Mrs. Bunting Restores 'Climate of Expectation'

Someone has said that women's education had to be as bad as men's before it could get better. Perhaps that time has come. If so, it will be facing courageously with all our talents and all our skills the questions that need to be answered to discover the criteria and the techniques needed for the good life. --Mary I. Bunting (Inaugural Address, May 19, 1960).

Ever since its humble but ambitious beginnings, Radcliffe College has attempted to provide a Harvard education, in the firm belief that women's education had to be as bad as men's in order to be as good. Through eight decades, under the guidance of four presidents, the College has evolved more or less steadily toward unity with Harvard. The relationship has intensified a number of problems, effecting the residence system, complicating the intellectual orientation of the Radcliffe girl by making her part of the Harvard community, and contributing to the emotional struggles of any college girl who tries to relate education to life.

Sidewalk Prophets Predict

When fourth President Wilbur K. Jordan announced in Spring, 1959, his intention to resign, the sidewalk property whispered that Radcliffe might never have another president. Late in May a giggle of cartoonists filled the front pages of the CRIMSON with their speculations about Jordan's successor. They imagined everything from a specially adapted Univac to a self-prepared Harvard undergraduate. They couldn't have been more wrong.

As Radcliffe's fifth President, Mary I. Bunting pointed out in her Inaugural Address a year later, "The cartoonists did not precisely call the shots. They did not portray a white-coated figure shoving aside microscope and test-tube cultures to examine the culture on a woman's campus, a myopic biologist diverted from the study of heredity and variation in micro-organisms to stumble upon the astonishing mechanism of human evolution, our modern, creative multi-structured institutions of ever higher education."

But Mrs. Bunting brought more than the skills of a distinguished microbiologist to her new job. The mother of four children, she described herself as "a geneticist with nest-building experience." Since 1955 she had held the top administrative post at Douglass College, a division of Rutgers, and shown herself an energetic leader in tackling the problems of women's education. Arthur S. Adams, President of the American Council on Education, declared that President Bunting's inauguration marked "a new beginning in the life of a great college."

A new beginning it has proved to be. When Mrs. Bunting took over the reins of the Radcliffe Administration on February 1, 1960, she was faced with a number of problems which College officials had resolutely ignored for years. As a result, she discovered, the "climate of unexpectation," which she believes had inhibited women's education nationally, prevailed even at Radcliffe. The College's cherished though much-abused social honor system had been won through student effort, but the average 'Cliffie felt that her opinions could and did not have little or no effect on administrative and educational policy. Mrs. Bunting explained recently: "I have a little the feeling of the freshman that the students are just as brilliant and interesting as I thought they would be. Radcliffe girls are not as apathetic as I had been told they were--but they are less self-confident about many things they are perfectly capable of doing."

One of her first tasks, then, aside from getting acquainted with the Administration and the student body, was to create an atmosphere of expectation. "There has been some feeling that you're so lucky to be here that you can't question anything about the College," Mrs. Bunting told the students. "But just because you can count your blessings, it doesn't mean I--and you-- shouldn't work to provide additional educational opportunities." During her first term at the College, she prodded the students, publicly and privately, to think about Radcliffe's problems and come up with their own solutions. Three weeks before her inauguration she attended a meeting of the Student Government Association, asking its members to help establish an advisory committee to work with the Administration in the future. Radcliffe girls are "too little involved in important policy decisions of the College," she declared, contending that it was ridiculous not to consult them on such vital issues as admissions policy, room assignments, and enlargement of library facilities.

Her action brought immediate results. By the end of the year the SGA had established a President's Advisory Committee on Policy and working with Mrs. Bunting, selected five students to serve during 1960-61. As it has worked out, the members meet weekly with the President to discuss short-and long-range plans. Out of their sessions this year have sprung a variety of suggestions for improving the quality of a Radcliffe education physically, intellectually, and emotionally.

The shortcomings of Radcliffe's physical plant presented the most concreate dilemma. In the past the College has grown in a haphazard fashion, with only sporadic efforts to plan for the future. Land has been purchased when available, new dormitories hastily constructed when old ones proved insufficient. No one paused to consider seriously whether the separation of class buildings, located in the Yard, from the residential Quadrangle was the best of all possible arrangements, or whether the dormitory system provided the best living quarters for a bunch of young women in search of a Harvard education. In recent years, College officials talked eloquently about the obligation to expand. Stopping their ears to anguished complaints from the undergraduates, they converted singles into doubles with the purchase of several double-decker "bunk beds." Overcrowding reached its peak a year ago, with one dorm housing more than double the number of students it had been designed for.

