The Great Flood

Even with these countermeasures, the first years came, and came and came. There were just too many and not enough rooms. Many first years found themselves stranded in Cambridge without the housing they had applied for.

The Crimson reported that on the nights before registration, there were "extra Yard cops being stationed to take in hand bewildered freshman with no place to sleep."

The University housing office "doubled up" wherever it could and squeezed students into dorms at one and a half times their recommended capacity.

Nevertheless, more than 150 students spent their first month bivouacked in the Indoor Athletic Center (now the Malkin Athletic Center), sleeping on surplus Navy cots and making do with what the college provided: one cot, one chair and one ashtray.

One undergraduate anchored a yawl in the Charles as a temporary home.

The administration pushed through with the usual September rituals despite the barracks atmosphere around Harvard. Normal bureaucratic hindrances bloomed into paralyses with the huge number of students.

The line for registration at Memorial Hall stretched past the Littauer Center and students waited hours in the unseasonably hot weather to officially join the College.

"My first impression of Harvard upon registration in Mem Hall was 'what a mob scene--just like the Army:' hundreds of veterans mostly still in army suntans and the place filled with registration tables like an army mess hall," wrote David L. McMurtrie '50 in a letter describing the crowds.

At the Coop, waiting students spilled out the door, filled Palmer Street and even snaked around the corner onto Brattle.

Veterans who paid for books and tuition with government money had to put up with even more forms and signatures as they marched back and forth with carbon copies and receipts to the Weld Hall Office of the Counselor for Veterans to process G.I. Bill scholarships.

The University Housing Office worked nights until mid-October in search of a way to squeeze 20 extra men into each House. The administration offered discounts on room and board to students who took on extra roommates and soon nearly all the Houses' generously designed suites were crowded even further over capacity.

In the "halcyon" pre-war years, first years had moved directly into upper-class houses, but as the housing crunch grew to near crisis, all residential upperclassmen were moved out of the Yard and the surrounding dorms into the Houses to clear room for the first year class. The practice of making first-years "Yardlings" continues today.

The Couples Crunch

With these measures, the gymnasium campers were dispersed in time for the first basketball practice, but the crowding problem was still crammed into every part of Harvard.

115 married couples moved into the Hotel Brunswick to find that their post-war life would begin in a one-bedroom apartment with no kitchen and a twin bed.

"This is unfortunate as most people give brides bedclothes for double