Alumni Bulletin: From Football to Frogs

You need a tough hide to be editor of the Harvard Alumni Bulletin. You have to put out a bi-weekly magazine that will please some 14,000 College alumni all over the world, you have t provide an almost personal apology for any unsuccessful football season, and occasionally, you have to endure accusations of crimes ranging from the defense of Communists to the appeasement of Yale.

Luckily, the charge of selling out to New Haven doesn't crop up very often, but for a certain type of alumnus this treachery may be implicit in even the most routine act on the Bulletin's part. Last March, for example, when the magazine had just adopted a new cover comprised of a little less crimson and a little more white than the previous design, it received the following letter from a subscriber:

With my Bulletin today I received a shock. Gone was the lively cover that used to adorn it. In its place, a format which could just as well be taken over with little change by the undertaker's association. From now on I shall be ashamed to show the Bulletin to my non-Harvard friends. Princeton has its orange and black, Yale its blue. Well, what the h... has happened to Harvard's Crimson?

Through its 56 years of publication the Bulletin has become rather impervious to such criticisms, however, and its current editor can laugh them off quite readily. For despite what certain alumni may say, members of the Bulletin staff know that the magazine has its admirers.

"Most Distinguished"

Probably the most significant of these admirers is the American Alumni council, an impartial organization which annually examines over 140 alumni magazines and selects one as best maintaining a "high level of editorial achievement." In 1948, when the Bulletin was celebrating its 50th year of continuous publication, it received the Alumni Council's award as "the most distinguished alumni magazine of the year" in the United States and Canada.

Uniqueness among alumni magazines was nothing new for the Bulletin, however. In 1948, as is the case today, and as was the case back in 1898 when editor Jerome D. Greene '96 watched the first copy of Harvard's new publication roll off the press, the Bulletin stood almost lone as an alumni magazine completely free of outside support and control.

Although recognized as the official organ of the Harvard Alumni association and the Associated Harvard Clubs, the Bulletin is financially and editorially independent of both these organizations, and of the University itself.

The Harvard Bulletin, Inc., which publishes the magazine bi-weekly during the college year, is a non-profit corporation that is completely self-supporting and has been for all but a few years of its long existence. Admittedly a sort of interlocking directorate exists, with William Bentinck-Smith '37 being the current University official on the Bulletin's board of directors, but no one questions the magazine's spasmodically-asserted right to disagree with any Harvard official it chooses, from President Puscy on down.

The situation is different at Yale, Princeton, and most other American colleges and universities. At New Haven, for example, the Yale Alumni Magazine is published independently t be sure, but usually goes far into the red and needs a yearly subsidy from the university to remain solvent. Princeton, meanwhile, has a complicated system whereby a varying portion of the alumnus's class contribution buys his subscription to the Alumni Weekly, and consequently all Nassau alumni are compulsory subscribers to the publication.

Competes With "Time"

Thus the Harvard Bulletin, in the words of editor Philip W. Quigg of the Princeton Weekly, is "Possibly the only alumni magazine today that has to hawk subscriptions in competition with commercial publications like Time and Look.

Members of the Bulletin staff are quite proud of this autonomy, and repeatedly emphasize that their magazine is in no sense a "house organ of the Dean's office." Joseph R. Hamlen '04, President and Publisher of the Bulletin since 1927, for example, recalls telling more than one University president the magazine could not carry an editorial or news item in exactly the form the president wanted. On the whole, however, there has been little conflict between the Bulletin and the University, and Hamlen characterizes their relationship as that of "pleasant playmates."

But there have been times when life in the playpen wasn't so pleasant. One of the latest of these spats between Massachusetts Hall and Wadsworth House--the old, yellow wood and brick building in the southwest corner of the Yard where the Bulletin's editorial offices are located--occurred in March of 1949, when Bentinck-Smith was editor of the magazine. At that time the University was still over-run with war veterans, and improved attention to the individual student, through such media as advising and tutorial, was sorely needed. In addition, a consistently losing football team and charges of communistic tendencies in the Law School were reaping some unusually unfavorable publicity, and discontenting alumni throughout the country.

"Shocking Deficiencies"

In order to point out these unhappy circumstances and perhaps t inspire a remedy, the Bulletin of March 12, 1949 printed in a prominent position a letter from Hamilton T. Brown '48 entitled: "My Son Won't Go to Harvard." Brown, who had just finished four years at the College after previously attending a state university, found "shocking deficiencies" in the University's Faculty and its undergraduate life, and concluded his letter:

For those who regard prestige, athletics, social life, family tradition, scholarships, and personal convenience as the primary criteria in choosing a college, Harvard College has much to offer. But for the man seeking the best education possible for his undergraduate time and effort... Harvard College, as presently constituted, is not worthy of serious consideration.

