The Big Party

It is now almost 350 years since Harvard was, absolutely and indisputably, the best institution of higher education in America.

It was the only one.

For many years Americans treated the College with the reverence only bestowed upon such venerable institutions as the British Monarchy and the Liberty Bell. Until the late 16th century, Harvard was a state institution, given special status in the charter of Massachusetts. Until 1870, the governor ordered the closure of business on the day of Harvard's Commencement ceremonies. By 1960, America had placed six Harvard graduates in the White House.

In 1986, the British Monarchy serves more as fodder for gossip columnists than anything else. Colleges and universities across this country attract students and professors who Harvard might otherwise retaining, and any reverence remaining for Harvard is counterbalanced by an equal dose of disdain.

But if Harvard's good old days are found only in the writings of Samuel Eliot Morrison, the concept behind the University's 350th celebration might make you think that Harvard believes otherwise.

Organizers have dubbed the four-day 350th birthday party a "family affair," but don't let their anti-climactic, homespun rhetoric fool you. This shindig has been in the works for over six years and will cost the University well over $1 million. The Prince of Wales and the Boston Pops will be there, even if President Ronald Reagan will not. And up to 40,000 or so undergraduates, alumni and friends of the College will be wined, dined, enlightened and entertained when they descend upon the Yard during the first week of September to take part in the fun.

From the moment the festivities get underway on Wednesday evening, September 3, with a birthday bash on the banks of the Charles, until the giant stadium jamboree Saturday night in Soldiers Field, celebrants will have fun and frolic galore at their fingertips-and all in the name of higher education.

"It's a big smorgasbord of events," says Vice President for Alumni Affairs Fred L. Glimp '50, who chairs the celebration commission's steering committee. Lining up for the smorgasbord of excitement will be 25 to 50 representatives of each College alumni class, selected by their class committees, as well as representatives from all the graduate schools and 50 members of each current undergraduate class, who were chosen at random. "If they want fun and glitz, they can get it," Glimp says.

But Harvard being Harvard, of course, due homage will be paid to scholarship and learning. What Glimp calls "the real meat of the affair" are the dozens of academic symposia to be conducted by the University's 10 faculties.

Glitzed-out revelers will be able to hear Harvard's best and brightest discourse and debate on topics ranging from "Protestantism, Puritanism and the Founding of Harvard" to "The Universe: The Beginning, Now and Henceforth" to "How Plastic Fillings Adhere to Teeth."

"I said we ought to have a good time at it, but we should do more than just get up before the world and say, `Look how wonderful we are!'" says Francis H. Burr '35, the former senior fellow of the Harvard Corporation and chairman of the 350th Anniversary Celebration Commission.

"It would be a mistake for Harvard to pat itself on the back," says Glimp. "We'll have fun and at the same time be intellectually serious." The symposia constitute the serious part of the celebration.

"A friend looked over the list of the symposia and said that if you could attend all of them, it would be the equivalent of a college education," says Thomas W. Stephenson '37. Stephenson is the general secretary of the celebration's administrative staff--the guy in charge of all the nitty-gritty details whose job it is to see that the four-day celebration runs smoothly.

Charles and Ronny

While the symposia and the parties comprise the heart of the 350th ceremony, the convocations are the soul. Continuing throughout the ceremony, the three separate events will feature Prince Charles and other dignitaries, bringing large crowds and the press corp to Cambridge from all over the world and requiring elaborate security arrangements. Conspicuously absent, however, will be President Reagan, who declined an invitation to attend earlier this spring citing his "very busy" schedule.

Eighteen thousand spectators will be able to hear Prince Charles speak on Thursday morning, "Foundation Day," as the representative of Cambridge University, Harvard's mother school. Its not known yet whether Princess Diana will accompany her husband, the bonny prince, but organizers are keeping their fingers crossed.

"I hope to gosh she's coming," says Burr.

If she does, maybe it will take the sting out of Reagan's decision to snub the festivities. President Andrew Jackson paid a visit to Harvard's 200th birthday party in 1836, President Grover Cleveland stopped by for the 250th celebration in 1886, and President Franklin Delano Roosevelt '04 took part in the Tercentenary Celebration in 1936. With Harvard men Donald T. Regan '40 and Caspar W. Weinberger '38 among his inner circle of advisors and planning to attend the ceremony themselves, 350th bigwigs counted on Reagan's appearance at Friday morning's convocation on "The University in a Changing World."

However, the possibility that the President might receive an honorary degree at the 350th precipitated protest among some alumni and faculty members. Cleveland and Roosevelt both were offered honoraries and some faculty members, students and graduates said they felt it would be inappropriate to so honor a man whose policies they deemed harmful to higher education.

The Corporation then seemed to back down, announcing that no honoraries would be handed out. Reagan followed suit, declining the invitation. The news sent 350th organizers scrambling to fill Reagan's slot in the second convocation, perhaps the single most important position in the ceremony. It remains unfilled to this day.

