The Class of 1950, arriving at Radcliffe in September 1946, found an academic environment exhilarated by the end of World War II, and significantly different from the University of 10 years before.

The class was surprisingly limited in geographic representation.

At least half came from Massachusetts, and at least 20 percent were commuters. There were two black students in our class, which was unusual since there was generally only one.

We Come Together

The most visible change was joint instruction (read coeducation), forced on the reluctant university by wartime pressures.

The large survey courses like History 1 and English 1 were still taught to freshmen in the Radcliffe Yard by middle-aged white men who trundled over from the Harvard Yard to deliver the same lecture they had just given to male students.

Even that vestige would soon be phased out, but when Lamont opened in 1949, women students were firmly excluded.

Most classes and laboratories took place jointly in Harvard classrooms, often necessitating breakneck bike trips from our distant location in the Radcliffe Quad.

We were thrilled to have equal access to the riches in the course catalog. What would take us longer to realize was that, despite this academic breakthrough, faculty and administration attitudes did not keep pace with our heightened expectations.

One classmate reports that she got a B in Chemistry after earning all As on quizzes and labs. When she confronted the professor, he replied that the class was graded on a sliding scale, he could give just so many As and those had to go to boys because they need them to get into medical school.

Even more dismaying, she accepted the explanation without argument.

The New Curriculum

The bold new curriculum for the postwar generation introduced by President James B. Conant '14, was General Education in a Free Society and introduced the year we arrived.

Out of Gen Ed came my favorite course, Social Sciences 118: "Democratic Theory and its Critics."

It was taught by a little dynamo named Louis Hartz who whirled into the classroom, talking as he walked and shedding his overcoat, coat and tie as he warmed up to his subject.

No other class--and many were wonderful--ever equaled the sheer intellectual and dramatic power of Professor Hartz's analysis of political philosophy over the past 300 years.

I can't leave the subject of classes without mentioning those between-classes coffee-klatsches at St. Clairs where groups were infinitely expandable and the conversation covered all subjects under the sun. Golden moments.