ivy student newspapers, the CRIMSON ran a front-page editorial arguing that no other measure would preserve amateurism in college football. The seven college athletic directors agreed to meet on the problem, but there was little immediate progress except for the addition of Penn-Harvard game to the existing inter-Ivy contests.
As the school year waned, 11500 students attended a hoax lecture on birth control. But the term wasn't over yet--there was still the riot.
And quite a show it was. Early in the evening, a seemingly innocuous water fight along Plympton St. drew together a few stragglers; by 11.30 p.m. a good-sized crowd had gathered. Another twenty minutes gave the disturbance time to swell to major proportions--by midnight 2500 students had gathered in the Square.
After the mob had crippled three trolley cars by disconnecting the power lines, the police moved in. They used tear gas--a tactic unprecedented and not to be repeated for over twenty years. But the patrolmen's efforts failed. About 1500 students fought their way up to Radcliffe, where they milled around yelling and hooting for most of the night.
Senior year was calmer. The CRIMSON editorialized against serving rum punch to freshmen and began a short-lived "Uncle Smugley Says" column. Wolff's Tutoring School rolled busily on and actress Joan Bennet, on a visit to Boston, recommended movie careers to a charmed circle of Harvardmen.
But if the academic year was calm, the athletic year was not. In their senior year the class of 1938 at last beat Princeton, 34-6, and--mirabile dictu-Dock Harlow's machine rallied past Yale in the snow and the rain, 13-6, When Frank Foley scored the tie-breaking touchdown.
Class Marshall that year were C. Russel Allen, Vernon H. Struck, and John L. Dampeer, Chairman for the Class Day Committee was Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr. Then, in June 1938, the Class collected their degrees, joined the fellowship of educated men and headed out into the world.
Thirty-eight conducted itself well in the war which began a few years later, and in the years which followed the war the class went on to carve a distinguished career in both public and private life. In public life some of its more notable figures include: Arthur M. Schlesinger, jr., Pulitzer Prize winning historian and Harvard professor, now Special Assistant to the President; Theodore White, reporter and Pulitizer Prize winning author (for The Making of the President--1960); John William King, Governor of New Hampshire, Richard Tregaskis, author of Guadacanal Diary and several novels and screenplays: and Nathaniel Bentley, novelist and New Yorker writer.
Some prominent educators from the class are: Francis Keppel, former Dean of the Harvard School of Education and now U.S. Commissioner of Education: Courtney Craig Smith, President of Swarthmore College and American Secretary of the Rhodes Scholarship Committee: F. Skiddy on Stade, Dean of Freshmen at Harvard: and Professors Benjamin Schwartz and Cedric Whitman, both at Harvard: and professors Benjamin Schwartz and Cedric Whitman, both at Harvard. There are also in the class 105 lawyers and judges, 68 physicians, one airplane pilot, and one railroad engineer.
In private life, members of the Class now have, collectively. 2215 children--991 female and 1,224 male, including 58 Harvard sons 58 members never married, and 55 have married, divorced, and remarried. Presently the great majority of the class are prosperously, happily engaged in some form of commerce or industry. In those depression years it had not always seemed that things would turn out so well.