Harvard Commencement, 1970.

Several of the students have refused to wear academic robes, donating the rental fees to various causes. Others have tied multicolored armbands around their black sleeves, protesting the Vietnam war and other actions of The Establishment. There were shootings at Kent State last month. Last week a theater review headline in the Boston Globe proclaimed that "Happy Endings Died in the 1960s."

A young tenant activist leads 20 followers onto the stage before astonished University administrators can stop her. When the sound system is turned off, she grabs a bullhorn to broadcast her demand that Harvard build low-income housing.

The day before, a hundred residents of the Riverside neighborhood encamped in the Yard in front of Grays Hall to protest Harvard's real estate policy. The protesters want the housing on a site near the new Mather House and Peabody Terrace buildings. Both University projects had displaced and angered Cambridgeport residents.

Answering students' cries of "Go Home," the speaker tells them, "You go home. We've been here longer than you'll ever be."

In the fall of '71, Saundra Graham won her first term on the Cambridge City Council. In 1976 she became a state representative from Cambridgeport, and is running unopposed for reelection to that seat. One member of the unruly class she addressed--State Sen. Michael LoPresti, 71 Jr. of Cambridge--represents an area including Harvard Yard as her colleague in the legislature. He is also unopposed for reelection this year.

Another, Democrat Michael J. Barrett '70, said that "I first met Saundra Graham when she stepped on stage and provided local interest for my parents." Since then, he has been her colleague in the State House of Representatives, and is now the heavily favored candidate to succeed State Sen. George Bachrach in representing a district adjacent to his classmate's.

Graham, who remains an advocate of rent control and low-income housing, said tenant activism "isn't out in the street any more. It's grown more sophisticated, and it's at the ballot now." She said she agrees with rhetoric from the recent Cambridge Tenants' Union founding, that "an organization is as effective as its ability to disrupt the system." However, she said a movement that does not use legislative means would waste its energy.

"My methods of doing business may have changed, but not my philosophy," she said.

The district Barrett seeks to represent includes the other half of Cambridge, plus parts of Watertown, Belmont, and the Allston-Brighton region of Boston. The Radcliffe Quad's dorms, like Harvard Yard, are in Cambridge's Ward 7 and LoPresti's district.

However, many faculty and graduate students who live to the north and west will find a choice among Barrett, Alice Nakashian and William Monahan on their ballots. Both of his opponents are Independents. Barrett also notes that "anybody who sleeps in the stacks of the Ed School or the K-School qualifies."

Barrett said he knew LoPresti slightly as an undergraduate. "He was a better jock, and I was a better journalist," he said, adding that the incumbent senator had better grades.

Although Barrett and Graham tend to hold more liberal positions than LoPresti, Barrett said he agreed with the senator on most issues. However, he does oppose a recent bill that LoPresti sponsored as chairman of the State Senate Judiciary Committee. If passed, it would abolish a practice that allows defendants convicted by a judge to demand a trial by jury "de novo" without going through a formal appeal process.

The candidate says such differences can be resolved and that he expects to work closely with LoPresti on issues affecting Cambridge. "If we survived the Harvard Square riots together, we'll flourish in the State Senate," he said.

Graham concurred, saying of LoPresti that "when it comes to Cambridge we do agree a lot."