"These were very strict rules--you just didn't fool around with them," Harp adds.

But didn't students resent these rules' infringing on their freedom?

"We were all full of middle-class morals--we didn't question the rules at all." Harp says.

"I don't think the (parietal) rules were questioned at all," says Downes. "We lived in that type of world--people didn't question authority like they to now."

They did like to pull the occasional prank, though, like the time a missing bell clapper off student riots.

The bell stop Memorial Hall--in the spire that has since burned down--used to ring on the hour, as Memorial Church's bell does now, signifying the end of class periods.

Then, one day in April 1932, the Class of '35's freshman year, the bell failed to ring.

"It turned out that someone had cut the bell clapper loose--and this thing weighted 300 pounds," Ehrenfried says. "As far as I know, no one ever figured out how the thing disappeared in broad daylight."

"Someone said a station wagon was going to come by with the clapper in it." Ehrenfried says. "Since it was a nice spring night, we started raising Cain."

Understandably, more than 50 Aprils later, some recall the riot's origins differently.

"An enterprising classmate of mine went to a local blacksmith and had another clapper made," Fox says. "Then he said it (the original clapper) would appear outside Hollis South, where he lived." That, Fox says, is what started the riot.

Some students, though, didn't know about either the station wagon rumor or the Hollis resident's announcement--and rioted anyway.

"Someone in the Yard said, 'Riot,'" Birge remembers, Then he says, student ran out and stopped cars in Harvard Square. "It was the idea of leaving a limit."

The Class of 1935, at some of the at least. "broke into the Radcliffe dormitories and rushed though the halls in search of the missing "We want our bell-clapper and we want liver." The Crimson reported at the time. "By this time [in Brattle Square] eggs were flying merrily."

"There were groups, racking our and buses, trying to tip them over, Harp says, adding that he limited was hit by some police tear gas.