The Key Hits 50

Vincent Jones '48, one of the founding fathers of Crimson Key, likes to recall a particular afternoon in 1947. "We were all veterans, and one of our gang was graduating. We all went to hear General Marshall give his Commencement speech and thought, 'That was pleasant,' and didn't think much more of it, until we read the newspaper headlines: all about the unveiling of the Marshall Plan. We had heard history being presented and didn't even know it. Starting Crimson Key had something of that in it--not wanting to let history pass by unnoticed."

Nineteen ninety-eight marked the first half century of the Crimson Key Society, five decades of an engaged appreciation for Harvard's past and an interest in its future.

The society began on April 14, 1948, primarily as a welcoming committee for visiting sports teams. Bill Hall '46, manager of the football team, who had seen how other Ivy campuses welcomed traveling teams, recalls, "We wanted to appear as a friendly campus, too." From its founding concept of "being good hosts to visiting teams," the Key soon broadened its focus.

Key members met rival teams at the railway station and ensured that they had a pleasant stay in Cambridge: facilitating dates, and, as an early manual instructed, attending to each player's "whims and wishes, except perhaps whether they prefer whiskey or gin." The Key also drew Harvard's diligent students away from the stacks of Widener to "all-College weekends," devoted to regattas, square dances, and masquerades--good clean fun that occasionally slipped into more bacchanalian behavior.

As weekend parties were phased out in the mid fifties, the Key took on another function: giving guided walks around campus to tourist groups and prospective students. Members also gave tours to freshmen as they applied to the Houses. Membership selection in those days required a stellar performance on a grueling two-hour written exam and an in-depth research project about one of Harvard's buildings. These treatises on Harvard architecture became the foundation for a guidebook, A Walk around Harvard.

Today Key members run Freshman Week, an orientation program that welcomes first-years to Harvard, tempers the pall of placement exams, and eases the tension of starting college. Highlights include an ice-cream bash; a mixer; a talent show displaying gifts both ridiculous and prodigious; and a rendering of Love Story that, if sacrilegious to Ali MacGraw devotees, leaves freshmen rolling on the floor of Science Center D.

The campus tours are also run with an eye toward fun and an appreciation of Harvard. Riad Abrahams '99 considers the tours he gives prospective freshmen the highlight of his Key membership. "You're convincing them to go here and conveying the fact that you've had a great experience for the past three years, and doing it in a sincere way," he says. "I'm sometimes wary of bragging about Harvard, but the truth is we've got a lot to be proud of."

~ Sara Houghteling

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