Thanks for the Memory

The Harvard-Radcliffe Affiliation Committee, a student group which has spent a year and a half investigating the administrative, academic, and extracurricular relationships between the two Colleges, has produced a series of disappointingly shortsighted, pedestrian, or obvious recommendations for altering the present situation, No doubt the committee is to be commended for the good sense and practicality of most of is proposals, but a little more long-range creative thinking about the problems and possibilities of Harvard-Radcliffe affiliation might have produced a more valuable guide to action. As the report stands, some of its strongest recommendations lose much of their import because the Colleges have already followed the suggestions wherever possible.

In the administrative field, the committee's most constructive--though hardly surprising--proposal is the elimination of the separate Radcliffe graduate school and the admission of women to the Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. Noting, however, that "It is paradoxical that when President Eliot championed coordination in 1893, he favored joint instruction only at the graduate level," the committee seems to favor continuing the paradox. Its recommendation that Harvard and Radcliffe remain separate at the College level is based on the superficial arguments that woman students might suffer from lack of attention and that educational experiments might be severely curtailed under a joint administration. In reality, a merger might cause Harvard to consider Radcliffe's position more thoroughly when making decisions which now do not affect the Annex in theory but do in practice. And there is no educational experiment in recent years which has not applied equally to Radcliffe and Harvard undergraduates.

Similarly, the committee's contention that "a separate honor system and different rules for conduct are also advantages of continued separation" does not stand up to factual examination. With nearly all exams now administered only at Harvard, Radcliffe's academic honor system has already been effectively stifled. As for the social honor system and different rules of conduct, almost every co-educational college or university in the United States has been capable of setting up disparate rules to cover the hours and activities of men and women Surely Harvard is not really less efficient than the University of Illinois.

"On the grounds of practicability," the committee urges retention of the present Harvard-Radcliffe undergraduate ratio of 4:1. Although it is undoubtedly more practical to leave College facilities precisely as they are, neither College would--or should--ideally favor such a policy of stagnation. "The necessity for men to receive an education" prevents Radcliffe expansion and Harvard contraction, according to the committee, which apparently has concluded that men's education is four times as important as women's.

Again, the committee questions whether there is "sufficient flexibility in the Harvard academic requirements when applied to Radcliffe." According to the report, "a liberal education indicates preparation not for a vocation, but for living a culturally satisfying life, and, in the case of most women, should include some preparation for marriage." Considering that the committee declares itself opposed to "courses in Home Economics or other such expedients," it is difficult to see what "implicit differences in the aims of education for men and education for women" need recognition from the CEP. After all, approximately the same number of men and women get married.

The rest of the committee's proposals, despite their validity, are more valuable as endorsements for existing trends or actual policies than as original suggestions for ways to improve Harvard-Radcliffe affiliation. Doubtless Radcliffe should have a permanent representative on the Committee on Educational Policy; the voluntary, non-credit seminar program should be open to Radcliffe; the Honors program in General Studies might well be extended; resident tutors would intensify the College's intellectual atmosphere; Agassiz would make a great student activities center (were it not one already); and House-hall affiliations are a lovely idea. But somehow it all seems a little familiar.