September 4 – Harvard

We decided to venture outside of downtown Boston. We travelled across the Charles River north to the town of Cambridge Massachusetts which is the home of Harvard University.

As we exited the subway system, we signed up for an escorted tour of the campus by a graduate student. Our guide was a recent graduate master student in education. His area of expertise is how to reduce economic inequities caused by disparity in education. He hopes to complete a research project this year and then return to his home in England and get his doctorate at Oxford.

Our tour started with a short history of the university.  Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States. By the 19th century, Harvard emerged as the most prominent academic and cultural institution among American elite.

Over the 20th century, as its endowment grew and prominent intellectuals and professors became affiliated with the university, Harvard University's gained a reputation as one of the world's most prestigious universities. The university's enrollment also underwent substantial growth, a product of both the founding of new graduate academic programs and an expansion of the undergraduate college.

Harvard alumni, faculty, and researchers include 188 living billionaires, eight U.S. presidents, 24 heads of state and 31 heads of government,

While women were allowed to take Harvard classes starting in 1943, they officially attended and graduated from Radcliffe. It was 1963 before Harvard degrees were awarded to Radcliffe students for the first time. In 1975 Harvard and Radcliffe merged.

We were taken around the university and shown many of the important buildings on the campus. These include Memorial Hall, the Science Center, Memorial Church, Widener Library and University Hall.

What was more interesting were the Harvard traditions.

The Johnston Gate which leads to Harvard Yard has an interesting tradition. As a student, you enter once on your first day at the university and only exit through the gate when you graduate.

It is a tradition to urinate on the statue of John Harvard.

On the Friday of reading week, students will go to the Old Yard, strip and run around the Old Yard yelling a primal scream.

To silence the church bell in the Memorial Church from ringing at 8:30 each morning engineering students stole the 14-ton bronze bell from the church’s bell tower and moved it to the Old Yard lawn.

Harvard has two campus publications. The Harvard Crimson is their newspaper, founded in 1873 and the Harvard Lampoon which is an undergraduate humor publication founded in 1876. As to be expected there is an intense rivalry between the two, which has evolved into practical jokes being played on each other. It usually involves stealing something of historical significance from the other side.

On top of the Lampoon’s castle is a statue of an Ibis. It is considered sacred by the Lampoon staff. As far back as 1930, this statue has been stolen by Crimson staffers. The conflict was furthered escalated by the theft in 1953 of the Ibis statue and its presentation as a gift to the government of the Soviet Union during the start of the cold war. It was only after John Updike and other Lampoon staff kidnapped the editor of the Crimson paper that the USSR returned the statue.

The President of the Harvard Crimson has a special chair, which has been used many American presidents to-be and other dignitaries when assuming the responsibilities of this prestigious job. The theft of this chair by Lampoon staff has occurred on many occasions. Conan OBrien was involved in one of these pranks. On other occasions it has ended up on the Jimmy Fallon show and has been taken to Trump Tower as a fake endorsement of Donald Trump.

Harry Widener died on the Titanic while trying to bring a Gutenberg Bible and other valuable books to the university library. The family donated the money to expand and fund the enormous library named in his honour.  The library has 57 miles of shelves. One of the conditions of their generosity was that all undergraduates had to pass a swimming test, so that they wouldn’t drown like Harry did.

Ice cream is served at every meal in cafeterias as a memorial to Harry Widener.

This is the last day of our wonderful vacation. I will update the final blog in a couple of days.