Richardson and the Extension School student maintain that most, if not all, of the expelled students were in good standing to graduate before the Court expelled them from the College and ruined their reputations. Some, they says, were just a few weeks shy of completing their degree requirements.

Richardson, who leafed through hundreds of pages of archival material in researching “Veritas,” his recent award-winning play on the subject, says that “a couple of the guys were like five days from graduating.” He offered the example of Keith P. Smerage ’21, who was expelled for homosexual activity and committed suicide 10 years later without the Harvard degree he would have earned had the University not terminated his career.

“He was so eloquent in his hopes for himself, what he thought Harvard could do for him and what he could do for the world,” Richardson says of Smerage. “He just couldn’t pull it together after this and committed suicide 10 years later.”

WAITING FOR CHANGE

On campus, the queer community is awaiting the University’s decision and pondering the implications of continued silence from Massachusetts Hall.

“Frankly, I can’t imagine a viable argument for not awarding these posthumous degrees,” says Timothy P. McCarthy ’93, who serves on the board of directors of the Harvard Gay and Lesbian Caucus. “It’s too little, too late, of course, but late is better than never.”

“I would be curious to see what the justification for refusal would be, and what a suggested alternative would be,” says Marco Chan ’11, co-chair of Harvard Queer Students and Allies.

Richardson, who is not a Harvard affiliate, says that a refusal to grant these posthumous degrees would send a “really terrible message to students at Harvard right now who are LGBT, who would have been rooted out 90 years ago.”

“If Harvard doesn’t grant these, they’re saying that this is just not as important as the people we’re granting awards to this year,” Richardson says. “Why should Meryl Streep, Whoopi Goldberg, or—I don’t know—Lady Gaga receive an honorary degree from Harvard next May?”

LOOKING INTO THE FUTURE

Thus far, Krueger—a longtime friend of Richardson’s—says that “Their Day in the Yard” will first attempt to join forces with the Harvard Gay and Lesbian Caucus before contacting the administration.

“Once we find out who our supporters are, we can contact the administration,” Kruger says.

The movement has set a tentative deadline of the 2011 Commencement—when the Extension School student will earn her own diploma—to persuade the administration to award the honorary degrees.

“I just realized that I didn’t really want to graduate from an institution that wouldn’t acknowledge its history like this,” she says. “I’m surprisingly optimistic that this is possible. I have to be.”

—Staff writer James K. Mcauley can be reached at mcauley@fas.harvard.edu.