Word: union
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Today the Union's primary purpose is to feed the freshmen: there is no talk of its becoming an undergraduate club-in fact, the College has even given up most of the rhetoric claiming it unifies the freshman class. As a common eating experience through which the poor and the rich must suffer together, however, it is an indirect force for democracy...
...While the dorm common rooms and the Yard Program have somewhat decentralized an already amorphous freshman activity program, the Union is still the center of most of the purely freshman extra-curricular ventures. The Freshman Council, a relatively powerless group which often attracts a large group of power-minded people, is generally in charge of the Union activities, although actual execution of the programs rests with the Secretary of the Union...
...where a member could obtain free instruction from "a well-known professional." A kitchen, a printing office, and some rooms of the CRIMSON completed this floor. Above in the hall now used as freshman dining rooms, was a living room. An athletes' training table occupied what is now the Union kitchen. Upstairs, a library of 25,000 volumes filled one room, while on the third floor were clubrooms. guest bedrooms. staff bedrooms, and the offices of the Harvard Monthly and the Advocate...
Since Major Higginson intended the Union, like all democratic institutions, to be, self-supporting, its overseers rapidly constructed a system of officer elections and dues to sustain the clubhouse. The Harvard Union offered speakers, pre-game rallies, post-game dances, debates, and discussions to members. The restaurants and snack bar were open all week long, ladies were permitted on weekends, and professors-either guests or members-were welcome anytime. Since Cambridge was a no-license city in those days, students had to go either to a final club or to Boston for "exhilarating beverages." For returning alumni, the Union...
...century wore on, the Union faltered, both socially and financially: by 1912 membership and participation had fallen off drastically. World War I plunged the Union into financial chaos, so that only the firm, paternal hand of the University maintained it through the twenties and into the Depression. But Edward Harkness, author of the House system, was responsible for the Union's final social demise. With the new Houses an undergraduate building was no longer needed: and the University, looking carefully into Major Higginson's will, discovered that the benefactor had made allowances for the failure of his institution...