"We didn't understand what kind of deep emotions we had touched." Nelson now says, The president's letter ushered in "a very stormy period." Auchincloss recalls "fierce denunciation of the chaplain." Students protested, and 16 professors--including Arthur M Schlesinger '38 and John Kenneth Galbraith--expressed their objections to Pusey in a hand-delivered letter. Ultimately, Harvard's corporation reversed the church's policy.

Other issues were treated with less intense concern--for instance, whether Radcliffe diplomas should have Latin inscriptions.

On the eve of their 25th reunion, some alumni draw parallels between their Harvard and the College today. "What strikes one is the cyclical movement of history, towards the sociability that one knew back then in the late '50s," Brooks says.

Goldman also emphasizes cycles. A collegiate atmosphere is something "like the fashion industry," he says. "Skirts can go up only too high and can only go so low. It's got to be between those poles. That fact accounts for the similarities between today and those years." The intervening period--the eventful '60s--offered "too much emancipation and too few rules; you get tremendously open experiences. It's very easy to go berserk--to use drugs, to do your own thing. "We can't run society on that silly slogan," he says.

To be sure, Goldman sees changes as well. He remembers taking a course on the United States and world affairs. "I teach that course now, with Stanley Hoffmann. And it's a very hard course today," he says, "Back then, it was a gut."

If any of these graduates were to write a novel about Harvard today, they'd need to incorporate other changes, too. A favorite Cambridge haunt--Cronin's--no longer exists. In its place stands Holyoke Center. Hawkins, among others, isn't too impressed by the area's new modern architecture, and he bemoans what he calls the "Aspenization of Cambridge."

"Of course," he adds. "Harvard's so massive that it anchors the whole area."

Several graduates recognizes that Harvard has also anchored their lives. Watkins says he attributed "any accomplishments I've had, to a significant degree, to the fact I went to Harvard." And Davis says that though he felt intimidated and made few friends as a student. "I got what I wanted and I'm as proud of my Harvard diploma as anything in my life. No one in my family had gotten anything like that before.