Students also began looking with an eager eye toward the world of business and profit, which was eschewed by many student activists just a few years earlier. When the class of 1979 arrived at Harvard as first-years, only 3.8 percent of them said they hoped for a career in business; by 1979, that number had changed to 18.4 percent.

Harvard’s wealthiest alum, Bill Gates, would have graduated in 1977 had he not left after two years to found Microsoft.

His business partner, Steve Ballmer, graduated in 1977.

Spirit of Protest

But as if clinging to a radical past, Harvard students of 1977 were willing to protest just about everything.

In addition to the demonstration over hot breakfast, students organized marches in front of University Hall to demonstrate against a variety of local concerns.

They opposed a raise in tuition and agitated to curtail ringing the morning bells at Memorial Church, which they said prevented sleep in the Yard.

Students living in the Quad also organized outside University Hall to decry Fox’s proposal to make all first-years, even those assigned to Quad Houses, live in theYard. Previously, Quadlings had spent all four years up Garden Street.

Students involved in the protest said preventing them from spending their entire College careers in the Quad relegated them to second class citizenship.

William B. Trautman ’79, who was also a Crimson editor, described the atmosphere as “more of a sort of look back to the ’60s than anything else.”

Yet while no 1977 student protests matched those of the Vietnam-era in magnitude, at least one international issue moved Harvard students to similar outrage.

On April 29, 1977, approximately 100 students gathered on the lawn in front of Lamont Library to urge Harvard to sell its holdings in South African companies due to apartheid. The students marched through the Yard and onto Mass. Ave, chanting, “Hey hey what do you say, down with minority rule today.”

Earlier in the year, demonstrators from across Boston had joined Harvard students to rally at the Brighton headquarters of WRZ-TV after the station continued air commercials for gold coins sold by South Africa’s government.