It’s a Homecoming for Radicals!

As one dean remembers it, it was a case where Harvard University just had to do things better than anyone else. So, when the political upheaval that was rippling across the nation reached that venerable institution in 1969, the response was overwhelming: on April 9, 300 students took over the administration hall. The next day, 400 police charged the building. There were 45 injuries and 197 arrests. The show of force galvanized the students and they staged a two-week strike. “The radicals seemed to feel that Harvard must excel--in riots as well as intellect,” said Richard Rowe, then an assistant dean at the graduate school of education. Now, 20 years later, the former student radicals are planning to get together again at the Massachusetts campus April 7 and 8, to reminisce and compare battle scars. “It’s important to reaffirm in some public fashion and some social context the values and beliefs of 20 years ago,” said reunion spokesman Michael Macy, now 40 and a sociology professor at Brandeis University. One of those arrested in 1969 was ABC News correspondent Chris Wallace, who was covering the sit-in for the student radio station. “We were all allowed to make that famous one telephone call,” Wallace said. “Some people called their girlfriends. I called the radio station. At the end of my report, I signed off: ‘This is Chris Wallace, in custody.’ ”

--”That’s Rich!” a headline in London’s Daily Express newspaper trumpeted in response to the announcement that the Duke and Duchess of York had been granted a 79% pay raise. The couple will receive state income of nearly $266,000 for the fiscal year beginning April 1, up from $148,000 this year. It is the second year in a row that Andrew--Queen Elizabeth II’s second son--and his wife, the former Sarah Ferguson, have received larger increases than their royal relatives. The others got 4.6% raises.

--Not about to look a gift horse in the mouth, former President Ronald Reagan on Tuesday accepted a black Thoroughbred gelding from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police during a stay at his ranch north of Santa Barbara. Reagan, who made much of getting “saddled up and ready to ride” into a post-presidential career in his speech at USC last month, did just that, and the horse behaved impeccably, said Reagan spokesman Mark Weinberg. The Reagans, visiting the ranch for the first time since their return to California, will be staying until Friday. It was only the third time the Canadian lawmen had parted with one of their treasured steeds; on two previous occasions they have presented horses to Queen Elizabeth II.