The death of Roscoe Pound on July 1 marked the end of an era at the Law School. Pound had been dean of the Law School from 1916 to 1937, and during his tenure he established the School as a national rather than an Eastern institution. He resigned as dean to become a University Professor, and spent the next eleven years traveling, writing, and teaching law and philosophy.
In 1953 at the age of 82, he abandoned his teaching duties all together and retired to his home in Cambridge where he lived until his death.
Cambridge entered a new era of its own this summer by luring the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Space Center--and its $60 million in construction contracts--to a site in Kendall Square, next to M.I.T.
NASA had announced last Spring its desire to build the Center within a half hour's travel time of both M.I.T. and Harvard. After surveying the area, the agency in early July indicated interest in building at one of several sites in Cambridge, and it requested the city to report on the feasibility of obtaining the sites for the Center.
Four weeks of study by the Cambridge City Council produced the City's offer of the 40-acre Kendall Square site. NASA's budget, however, called for a good portion of the construction costs to be borne by urban renewal funds. And once the Cambridge Redevelopment Authority was assured the Kendall Square area would qualify for urban renewal funds, NASA promptly approved the site.
The Space Agency has set up temporary headquarters in Technology Square but it is not anticipated that any demolition or construction will begin for a year or two.
Kennedy Library
President Pusey spent an active June before he departed on his vacation. Commencement week Dean Ford, Don K. Price, dean of the Graduate School of Public Administration, and Pusey met with McGeorge Bundy, Robert Kennedy's official envoy to the University. Bundy brought with him the first concrete proposals for the institute in the Kennedy Memorial Library, and the meeting itself was the first formal contact between the Kennedy family and the University on the Institute. (See page seven for the basic points discussed.) Later in the month, Kennedy himself journeyed to Cambridge to talk to Pusey about plans for the Library.
Civil rights and other events of the summer eventually forced the Attorney General to turn his attention away from the Library and little has been done since June.
On June 23, however, the plane carrying Sen. Edward M. Kennedy '54 (D-Mass.) to the Democratic State Convention crashed in an apple orchard, killing the pilot and one of Kennedy's aides. The Senator sustained a broken back and will be in the hospital until Christmas.
In the middle of June, the University joined a campaign against a proposed Commonwealth Edison plant to be built in upper New York state. If Con Ed goes through with its plans to build the hydro-electric power project in Cornwall-on-Hudson, New York, the University will lose slightly more than 200 acres of its Black Rock Forest.
In a letter to the New York Times printed June 19, President Pusey objected to Con Ed's "radical proposal for altering the scenic beauty and scientific value of largely unspoiled section of the Hudson valley." Pusey said the 3700-acre forest "is remarkable for its hardwoods characteristic of the middle Applachian region and important for the study of silviculture and conservation practices."
The University's chances of blocking the construction of the project dropped sharply when a Federal Power Commission examiner approved Con Ed's plans for the Hudson River plant on July 31. While the five-man Commission will undoubtedly review the examiner's findings this fall, it is unlikely the group will reverse the ruling. Once a utility obtains a federal license for a hydroelectric project, it can take private property by right of eminent domain.
Mem Drive Underpass
Conservationists in Cambridge were busy denouncing the Metro-politan District Commission's "modifications" of the plans for the Memorial Drive underpasses. The MDC in early July announced changes in its plans for the underpasses which, it declared, would save 11,500 feet of park land from destruction.
MDC engineers decided to shorten the underpass under Boylston St. by about 20 feet, and the Commission voted to replant upstream the 19 sycamores due to be removed during construction of the underpass. Opponents of the underpasses have challenged the accuracy of the MDC claims, however.
Charles W. Eliot II '20, professor of City and Regional Planning, noted the MDC had claimed the number of trees to be destroyed would be reduced by 18. After examining the modified blueprints, Eliot said the old plans called for the destruction of 95 trees; under the new plans 117 trees (42 sycamores and 74 maples) will be transplanted or destroyed.
The MDC had also said that 11,500 square feet of park land would be saved under the new plans. While not contesting this claim, Eliot noted that the underpasses are planned to be 52 feet wide. Memorial Drive is only 40 feet wide at present, and Eliot expressed concern that the underpasses were only a prelude to a widening of the entire length of the Drive.
The South
In the South, and Mississippi in particular, Harvard students were being arrested and beaten up at an alarming rate throughout the summer months. Trouble struck first in Selma, Alabama. James W. Wiley, 2nd, '65 and three other SNCC workers were arrested on July 4 while testing the public accommodations section of the Civil Rights Law of 1964.
