Sex and Humor at Harvard

On Friday, an indeterminate number of Cliffies living at the Harvard Houses opened their registration folders to find an admonishing memorandum from a morals squad.

Now Harvard has many committees. But the "Alumni Committee on Undergraduate Comportment" is not one of them.

The letter, claiming that Square pharmacists had confidentially reported an increase in the sale of contraceptive devices, urged that Cliffies "restrain the baser instincts of their menfolk."

"With your help," the letter continued, "the term 'A Radcliffe Lady' may someday connote the excellence of character and breeding which has come to be associated with the term 'A Harvard Gentleman'."

Marion Belliveau, associate Registrar of the College, said Monday that "the letter is evidently a joke." She said she assumed that students working with the Registrar had quietly inserted the mimeographed letter into arbitrary Radcliffe folders.

Though the incident has all the dimensions of a Lampoon escapade, 'Poonies were not amused.

Frederick D. Weil '73, Lampoon lbis, denied Monday that his cohorts had prepared the jeremiad.

"It's a bad joke. We have something better planned for later," he said.

The letter is signed by the non-existent "Franklin Jefferson Adams IV '22." The closest name in Harvard's Alumni files is, Franklin Stanley Adams '19, of Paducah, Ky.

When asked Monday to comment on the letter, the real Adams said, "I would suspect that women and men living together in domitories has contributed to the decrease in moral standards." But, he added with a merry chuckle. "I've been retired for quite a number of years and that's only my opinion.