Master Plan Drawn

To combat such practices, justified on the grounds of expediency, College architect Nelson Aldrich was employed to draw up a master plan to guide the use and development of land and buildings. While he and his staff began surveying present patterns of usage in Spring, 1960, the President formed a Long-Range Committee to study and suggest ways of ameliorating Radcliffe's physical plant. Under her supervision as chairman, the Committee includes several College officials, among them Frances R. Brown, Dean of Residence and Student Affairs, and Kathleen O. Elliott, Dean of Instruction.

The combined efforts of President Bunting, her Advisory Committee, Aldrich, and the Long-Range Planning Committee produced carefully-considered results within a year. One month ago the President announced that Radcliffe will begin a sweeping revision of its housing system next Fall, reorganizing the dormitory Quadrangle into four living units similar to the Harvard Houses. Although physical changes will be deferred till the year after next, a new dorm will be built in the near future. In the meantime, the present halls will be grouped into three units Comstock, Moors, and Holmes Halls will combine to form North House; Briggs, Barnard, and Bertram, South House; and Cabot, Whitman, Eliot, and the new co-operatives, East House. The off-campus houses on Garden St., eventually to be replaced by the new residence, probably will form West House.

'Much Needs to Be Done'

"I have had a steadily growing sense of how much needs to be done for the undergraduate house system. The real gap between the educational opportunities in Harvard and Radcliffe residences was a surprise to me," the President explained recently. Although she has had the basic notion of a Radcliffe House system in mind for well over a year, the plan crystallized slowly, through discussions with Harvard officials, Radcliffe administrators, and undergraduates who came to complain about the College's physical set-up. One day this spring the trustees solemnly toured the gleaming halls, airy rooms, and spacious courtyard of Quincy House, then boarded a bus for the Radcliffe Quadrangle to survey the cozier quarters provided in Cabot Hall (built in 1937, fourth youngest of the College's nine brick dormitories), Presumably they were impressed by the difference; at any rate they approved the president's proposal to create the first house system in the history of women's education.

As the plan now stands, only a step beyond the experimental stage, the Radcliffe Houses will duplicate the most important features of the Harvard ones and add some characteristics of their own. "An essential ingredient of the House system is the chance to talk with a diversity of people," President Bunting told the undergraduates at an open meeting of the SGA. If the plan is successful, "during a much greater proportion of the day you will be leading more interesting intellectual lives than you do now. Conversations between undergraduates and scholars or other outstanding adults are important because they give you a chance to take your own stand on a variety of subjects, to find out what you really think about what you've been learning."

Over and over again students have expressed the desire for less formal and more frequent contact with the Faculty; Mrs. Bunting conceives of the House system as a partial remedy. Next year selected Faculty members will act as freshman advisers and, hopefully, others will agree to help plan House-oriented tutorials, seminars, lecture programs, and even dramatic and musical organizations. In the future the President intends to provide each Radcliffe House with approximately 275 undergraduates and 25 Faculty affiliates. "Their relationships cannot be regulated," she stressed, "though the Administration should be clear in its hopes, provide incentives, and make progress possible, easy, and attractive."

In addition, Mrs. Bunting wants to bring the students into contact with a number of outstanding families, who would live in the Houses. "Radcliffe students have a potentiality of service all over the world. While at College, they should be able to observe and communicate with people who have successfully co-ordinated their private and public lives."

Mrs. Bunting does not believe that the establishment of a separate but equal House system at Radcliffe will separate the College from life at Harvard. Instead she expects the men will come to Radcliffe more frequently as the women's Houses instigate their own co-educational projects. The affiliation between Quincy and Holmes in extra-curricular activities will continue, as will that between Winthrop and Comstock for tutorial and occasional departmental dinners. Nevertheless, no new House-dorm co-operative ventures are now being planned.

At the moment, the President has no comment to make on the possibility of a co-educational House. Earlier in the year she endorsed the suggestion as "something to think about," but she remains understandably reluctant to initiate what many consider a risky project. The Radcliffe House system has top priority on her schedule. With Harvard officials unwilling to take the idea seriously (at least in public) and alumni outraged at the idea, it appears that neither College is ready for open discussion of the proposal.

In connection with the House system, Mrs. Bunting wants to improve the quality of "dinner-table education" at Radcliffe. At the Cedar Hill conference this February, she requested students to describe their vision of the ideal dormitory. Second only to the cries for small living units co-ordinated along the line of the Harvard Houses were the requests for larger dining rooms and longer meal hours. Gracious living as Radcliffe now defines it has fallen from favor. Many a Faculty member shuns the Quad at mealtimes, remembering the night he sat transfixed by eight pairs of blank eyes while the girl on his left politely inquired what courses he was teaching this term. Unable to offset the institutional formality, most 'Cliffies would like to abolish it altogether. Once again the sanctioned motive for revision is the desire to entice the Faculty up to Radcliffe. Many 'Cliffies, however, admit private reservations about emulating the free-wheeling discussions they imagine typical of the Harvard Houses.

