HSA 65th Anniversary Book

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JUNE 1, 1972 –
MAY 31, 1973
PRESIDENT
Arthur
Segel
OFFICES
4 Holyoke St.
2 Trowbridge St.
8 Holyoke St.
A year of changes and challenges
Plans were laid to sell condoms in the Union News Stand after the Supreme Court overturned a
Massachusetts law forbidding the sale of contraceptives. At a price of three for 25¢, HSA’s condoms cost
one-third as much as elsewhere and spared many an amorous freshman the schlep to the nearest pharmacy.
Concerned by the amount of controversy and attention garnered (including protests and articles in the
Boston Globe and Wall Street Journal), the Board of Directors decided to nix the venture in order to “avoid
adverse publicity.”
Still plagued by medical issues, Andrew Nelson bid farewell to HSA and was replaced by Brad Howe as
General Manager. Howe, a former Linen and Europe by Air manager, recent Harvard Business School
graduate, and at the time Harvard Director of Student Employment, took office on February 22, 1973. As
Dusty Burke had years before, Howe split his time between HSA and the Student Employment Office.
In order “to increase operating efficiency and expand or begin new agencies, thereby creating more job
opportunities,” HSA launched its second fundraising campaign. With a rather specific goal of $96,208, the
campaign’s objectives included the purchase of three floor waxers and eight vacuums.
After the university agreed to a 10-year loan of $104,000, HSA severed its 14-year-old relationship with
the Gordon Linen Company, then purchased mountains of linen, the machinery to clean it, and a truck to
deliver it. The Laundry Plant officially came into the HSA fold. Located behind Harvard Stadium at the
corner of Western Ave. and North Harvard St., the plant employed 30 students as foremen and machine
operators.
In order to consolidate operations, HSA leased office space adjacent to its traditional headquarters at 4
Holyoke St. In April 1973, HSA moved those agencies operating at 2 Trowbridge St. and opened shop at 8
Holyoke St., the previous location of a barber shop and the Tiger Eye Jewelry Shop. Travel, Europe by Car,
and Rings moved in the direction of increasing professionalism, all acquiring street-level retail space for the
first time.
A whole lotta shakin’ was going on: in the basement of the Hotel Continental, patrons grooved at HSA’s
Good Life Coffee House on weekend evenings. Catering launched its Wine Appreciation Course, teaching
the hidden arts of oenology. Charter Flights metamorphosed into Travel Services, quickly becoming the
largest distributor of ISICs on the East Coast outside New York City. Brahmin pearl-clutchers called the
police on House Painting employees who were sitting in a circle, half-naked and stoned, on the lawn of a
client’s house in tony Brookline, the door off its hinges but the paint fresh. The beleaguered agency died after
painting itself $15,000 in the red.
Unfortunately, brooding clouds of fiscal troubles darkened the skies. In its worst showing to date, HSA lost
more than $50,000 on the year. Doubts emerged as to HSA’s ability to survive as a self-sustaining enterprise.
The Oenophilist’s Lament
In its historic debut, the thumbpick logo dominated the dark-blue cover of Let’s
Go: Europe. After two years of going large, the guide slimmed down to 672 pages
but added coverage of the USSR. Production ran two months behind schedule as
HSA trusted the Crimson (for the first and last time) to typeset the finished text.
How to Earn (a Lot of) Money in College evolved to become Making It: A Guide
to Student Finances, a 320-page extravaganza of more money-making tips for the
college student. One thousand hardcover and 20,000 paperback copies became
bound reality.
During its eight years of existence (1973–1981), the Wine Appreciation Course influenced countless lives. Here, a personal
account: “I guess it was my roommate’s fault that I accidentally dropped out of Harvard and lived the rest of my life as some
fiendish sybarite, sipping and slipping from cellar to dank, musty cellar. It was he, after all, who first inserted the HSA brochure
into my fall semester coursebook, who told me there was a new concentration in ‘wine tasting’ and, most importantly, who forked
over the 15 bucks I needed to take HSA’s three-night Wine Appreciation Course. How could I not believe? The brochure was so
convincing, the apparent rewards so unbelievable: lectures by a former member of the Oxford Wine Tasting Team that ‘last until
the wine gives out’; answers to valuable questions such as, ‘What does the cork do in the bottle?’; the opportunity to ‘learn not
to be taken by fancy phrases or pretty pictures’; and most devastatingly, I could ‘receive an 8 by 10 inch diploma, together with
a wallet-sized Master Oenologist identification card.’ The card, still besmirched with the scarlet ‘H,’ ablaze with the mythical
‘HSA,’ curled and sweaty with an oaky, buttery bouquet, still hints at who I once was. Better, though, it bellows who I am today,
to my classmates and to the world: ‘In Vino, Veritas! In Veritas, Vino!’”
LET’S GO TITLES
• Europe
AGENCIES
OTHER TITLES
• Making It: A Guide
to Student Finances
• Linen/Laundry Plant
• Publishing
• Catering
• Travel Services
• Custodial
• House Painting
• Refrigerator Rental
• Europe by Car
• Rings
• Union News Stand
• Moving
• Fall Blotter
• Coffee House
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