HSA 65th Anniversary Book

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68
SEPTEMBER 1, 1967 –
AUGUST 31, 1968
PRESIDENT
Andrew
Tobias
OFFICES
4 Holyoke St.
993A Mass. Ave.
2 Trowbridge St.
LET’S GO TITLES
• The Student Guide to Europe
AGENCIES
From one book to three
Cumulative student earnings since 1957 exceeded $1
million, and annual administrative expenses neared
$60,000. Gross sales approached $1.5 million for the year, a
record mark that remained unbroken for the next 15 years.
Aided by the extra capital gained from the fundraising
campaign, HSA leased office space on the third floor of
2 Trowbridge St. for the growth and expansion of IGS.
HSA’s territory now included three separate locations
scattered about Harvard Sq., a byproduct of its success
but also, increasingly, a logistical challenge. Headquarters
at 4 Holyoke St. experienced a three-inch flood when
a member of the Porcellian Club lost his squash ball in
HSA’s drainage pipe.
Extension School student Sean Finucane started the Computer Programming and Information Service,
renting three IBM keypunch machines and employing students for the stimulating task of punching cards.
An agency to send students on safaris to New Mexico to hunt mountain lions was proposed and quickly
shot down. The Harvard Bartending Course cost $5, Pat Downey ’68 screened a 10-minute film on the “new
morality” to begin the TV Film Projects agency, and the Harvard Band made fun of HSA during halftime
of the Harvard-Lafayette football game. After ridiculing other campus organizations, the commentator
announced over the PA system: “But we really know who runs things around here.” Reverently, the band
formed “H$A” and commenced playing “Goldfinger.” In an era of social activism and a not-universal
appreciation of capitalism, HSA was not exactly beloved, so President Andy Tobias whipped up a 32-page
pamphlet explaining HSA’s non-evil raison d’être and dropped it at every door in the college.
With the help of a fundraising-induced capital infusion, Let’s Go metamorphosed into the Publishing
agency, producing not one work of editorial genius, but three. True to old-school form, HSA printed 65,000
copies of the original Let’s Go, compiled by 20 traveling editors and including a new section entitled, “The
Traveling Girl.” It was joined by 30,000 copies of the finest piece of literature ever produced by the Western
world: Let’s Go II: The Student Guide to Adventure.
Meant to be a guide to the entire world, this first Let’s Go spinoff
guide added a number of new destinations such as Albania,
Cambodia, Central Africa, “Red China,” Ethiopia, Hong Kong,
India, Japan, Kashmir, Laos, Lebanon, Morocco, Poland, and
Turkey. “This book is a thousand ideas for adventure in Europe
and on three other continents,” it proclaimed. More than 20
students roamed the earth, recounted tales of their adventures,
and passed on the how-to travel knowledge they acquired. Features
• The Student Guide
to Adventure
OTHER TITLES
• How to Earn (a Lot of)
Money in College
included “Winetasting,” “The
Trans-Siberian Railway,”
“The Amazon Jungle,” “The
Monaco Grand Prix,” and
“The Modern Troubadour:
Street Singing in Europe on
No Dollars a Day.” The Vietnam chapter aptly observed that the best way to get to Vietnam
was to join the U.S. Army and suggested that those weary of the museum circuit “keep away
from battles and swamps.” Never to be accused of speaking monotonous brochurese, the book
told it like it was: “Just about no one wants to go to Vietnam these days. Most Americans who
do travel there go with the army and leave as soon as they can.”
Publishing’s final piece of the triptych was Tobias’s brainchild, How to Earn (a Lot of) Money in
College. With the visual aid of humorous cartoons by Richard Deutsch ’69, the book detailed
the various means by which college students could reap small fortunes: financial aid, studentrun
small businesses, term-time and summer employment, shooting mutant butterflies, being
morally handicapped, etc.
WHERE THEY ARE NOW...
Andy Tobias | ’68, MBA ’72
JOBS AT HSA: Salesperson, Rings and Student Calendar, FY65; Editorial Assistant, Let’s Go: The Student Guide to Europe, FY66;
Business Manager, Let’s Go, FY66; Manager, Let’s Go, FY67; President, FY68.
WHAT WAS YOUR TRAJECTORY AT HSA? “Freshman year I sold class rings and ads for the Calendar and worked on laying out
that publication. … Then they gave me Let’s Go to run that summer — and had misplaced the editors for Ireland, Switzerland,
and Yugoslavia, so the first thing I had to do was leave the country for the first time in my life and update those sections. …
Basically, it became my life — WAY more interesting and exciting than my major, Slavic Languages and Literatures (which
essentially meant reading War and Peace in English, in the Cliff Notes). … I loved biking up to 993A Mass. Ave. every day and
working crazy hours there — it was my home, really.”
WHAT DID YOU DO AFTER GRADUATION? “I worked at National Student Marketing Corp., whose President wanted me to
do on 2,000 campuses what we had done at Harvard. I explained that after all those years doing it at Harvard, HSA had racked
up a $27,000 deficit — which would be $54 million over 2,000 campuses. He said we’d do it smarter and hired me anyway. …
With six months to go before I could exercise my options (the stock had climbed from $6 when it went public in April 1968,
and $37 when I joined up, to $140), it turned out the ‘creative accounting’ the company was practicing was really ‘fraudulent
accounting.’ The President of the company went to jail… I went off to Harvard Business School and wrote a book about it.”
WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH YOUR CAREER SINCE? “New York magazine hired me to write about money and business
when I graduated, and I’ve basically never worked a day in my life since. After New York, I had a column in Esquire, then Playboy,
then Time, then Parade, and wrote some books along the way. In 1999, President Clinton basically installed me for a two-year, $1/
year stint as DNC treasurer — which wound up lasting until February 25, 2017. I made $18.”
• Linen
• Publishing
• Catering
• Information Gathering
Service
• Charter Flights
• House Painting
• Fall Concessions
• Student Calendar
• Refrigerator Rental
• Europe by Car
• Rings
• Computer Programming and
• Information Service
• Union News Stand
• Moving
• Summer Calendar
• Stationery
• Birthday Cake
• Fall Blotter
• Magazine-Newspaper
• TV Film Projects
• Watson Rink
• Summer Blotter
• Addressing
and Mimeograph
• Entertainment
HOW DID YOU COME TO FOLLOW SUCH AN INTERESTING CAREER PATH? “I was very lucky. Nothing was planned. I
just fell into things, including that first job at HSA. I wasn’t supposed to have one, needed no financial aid; just happened to be
riding my bike the week before freshman year started, saw a friend from high school, and rode with him to this place he was going
(993A Mass. Ave.) for the job that was part of his student-aid package — and got conscripted on the spot. And loved it.”
20 HSA 65th Anniversary History Book 21