Former Adams House Master Robert J. Kiely, for instance, said that drinking was only one part of Adams House life. He cited theater, music, and political expression as other activities that encouraged community interaction in a social setting.

“The Explosives B Café and Molotov Café served nothing stronger than espresso, but students gathered in these places every night to hear one another’s poetry or listen to Seamus Heaney, Adrienne Kennedy, or Jamaica Kincaid, all of whom lived at Adams,” wrote Kiely in an email. “Of course, not every student took advantage of this, but many did.”

Though he wasn’t aware of any large-scale changes to the Harvard social scene, Mark A. Hanzel ’88 does recall one particular instance of students bending these stricter rules.

According to Hanzel, the band room in the basement of the old Freshman Union dispensed Duke beer for 25 cents a can, and in 1985, former Dean of Students Archie C. Epps III told the band that the beer had to go.

“When we returned to the band room, one of our officers opened the machine and told us to help ourselves to as many cans of Duke beer as we could carry,” Hanzel wrote in an email. “I was a practicing Mormon, but I couldn’t resist free stuff. I carried three or four cans back to Lowell House and gave them to my roommate, who observed that Duke wasn’t any worse than Budweiser.”

—Staff writer Brianna D. MacGregor can be reached at bmacgregor@college.harvard.edu. Follow her on Twitter @ bdmacgregor.