"I would have said all along it was a 50-50 chance," says Burr of a presidential appearence at the 350th. He believes that "a combination of reading about disturbances endemic to academic commencements and terrorism," not a reaction to Harvard's honorary degree dictum, led Reagan's advisors to recommend against his attending the celebration.

"The presence of the President is bound to add something to an occasion whether you like him as President or not," says Burr. "I hope we can find someone sufficently recognized and sufficently interesting--but there is a problem of time. It's hard to get someone of international stature on such short notice. But I hope it won't make that big a difference."

One big difference that Reagan's failure to attend will make, though, is in the Celebration's security budget. If Reagan had attended, Burr says, security would have been ultra tight, and spectators may have had to enter the Yard through metal detectors like those found in ariports. As it is, with Prince Charles and other dignitaries expected, security will be the most costly item in the 350th budget.

"With all the recent terrorist activity, the most expensive thing will be security," Burr says, adding that, "Prince Charles is an obvious target for some groups."

"We're not taking anything for granted," says Harvard Chief of Police Paul E. Johnson. Johnson also says that his department will coordinate its efforts with other police groups, such as the FBI, Scotland Yard and the Metropolitan District Commission.

Glitz and Glee

Celebrants will be able to cap off their daily doses of convocations and intellectual stimulation with a wide array of performances and parties planned for each evening of the celebration. The first big event is Wednesday's party on the Charles. It will feature music and dancing on special barges and on both sides of the Charles, which will be connected by a 600-foot helium arch. The party, which will be open and free-of-charge to the entire Harvard and Cambridge community, will be illuminated by lasers reflected off screens of water.

On both Thursday and Friday nights Harvard's entertainers will also be on display. "The King Stag" will be performed at the American Repertory Theater, and the Erick Hawkins Dance Company will take the stage at the Hasty Pudding Theater. Choral performances and poetry readings, along with a special film compilation of Harvard in popular movies, help round out the evening fun.

But the celebration's event of events is Saturday night's Soldiers Field Celebration. The show is being produced by Tommy Walker, the man who put on the opening and closing ceremonies of the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles. Before it ends in a display of fireworks, the 30,000 people who jam into Soldiers Field will hear the Boston Pops, see several undergraduate performing groups and--if they can make it--witness performances by Jack Lemmon '47 and other famous alumni from the world of entertainment.

Select alumni were offered special "Crimson Circle" tickets for the stadium celebration. A pair of the elite tickets goes for $350 but $300 of that is tax-deductible. Glimp says that the special tickets were offered to those who did a lot of work for the Harvard Alumni Association and Admissions Office, and were not designed to butter up potential fat-cat donors.

"The Corporation decreed early on that there should be no fundraising done in connection with the celebration," says Stephenson. "But, realistically, such an event creates a climate of giving." Similarly, Glimp notes that "anytime you get President Bok, Henry Rosovsky [the former dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences] and Michael Spence [the present dean] going around the country talking to people, it raises the level of interest--its the positive background music to fundraising."

Lots of Parties

Harvard cannot seem to resist the urge to throw itself a big party every 50 years of so. The first such fun-fest occurred in 1836, when 1500 old chaps endured rain in Harvard Yard to drink wine and and hear Oliver Wendell Holmes sing a song in honor of the College's 200th anniversary.

The next party was then tentatively scheduled for 100 years later, in September 1936. But President Josiah Quincy and the centennial celebrants underestimated the need of every second generation or so of Harvardians to let loose in honor of their alma mater. In November of 1886, then, the 250th anniversary of the College's founding was marked in a three-day celebration by 4000 celebrants, 2500 of whom jammed into Sanders Theater to see President Grover Cleveland and Charles William Eliot, then president of Harvard.

September of 1936 saw President James Bryant Conant '14, Franklin Delano Roosevelt '04 and 11,000 other alumni and friends of the University gather to commemorate the College's tercentenary Theater. The 300 was an international event, perhaps the most lavish university party in the country's history, with 2400 scholars from around the world attending along with representatives from 530 universities, colleges and learned societies.

The 350th, for all its hoopla, will not match the grandeur and extravagance of the 300th, organizers insist. "We won't blow our trumpet quite as hard," says Burr.

"I think the committee set up in 1980 to set up the concept for the 350th Celebration felt a 50th did not have quite the stature of a centennial, and they didn't want to repeat the 300th," says Stephenson.

In any case, at the close of 1936's three-day event, President Conant proposed, and the gathering unanimously approved, a motion adjourning the celebration until "the eighteenth of September, 2036." But 50 years short of that date, Harvard is preparing to strike up the band and celebrate, in Burr's words, "350 years of education in America and Harvard's role in it."

As the first president in 150 years not to attend such a celebration might say: here we go again.