'The Adjudicator of the World'

Last year Harvard received letters offering it religious diatribes or unsolicited individual world views, imploring it to endorse a chain letter, inquiring on the best method to do a math problem, and requesting to use its contacts in the right wing to start a revolution--in addition to routine pleas for a "little chunk of your large endowment." They all made their way to the office of Jim Ball, a public information officer in Harvard's News Office.

"Some of them are funny, some are mystical, some are sad, and some of them are frightening," says Ball of his collection of over 100 letters, adding "I've always wanted to check whether their arrival coincides with any natural phenomenon like a full moon."

Ball's file would be empty if Harvard's name was not so recognizable in mailrooms around the country. One letter from Lagos, Nigeria was addressed "Harvard University, Harvard, USA." When it finally arrived, it contained pieces of paper on which "15,000 Holy, Holy, Holy I am Holy Jesus Christ 15,000" had been written on each line. Another headache for the post office must have been the envelope from Cedar Rapids with "Harvard University. Seven County Georges" scrawled illegibly on the front Appropriately, the sender was asking Harvard for instructions in catching pigeons--presumably carrier pigeons

Sometimes, however, the problem extends beyond illegible or insufficient addressing. One correspondent sent his text from Canada to "The Social President and Principals of Socially Institutionalized Social Education Social System and All Other Social Leaders of 'Pressure Disparity' Harvard University, Cambridge. "The sender stressed that his letter was "personal"; it contained what the News Office considers one of the stars of the collection--a thirty--five page treatise on the world with pages Scotch taped together to form a scroll

As Marvin Hightower, who took care of the file before Ball, says, "People from all over just write categories: requests for information, advice or money from Harvard, religious tracts, and a

The letters can be divided into three broad categories: requests for information, advice or money from Harvard, religious tracts, and a kind of rambling of which Hightower says, "reading it at the beginning you feel like you're in the middle of nowhere and at the end it's in the middle of nowhere and you're none the wiser for it being written."

People write Harvard, Hightower believes, "because they think that we have people who take care of the problems of the world."

Indeed, a man from Osawatomie, Kan., hoping that Harvard would fill one such expectation, asked. "Please write me a letter back and let me know something." To prove that he was somewhat qualified, he sent along a three-page algebraic proof and a greeting: "Best of luck in football."

A citizen from Burbank, Calif, had a different request: Dear Harvard Teacher: I wish to have my license back from graduating and a diploma degree plus law book. "He added that he needed this so he could return to what he called his law practice.

The public is also interested in a wide range of trivia. For instance. "Would Harvard University investigate the year of J.P. Morgan graduating from Harvard University?" "Who owns Harvard University?" and "Can you also send me a catalog listing and describing all the products which Harvard University will sell me or students....I am a friend of the Kennedy family'"

Other interested parties write with an eye towards relieving Harvard of some of its financial resources. One gentleman asked for one million dollars to collect butterflies He adds, "You're a big, strong University, you can could stand the strain of lowering one million dollars down here [Although] ropes ought creak a bit, sweat might run."

Once in a while, a job applicant thinks he can circumvent the selection mechanism by going straight to the source. One such overachiever from the state of Washington was a man who enclosed three newspaper clips of the exploits of three different people He claimed to be all three of the cited individuals and asked for proper employment within the University.

Other such proposals come in occasionally such as that of the New Haven doctor who reported his wife's belief that "the greatest tragedy. The Biggest Mistake you ever made in your 200 year history" was granting the degree of Doctor of Philosophy A letter from San Francisco proudly announces that "Home Putterbaugh, graduate of Harvard Law, got the idea to be an attorney from me"

Sometimes these missives hit close to the mark One post card expounds: "It is interesting to note that it appears that Harvard has finally become the HAVEN OF REFUGE for discarded politicians" Other such thinkers have sent a number of theories for Harvard consumption, for instance. The Gold Arthritis Theory, the astrology proof theory. On Education of Minors, and the Jewish leukemia theory (offered by a self-proclaimed "Atomic Kid").

The final category of requests views Harvard as an alternate judiciary system

Currently, it could be said that two cases are pending in the Holyoke Center file. One such Harvard appeal is a poem sent to the University to publish "because it has been censored everywhere else." Another is from a prisoner who would like Harvard to take up his appeal for "a victim of an act of Communism or Marxian Socialism." However, the latter appellant gives Harvard another option: "If you have no interest in this matter then please send me the address of the New York Times. Thank You."

The Times is the subject of yet another Harvard postcard, though in a less flattering light. "The Marxist-Socialist-liberal New York Times is a treacherous brainwasher that can be dangerous to your mental health"

Although many of these letters can be brushed off as aberrant humor. Hightower asserts that there is a limit to what one can just chuckle about "Some of the letters are genuinely sad, because in many cases you can read between the desperation in the message by the way the word is put down on paper"

Much of what fills the file relates in some way to religion. However, the bulk of that mail is in coherent Two letters outlining societal do's and don't's are signed by Jesus Christ and the Messiah respectively The latter correspondent prophesies that on the Monday following the Resurrection. Millicent Fenwick will become President and Alan Alda will become the Secretary of Radio TV

Harvard also received "A Prayer for Luck" which was supposed to bring "good luck within four days frin receiving this letter, providing you send it back out." The University apparently did not send it back out A no-strings-attached offer was also made in a pamphlet titled "The Triumph of Christianity," which "increases buying power 50% and provides a PhD education" by abolishing the Federal Reserve and the income tax.

The News Office makes no effort to understand the "rambling" letters. One, written in multi-colored inks, is addressed to "Former Associates of J. Edgar Hoover." It is a disorganized discussion of mental illness making as much sense as the random change of ink color.

There are also multiple copies of an address book. On the back of each sheet is an address of either a University of California Berkeley professor or an United Nations consulate. Pencilled in for March 5 is "Middlesex Court next" at 9:00 am and "Harvard cheats" at 6 00

Other confusing missives include a copy of a mailgram which reads 'semi-castration saves' and a postcard with several Massachusetts citizens and stores in those towns written haphazardly The all time confounder, however, belongs to a postcard which only has "ATM" written in the middle of the card and "BPX" in the bottom right corner

There is, however, the occasional clever or intentionally funny letter to Harvard that restores, some faith in humanity The Harvard Gazette once had 1 photo of a Houston area development map which was using some Harvard Square area names for streets. An observant, clever, or bored writer indicated to the News Office that 10 of 15 of the Harvard names were on dead end streets

Nothing, however, will rival the day that Ball opened a package addressed to Harvard and found only black rosary beads and a sweat sock "When I first got this. I wasn't sure whether there was something had inside like poison. You never know what's in the letters," he says.

Other memorable enclosures have come to his office. A woman once sent two items: an empty envelope from the Alabama Department of the Treasury and a blank white envelope. A four-page collage of magazine clips was the interesting enclosure of another letter but it was upstaged by the envelope with 22 different U.S. stamps including a 1/2c. Yet another multimedia package has been contributed by Heaven on Earth, a society that has been in touch with UFOs and has produced a casette tape detailing its contact: with the alien beings. Both Bell and Hightower enjoy being the receptors of Harvard's stranger mail. As Ball says, "It's interesting to see what's going on out there"