"I was very lucky in that my family was not seriously affected," says Richard S. Salant '35, former president of CBS News, now living in New Canaan, Ct. "Except for the headlines, and the fact that fathers of friends of mine jumped out of windows, I wasn't much affected."

Once within the Ivy walls, students lived in a luxury which makes today's accommodations pale in comparison. Every Harvard undergrad had his own bedroom, daily maid service, and waitresses to serve him as he selected his meal from printed menus in College dining halls--and all this for a tuition of $400, a room fee averaging $240 a year, and $9,50 a week for meals, according to the Harvard Archives records for 1930.

Instead of dorm crew, in the '30s College maids--called "goodies"--should make beds, empty wastebaskets, and tidy rooms up. "It was very plush living," Harp remembers.

"I didn't make my bed in all my years of college, and I never dusted, or swept a rug," says Downes, retired from a lumber company which bears his name. "We lived so well, it's incredible."

The atmosphere in the dining halls, as might be expected, was also quite different from today's, with formality and serenity instead of loud announcements from chairtops.

"It was very quiet and orderly at mealtimes," Vuilleumier says. "No one went to meals without jacket and tie, and we were served by a waitresses," he says. "You were seated by a maitred," Tower remembers.

"The food was better then, too" adds Vuilleumier, who says he has been back to eat a number of times since graduating.

The formal tone hardly ended at dining hall exits hat," "We never went to class without wearing a felt hat," Downes says. "That seems funny to me now What everyone wore--gabardine jackets, grey flannel trousers, and brown-and-white saddle shoes--was almost a costume."

"Today, people wear a shirt and jeans, and; never went to class without a neck tie," Downes adds.

If the Radcliffe Quadrangle seems far away now, it was even farther away in the '30s, both geographically and socially.

"I hardly knew a Radcliffe woman the whole time I was there," says Birge.

"I didn't mix much with the Radcliffe girls--they weren't around much," says W. Dudley Cotton Jr. '35 of Boston, a retired travel agent. "I had other girls, from Smith and Wellesley."

"You almost never saw a woman walking around Harvard Yard," Harp says.

The absence of women extended, naturally, to the dorms.

"We still needed permission to have a female guest, and sign a registration list," says Harp. "Women had to be out of our rooms around the dinner hour, except on weekends when it was a bit later."