"Our scholarship policy opens the door of opportunity at Harvard to those boys of inferior economic status who are at the very top in academic performance but does not reach down very far below the highest level in those terms," said Dean of Freshman Leighton.

Buck, in his attempts to counterbalance the more introverted, private school "floppy ducklings," as he called them, advocated digging deeper into the public schools and his initiatives have slowly developed into Harvard's present dense web of recruitment with more than 6,000 actively recruiting alumni.

Yesterday and Today

Despite the advances it made in the late 1940s toward geographical and social diversity, Harvard was still an almost entirely white, Christian school.

The college had only begun to fully integrate Jewish students and offered admission to only a handful of blacks each year.

The imperative for inclusion that began with the Class of 1950 was extended over the next decade as Harvard grew to reflect an ethnically diverse America.

Those first years who wandered Harvard Yard in search of a cot were the largest and most diverse class Harvard had ever taken.

The pressure of so many students brought Harvard to its modern size and shape and the many backgrounds of those students brought Harvard the color of diversity.