But the 1977 protest with the most serious consequences for those involved had a local bent.

A number of Harvard students drove to Seabrook, NH to participate in a two-day occupation of a nuclear power plant there and were arrested.

While most of the students involved bailed themselves out of jail, three declined to pay and languished in detention for 12 days.

Gideon Gil ’78, who was also a Crimson editor, remembers organizing many of the campus protests that year.

“We were still trying to hang on to activism,” he says. “I don’t think it was quite dead yet.”

Internal Focus

Just as the thoughts of Harvard students returned to their studies and more local concerns, so too did the College begin to address academic and social issues on campus—some of which still resonate today.

Perhaps 1977’s greatest academic contribution to Harvard College was the development of the Core Curriculum. Though the College did not adopt the Core Curriculum until two years later, 1977 saw a faculty committee propose a curriculum divided into five sections— “Letters and Arts,” “History,” “Social and Philosophical Analysis,” “Mathematics and Science,” and “Foreign Languages and Cultures.”

The Core was designed to replace the old general education program, which members of the Faculty felt did not guarantee students a full liberal arts education.

The College also wrestled with the issue of grade inflation in 1977, although many College officials at the time considered “grade inequity,” in which grading policies varied among professors, to be the real threat.

That year, the College began providing professors with a chart comparing their grades to those awarded by other professors.

Then Dean of the Faculty Dean K. Whitla said “several [Faculty] council members said they would like to do more” about grade inflation.

1977 also saw significant changes to College life.