The Year Ahead: Less of the Same

January

President Bok dramatically intervenes in the contraceptives crisis, taking condoms out of the hands of HSA. "Drop by after supper and we'll talk it over," Bok tells Freshmen. "If I'm not around, they're in my top bureau drawer," in a stirring inaugural address. President Nixon calls for "the middlization of America" and as a first move renames the Supreme Court building the "Burger Palace." Harvard Treasurer George F. Bennett ends the problem of his succession when executors of his will reveal he has bequested his son to the University. But IRS agents grab over half of Bennett Jr. in estate taxes. Professor James Q. Wilson is put on disciplinary probation when it is discovered that the Resolution on Rights and Responsibilities was written by a termpaper company.

February

Congratulating Harvard School of Public Health Dr. Robert P. Gever on his discovery of a totally synthetic blood substitute for rats, President Bok admits that he is not surprised. "I'm totally synthetic myself," Bok adds. In an elaboration of his report on the unimportance of integration in education, Christopher Jencks concludes that in fact all education is unimportant. "People are like sheep," Jencks tells reporters gathered around him on the steps of St. Paul's Church, "God will tell us what we ought to know." While Dean Dunlop grants Zeph Stewart an extension to research further his reportion cohabitation in the Houses. Master Stewart airs preliminary findings that cohabitation has been cut in half in those rooms of Lowell House women where peepholes were installed. "I think it's a wonderful innovation," Stewart explains. Now these girls can choose their partners."

March

Supreme Court Justice William Q. Douglas travels to Cambridge to read members of the Signet Society passages from his new book about a mild mannered Maine river that is forced to use guns to defend its constitutional rights. In a lively introduction, the Society's First Woman President Ernestina Rathborne reminds the Associate Justice that the Signet is "neither a male chauvinist organization not an exclusive final club, neither a ham sandwich nor a lampshade, but rather Harvard's literary eating society." After the dinner Douglas and Rathborne elope to help a lonely Alaskan mountain defend its freedom of speech, Harvard Treasurer George F. Bennett Jr. urges the University to divest itself of its state and municipal bonds. "These bonds yield 4 1/2 per cent and 5 per cent respectively," Bennett explains. "That's an obvious conflict of interests." President Nixon announces that he is giving up the Paris Peace Talks for Lent.

April

Synthetics specialist Dr. Robert P. Geyer tells alumni gathered in New York. "If Derek Bok did not exist, we could easily make him." Bowing to Senate pressure that he appoint a Grade A Supreme Court Justice to represent America's 22.3 million Grade A citizens, President Nixon nominates Professor Paul A. Freund to fill Douglas's seat. "Not only will my decisions be liberal," Freund assures Court scholars, "they will be easy." With peace negotiations in their summer recess, Bunnies at the Paris Playboy Club take time out to vote Dr. Henry A. Kissinger '50 the "Piecemaker of the Year." In its first report, the Advisory Committee on Shareholder Responsibility (ACSR) calls the CRR "a bad investment" and demands that the University divest itself of all Glen Bowerstock.

May

President Bok appoints Claude Levi-Straus to be the New University Architect. "We need a good Structuralist around here", Bok explains. "Now that we've built Gund Hall, maybe Dr. Levi can tell us what it's for." In an uncharacteristic display of independence, the Senate erupts in a barrage of catcalls and Bronx cheers until Spiro Agnew and a phalanx of Sergeant-at-Arms convince Congressional spitoons to turn on their former masters Frank Fisher, director of the Office of Career Services and Off-Campus Learning releases a report entitled What the Harvard and Radcliffe Class of 1973 Wants to Do When It Grows Up. The new study shows that 96 per cent of the class eventually plan to go to graduate school, 98 per cent intend to be President of the United States "or First Lady," and 99 per cent expect to be "rich and famous." On a more sombre note, the report concludes that the remainder have already resigned themselves to Harvard professorships.

June

Explaining his new discovery at a symposium on artificial life, Dr. Robert P. Geyer describes the synthetic rats blood as a "milky solution of highly inert flurocarbons and industrial emulsifiers--in fact, not unlike Derek Bok." In a protracted game of double or nothing with Kingman Brewster at the New York Yale Club, Harvard Treasurer George F. Bennett Jr. loses the University's endowment. Posing as a tub resting on its own betters, Bennett is choose to be a contestant on Monty Hall's Let's Make a Deal, where he swaps the Harvard Classes of 77-80 for what's behind certains two and three--the Departments of Justice and Labor. "I am neither a male chauvinist organization nor an exclusive final club," former Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas tells a stunned commencement audience, "nor is Paul Freund." Honorary degrees go to miler Jim Ryus (". . .a credit to his race. . .") and City Councilman Alfred E. Velluci (". . . while a less hearty warrier could not have pursued his attempts to turn the Yard into a parking lot and the Lampoon into public favatories, he has persevered until his visions were a reality. . .").

