NOVEMBER

A fire at the Eliot House grille forces the evacuation of hundreds of students from Eliot, Kirkland and Winthrop Houses. Though the fire causes significant smoke damage in the tunnels and closes the grille until February; there are no injuries.

Nathan M. Pusey ’28, Harvard’s 24th president, dies at the age of 94. Serving during the 1950s and 1960s, his administration led the University’s first major fundraising campaign and also focused on undergraduate education. His presidency ended in controversy as a result of the 1969 break up of the University Hall takeover.

Don C. Wiley, Loeb professor of biochemistry and biophysics, is declared missing after police find his abandoned rental car on the Interstate 40 bridge over the Mississippi River near Memphis, Tenn. Wiley was last seen on Nov. 15 at a dinner at the Peabody Hotel, where he was attending the annual meeting of the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital scientific advisory board.

For the first time since 1913, the Harvard football team finishes its season with a perfect record, defeating Yale 35-23 in New Haven to win the Ivy League championship.

In a speech delivered before 6,000 at the Gordon indoor track and tennis facility, Former President Bill Clinton stresses the need for greater awareness of the dangers of nations’ interdependence in the modern world.

DECEMBER

A year after being shut out of the Rhodes Scholarship competition for the first time since 1930, Harvard nabs five of the 32 spots awarded this year—the most of any college—bringing the total number of Harvard Rhodes Scholars to 300.

Sujean S. Lee ’03 is elected president of the Undergraduate Council. Lee’s victory, along with running mate Anne M. Fernandez ’03, marks the first time an all-female ticket has won a popular presidential election.

Five weeks after he vanished, police find Wiley’s body floating in the Mississippi River, 320 miles downstream from Memphis. His death is later ruled an accident, quelling previous speculation about suicide.

2002

JANUARY

Summers meets with Fletcher University Professor Cornel West ’74 in an attempt to keep the prominent Afro-American studies professor from leaving Harvard and returning to Princeton. West’s allegation that Summers questioned his scholarship at an October meeting makes national news.

Suzanne M. Pomey, who served as producer of the 2001 Hasty Pudding show, and Randy J. Gomes, who assistant-directed the Man and Woman of the Year shows, are charged with grand larceny after allegedly stealing tens of thousands of dollars from the group the previous spring. Gomes and Pomey, both of the Class of 2002, later plead not guilty to charges of larceny.

The Enron controversy spreads to Harvard as Corporation member Herbert S. “Pug” Winokur ’64-’65 receives a subpoena from the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations for his connection with Enron’s collapse. He was then the chair of Enron’s finance committee.