Alumni Share Highlights of Past Harvard-Yale Contests

It wasn't too long ago that Harvard-Yale game was a premiere social event at Harvard. The Game inspired school spirit and ignited an age old rivalry. Alumni who return to campus each year are drawn not only by this year's contest, but by the significance of what once was.

Make no mistake, times have changed. For much of The Game's history, there were no Harvard women representing their alma mater in the stands--those in attendance came from Radcliffe. Male Harvard students twenty years ago dressed up and brought dates to The Game, which played the role of both sporting event and social activity.

Few considered staying home.

"It was the thing to do," Thomas F. Myles '37 said of the event in a recent interview.

The Game takes on a different meaning for more recent alumni, who are familiar with college football as a contest that draws national attention rather than as an event associated with a college and its spirit. Alumni from this era recall the social trappings of the contest and traditional spirit rousing rallies the night before.

"As a freshman I remember pre-game rallies on the steps of the athletic center," said Marlowe A. Sigal '52. Sigal recalled how the Harvard football coach at the time would attend the rally to inspire the crowd and that his greeting would be followed by student renditions of traditional fight songs.

But The Game was equal parts sporting and social event, a chance for students to dress up for a date with friends. As with most Harvard traditions, there was protocol.

"The Harvard-Yale game was a social event and one took a date. One dressed for the game. Coats [and] ties were quite typical," said Sigal.

Myles remembered that trains would come up from New York, carrying mostly alumni headed for The Game.

"The people coming off were beautifully dressed [some] wearing mink coats," he said.

After the game, students occupied themselves with a different activity.

"Fifty years ago it was a sport to tear down the goalpost. They were fairly easy to tear down, being made of wood," Sigal said. "what a dangerous sport that was.

Uprooting the goalposts became an inter collegiate contest in itself. According to Gus B. Lindquist '44, "There was always a fight for the goal post. One would defend it, the other would fight for it."

Once the goalpost were down, the post game celebrations would get underway. Myles recalled that students and their dates would go back to the Houses for cocktails, and then to dinners and dances.

"We Just had a grand time," he said.

"There were hundreds and hundreds of parties in the Houses and in the dorms," Sigal said.

Myles also remembered festive student gatherings after The Game.

"There were dances and we had big bands there, one after another," he said. "We just made a great night of it."

At The Game, of course, the object was to beat the Bulldogs. This involved taunts shouted across thee field from both sides. The rivalry has not faded for alumni. Sigal said it has "pretty much been a constant over the years. I can't really say it's changed."

Lindquist expressed a different view, nothing the importance of context. In the '40s, he said, "There was a much greater interest in rivalry," although he said he sees the rivalry in a milder from among students today. The importance of the rivalry, alumni said, is linked to the strength of The Game as a tradition.

"Yale was an incredibly hard fought game, but it was clean," said Thomas G. Aubin '88 a former football player. "There was respect for the people one the Yale sidelines," he said.

Aubin remembers the 1987 game well. Harvard was up 14-10, put Yale was driving down the field, going for the winning touchdown. The quarter back pitched the ball to the running back. There was a tackle, then a fumble, Harvard recovered the ball and was able to run out the clock. Harvard won the game and the Ivy League title.

"It was only the second or third time Harvard and Yale played where the winner was going to be the champion," said Aubin, who made the winning tackle.

With a seasonably large crowd, The Game makes memories.

"When someone would break off [on] a lone run of 30, 40 yards, the roar of the crowd was amazing. You don't hear that in other games," said Shaunessy. "The way the yelling and

But despite students' gripes about finding andusing typewriters, seasoned administrators saymembers of the computer generation don't know howlucky they are.

Many say the ease of editing and formattingtext that a computer allows has above all extendedthe amount of time students have to write papers.

According to Director of the Science CenterDear R. Gallant '72, the process of writing acollege paper was not as simple as sitting down infront of a PC at midnight and banging out amasterpiece.

He says the real work used to occur after hefinished drafting the text in longhand.

"Actually typing the paper was a bighurdle--and you had to be reasonably conscious todo it," Gallant says. "You couldn't save thatuntil 4 a.m. if you wanted it to look at allneat."

For greenhorn typists prone to mistakes, Kemplesays typing up a paper was especially frustrating.

She says the excitement that arose fromfinishing the composition quickly wore off whenshe sat down to type it.

"Just to type one piece of paper,double-spaced, I always allotted 20 minutes," shesays.

But Kemple says catching and correcting errorsposed an even greater challenge than the timeconstraint. Although Eraseable Bond paper alloweda typist to erase an error with a pencil eraser,the process of fixing typos was nonethelessdifficult.

"You could erase easily but getting the paperback into [the typewriter]" was tough, Kemplesays. "I would clog up--ruin--typewriters becauseI made so many mistakes."

Even with the ability to erase, AssociateDirector of the Office of Career Services Susan M.Vacca '76 says excessive mistakes meant a lot ofwasted time. To avoid such squandered effort, shesays the typist had to plan well, especially inanticipating footnotes that required specificplacement.

"If you made too many messy errors on one page,it was gruesome and you had to retype it," Vaccasays. "Once your margins were set, they were set."

The challenges associated with typing a regularlength essay were com pounded in the case ofsenior theses. Kemple says that as a referencelibrarian, she often saw large groups of studentspacked into one of the Hilles typing rooms, allworking together to type up a friend's thesis.

And technological advances didn't benefit theaverage undergraduate for some time. As Vaccarecalls, the College maintained strict guidelinesprohibiting the use of Erasable Bond paper fortheses.

Acknowledging computers' technologicalsuperiority, many say there's just somethingspecial about typing out a letter on old SmithCorona.

"I don't see how anybody would prefer atypewriter," Kemple says. "[But] it is that sortof aesthetic experience. There's something verynostalgic about it."

Gallant, who has been collecting uniquetypewriters for about tow decades, says hiscollection now numbers almost 20 machines. He saysusing a typewriter forces the writer to pay closerattention to the task at hand.

"It seems to me that one writes at a much moremeasured pace," he says. "You want to form yourthoughts more carefully before putting them on thepage. You're engaged in a more sensual mechanicalprocess."

But Vacca says that best of all, typists werefree from the constraints of a computer's whims.

"There were no hard disk crashes," she sys. "Ifyou could hit the keys, you got copy.