July

President Nixon tells the Mt. Kisco, New York International War Crimes Tribunal that while he did order bombs dropped on North Vietnam, he "didn't know they were loaded." "I am a Quaker by religion," the President explains. Across the country. Americans mob bookstores to buy a gruesome book documenting loss of limbs in Southeast Asia entitled. A Farewell to Arms. The first number of True Romance Languages, an intradepartmental magazine, stirs up mid-summer passions at the Faculty Club. Doris Kearns fictionalizes her biography of Lady Bird Johnson The Early Years and retitles it Tell me that you Love Mr. Dwight Le Merton Bolinger, AB, AM, PhD.

August

President Nixon tells Indians occupying the Bureau of Indian Affairs to clean up and get a job. "There is no place for us in American Society," claims aborigine spokesperson Jane Fonda. "That's what the Washington Redskins were saying five years ago." Nixon replies, "and look where they are today," F. Skiddy von Stade '38 observes that there "would be no issue at all" about equal admissions if Radcliffe girls were "four times more promiscuous." A. Edward Heimer '49 Master of Eliot House, derides the suggestion as "an impossibility" but L. Fred Jewett '59 decides to use it in the last minute advertising attempt to recruit the Class of 77. "Have we got a Fall for you!" Harvard posters tell prospective freshmen. Fingered by svelt actress Jill St. John, Dr. Henry Kissinger '50 testifies before the Rowayton, Conn., International Sex Crimes Tribunal. "I vas only following orders," Kissinger tells miss St. John.

September

President Nixon sends a telegram to Ambassador Daniel P. Moynihan in New Dehli: WHILE YOU ARE THERE COULD YOU HANDLE THE BUREAU OF INDIAN AFFAIRS STOP HOW IS THE WHETHER STOP IT IS FINE HERE STOP THE PRESIDENT. Testifying before a crowded Congressional committee, Synthetics specialist and rat expert Dr. Robert P. Geyer reminds the representatives, "Rats might be under control but Derek Bok is still at large!" In his long overdue report on cohabitation, Lowell Housemaster Zeph Stewart finds that "only about one out of every 3.5 students sleeps in a room not her own." "The statistics belie the insignificance of the problem," Stewart concludes, "Every student I talked with admitted that they really only slept on the living room sofa, or on the bedroom carpet, or platonically outside the covers--in all, just 'showing-off."

October

"The Lord is my shepherd," Christopher Jencks tells Freshmen gathered in Sanders Theatre, "I shall not want." Asked about his strategy this year, Coach Joe Restic, radical theoretician of Soldiers Field, explains his theory that "not only is the best defense a good offense, but the best offense is a good offense." Questioned about his team's chances. Restic confides in the journalists "his conviction" that "on any given Saturday, any team can beat any other team." "Luckily," Restic observes, "all our games are on Saturday this year." President Nixon proclaims Cambridge, Massachusetts, the "National Halloween Disaster Area." Cambridge returns the compliment.

November

A much aged and saddened Dr. Robert P. Geyer tells reporters that John Lindsay's mayoralty defeat was not only a tremendous setback to synthetics and to him personally, but an irreparable loss for rats the world over. "If you won't nullify Rat Control." Former Justice William O. Douglas tells the Supreme Court, "at least grant these rodents the right to lawful assembly." After the bearing Douglas confides at a press conference: "Now they want to control rats, next it'll be the Jews--you know what that means." The elder justice returns to Alaska to write a book about a liberal-thinking rat that is forced to bite ghetto children to defend his constitutional rights. President Nixon tells a Lake Forrest, Illinois Grand Jury investigating Federal complicity in Vietnam war crimes, that to reveal his sources would violate his rights as a published author.

December

In an article on the Op-ed Page of The New York Times, David Landau '72 defends Dr. Kissinger's "tardiness" in ending the war. "Although Kissinger has a big brain," Landas writes, "he is semi-human like the rest of us." In a citywide ecology dragnet Cambridge police arrest six staff members of the Harvard University Gazette and book them for "willful, premeditated and repeated pollution of the area with noxious and pointless litter." Collapsing in the face of police interrogation, Harvard Publicity Director Deans Lord admits that Derek Bok, Henry Kissinger and Patrick Moynihan were her creation. "We needed some cheap notoriety," Lord sobs. "Not every experiment is a successful one." In an ecumenical Christmas Eve gesture, President Bok and Christopher Jencks hold a joint press conference and in union chant: "We forgive those who trespass against Us. For Ours is the Power and the Kingdom and the Glory, for ever and ever, in Heaven as it is on Earth, Amen."