War Holdovers

Though the war was over by the time most students ever set foot in Cambridge, its effects echoed throughout the campus in many ways.

Unlike the Harvard students of the isolationist 1930s, the Class of '49 involved itself in politics on a world scale. Throughout the late '40s multiple liberal political groups appeared on campus.

Students organized rallies to "Save the Marshall Plan" and they held and participated in debates to bash the anti-Communist Barnes Bill that was introduced in the Massachusetts legislature during 1948.

President Truman's Universal Military Training plan caused much controversy on campus with heated arguments coming from both sides, and rallies at Sanders Theatre.

Over 1,000 students gathered at Memorial Hall in April 1948 to rally against the escalating Cold War.

In an attempt to educate Harvard students the American Veterans Committee held programs on politics and how to work within the political system.

Undergraduates also supported student movements overseas and collected money and food to be sent to China, India and Greece.

In general, alumni remember that this flourish of political activity, which tended towards the liberal, was new and exciting forthem, though it soon died out as memories of thewar started to fade.

The Importance of Being Earnest

Whatever they did, in the words of one alum,was with a sense of "earnestness."

Recovering from a big war meant that everyonewas "a little more serious and little moreconcerned" than the younger classes at Harvard.

Their intensity made them a studious group ofmen so dedicated to their academics that theyadvertised in The Crimson for their lost classnotes.

Class members say they don't remember much of a"party atmosphere" on campus, and administratorsworried that veterans were not having enough fun.

Not only were many students veterans of thebattlefields, some were already married withfamilies. There were so many "family men" in theClass of '49 that Harvard had to lease the HotelBrunswick in Boston for them to live in, inaddition to temporary housing established oncampus.

The lingering insecurity of a world so recentlytorn by war also contributed to the "earnestness"of the late 1940s.