Class of '71 Views 60's Turmoil As Positive, Mind-Opening Era

When the Class of 1971 were freshmen in the fall of 1967, they still had to wear coats and ties to all meals and sign all female visitors in and out of their dormitories. By the time they graduated, the coat and tie and parietal regulations had been abolished, University Hall had been occupied and the University had been closed by a strike. And Harvard and Yale had played the spectacular 29-29 game.

Even though they didn't receive the standard Harvard education, many members of the Class of 1971 said last week that they valued their stay at Harvard because it opened up their thinking and made them more receptive to new ideas. After their graduation, most graduates went into many of the same professions other Harvard graduates have gone into, but they claim that they brought a new sense of social commitment to their jobs that many other classes hadn't possessed.

"I would've been more at home if I went to Harvard now," Robert C. Garrett '71, a reporter for the Boston Herald-American, said last week. "I don't consider myself arch-conservative, but I was concerned by the lax attitude in terms of education. A lot of the anti-war, counter-cultural protests rubbed off a bad way. People had the feeling that school wasn't that important."

After graduation, Garrett went to graduate school in city planning, with the goal of somehow changing society. "The atmosphere of those years must have rubbed off on me," Garrett said. But he decided that he didn't want that type of career, so he started working at the old Boston Record-American as head office boy. After a year of running errands, Garrett got a break and started writing for the paper.

Garrett has a cynical interpretation of the demonstrations and strikes of the late sixties. "I wonder how much of it was a spring-fever type of thing. There was a lot of wasted time and a lot of apocalyptic thinking when it turned out not to be an apocalypse."

"The ideas people talked about were not all that focused. I can't remember what most demonstrations were about. It shows how profoundly significant it was. There was a lot of bogus stuff," Garrett said.

David N. Hollander '71, former president of The Crimson, concedes that many people probably can't remember the six demands of the 1969 strike, but that the basic ideas behind the demands still flourish. "People still think that Harvard shouldn't eat up Cambridge and drive the workers out. We had an anti-capitalist feeling on a small scale," Hollander said.

Hollander graduated from Harvard Law School in 1974 and practiced for nine months before joining New Times magazine as managing editor. "The effect of those (undergraduate) years was permanent. A handful of us are doing committed political work, and people who became doctors will be committed to giving good medical care."

"There was a tremendous change in attitudes. The attitudes we had then are still the attitudes of students now, but you don't have to sound radical and act violently because the battles have already been won," Hollander said.

Hollander claims that Harvard students were so involved in anti-war demonstrations because many people from Harvard helped plan the war. "For us to be getting all of the benefits of Harvard made us feel incredibly guilty. The war was continually present in our lives. Many of us felt personally responsible for the war. The passion we felt is impossible to explain and feel again. I don't think many of my classmates are going to forget that period.

"We were all so alienated. Harvard seemed so foreign to us and Pusey (former President Nathan M. Pusey '28) was such an unappealing figure. We really hated Harvard but at the same time we loved it. The ambivalence could really be gutwrenching," Hollander said.

The mixed emotions Hollander felt at Harvard didn't prevent him from enjoying college. "I'm delighted I went to Harvard in that period. It was more important for our souls to go to demonstrations than to study for tests. But I wish I had spent less time sitting around in endless bullsessions," Hollander said.

Russell D. Goldsmith '71 sat in his office at Irell and Manella, a law firm in Los Angeles last week, and recalled his four years at Harvard. "Going to Harvard at any time should affect your values," Goldsmith said after being asked whether his values had changed because of the period in which he attended Harvard. "The kind of questioning that went on was basically positive. There was a particularly close examination of the values of individuals, the country and the University. Now, I question what I'm doing and why I'm doing it more. I have a greater perception of government and society, and I learned about the interrelationship between government and society. The period leaves you with a framework with which to judge government, as well as a lingering and vivid historical example of how policy is made and skepticism of what government officials say," Goldsmith said.

Before Goldsmith went to law school and became a lawyer specializing in tax and entertainment law, he worked for the New York City government on an urban fellowship. "Working for New York City reflects some commitment to the values that grew out of that period," Goldsmith commented. "The problem for a lot of people who came away from the late sixties with a heightened concern with current issues is that many are having problems finding channels to utilize this concern. It's harder to be sure what is the right thing to do in different situations. You want to sustain certain personal values. Many people are trying to find a mix between their lives before Harvard and their lives after they entered Harvard," Goldsmith claimed.

Kenneth G. Cross '71 took an alternate route from many other Harvard graduates. After travelling around for a few years after he graduated, Cross and four friends opened up a saloon in northern Vermont. "There are an amazing amount of crazy people here," Cross said last week from Kilgore's Trout Saloon in Montgomery Center, Vermont. "It's a small town--you know everybody." But Cross was not satisfied with his college education. "Education doesn't give you a whole lot to do, and the problems of the city bummed me out, so I came here. Things happen in the town. You create your own interests and follow them."

Now, Cross is supervising the building of a sewer system in the town, which has one street and 600 people. "I still have to drive an hour and a half to go to the movies, but rural America is where I want to live."

Edward P. Atkinson '71 is a freelance carpenter, working on renovating an apartment building he owns in Boston's South End. "I don't have any fond memories of Harvard. It was a mistake for me to have gone there. I did some work in Visual Studies but I couldn't do anything because the professors were more concerned with their outside work."

"I grew more embittered by the fact that the understanding of urban issues at Harvard is not good. If anything is going to happen in the cities, people have to understand them. The main thing is that the professors lack an understanding of the way people live their lives. Nobody can get concerned about social issues with high taxes and street crime and racism. I had the feeling that none of those professors had even been in the city."

Ten days after graduation, Endicott Peabody Jr. '71 went out to Colorado and joined the Colorado National Bank as a management trainee. "There was a lot of ferment and people who were restless and anxious to do something about the Vietnam war in some form," Peabody said last week about his undergraduate stay. "I kind of feel sorry that it happened when I was there or that it happened at all. We got away from the college experience--we were nationally oriented."

"The demonstrations brought the real world into perspective. I'm not sure that my brother (a Kirkland House junior) is really aware of what's happening in the world."

"I'm not sure my values have changed," Peabody continued. "Rather than changing values, it made people stop and think about it and question what was happening. It forced you to listen and evaluate things on your own. In my own case, I'm in a position to look at all sides before I make a decision."

"For the most part, I was glad to be at Harvard then, although it made people so intense that it became more difficult to concentrate on other aspects of college life," Peabody added.

Eugene L. Herzog '71 is graduating from Harvard Medical School this year and plans to do a residency in family medicine. "The demonstrations loosened up my thinking a lot. The strikes were particularly valuable because the school became a lot warmer and people were more open to new ideas," Herzog said last week.

"The war was in everybody's thinking. People tried to stop it or bring about a revolution. Harvard, as an aspect of the American dream, was disillusioning people. Now I'm finding that it is very hard to lead the life you want to lead if you're a thinking person."

"My Harvard education led me into an interesting way of looking at the world," William B. Beekman '71, a freelance screenplay writer living in California, said last week. "I'm a fairly balanced person, but that doesn't help me in the practical world," he continued.

"I went to Harvard with a radical romantic ideology, but SDS quickly turned me off of that. I never trusted people who organized for causes I believed in. Great things have been co-opted by organizing people. When I got to Harvard, I found things pre-packaged and suspicious. We were the beginning of the end."