If the Radcliffe House system lives up to Mrs. Bunting's expectations, clearly it will bring improvements other than adequate space and lighting and a reasonable amount of privacy. Casual friendships between students and Faculty members--or those families Mrs. Bunting hopes to attract--could gently alter the intellectual atmosphere. 'Cliffies might stop feeling and all too often behaving as if they were losing in a competition with Harvard for Faculty attention. The desperate grind might desert her study corner for the intellectual give-and-take in a Harvard-style dining room. The party girl might be stimulated to individual research through the example of a scholar or public figure she came to know and admire.

The House system might even provide a partial solution for the many emotional problems of the Radcliffe girl. Not only would she have the "place to cry" many have wished for, she would have an increased chance to expand her interests beyond herself. A variety of opportunities which were formerly labelled "Harvard only" would open before her in the House-oriented activities. As her specifically "intellectual" endeavors became intermingled more thoroughly in her daily routine, the frightening gap between education and life might narrow a little. The resident families would provide her with encouraging examples of professional women who are also excellent wives and mothers and of what she is just as anxious to find, professional men who support their wives' careers with interest and understanding.

This year, however, with the House system still in the future, President Bunting effected some changes immediately. For the first time, a substantial amount of money became available for the undergraduates to use "to enrich College life." A $5,000 gift from Harvard, supplemented by donations from Radcliffe alumnae, went into the new President's Fund last Fall. Every dorm and off-campus house received $1 per resident to spend as the majority wished. While the students haggled over the relative merits of television sets, sewing machines, and pictures for the walls, Mrs. Bunting and her Advisory Committee appointed six students to the President's Fund Board. Throughout the year the members listened to requests for money for all sorts of projects and relayed them, with recommendations, to President Bunting. By June the Fund had doled out nearly $3,000 to provide travel expenses for 'Cliffies visiting other colleges on the exchange program, to send a girl to France on the AIESEC job exchange plan, to sponsor a piano class, and to support a number of experimental programs. Among these were the thesis readings; the highly successful "living room talks" on marriage, divorce, child care, and careers for women; and the considerably less popular Radcliffe seminars which were intended for students not involved in departmentaly tutorials and attracted only a brief flurry of interest.

Probably the single most important thing President Bunting has done this year, at least in the eyes of national observers, is to establish the Radcliffe Institute for Independent Study. The program, which represents the first major attempt by any college to develop the neglected talents of highly educated women now unable to use their training effectively, will begin next year when 24 woman scholars with a Ph.D. or its equivalent in achievement come to the College to pursue their specialties on a part-time basis. "For some years there has been a growing belief among people concerned with bettering American educational facilities that the education of women is too often lost or dissipated when college days are over. American women, once educated, are too often diverted from continuing their own careers in our society," the President explained. "Radcliffe views its new program as a pilot study with the hope that similar plans will be adopted by other colleges and universities to meet pressing national need."

Mrs. Bunting sees the Institute's primary function as providing opportunities and encouraging educated women to believe that their talents can and will be useful. The national response to her venture has been almost overwhelming. Widespread publicty followed the first announcement last Fall; President Kennedy acclaimed the move; and nearly 250 qualified women from all over the United States applied for admission to the Institute. In her attempt to salvage educated women from the intellectual stockpile, Mrs. Bunting has fired the imagination and enthusiasm of the group she most wanted to reach.

At Radcliffe, too, there has been a shift toward the "climate of expectation." Here the response is tuned to the changes in College policy rather than to the creation of the Institute; the average undergraduate is not yet ready to worry about post-doctoral education. Nevertheless, "the sense that things can change," as Mrs. Bunting says, has replaced the resignation which pervaded Radcliffe attitudes two years ago. With the President to push reluctant College officials and alienated, bored, or timid 'Cliffies into an excited recognition of the potentials of a Radcliffe education, the dangers of stagnation lie in the past.

But the College isn't perfect yet. In the midst of all the innovation, Radcliffe's goals have remained basically ambivalent. Mrs. Bunting has said that "though a bit odd, Radcliffe is influential. Both its oddness and its influence may be attributed to our relationship with Harvard. It is our opportunity to benefit from and contribute to this relationship any woman can understand, use, and cherish." Obviously Harvard has been a potent force in the shaping of Radcliffe's identity; the question now is whether Radcliffe will continue under the present partial separation or try to move toward a final merger.

The College's course of conduct is complicated by several factors. Many men and some women are quick to object to incorporating Radcliffe within Harvard, arguing that men's and women's educational goals are different. As Mrs. Bunting sees it, "Women must pattern their lives differently from men, but with a little ingenuity on the part of society, including educational institutions, the logistics can be accomplished. Differences in pattern need not dictate differences in purpose." Yet clearly a woman's college, as such, is better equipped to provide the requisite pattern of train1