In an unusual step for the University, Harvard agreed to house military officials during the U.S. Army’s 230th birthday celebration two weeks ago, although a last-minute change in the Army’s plans meant that no troops actually stayed on campus.

Harvard has long had an arms-length relationship with the military. Military personnel have not lodged on campus since 1969, when the Faculty of Arts and Sciences voted to expel the Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) from campus in protest of the Vietnam War.

Today, no branch of the armed forces is allowed to have an office on campus.

Police also arrested seven protesters during the celebration, which took place on Cambridge Common on June 14.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) condemned Cambridge Police tactics as unconstitutional, and city leaders later demanded an investigation into Cambridge’s sponsorship of the celebration.

The Army celebrates June 14—which is also Flag Day­—as its birth date because it was on that day in 1775 that a collection of soldiers camping out on Cambridge Common formally became the Continental Army.

Exactly 230 years later, as paratroopers descended on the Common and a helicopter hovered overhead, veterans and dignitaries, including Undersecretary of the Army Raymond F. DuBois and Cambridge mayor Michael A. Sullivan, delivered celebratory speeches.

Harvard had also planned to play a part in the festivities—according to an Army press release issued before the event, “Harvard University is once again opening its doors to the Army, providing billeting for a 12-person Army drill team.”

From 1775 to 1776, more than a thousand Continental Army soldiers inhabited Harvard Yard’s oldest dorms, including Mass. Hall.

Mary Power, Harvard’s director of community relations, said that the City of Cambridge Veterans Service Organization had asked the University to house soldiers in conjunction with the celebration and that Harvard had agreed.

But, Power said, the housing was never needed.

Dave Foster, an Army spokesman, said that the drill team that was supposed to use the Harvard housing did not attend the festivities.

“To my knowledge, no one ended up staying [at Harvard],” Foster said.

True to Cambridge’s long-running opposition to the military—the city council voted unanimously in 2003 to express their opposition to a war in Iraq—several anti-war groups arrived on the scene to protest the Army.

Cambridge police kept dissenters in a “free speech zone”—a part of the Common distant and closed-off from the official festivities.