Military members outnumbered civilians 4-1 on campus. Dunster, Eliot, Kirkland and Leverett Houses housed male military members, and some of the Radcliffe Quad residences were occupied by female division of the armed services.

While popular student activites such as the Harvard Band and The Crimson languished, campus military groups flourished. These groups included women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Services (WAVES), Army Service Training Program (ASTP), Chaplains and the V-12, a group of men in the Navy who trained at Harvard.

As the military presence increase, subtle changes began to make themselves known.

The Hasty Pudding Club was reserved for officers and their guests. The Advocate officially dissolved, and the College instituted a full summer term in order to accelerate graduation of those hoping to join the war effort.

"My one year at Harvard at a very young age...and my desire to enlist as soon as I reached my eighteen birthday...has left me with a sense of unimportance in the records of Harvard," William L. Bell said in Fiftieth Annual Report of the Class of 1945.

"Two major events in my life did occur during the year," Bell continued. "One is having a sterling sliver medal recognizing a year with the Harvard Band. The other was acceptance into Navy flight school."

Every segments of the Harvard community made its contribution to the was effort. The Navy Wives Club met on the "second deck" of the Harvard Union. The Fine Arts Department offered courses in camoflauge, athletics were compulsory and an air-raid siren was placed atop Widener Library.

"Joint instruction" was a new phenomenon as women and men shared classrooms for the first time. However, if only female was enrolled in a class, "she had to sit outside in the hall" and listen to the lecture, according to Radcliffe alumna Priscilla G. Hopkirk '45. Radcliffe students still were not allowed to use most of Widener Library.

All vacations except Christmas were eliminated from the school calendar to cut down on domestic travelling.

Harvard Service News

The war meant changes for the Crimson as well.

On February 23, 1943, The Crimson launched a bi-weekly publication, The Harvard Service News. Later that year, The Crimson suspended publication in favor of the wartime-focused Service News.

"The Harvard Crimson will...return only when Harvard is once again a liberal arts college," the retiring Crimson executive board announced on May 21, 1943. "In a program that is primarily one of was training there is little time to publish the Crimson; indeed, there is small place for it in a college of uniforms."

"The need of news reporting remains, and this function will be performed by the Harvard Service News," The Crimson's announcement continued. Calkin said. "There were too few editors aroundto make us think it would be a good newspaper. Wewere afraid that it would lose its independence."

Undergraduate members voted to cede authorityto the graduate Board of The Crimson to "maintainthe continuity of the paper [the Service News] andto keep it from becoming a simple organ of theservices or the university," according to the 1943announcement.

The Service News was published twice a weekduring fall and spring terms and once a weekduring the summer term of 1944 and 1945. It didnot print editorials or opinion pieces, aside frommovie reviews and an occasional letter to theeditor.