The low number of admitted women and the female undergraduates' independence and camaraderie often caused Harvard men to be intimidated by their female counter-parts, Noyes says.
"There was the perception that the women tended to be brainier since there were only 400 of them," he says. "Some [women from other colleges] were considered more accessible in terms of finding a date."
However, Holly R. Sorensen Thompson '72 says that her undergraduate life had more similarities than differences with those of her Harvard brothers.
"What struck me was there are a lot of things about my experience which were the same as my brothers," she says. "You could go to dinner every night and know that you could have an interesting conversation--things like that don't change."
However, conversation was not the only staple of Harvard life, Gorman says. According to Gorman, social drinking allowed Harvard undergraduates to get to know one another--enforcement of the drinking age was the least of the University's concerns during the war, he adds.
"The first week, we were invited to the President's house and given sherry," he says. "The University poured sherry down your throat [and] served liquor to its freshmen on a regular basis. I still can't stand it."
Gorman remembers that sherry figured prominently once again after the 1969 Harvard-Yale game, in which the Crimson players scored 16 points in the last few minutes to clinch a "29-29 Crimson victory," according to The Crimson.
"The drink dispensers in the houses were filled with wine," said Gorman, and the post-party "lasted for I don't know how many days."
In 1971, the filming of Love Story still stands in the minds of many graduates.
"I remember thinking it was a dorky movie," said Sorensen Thompson. "I thought, 'No one's ever going to watch it.'"
It was the only Harvard film to be filmed on campus with the full cooperation of the University, and was made at Dunster House.
Gorman, a Dunster House resident, recalls how students took advantage of the filming crew to escape dorm food.
"They used to fill the Junior Common Room with their catering, and we used to sneak in because the food was better," he says.
The Houses
According to Miller, students retained greater loyalty to their Harvard houses in those days because they had to undergo a rigorous interview process to be admitted into some of the more elite river houses.
"For Adams and some other houses, you pretty much had to go and interview, and they saw if you were interesting," he says. "We got into Lowell House because some guy's brother said we were good people."
The house interview process has since been replaced by a randomization process in which students have no choice in housing preferences.
However, despite their tumultuous years at Harvard, 71 percent of the graduates--down from 91 percent for the Class of 1967, surveyed in 1992--say they would send their children to Harvard, according to the 25th anniversary survey.