When the Class of 1969 met at their 25th reunion five years ago, the class that epitomized Harvard radicalism had become a collection of lawyers, businessmen, doctors and professors. But even after more than two decades, this class was still somehow different.

When President Neil L. Rudenstine and Dean of the Faculty Jeremy R. Knowles addressed the class, according to one audience member, the crowd saw "administrative bullshit" where other reunion classes had seen just welcoming pleasantries.

One indication that the two officials may not have been telling the whole truth was that the crowd reacted with a suspicious murmur not typical of 1,000 well-educated professionals in their late 40s.

"It took about 40 seconds for this crowd to turn on these guys," said Robert D. Luskin '69, a WHRB reporter in the spring of 1969. "Everybody experienced the same visceral reaction."

Thirty years now separates Harvard from the fateful spring day in 1969 when students stormed and occupied University Hall before being forcibly ejected by local police early the next morning.

No one chronicling the strike has ever aimed at objectivity--1997's Coming Apart by former Dunster House Senior Tutor and Master Roger Rosenblatt, the most recent work on the strike, primarily focused on his personal recollections.

This is likely because no two witnesses to the events of 1969 see them in the same way. But in the years since the strike and the "bust" brought activism home to Harvard, all say they have learned vivid lessons from the morning where a hundred things that could never have happened at Harvard suddenly did.

Changing Times

The Class of 1969 came to Harvard at a strange time: a changing student body in a very traditional college atmosphere meant that radical students were sometimes disciplined simply for not wearing ties to dinner.

But a wave of student radicalism sparking riots and protests across the country could not be held back even by Harvard's formidable traditions. The campus was thrown into tumult by protests by the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), which gained momentum through 1969 to the April takeover of University Hall.

At different corners of the campus that spring were five people swept up by the events happening around them.

Richard E. Hyland '69 was only a prominent SDS member at the time of the takeover, but not involved in the leadership. Michael Kazin '72, the embattled SDS leader, asked him to preside over the building occupiers primarily because he was not involved with the internal SDS political wrangling.

Kenneth M. Glazier '69, who was a past president of the Student Faculty Advisory Committee (SFAC), had experience in subdued committee meetings but never in any sort of mass arena. And it was Glazier who ended up trying to create order during the morning-after Memorial Church meeting and ended up chairing the Memorial Church group.

Alan E. Heimert '49 had only been recently toiling away as a junior faculty member and had just received tenure as the Cabot Professor of American Literature, along with taking the reins of Eliot House in 1968 as its master. Heimert would lead the Committee of Fifteen, an administrative body which decided the fate of the most egregious offenders.

Jon D. Levenson '71 was a sophomore in Adams House at the time, and among a minority of students who did not support the ideas, let alone the tactics, of SDS. He even approved of the decision by Harvard President Nathan M. Pusey '28 to send in the local police.

Peter Wood was a graduate student, a teaching fellow and an assistant senior tutor in Eliot House. Part student, part faculty, and part administrator, he had to deal with all factions on campus regardless of his personal loyalties.