25 Years Ago...

In honor of today's 25th reunion, The Crimson dug up these quotes from the newspaper's staff editorials of 25 years ago. The more things change...

20 Below In the Shade

"The University immediately seems like a very cold and hostile place to the newcomer, and superficially it is. The Administration cares little whether an individual student sinks or swims...One can easily spend four years in Cambridge without meeting a Faculty member of higher rank than teaching fellow, and it is possible to receive a gentleman's C with little or no work and have the only permanent trace of one's presence here a series of impressions on an IBM card." Pre-Registration Issue, September, 1962

Senator Kennedy

"The Crimson cannot join those newspapers across the state who today are expressing hope for Edward M. Kennedy's emergence as a worthy United States Senator....It might be argued that our objections, coming on the day of his victory, are in poor taste. But taste, good or bad, has been made laughably irrelevant by the candidate's own arrogance...A few 'right votes' in the Senate will not justify the abuses he has already perpetrated...it is with the severest pessimism that we now regard his ascendancy.   November 7, 1962

A More Perfect Union

"...In most universities, students can gather in a union or activities center. Harvard students are condemned to meet in Widener, the unattractive and expensive cafeterias in the Square, and the inconvenient Agassiz living room....A union would provide 'Cliffies with a place to relax between classes. It would lessen the social pressure on Widener, leaving the library to those who want to study. And such a meeting place might ease social tensions and uncertainties between Harvard and Radcliffe...Whatever building is finally chosen the University should support the project. Dating is expensive in Cambridge, and most Harvard students would welcome the chance to associate with girls in a natural and freewheeling context. Social life at the University today is too often restricted and artificial."   November 21, 1962