Although the Bulletin gave no evidence of agreeing with Brown's sentiments, and indeed, in its next issue carried many replies under the heading: "Some Sons Will Go to Harvard!," high University officials considered publication of the letter extremely ill-advised, and said so privately.

Perhaps the sharpest clash between the Bulletin and Massachusetts Hall policy occurred in the spring of 1950, when the University proposed to build a new Varsity Club.

Should the University build a new Varsity Club with part of the unrestricted legacy of the late Allston Burr? (the magazine asked in a May 27 editorial). The Bulletin feels it should not. There are few matters on which the Bulletin takes issue with the administration, but this is one of them. The project should be abandoned...

Opposition by the Bulletin, together with that of many enlightened alumni and of various other parties, finally succeeded in defeating the new Varsity Club, even though the Corporation had already approved the project and architectural plans had been drawn. The legacy of Allston Burr '89 was used instead to finance the present system of Allston Burr Senior Tutors.

That the Harvard Alumni Bulletin should ever oppose an improvement of the College's athletic facilities might have seemed preposterous, however, to someone reading the publication back near its founding in 1898. For the Bulletin was born with an admitted athletic preoccupation, and in a sense its history has been simply a gradual transition of interests from Soldiers Field and the river to University Hall and Widener.

Two other Harvard magazines, one the brash but impressive creation of an undergraduate and the other the dull official publication of the College administration, had already been unsuccessful as vehicles of University news when the Bulletin began its try. It was formed in 1898 under editor Jerome Greene as the weekly publication of the Athletic Association of Harvard Graduates, a group whose purpose was "to increase alumni interest in Harvard athletics and, as a by-product, to interest promising athletes from the preparatory schools..."

November 7, 1898

The first issue of the Bulletin, which appeared November 7, 1898, gave the following as the new magazine's objectives:

First, to give selected and summarized Harvard news to graduates who want it; secondly to serve as a medium for publishing promptly all notices and announcements of interest to graduates; thirdly to unite graduate and undergraduate interest in all the athletic sports.

The statement of policy added, however, "The Bulletin will not be an athletic paper... in any exclusive sense."

Yet despite this last sentence, and despite Greene's discontent with the publication's athletic affiliation, the early Bulletin was little if not an athletic paper. The very first issue, for example, subordinated its statement of objectives to a congratulation of the football team for defeating Pennsylvania, and the third issue, following a victory over Yale, carried a typical lead editorial urging readers to

... remember that the best way to commemorate our (football) victory will be to get ready with equal vigor for baseball and rowing victories in the spring. Help Captain Higginson on to victory with the same noble support that has been given to Captain Dibblee.

It was very rare indeed in the early years for an issue of the Bulletin to neglect to congratulate, console, or exhort some Crimson athletic team.

Policy Changes

The magazine's policy began to change, however, when John D. Merrill '89 took over its editorship in 1903. To be sure, there was still a preponderance of articles and editorials on athletic subjects, but these pieces now showed an interest transcending the simple necessity of beating Yale every year. The Bulletin staunchly resisted the advent of professional coaching, for example, and delivered the supreme insult to Harvard's athletic chauvinists when, despite heavy criticism, it declared that in the interest of "modesty" it would continue referring to athletic contests as, for instance, the Yale-Harvard game, and not the Harvard game.

Then, in 1907, the Harvard Alumni Association took over sponsorship of the Bulletin from the Athletic Association of Harvard Graduates, and the switch, in the words of Greene, "rid the Bulletin of even the shadow of control by athletic interests."

The magazine had finally broken away from Soldiers Field and the river, there could be no doubt about that. But when John D. Merrill became editor again in 1919 (after having left the job in 1907), it appeared that the magazine's interests might travel right past University Hall and Widener, and end up in the laboratories.

Merrill's second editorship, from 1919 to his death in 1940, has been characterized by Bulletin historians as the period of the "frogs of Guatemala." This epithet does not imply that there ever was a Bulletin article specifically discussing Guatemalan frogs, but only that there might as well have been. For as one scans the issues of this 20-year period, and notices the astonishing frequency of articles reporting esoteric scientific field trips, one gets the distinct impression that "the frogs of Guatemala" would be right at home on the cover of the following issue.

