The Lonesome Travelers

At present Radcliffe has forty-seven unmarried commuting students, who live outside the dorms or various reasons. Some have preferred room and board jobs to scholarship aid, while others have wanted to live at home because of particular family situations.

These students should be getting a Radcliffe education; although they take the same courses as resident students, the commuters are denied the educational experience of dorm living. Too frequently the commuter's education stops when she puts away her notebook after her last assignment. Moreover, it is very difficult for commuters to participate in extra-curricular activities which would require them to stay in Cambridge late at night or to travel over the weekend.

If Radcliffe intends to offer anything more than our Harvard courses, it should allow commuters to stay in the dorms periodically.

According to interviews, most unmarried day students would like to spend at least some nights in Radcliffe dormitories. Currently, a Radcliffe commuter receives the same treatment as any visitor not in college. She may stay in the dorm only by arranging to have a resident act as hostess. The hostess is then obliged to pay several dollars for linens (a fee that some interpret as an ill-disguised nuisance charge). The hostess is also responsible for being that her guest obeys rules, and must even after any penalties her guest incurs.

These complications and restrictions, which discourage commuters from staying in the dorms, are unnecessary. Every weekend, more than one hundred resident students go away. They frequently permit visitors from other colleges to use their rooms. Many of them would be willing to lend their rooms to commuters.

The linen fee could be eliminated by allowing commuters to bring sheets from home. The cost of weekend meals could be provided by house or dorm treasuries if commuters were unable to pay, and the College might even consider reducing meal rices for these students.

Institutionalizing visiting procedures would make it natural, rather than extraordinary, for commuters to spend weekends in the dorms.

By spending all her Radcliffe weekends in the same dorm, the traveling student could come to feel at home there. She could develop many friendships and readily attend Harvard's weekend activities--from parties to poetry-readings--as well as dorm and House functions. And during the week she might eat lunch in "her" dorm or visit friends there between classes.