Boys and Beanies Together

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

Within the past few months there have been a rather large number of letters in your column which have attacked women in general and Radcliffe in particular. Were this not bad enough, I notice also that not one voice has protested these attacks on women. It is time to turn the tide.

The history of women has been a consistent one of struggle against the inferior role which this and past forms of society have placed her in. The right to vote, the right to equal employment, the right to an equal education, all these, to what extent they have been won, have been won through the courageous struggles of women's organizations, and not, as some might wish to believe, by the generosity of the condescending male masters. This right takes its proper place with the fight for Negro rights and the fight for better working conditions which have all been an essential part of the fight for democracy started here in 1770, and still going on.

Democracy of Hypocrisy

Harvard has taken great pride in its reputation as a liberal and democratic institution. If this pride is not to turn to hypocrisy, Harvard must not submit to the increasing pressures of the cold war hysteria and conform to all the anti-democratic criteria which would be necessary to prove to the McCarthys and Mundts that it isn't a Communist school. If Harvard is to maintain its stand on democracy, one of the first important steps is the realization that full equality between men and women is an essential principle of democracy. The fact that Radcliffe has no faculty of its own shows, not that Radcliffe is a "parasitic institution", but, rather, that the Administration is still conforming to the "tradition" of segregation in education, by setting up another college as a separate institution rather than admitting women to Harvard on a fully equal basis. If Harvard chooses to return to the principles of democracy, the following steps should be taken, as a minimum:

Three Steps

1. All classes should be co-educational.

2. All undergraduate organizations should be permitted to have members of both sexes.

3. The Lamont Library should be open to Radcliffe students.

. . . the prestige of Harvard rests not on its conformance either to the status quo or to whatever backward trends might be in governmental favor, but to its maintenance of the principles which have gained for it a reputation of being one of the most liberal and democratic schools of the country. Don Long '49   Chairman, John Reed Club