"The Corporation decreed early on that there should be no fundraising done in connection with the celebration," says Stephenson. "But, realistically, such an event creates a climate of giving." Similarly, Glimp notes that "anytime you get President Bok, Henry Rosovsky [the former dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences] and Michael Spence [the present dean] going around the country talking to people, it raises the level of interest--its the positive background music to fundraising."
Lots of Parties
Harvard cannot seem to resist the urge to throw itself a big party every 50 years of so. The first such fun-fest occurred in 1836, when 1500 old chaps endured rain in Harvard Yard to drink wine and and hear Oliver Wendell Holmes sing a song in honor of the College's 200th anniversary.
The next party was then tentatively scheduled for 100 years later, in September 1936. But President Josiah Quincy and the centennial celebrants underestimated the need of every second generation or so of Harvardians to let loose in honor of their alma mater. In November of 1886, then, the 250th anniversary of the College's founding was marked in a three-day celebration by 4000 celebrants, 2500 of whom jammed into Sanders Theater to see President Grover Cleveland and Charles William Eliot, then president of Harvard.
September of 1936 saw President James Bryant Conant '14, Franklin Delano Roosevelt '04 and 11,000 other alumni and friends of the University gather to commemorate the College's tercentenary Theater. The 300 was an international event, perhaps the most lavish university party in the country's history, with 2400 scholars from around the world attending along with representatives from 530 universities, colleges and learned societies.
The 350th, for all its hoopla, will not match the grandeur and extravagance of the 300th, organizers insist. "We won't blow our trumpet quite as hard," says Burr.
"I think the committee set up in 1980 to set up the concept for the 350th Celebration felt a 50th did not have quite the stature of a centennial, and they didn't want to repeat the 300th," says Stephenson.
In any case, at the close of 1936's three-day event, President Conant proposed, and the gathering unanimously approved, a motion adjourning the celebration until "the eighteenth of September, 2036." But 50 years short of that date, Harvard is preparing to strike up the band and celebrate, in Burr's words, "350 years of education in America and Harvard's role in it."
As the first president in 150 years not to attend such a celebration might say: here we go again.