The clerk at the New Haven Superior Court now says there is no record of any such trial--which is a good thing, because the judge, in the end, said that after 13 months' probation, the record would be expunged. Apparently, it was. Jamie, John, and Sarah were lucky.

Their court-appointed attorney, a Harvard Law graduate, told them the regular judge was a Yale Law School graduate, who might not have been so kind.

The man sitting in that Friday, though, was a Harvard Law man. And so was the prosecuting attorney.

At about the same time that Scott was finishing off the last page of his hourly exam. Jamie, John, and Sarah were released.

The next time I saw them, we were all drunk, at a party in Straus Hall late that night. None of us were really sure what was going to happen to us--and whether Harvard knew. John looked at me for a second. "That was a great idea," he said.

H H H

The last time the nine of us were all in the same room was in the office of Burris Young. Associate Dean of Freshmen that November. Before that there had been a lot of talks with proctors and senior advisors.

He had called us all together to read us a letter he had received from some administrative vice president of Yale informing him of the cost of our adventure. He read us a list of charges for things like sandblasting and grafitti removal. It totaled up to about $39 each. We paid.

Young read us the letter. It said something about the costs of vandalism, and all the problems included in it. And there was a list of the grafitti. "12 Red H's, a couple of Veritas's, and only one 'Yale Sucks,'" it said. "For Harvard students, they certainly lacked creativity."

H H H

The statute of limitations has run out on The New Haven Nine, all members of the Class of 1984. Their names have been changed in this account. Their story is true.