Certainly, Harvard has come a long way since W.E.B. DuBois, unable to afford a spacious room in Harvard Yard, was forced to rent a home from an African American woman on Flagg Street, near where Mather House stands today.
In the 1930s, the introduction of the Harvard National Scholarships brought in the first large numbers of immigrant and working-class students. This trend toward financial assistance in obtaining a college degree has continued.
The latter half of the 20th century has brought not only the professionalization and standardization of curricula, but also an ostensible commitment to a degree of egalitarianism and meritocracy in America's top schools. Harvard moved to a need-blind admissions policy in the 1950s, according to Fitzsimmons.
For some, the University's efforts have succeeded in changing perceptions.
"At Eliot House there used to be valets and people who'd serve you, but [today] that's the person's view of Harvard who doesn't go to Harvard," Weld says. "It does have a collective sense of guilt about it. Its past is fairly homogeneous, which is viewed as a bad thing."
That image is fast changing, he maintains.
"Clearly it's not a communist utopia, but I don't think there's huge gaping class differences, huge problems over class," Weld says. "I think Harvard, like the Vatican, is an organization that tends to think long term, and since it seems clear that it has decided it wants a more egalitarian, diverse student body it's probably going to get it sooner or later. It's pretty close to it now."
But Harvard's elite and intimidating reputation, for others, is not too far from reality.
"I go to the Bronx every other month," Reynoso says. "Just taking the train from here--it's like I never see day-light until I get there. Going to the South Bronx is like being in two different worlds in the span of four or five hours. I have to shift my whole mentality, my whole existence. It's not just economic, but social and ethnic as well. I come here and I have to become another person."