Retrospection
The Smith Campus Center and the Ghost of the Harvard Union
At the turn of the 20th century, the Harvard Union was built to provide a club for social purposes open to all Harvard University students; the space was meant to unify a social scene that seemed to be primarily run solely by final clubs and other “elite” institutions.
Retrospection: Freshmen Union
The Freshmen Union was formerly located in what is now known as the Barker Center.
Past Tense: Drinking Age
In 1964, a truck used to roll through Harvard Yard selling sandwiches. One day, when the truck arrived, a freshman asked the vendor, “But where can I get a beer?” Without hesitation, the driver gave the student the name and number of a “business.” Within 15 minutes, another delivery truck rolled into the Yard with a case of beer, delivering it to his freshman dorm.
The Hound and the Horn
The story of The Hound & Horn, begun when two underclassmen broke off from the ruthless social and literary hierarchy of Harvard undergraduate publications and pursued their own course, ultimately faded away into the history of the many short-lived literary publications
Female Final Clubs: A Retrospection
Final clubs for Harvard men date back to 1791, but final clubs for women at Harvard didn’t emerge until a full 200 years later, in 1991. Though less institutionalized and established than their male counterparts, female final clubs have significantly impacted Harvard’s social scene in their two decades of existence
In And Around Language: "Twerking"
Many millenials have had the inauspicious pleasure of watching Miley Cyrus’ VMA performance. Well, performance is a strong word. For six minutes, hell was recreated on stage with all the attendant teddy bears and rasping attempts at singing. But the piece of the Miley experience that had people up in arms screaming over social media was her twerking, a word which largely hadn’t entered our vocabulary until the ex-Disney starlet graphically displayed its meaning on national television.
FM Throwback Thursday
Besides Natural Light, boxed wine, and stein club ales, Harvard students in the 1950s had the option of drinking Harvard Brewing Co. beers.
The Gates Unbarred: Seamus Heaney at Harvard
It is a natural, perhaps inevitable reaction, when confronted with news of a star, to try to bask in his or her reflected light.
Robbed Twice
What struck me the most about my first robbery was its normality. It occurred on a sunny afternoon, in a ...
A Modern Moment
On January 23, 1957, renowned architect and Dean of Harvard’s Graduate School of Design Josep Lluís Sert sat down to write a letter. Its mission: Convince the controversial modernist sensation Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, better known as Le Corbusier, to make his first visit to Cambridge. “Is there any chance of getting you to come here sometime next fall or spring?” he wrote. “Both MIT and this School are willing to do their best to get you to come here.”
