Susan Harrington, class of 1970, grew up in Chicago as the Vietnam War quickly approached. After 12 years at Latin, Susan Harrington went to boarding school at the Hewitt School, Madeira, and Holton Arms. She continued her education at Mt. Holyoke College, Denver University, Washington University of St. Louis, and the University of Chicago. As a lifelong political activist, Harrington campaigned as a teenager for Barry Goldwater, but also in the White House as an intern for Richard Nixon in 1969. Ms. Harrington also scheduled for Jerry Ford in 1976, and later worked in the transition office, as a congressional liaison, and in the Domestic Policy offices from 1980 to 1982 for Ronald Reagan. Harrington remains a strong figurehead for young voices as she helps young children and teenagers become politically active in their communities. Ms. Harrington remains very active with Latin, planning reunions as the grade representative, and continues to gather her old friends for the 50th-anniversary celebration, while living on St. Simons Island in Georgia. 
In her own words:
“I was eight years old and my grandfather was involved in politics in Illinois and in Chicago. I sat on his lap the night of the Nixon-Kennedy election and he put me to bed. The next morning, there was a note on my bed that read, The world is doomed. Kennedy won. Therefore, immediately I became a Republican. 
 I was ten years old walking door to door canvassing for Barry Goldwater. Some agreed with me, most did not. All my friends were democrats at Latin. In ninth grade, I went to boarding school. I was still involved in politics, in my own young way. I was the only hawk in my class. I was working for Nixon when he went through the impeachment process. I’ve been close up to a lot of stuff. I was loyal to Richard Nixon, and I still am. I liked a lot of things he did. He cared about the environment. He passed the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency). It was because of him that the 1964 Civil Rights act was passed, one of the most important ever passed by our government. People don’t know that. 
War was like the onset of a bad flu. It happened very quickly. All of the sudden kids were smoking pot. No one drank. People smoked cigarettes, smoked weed and dropped acid. That was not necessarily because they enjoyed it, but because they felt like it was something they needed to do.  It was part of our generation. None of us knew anything. We went from being little preppy kids to being quasi hippies. It was a social change. Twenty years earlier, people were jitterbugging and talking about Elvis Presley. There was weed then, but nothing like when we got involved. A little bit past high school, when Martin Luther King was killed, they locked down our school for four days because there were riots on the Upper East Side of New York. Things changed pretty radically for us. All you have to do is look at album covers from 1970. The world was a very different place. Now, there is such bitterness with young people.
I don’t think that any of the politicians back then would believe what we are going through now. I’ve been watching the impeachment process and I’m totally disgusted. It’s amazing to me what has been going on with Donald Trump. After talking to my liberal friends too, they feel the same way, just because of how things have been handled. This is not even close to what was going on in 1972 with Nixon or what was going on with Clinton. There aren’t laws that go with impeachment, but there are traditions. They are backed by the Supreme Court.
We are about to sign a major economic treaty with China. Every minority you list is doing better, making more money and working more jobs. I am amazed that the stock market has climbed to thirty thousand. When I was in college, no one thought the market was going to climb to two thousand. [Trump’s] accomplished a lot. He’s helped a lot of people. It’s amazing how things have changed. It’s a different world. Now, there is such bitterness with young people.
I’m still a republican. If you’re conservative, you can’t go on campus without the fear of being attacked, verbally or physically. It’s a sad thing to see. I’m treated with disrespect. I don’t know what the answer is. It’s your generation’s job to educate your children. I do think people need to respect the office of the president. Millions of people elect that person. Your generation has a big job ahead of you. I’m glad I’m not there. People aren’t respectful of each other anymore. They don’t respect each other’s viewpoints.
My oldest friend from Latin is liberal. When I go to her house, I get lambasted by her family, her friends, and her kids. It’s a different world. They want to pop questions at you and challenge you, but they don’t want to hear what you have to say. My family was apolitical. No one ever talked about it. My brother and I fought about the Civil War. That’s all I can remember, but nowadays parents are not apolitical. Whether it is true or not, they want to tout their children’s viewpoints and their kids are being influenced by not necessarily what’s the truth but what the parents feel. It’s amazing the differences in the last ten years. 
 Latin is a very unusual school. I don’t know if this is still true, but when I went to school my class, the class ahead of us, and the classes behind us were sort of like a family. The graduating class was thirty-four, thirty-five, or thirty-six people. You may not have been a best friend of everybody, but we all knew each other’s siblings. We knew their parents and their parents knew us. It was something that carried forward to this day. We try to put it into words, it’s very difficult though. We still feel like a family. A lot of us went to boarding schools or other schools beyond Latin, and they just didn’t have that same feeling about their school and friends as we did. We were very close to the teachers. They nourished all of us. A lot of the teachers at Latin have always been that way. We were afforded this wonderful thing because we were such a small class. I felt like and I still feel like the foundation I got at Latin has allowed me to accomplish a lot. It has opened the world up for me.”