Eleven Harvard couples, including 240-ib. Neil Curtin (the heaviest member of Harvard's football team) and his date, piled unsuspectingly into the Quincy House elevator on the sixth floor shortly before 8 p.m. Saturday night.

After hesitating briefly at the third floor, the ever-loaded lift then continued at its normal speed to the very bottom of the shaft and stuck there. The cables had remained firm, but the extra half ton of humanity apparently caused the breaking mechanism to falter.

John Marshall Bullitt, Master of Quincy House, sped to pry the door open with his trusty crowbar. This method proved unsuccessful, however, and meanwhile two people fainted from lack of air.

Switching his tactics, Master Bullitt drove his private elevator, located in the adjacent shaft, down to the basement. Then, by means of a human chain, the trapped students were lifted out of the escape hatch at the top of the "people's elevator" into the neigh boring one. Within fifteen minutes the crippled conveyance had been completely evacuated and Quincy House had returned to normalcy.