Students' Protest Tradition: From Bad Food to Investments

Throughout Harvard history, students have blown off steam by staging protests against University policies, ranging from food to investment quality. And administrators have become pretty heated up about the students' skirmishes, responding with disciplinary action, ranging from arrests to merely turning the other cheek.

When the food got bad, students got mad. Four undergraduates staged the Rotten Cabage Rebellion of 1807 by presenting then President James T. Kirkland with a bowl of maggoty soup. They were promptly expelled.

About a decade and a half later, the food and Kirkland's paternalistic attitude inspired the worst riot in Harvard's history. In 1823 students ransacked University Hall destroying furniture throughout the building. When Kirkland expelled four of the people involved, the senior class responded by staging a boycott. Not to be outdone, expelled 37 seniors, more than half the class.

Although modern-day students clamor for more openness in the disciplinary process, their 19th century predecessor's wanted to keep things a little more private. Following widespread student complaint, the faculty in 1897 abolished the practice of "posting," or publishing the names of students who had been found guilty of breaking Harvard rules.

From the turn of the century until the tumultous 1960s, students at Harvard were relatively quiet, as the years were filled with the Depression and two World Wars. Student protest heated up again in the 1960s during the Vietnam War.

Undergraduate staged a series of sit-ins and demonstrations against the accredited ROTC courses which Harvard offered. in 1968-9, five students were required to withdraw for staging a sit-in at a December 1968 faculty meeting. their sentence were suspended, but the trouble didn't stop there.

Several hundred students invaded University Hall on April 9, 1969 and evicted administrators. When President Nathan M. Pusey '28 called in the state police to forcibly remove and arrest the protesters, students responded by boycotting classes for a week. Although the University dropped the charges against most of the students, 132 students were ultimately disciplined for participating in the occupation.

The sit-in had become a popular student protest weapon by the 1970s. In 1972,32 Black undergraduates staged a six day occupation of Massachusetts Hall to protest Harvard's refusal to sell $700 million of Gulf Oil stock despite the company's involvement in Angola. All of the protesters were put on probation.

That same year, a well-known Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) member was required to withdraw three days before graduation for occupying the Government Department's office for six hours. The Committee on Rights and Responsibilities (CRR), which handed down both decisions, explained that the SDS member was punished more harshly because she had a previous disciplinary record.

After a decade of relative calm, the protests started up again in 1985 when about 45 students occupied 17 Quincy St. for an eight hour workday to urge Harvard to divest from companies that do business in South Africa.

Several weeks later, 200 students blockaded a South Africa diplomat whom the Conservative Club had invited to speak in Lowell House. The disciplinary cases for the two incidents resulted in 10 people put on probation and 11 students were admonished.

A series of divestment protests staged since the spring of 1985 have not resulted in any disciplinary action.