The Second Century

The laws of the 1700s got more intricate, but no more liberal. God-fearing schollars prepared for the Lord's day early, having to stay in on Saturday nights (of course Ye Olde Picadillie Fillie had not been built) and never forgetting to give thanks before leaving the dining hall.

With all that translating, praying and donning of sober habit, students during Harvard's second century had little time for merriment. Fortunately, it was prohibited.

"To prevent those tumults and disorders which are frequently consequent upon any confideable member of the students being together at entertainments, as well as to guard against extravagance and needless expense, all undergraduates are prohibited from making any festive entertainment in the College or its vicinity," according to the laws of 1763, a very distant precursor of today's student handbook.

Included in the College's definition of "Festive entertainment" was dameing (for which suspension of the mild degredation were the punishments) foregone the dining hall pudding (served with every meal) to eat out in Cambridge taverns or victualling houses, and getting drunk on the alcohol one didn't have in his room.

If such wanton abandon were once again prohibited, Epps says, "it might improve people's GPAs." Of course, he adds, colonial Harvardians didn't always heed these rules. "During those days people did the most awful things in their rooms, like drinking grog and smoking things out of far-eastern pipes."

Needless to say, wine, liquor and tobacco were prohibited in undergraduate rooms, and kegs were absolutely not allowed in bathtubs. Furthermore, any schollar caught playing Crazy Eights or Double Solitaire or throwing dice with his chambermate could expect to add five shilling to Harvard's endowment. Get caught a second time, and it was a public confession.

A Pleasurable Feast

Staying within the college gather to feast likely proved a pleasure before the days of Eggplant Parmesan and Serried Chick Livers. The College rules specifically required stewards (today's over-the-counter servers) to procedure fresh fish as often as possible, which food service officials, say they still try to do.

"We occasionally use frozen first there's been a winter storm, but we prefer to use fresh fish," says Assistant Director of Food Services Benjamin H. Walcott.

But, Walcott says, the College has no plans to provide white table clothes at meals as it did in the colonial days. "Can you imagine white table cloths in the Union breakfast, lunch and dinner--the cost, the mess, the laundry!"

Anyone wishing to forego the entrees du jour in the 1700s had to ask the president's permission to do so. "Bok would be a pretty busy fellow, wouldn't he," says Walcott.

If schollars did leave their chambers or the Yard, they had to curtail their excursion to meet the 9 p.m. parietal hours.

This rule thus precluded a scholars opportunity to nab a dose of "culture" by seen it a play in town. Not coincidentally, watching and acting in plays was forbidden.

"If any Undergraduate Shall presume to be an Actor in a Spectator at, or any Ways concerned in any Stage Plays, Interludes or Theatrical Entertainments in the Town of Cambridge or elsewhere, he shall for the first Offence be degraded and for any repeated Offence shall be rusticated or expelled," reads a 1767 law.