In May Day rites at the White House, DAVID EISENHOWER (right) pushes the button which blows up ALBANIA (left). "It's lots more fun than throwing out the first ball to the Senators," he chirps.
June
FOURTEEN students receive bachelor's degrees in Harvard's three-hundred-thirty-fifth Commencement Exercises. Honorary degree goes to Marshal Nguyen Cao Ky "for his dedicated statesmanship, open-hearted humanitarianism, and distinguished service in the Armed Forces of the United States." Stephen J. Kelman '70, Swedish meatball for the Boston Globe, is invited back for the second consecutive year to deliver the Pig Latin Oration on "The Ythmay of Expressionary," In his swearing-in ceremony, Harvard's new president comments,
In a simple open-air ceremony amidst the scenic ruins of Kent State University, Mrs. Bella Abzug and Richard Nixon are joined in holy matrimony, Mrs. Abzug is the former congressman and women's rights advocate recently released from the Radic-Lib Female Detention Center on the third floor of the White House. Mr. Nixon is Emperor of the United States.
July
THE OVERSEERS Committee on Governance comes out with a sequel to its best-selling broadside, Harvard and Money. Called Son of Harvard and Money, it is soon to be a major Paramount motion picture starring Anthony Quinn as John Dunlop and Ali McGraw as Mary I. Bunting, the woman whose college Quinn saves by paying off the mortgage seconds before the creditors start moving the furniture out of Currier House. George Bennett sings the Henry Mancini theme song, "Every Tub on its Own Bottom." Below is a shot from the climactic final scene in which ground is broken for a cement-and-concrete nuclear reactor and photocopying center on the former site of Harvard Yard and Memorial Hall. BENNETT announces, "With construction costs rising 73 per cent a month, we just can't afford to wait until we have the money and space," as AL VELLUCCI looks on, smiling.
Nixon orders "protective reaction sterilization" of the staff of the New York Review of Books.
August
YOU WOULDNT believe what happens in August.
A series of oil tanker leaks covers the Atlantic with shiny black slime. The sun is reflected off this surface, causing a tremendous heat wave in which the average temperature in Cambridge is 140 degrees. The Ad Hoc Committee on The Weather finds the heat to be a "social" and not an "academic" issue, and Harvard refuses to get involved until the Holyoke Center air conditioning fails. Meeting in emergency session, the Faculty votes to allow people to eat in the Faculty Club without coats and ties. After the meeting, George Wald calls reporters into his test tube to applaud the decision. "It's not the heat," he explains. "It's the humility." The crisis ends after two weeks when air pollution finally blocks out the sun completely. Both the liberal and conservative Faculty caucuses take credit for this last-minute arrangement.
September
THE DAYS grow short.
October
THE REBIRTH of student activism at Harvard. Twenty-six students sign a petition protesting overcrowded conditions in the Houses. Dean May says the overcrowding is due to the barracking of 200 army soldiers in Kirkland House and "the unfortunate collapse" of the Mather House tower, which toppled into the Charles over the summer. SDS president Laszlo Pasztor '73 admits that the number of names on the petition is disappointingly low, but comments, "Remember, that's half the student body." At right, MASTER von STADE goes down with his House, as the Committee on Houses and Undergraduate Life (above, with champagne) looks on.
New Yorker Magazine publishes three segments from Nathan Pusey's forthcoming memoirs, entitled You Don't Need McCarthy to Fight Communism. John Kenneth Galbraith hails it as "perhaps not without some merit, but then again, perhaps so."
November
THE NOVEMBER Action Committee celebrates its second anniversary with a gala charity ball at the Ritz-Carlton to benefit the wives and families of prisoners-of-war in North Dakota. The theme of the fete is "Tell It to Bismarck." To charges that NAC has copped out, leader Michael Ansara answers helplessly, "This is the only way we could keep our tax deduction and our Ford Foundation grant. Below, ANSARA receives check for $50,000 from McGEORGE BUNDY (smiling), president of the Ford Foundation (assers: $21/2 billion), as NATHAN PUSEY (pouting), president of the Mellon Foundation (assets: $600 million), looks on.
An 80-point headline in the newly revised University Gazette-Enquirer concerning: "What Ernie May Told Barbara Solomon About Doris Kearns and Alan Heimert!" The article concerns May's announcement that Kearns and Heimert have been reappointed to the Temporary Ad Hoc Committee on Capital Punishment, Faculty Reorganization, Coed Living and Curriculum Reform.
Nixon proclaims December 23 as "Christmas."
December
NIXON orders all U. S. troops out of Vietnam, leaving the population of that country at 120 "gooks, none of them Communist thanks to American perseverance and technological know-how." Nixon announces that the resources saved by the unexpected withdrawal will be used to rebuild America's cities "somewhere in Alaska, where they won't get in the way of suburban life."
A Yale biologist announces he has synthesized a substance that, if placed in the world's water supply, will create peace on earth forever, as well as quadruple the productivity of all soil, clear the nasal passages and the Suez Canai, and act as a non-polluting automobile fuel.
A month-long stock market rally sends the Dow-Jones industrials back past 350 toward 500 by New Year's Day and the U. S. Department of Commerce Citizens' Happiness Index rises at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 8.3 per cent, only half of which is attributed to drugs.
All of which causes the University Gazette to rhapsodize in its newly purchased subsidiary, the New York Times, that, "despite 23 per cent unemployment and 45 per cent inflation, even though the U. S. birth rate has dropped to zero, though there are still divisive elements in our country which have not been eliminated, the American people have once again risen to the challenges of happiness in this joyous season."