Back to School: 1946-'47 in Review

August 1946

A record-size Class of '50 enters and letters are sent warning 292 first-years living within 45 minutes of Harvard that they will be required to commute for the year. Meanwhile, several hundred students from outside the Boston area are housed barracks-style in the Indoor Athletic Building (now the Malkin Athletic Center).

September 19, 1946

In the face of burgeoning enrollment, Harvard tries to accomodate two and a half times the normal number of students in the same length of registration time. Veterans constitute 71 percent of College enrollment.

September 23, 1946

At its first meeting of the year, the Student Council establishes a committee of representatives and members of other student organizations, including Phillips Brooks House and the Crimson, to consider changes in basic Council structure.

September 28, 1946

At the Crimson's first formal football game since 1942, 25,000 spectators see Harvard defeat the University of Connecticut 7-0.

September 30, 1946

As fall term begins, all classes but those in the natural sciences see increased enrollment. Economics A, with 1,092 students, is the College,s most popular elective.

October 3, 1946

An anti-communist bloc is elected to the leadership of the Harvard Liberal Union, ousting four students allegedly tied to the Youth Communist League.

October 22, 1946

The University announces that 82 international students are registered at the College, as a predicted post-war flood of European and South American students does not materialize.

October 30, 1946

Harvard President James B. Conant '14 says he has no plans to run in the 1948 U.S. Presidential race, despite prompting by colleagues. "Somebody is always running me for something," Conant tells The Crimson. "At one time I was No. 7 in the list of America's best dressed men. It must have been a mistake."

October 31, 1946

Under pressure from the Student Council, seven house masters agree to standardize rules allowing parental visits. The Council had complained that "lack of uniformity in regulations from House to House encourages Violations in that small, chronic group of offenders."

November 2, 1946

The Crimson loses its first football game of the year to Rutgers, 13-0, lifting what Boston Whammy" from the team's shoulders.

November 6, 1946

Salaries for College Faculty are increased to $3,000 yearly for full-time teaching fellows and $4,500 for junior Faculty.

November 11, 1946

Thomas H. West Jr. '50, missing for two weeks, notices his own picture in a missing-persons report in a Boston newspaper. The student's discovery ends what he claims was a two-week amnesic attack that took him as far as Jacksonville, Fla., under an assumed name.

November 14, 1946

Appearing before the House Un-American Activities Committee, Paine Professor of Practical Astronomy Harlow Shapley charges Rep. John E. Rankin (D-Miss.) with using "Gestapo" tactics in his management of the committee.

November 20, 1946

Amid a storm of protest, Director of Athletics William J. Bingham '16 defends his decision to limit students to two tickets each for the Yale game, which he predicts will be a sell-out.

November 23, 1946

Despite two quick Crimson touch-downs, Yale defeats Harvard 27-14 in the 63rd annual game. Attendance was so heavy that cars blocked streets for half a mile up Mass. Ave.

November 25, 1946

A. Chester Hanford, dean of the College since 1927, announces his intent to resign from his post in June to resume teaching in the government department. Wilbur J. Bender '27, chief of the Counsellor for Veterans office--responsible for re-orienting students from the war to the University--is appointed to replace Hanford.

December 3, 1946

The Faculty votes to end the 30-year distinction between A.B. and S.B. degrees, and instead will award all graduates beginning with the Class of 1950 the bachelor of arts degree. The Faculty also waives the College's requirement in ancient languages.

December 9, 1946

Trustees of the Harvard Advocate gather in New York City to decide the future of the literary magazine, which stopped publishing in 1943 in the face of considerable debt.

December 12, 1946

President Conant is one of nine prominent scientists and engineers appointed by President Harry S. Truman to the general advisory committee for the Control Commission on atomic energy.

December 19, 1946

S. Douglass Cater '46-'47, a Harvard delegate to the 1946 meeting of the International Student Congress, of the misses allegations by Professor William Y. Elliott that the group is infiltrated by communists.

