The 'Cliffe Girl: An Instructor's View

The Harvard undergraduate has some pretty stereotyped ideas about his Radcliffe counterpart: she makes Dean's List too often and she drinks too rarely; she always wears horrible long sox.

Lean familiar, however, are the opinions of the professors and section men who teach the Radcliffe girl. But, ten years after the birth of Joint Instruction, these men have formulated some definite ideas.

"They read too much, remember too much, and don't chow it over," said Theodore S. Baer '46. Instructor in General Education. "They are fact-minded rather than idea-minded." Charles R. Cherington '35, professor of Government, agreed, "Radcliffe girls have a marked tendency to study too hard nd think too little."

Most of the instructors noted that the women are good, solid, conscientious, and rarely brilliant; they strike a steady mean, while the men tend more to extremes. Baer added, "They work like hell, the competition is extremely intensive in grades, dress, and social life, and they desperately want to get on Dean's List."

But some dissented from this view. Samuel H. Beer, professor of Government, refused to "go along with the myth that Radcliffe is all B's, few A's; this hasn't bee true in recent years." He continued, "The girls certainly add to the intellectual stimulation of the class, and in some of my courses, the girls have knocked the boys' heads together admirably." Elliott Perkins, lecturer in History and Master of Lowell house, added, "You really can't tell the difference intellectually, except that the girls wear skirts and longer hair."

The Grade's the Thing

Apparently, the women are "heart-broken" over a C or a D; two section men have had girls sobbing on their shoulders (they preferred to remain anonymous), while the men are more apt to shrug off a "gentleman's C."

Females generally have a great reputation for talking. Yet section men find them strangely silent in class; they talk much less than the boys, although, as Samuel P. Huntington, Instructor in Government said, "One first-class famale intellectual can shut up a whole class of men faster than anyone else--once she really gets going."

Cherington seemed almost eager for a "little intellectual duel" with some of his 'A' Radcliffe students, but he claims that in class, they just concentrate on looking dumb in the back row. Pitirim A. Sorokin, professor of Sociology, echoed Cherington's wish that Radcliffe girls would argue with and challenge their professors more. "Both Harvard and Radcliffe students are orderly, docile, and peaceful compared to the Russian 'revolutionary' students of my day."

Until Joint Instruction was introduced in 1943, sections were, of course, conducted separately. According to Joseph Palamountain, instructor in Government and veteran of separate sections it's been "Quite a change; the girls were dungarees, curlers, and no makeup. It was something of a shock to see a girl in your section at a House dance and discover she actually had a face after all."

Only married men taught the all-girl sections, but because of a shortage after the war, bachelor Paul Ylvisaker became the exception to the rule. Ylvisaker, now teaching at Swarthmore, is no longer 8 bachelor: he was rapidly married by one of the women in his section.

On the subject of professors marrying Radcliffe women, McGeorge Bundy, professor of Government, called it "an excellent idea. I married one of the Radcliffe teaching staff myself." And Earnest A. Hooton, professor of Anthropology, recalled, "half a dozen girls used to marry their professors." He attributed this to the fact that "some of the smartest girls were also the most beautiful."

A Good Job

Armand Hoog, visiting lecturer on French literature complained that American women in general, and Radcliffe girls in particular, want "to have their cake, and eat it too." But most agree that they manage to do a very good job of it. As Cherington summed it up: "Radcliffe has extremely high intellectual standards, yet the girls have style and 'elan', and take their highly varied and extensive social life well in their stride." Compared with other women's colleges, he said, "It ranks with Bryn Mawr and Barnard as the three leading intellectual colleges, yet it does not have 'the supra-heated steam intellectualism' of Bryn Mawr. Holyoke girls are too sweet and wholesome, while Wellesley girls don't measure up intellectually."

Pursuing the Wellesley contrast, Duane Roller, head section man in Natural Sciences III, noted "It has been said that Radcliffe girls get all the A's and that's why Harvard prefers Wellesley but that isn't the only reason. S. Marshall Cohen, instructor in General Education, expressed his feeling that "Wellesley girls are prettler, but that Radcliffe is more convenient."

A Source of Embarassment

And Perkins, although he likes the Annex, still thinks "the Yard looked better before, with just Harvard men." Cherington along with some others, asked for "no handholding in the yard: if embarasses the Faculty."

One section man commented that some girls like to write "sweet little noises," to their section men at the end of exams. And most of them found girls' knitting very distracting and annoying.

The man with a remarkable number of Annex students in his English 160 course, Robert Chapman, commented, "Why are Radcliffe girls always so conscious of the opinions of others?"

Chapman, co-anther of "Billy Budd," has assisted Radcliffe girls in many of their theatrical productions.

Still, the old saying that "familiarity breeds contempt" just isn't true these days. The undergraduate succumbed first to the Radcliffe girl's charm, although he attributed her overall mark superiority to her "learning everything by role, spewing it forth at exams, and getting A's, or that failing, sidling up to an instructor, displaying a little leg, and getting an A."

The girls answer thus (in the 1953 production of "Drumbeats and Song"):

We wit reading over due books,

We scribble into blue books,

What's more, we fall in love with all our section men."

Who found with some observing that

Not only graphs are curving and

Radcliffe girls stack up quite well with Harvard men.

And Howard E. Huge, assistant professor of General Education, summed it all up: "It certainly makes teaching a lot more attractive.