And although the aforementioned frogs never do reach the Bulletin's cover, their African brothers do in the cover article "Hunting Frogs in African Forests," which appeared in the issue of January 18, 1935. The apes, however, made the Bulletin cover twice: once on December 22, 1933 ("The Apes in Animal Sociology"), and again on May 27, 1938 ("The Living Asiatic Apes"). In addition, other esoteric cover articles of the Merrill period featured "The Harvard Observatory at Bloemfontein, South Africa," "'Malaysia.' Its Governments and Physical Beauty," "Collecting Fossil Insects," and "A Way to Control the Gypsy Moth."

Yet all was not frogs during these 20 years, and the Bulletin, by publishing articles like "The Religion of a Scientist" by Kirtley F. Mather, and "A Liberal Education Viewed in Later Life" by brooks Atkinson '17, was gradually establishing a national reputation for distinguished journalism.

Drab Cover

But the Bulletin of 1939 was hidden under a drab, cream-colored cover that usually announced equally drab scientific reports, and distinguished as it may have been, it was drastically losing subscribers. In competition with attractively packaged and styled publications like Time and The New Yorker, the magazine obviously needed a complete brightening, both visually and journalistically; but its staff, accustomed to 20 years of traditionalism, tended to resist any change.

Into this difficult situation stopped publisher Hamlen, characterized by present Bulletin editor Norman A. Hall '22 an the "elder brother" of the magazine's editorial staff. Recognizing both the acute need for a change and the obstacles to be overcome, Hamlen in the summer of 1939 commissioned David T. Pottinger '06, associate director of the Harvard University Press, to design a completely new cover and inside format for the Bulletin. In the fall, Pottinger presented Hamlen with the new magazine he had wanted; the small, stuffy type on the inside had been replaced by an easier-reading style and re-arranged in double-column pages, and the cream cover had given way to a bright red one with provision for--of all things!--a picture.

Unknown to Staff

The following week Hamlen took Pottinger's design still unknown t the magazine's staff to a Bulletin board meeting. "Gentleman," he said, producing the bright trial copy from under the table, "here is the way Alumni Bulletin."

It is typical of the modern Bulletin, which Hamlen inaugurated that day in 1939, that what he called "the new Alumni Bulletin" itself became old-fashioned within two years. Under the leadership of David McCord '21, who replaced Merrill upon the latter's death in 1940, the magazine was again completely redesigned for the fall of '41. In addition, the old athletic weekly was finally made a bi-weekly, and thus the Bulletin took the essential form that it has today.

Bentinck-Smith who became editor when McCord resigned in 1946 and held the post until last winter, brought the magazine more certainly than over into competition with leading commercial publications. His aim, he says, was to make the bulletin combine the news efficiency of Time with the literary flavor of The New Yorker, and his efforts toward that end were officially recognized in 1948 by the Sibley award committee.

As publisher of the Bulletin, Hamlen says he is constantly afraid that some big national magazine will lure away his editor. All of the past several editors could have gotten a job with virtually any magazine they chose, the publisher explains, and he extends this statement to the Bulletin's new editor, Norman Hall. And indeed Hall has already shown that he will maintain, if not improve, the Bulletin's "high level of editorial achievement."

Of the several regular features carried in the Alumni Bulletin today, by far the most popular is the alumni notes. These items, which record marriages, promotions, or births pertaining to the members of each graduated class, are avidly read by alumni, according to editor Hall, because "everyone likes gossip." One cannot mention the Bulletin's alumni notes, however, without mentioning Jane E. Howard. Miss Howard, former secretary and now assistant to the magazine's editor, has painstakingly complied and checked the notes for 32 years. She is known, semi-officially, as "the lady without whom the Alumni Notes would appear under the wrong classes or never appear at all."

Letters Column

Other features in the contemporary Bulletin are a comprehensive and well-read letters department, a column of "antiquarian chitchat" by ex-editor McCord entitled "The College Pump," a university section in which current releases from the Harvard News Office are re-written in a clear, light style and with background information added, an Undergraduate column written by the Bulletin's undergraduate editor about life at the College, and--of primary interest to many alumni--a report on the past fortnight's athletic happenings.

For despite the Bulletin's long and arduous trek away from Soldiers Field and up into the Yard, there are still certain alumni among its subscribers who read only the athletic column, and care only about beating Yale. Happily, however, this group is small, and Bulletin editors find that more and more they can turn away from apologizing for the football team, and devote themselves instead to putting out and improving "the most distinguished alumni magazine" in America