Word: eppse
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When student protestors took over University Hall in 1969, Archie C. Epps III was a "baby dean" in the College administration, closer in age to many of the protestors than to the administrators who called in the police to eject them.
"I decided Harvard gets the benefit of the doubt in close calls," says Epps, who will retire this July from his position as dean of students, a post he has held for the past 29 years. "You can be a conserver of institutions but also have progressive views...Harvard isn...
Epps--who attended the meetings where administrators decided to use police to storm University Hall and eject the protestors--says that while that choice cast a shadow over relations between students and administrators for years to come, many University officials saw it as their only option.
Few thought a takeover would actually occur at Harvard, Epps says. But after hearing a presentation by Professor Archibald Cox '34--later famous as a special prosecutor who investigated Nixon--about similar actions at other schools, the University began to prepare anyway.
This consensus was put into action with no real opposition, Epps says. But it would soon become one of the most controversial events in Harvard's long history.