When a Harvard Summer News reporter called the sheriff's office in Selma, he was informed there was "no Mr. Wiley in jail here. We got a nigger named Wiley down here though. Is that who you mean?" The holiday weekend and the sheriff's delaying tactics kept Wiley and his co-workers in jail for close to a week.
Soon, however, the jailings and beatings became regular events. Even the Summer News sketchy news coverage reported several Harvard students arrested each week. Barry Goldstein '64 and two other COFO workers were arrested in Gulfport, Mississippi on July 9; the following day another Harvard student was arrested in Haddiesurg. Peter Orris '67 and Peter Cummings '65 received tastes of Mississippi justice in the middle of July. Orris was arrested with a crowd of 98 others during a Freedom Day in Greenwood, Miss. while Cummings was detained for a day for not having an inspection sticker on his car.
The Freedom house in Batesville, Miss., where Kathie Amatniek '64, L. Geoffrey Cowan '64, and Claude Weaver '65 were living, was bombed with tear gas on July 27. Fears that the tear gas attack was only a prelude to stronger action (as threatened in numerous phone calls to the house) proved unfounded.
Bickford Arrests
The long hot summer of 1964 seemed to have come to Cambridge on July 10 when a CORE-sponsored civil rights demonstration against the Hayes-Bickford's chain produced 27 arrests by the Cambridge police.
The arrests climaxed a long evening of CORE picketing at three different Bickford restaurants in Boston. In each location the group of 30 picketers succeeded in closing down the 24-hour a day cafeterias for a short period. But when the demonstratiors departed each Bickford reopened.
About 9 p.m. the pickets returned to the Cambridge cafeteria and continued to picket until 1 a.m. when the police ordered them to stop. The demonstrators refused to disperse and the police moved in.
The cases of all 27 arrested were dismissed two weeks later in Cambridge District Court, but the incident still received wide coverage in the South as small wire service stories were expanded for page one space.
Vorenberg Appointed
Midway through August, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy '48 appointed James Vorenberg '49, professor of Law, to head a newly created Office of Criminal Justice. The general function of the new office will be to study and evaluate the effectiveness of the federal law system. Kennedy said he created the office to ensure that "the department over which I preside is more than a Department of Prosecution and is in fact a Department of Justice."
Vorenberg will head the office on a part-time basis so that he can continue to teach here. The inequalities of the bail system, the parole system, and rehabilitation procedures will probably be among the first issues considered.
At the Summer School itself, little out of the ordinary occurred. Despite the new ruling permitting Summer School students to form their own political clubs, only two organizations were formally organized. Only the Civil Rights Coordinating Committee and a chapter of the Students for Democratic Action were formed by summer students.
Walter H. Clark, dean of Men at the Summer School, said the Summer School Committee on Student Organizations had not vetoed the aplication of any political club. He admitted the Committee had refused to recognize two or three clubs with "primarily entrepreneurial aims" because "what the clubs wanted to do would not have been of use to the Summmer School."
The Loeb Drama Center concluded its Shakespeare Centennial with three productions by the Summer School Players. Love's Labour's Lost, The Winter's Tale, and Richard II were all performed in their entirety on the main stage.
The Summer School fell victim this summer to a popular hoax: the non-existent student. A group of Harvard graduate students, several holding junior positions on the Summer School administration, created a Princeton junior, Barton Durstine Osborne, and engineered his admission to the Summer School.
Osborne remained in School for only four weeks, however, and didn't even stay long enough to take his hour exams since the pranksters were unwilling to pay the tuition for their charge. As bills began to arrive at Osborne's Cambridge address in increasing numbers, his creators became uneasy and finally turned themselves in to Summer School authorities.
Leonard Holmberg, registrar of the Summer School said, "They wanted to see if they could beat out system, but they found out they couldn't." No disciplinary action was taken against any of those involved.
Brandeis announced on July 14 that it was abolishing all parietal hours. The directive announcing the decision came from the dean of students and gave so reason for the move. It is apparently the result of several scandals which rocked the Waltham campus last semester. At the same time, however, the school announced it would permit more students to live off campus.
The City of Cambridge had one of its most enjoyable summers in a long while. Its Water Department workmen ripped up nearly every street and sidewalk in the Harvard Square area during a pipe cleaning operation. Cambridge water mains are over 100 years old, and William H. McGuinness, superintendent of the Cambridge Water Department, hopes the present cleaning and relining operation will make them good for another hundred years
