See this story's original coverage in The Crimson.

Some problems transcend generations. At Harvard, one such problem is finding love.

Take the words of a young Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., Class of 1829. The American poet and essayist arrived at Harvard in 1825 and was instantly dismayed at the quality of Cambridge women.

“If there was a girl in the neighborhood whose blood ever rose above the freezing point...nay if there was even a cherry-cheeked kitchen girl to romance with occasionally, it might possibly be endurable.”

Instead, Holmes wrote in a letter, the neighborhood offered him “nothing but vinegar-faced old maids and drawing-room sentimentalists.”

It’s little wonder, then, that Harvard students from Holmes’s time through the 1950s looked to the women at Radcliffe College to satisfy their romantic urges.

But dreaded parietal rules kept Harvard boys and their prospective ’Cliffe dates well-separated during certain verboten hours. These regulations restricted the presence of the opposite sex in each college’s dorm, but fell particularly heavily on female students, who had to sign guests in and out of their dormitories.

Peter French, in his 1963 book “The Long Reach: A Report on Harvard Today,” said that “rather than ‘dating,’ Harvard boys and Radcliffe girls much more commonly study together, call each other on the phone right after breakfast, go to class together, and eat together.”

“It’s a wonderful relationship,” one Radcliffe girl told French. “It has all the advantages of matrimony—almost.”

Harvard students took a step towards reclaiming the “almost” portion in 1957, when upperclassman parietals were extended to midnight on Saturdays and prior to holidays. Freshmen also gained three hours of private time with their female counterparts, moving back the start of their intimate hours from 4 p.m. to 1 p.m. on the weekends.

Further extensions would follow throughout the 1960s, followed by the abolition of parietals in the 1970s.

But even without the restrictions, both genders still fight the battle for love at Harvard. Allie T. Pape ’08, an arts columnist for the Harvard Independent, described how difficult this battle can be in an article this spring: “Few and far between are the men who can understand a reference to Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo or get pumped about spending a Saturday evening plowing through Gandhi.”

It seems that the more life at Harvard changes, the more it stays the same, and many students would still agree with what Holmes wrote when he was a student at the College.

“I do believe I never shall be contented till I get the undisputed mastery of a petticoat,” Holmes wrote.

—Staff writer Nicholas K. Tabor can be reached at ntabor@fas.harvard.edu.