AS STRANGE AS IT seems, Dean Monro and Dean Fred Glimp after him, had encouraged competition between the Administration and SDS on the softball field. The games went well for several seasons, but the political situation in the nation had deteriorated to such a point that it seemed unlikely that students and administrators could ever see eye to eye on the role of the University. By April 1969, the situation was unsalvageable. While SDS and others demanded an end to military and military-industrial recruiting. Harvard expansion into poor communities, the ROTC program, and other connections between the University and war-related activities, administrators walked a fine line of distinctions and differentiations in seeking to reach a satisfactory balance of demands. The wheels of bureaucracy move with excruciating tardiness, and this bureaucracy could not move fast enough to satisfy one segment of SDS. Although the group as a whole had voted to take no such action, a fraction of those in attendance at a SDS meeting on April 8, 1969, decided to occupy a building the next day. Shortly before noon on April 10, they did so, ejecting the deans in University Hall, and renaming the building "Che Guevara Hall". The crowds of students who gathered outside overwhelmingly opposed the occupation: there was talk of football players and other able-bodied students coming to remove the occupiers. Then, at dawn the next day, with no advance warning to the Faculty or the students. President Pusey ordered in the police. By the hundreds came police arrayed in combat gear and ready for violent action. At dawn, they marched in and cleared the building with night sticks and buttering ranis. Quite a few students were injured, a few seriously; a significant number of reporters were arrested and tossed in jail. In seconds, the mood of the University changed from anti-occupier to anti-Administration.
The Crimson was out with an extra soon after the Bust, just as it had issued an extra the day before, following the takeover Crimson editors were among the group of reporters from the most distinguished publications in the country who were arrested, and Crimson photographers were among the many whose cameras were smashed by police billy clubs.
The anger which many members of the University community, students and teacher alike, felt at Pusey's unilateral, unprecedented action, was reflected in the editorial columns of the Crimson that Spring. The mass meetings held in Harvard Stadium occasioned some of the paper's most thorough reporting, and relations with the Administration deteriorated even more. For a generation of Crimson editors, the act of summoning riot-equipped police to the Harvard Yard stood as tantamount to treason.
The aftermath of the Spring of 1969 brought many baffling moments for the executives of The Crimson. James M. Fallows '70, the president in 1969, recounted part of the aftermath in a piece which is reprinted on page 24 of this Centennial issue. The task of making sense out of the post-1969 period is left to the full version of this Centennial book. For now, suffice it to say that The Crimson has made its own peace with the events of that year, and remains steadfast in its obligation to serve Harvard as a source of independent comment.
THE NIXON ADMINISTRATION did nothing to alleviate the seriousness of the Indochina war in the first years. After the 1970 invasion of Cambodia. The Crimson covered the activities of the Harvard people who went to Washington to lobby, for peace. Michael E. Kinsley '72, would win a Dana Reed, Prize and national reprinting for his article on the Harvard Faculty who went to the Capital to confront their old colleague, Henry Kissinger. The Spring brought riots as well, spinoffs from large scale antiwar demonstrations in Boston which caused damage of varying degrees to Harvard Square.
The selection of a successor to President Pusey engaged the attention of the University in 1970-71. Scott W. Jacobs '71, the paper's Executive Editor, covered the search for a year, securing inside information more than once and publishing lists of the candidates on the Corporation's docket at frequent intervals. When Derek C. Bok was selected as President, Jacobs was ready to tell Harvard--and the world, through his connection with Newsweek--everything there was to be known about the Law School Dean and the reasons for his selection.
The Crimson's Law School correspondent. Robert W. Decherd '73, became The Crimson's Presidential correspondent when Bok moved to Massachusetts Hall. Shortly thereafter, Decherd became the Crimson's President, and has informed the Harvard community of the goings on in the corridors of power ever since.
AS THE FIRST CENTURY ends, Decherd's Board, which master-minded the Centennial celebrations, prepares to retire. Daniel Swanson '74, is already prepared to take over the business of running the paper, as soon as the last murmurs of the festival fade away. The people who made the ceremonies possible--Andrew P. Corty '74, the hundredth anniversary czar Pat Sorrento, the shop foreman whose patience with dilatory copy makes Job seem a piker; Miss Eunice Ficket, the Business Board's conscience, soul and spirit, who has kept the details running; and those whose names have been forgotten--all will pick up the pattern of their lives after they recover from the partying. They have done well.
This narrative is hardly complete--time, space, and human frailty assure it could never be. It has been, to now, a rough narrative of what has gone on at The Crimson since the last time the record was brought up to date, but hardly as complete a narrative perusal of recent bound volumes of the paper would provide. Let me encourage those who have the slightest interest in the subject to pursue it further, and let me offer the following chapters as a rough history of the first three quarters of the paper.