January 7, 1947

Two hundred experts in government, education and industry gather at Harvard for the opening of the Computation Laboratory, a "modernistic, two-story structure" featuring the 51-foot IBM Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator.

On this date, the Faculty also abolishes the War Service Sciences concentration and creates the Physical Sciences field, toward which fewer military and naval science classes may be taken for credit.

January 9, 1947

The final exam for the fall term's most popular class, Economics A, is rescheduled for an unprecedented 7:15 p.m. time slot due to high enrollment and space limitations. Many students are angered.

January 14, 1947

The Faculty votes to codify customary but unprinted rules governing extracurricular organizations, including required Faculty approval for the distribution of papers and posters.

January 29, 1947

Trustees of the Advocate announce the creation of a four-person committee headed by Donald B. Watt Jr. '47 to bring the magazine back into print.

February 6, 1947

The City of Cambridge installs parking meters for the first time, charging one cent per 12 minutes along Mass. Ave., Brattle Street and Boylston Street (now JFK Street).

February 7, 1947

Reform of the Student Council constitution is halted when final returns of a two-day vote reveal that less than half of the student body have cast ballots. Of those voting, 86 percent support the new constitution. The constitution is then ratified Feb. 13 by an internal council vote.

February 10, 1947

A state-wide hunt begins for Sylvester Gardiner '46, football and varsity crew athlete an son of an ex-governor of Maine, who disappeared Jan. 23. Gardiner's family initially suspects he may have fallen into the Charles River while ice skating. After a four-week, multistate search, two children find Gardiner's body floating in the Boston basin of the Charles with ice skates attached to his feet.

February 18, 1947

Dean Hanford suspends a College rule prohibiting personal solicitation of funds in the houses and dormitories, allowing the Food Relief Committee to collect funds for relief efforts in countries including Greece, Poland and China. The campaign is supported by folk singer Pete Seeger '40, who gives a free concert in Emerson Hall two weeks later.

March 5, 1947

The eight-year-old Bureau of Supervisors in renamed the Bureau of Study Counsel, Clarifying the role of the agency in offering student guidance services.

March 8, 1947

Two black students are halted at the entrance of the Club 100, a Cambridge social club, and asked by the owner to present "membership cards." Twenty-one days of student picketing and protest later, the owner signs a 126-word statement asserting that "race, creed of color" will not keep patrons out of the club.

March 11, 1947

After a successful six-month experiment, the Faculty announces plans for the rapid expansion of the General Education Program--the precursor to the Core Curriculum--including the addition of eight new courses.

March 26, 1947

"Speak for Yourself," a musical-comedy set in a New England Puritan settlement, is the first Hasty Pudding show to open in five years. "Both the law of averages and traditional Harvard theatrical on Holyoke Street," The Crimson writes.

April 15, 1947

The Faculty votes to consider the state of national emergency, in effect since April 1941, terminated. All emergency regulations adopted in the interim are dropped. Full courses are reinstituted and February examinations again become mid-years.

April 24, 1947

The College announces that veterans and non-veterans fared equally well scholastically in the fall semester, with 30 precent of veterans and 28.5 percent of non-veterans achieving a Dean;s List average.

May 8, 1947

In a Student Council poll, students overwhelmingly support a "utilitarian" memorial to Harvard's World or statue. Eventually plaques are erected along the south wall of Memorial Church listing the names of the deceased.

May 17, 1947

The University's endowment reaches $162,000,000, a University official tells an Associated Harvard Clubs convention in Milwaukee.

May 23, 1947

Final plans are released for Lamont Library, where "functional design will be the keynote." Construction of the library, which will be closed to Radcliffe students, is set to begin in June.

June 5, 1947

Secretary of State George C. Marshall, Veterans Affairs Administrator Omar N. Bradley and atomic researcher J. Robert Oppenheimer '26 are among 12 awarded honorary degrees, as 769 seniors--who entered Harvard in three stages--march in a tradition-laden 296th Commencement ceremony.