Ward says he stayed with the ROTC, despite the criticisms he received, because his father had been a high-ranking officer in the Army and Ward felt that he should fulfill his duty toward his country.

"My father was a retired Army officer, so I had never thought about the possibility of not being in ROTC," he says.

But the protest which eventually earned Blustein her expulsion papers took place in the spring of 1972.

On April 6, 1972, the Pan-African Liberation Committee (PALC) and sympathetic students took over Massachusetts Hall to protest Harvard's ownership of stock in Gulf Oil, which was involved at the time in Angola, a site of Portuguese colonialism.

Blustein says that in the third strike PALC took over Mass. Hall early in the morning and attracted more than 1,000 additional students to the strike later in the morning by leaving leaflets throughout Harvard undergraduate buildings.

She says the group formed a picket line around Mass. Hall and was in the process of taking over Harvard Hall but was disrupted by an army recruiter's coming to campus. She says 150 of the students then marched off toward the ROTC building.

However, members of the PALC who were already inside Mass. Hall managed to remain there for another 153 hours, according to the 1972 Crimson Commencement issue. Meanwhile, the splintered group had reached the ROTC building, found no one there and marched on to Littauer, the government building.

Blustein says the group sat in Littauer, chanting, "Kissinger out of Harvard, Harvard out of Gulf, Gulf out of Angola, U.S. out of Asia and Africa now."

"It was a very peaceful demonstration, but the administration cut the phone wires to the building and announced that we had taken the building over," Blustein says.

According to the 1972 Crimson Commencement issue, the Committee on Rights and Responsibilities (CRR), then the University's disciplinary arm, responded by imposing suspension requirements on 32 undergraduates.

Blustein was told three days before graduation that she would not be allowed to graduate with her class, but the activism did not die with her absence.

At a home football game in the fall of '72, the band spelled out 'CRR' and 'exile' during halftime while they played "My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean," Blustein says.

A Hiatus on Finals

The strikes interrupted Harvard lectures with regularity and obliterated the required final exams during the class's first two years.

"We didn't have finals freshman and sophomore year," says York Miller '72. "If you were going O.K. [in the class], you could take whatever grade you had going into the final, but you could take the final if you needed to boost your grade [too]."