In September 1986, Harvard will throw itself a 350th birthday party, promising to attract thousands of the nation's richest, most conservative, and most elite for a gala a la the Royal Wedding.

The party will mark that day in 1636, when the Puritans--between hunting witches and building churches--found time to found Harvard.

A lot of people at not-so-well-established schools in Connecticut coastal communities claim that not a lot has changed in the intervening three-and-one-half centuries, calling Cambridge's Ivy institution "stodgy," even "rigid."

But a glance at the colonial-period College Laws now sate guarded in Pusey Library's Harvard Archives shows Harvard has made more than a handful of reforms since the days of cloaks, Classics, and clerics.

The Harvard of 1636 had 12 students--all male--compared to the some 6400 men and women who today call Cambridge's Ivy towers home. "Scholars," more commonly known today as students, were called by their surnames as a general rule--of course, sons of noblemen and knights' eldest sons were exempt from the restriction.

But even these fortunate schollars couldn't talk to their more humble buddies in English, unless "called thereunto in publick exercise of oratory or the like."

Speaking the scholarly language of the day, Latin, was never a problem, though, for the young men who ended up here-they were admitted because of their ability to read and understand Tully, Virgil and other "ordinary classical authors," to say nothing of the Greeks.

Today, students only have to profess a knowledge of a few useful classical terms like "Veritas," "Ad nauseum," and "PiEta."

"[The old criteria] certainly would make the admissions process a lot easier on the committee, and I don't think we'd have any housing problem," says Dean of Admissions and Financial Aids L. Fred Jewett '57 of the old admissions requirements.

Once admitted to Harvard, students were expected to treat administrative gurus with reverence befitting "their parents," Schollars could not speak in the presence of the president, tutors, fellows or other superior types, and no "disorderly gainsaying" was permitted. Anyone chanting "Derek Bok, get the word, this is not Johannesburg," could also expect strict censure, especially if he forgot to translate it into Latin.

A dress code forbidding Guess jeans, Athletic Department sweats or "Yale Sucks" T-shirts was strictly enforced. If schollars wanted to leave their chambers, they had to don their somewhat they coate, gowne and cloake set.

Dean of Students Archie C. Epps III, who himself is known to sport a cloake on occasion, the favors the return of the gown rule "They wouldn't have to be held responsible for people the Square who I know aren't Harvard students,' he says.

In colonial times everyone had to "wean modest and sober habit." "Strange ruffian like new langled fashions," including gold and silver were strictly prohibited.

What are ruffian fashions? "It's undoubtedly clear that once students arrive at Harvard they appear handsome and well-dressed, but they soon disappear into the blue denim world of jeans," Epps says. "I would welcome banning that and return to the coat and tie rule at dinner."

Those puritans fearing a premature onset of the 1980s and rogynous look also had their say in the legislative process. Long dresses and bonnets were not allowed at the all-men's school--the punishments: "public admonition, degradation, suspension, rustification or expulsion."