$10-Million Mistake

The President of Radcliffe, Mrs. Mary I. Bunting, apparently feels that the threat of a large financial deficit is sufficient cause to limit sharply the number of Cliffies eligible to move into their own apartments next year. In response, a growing number of girls organized a hunger strike to force Mrs. Bunting to relax the restrictions.

After five days the hunger strike is over. Mrs. Bunting has wisely accepted the plan of an arbitration committee to examine the feasibility of letting more Radcliffe seniors move off campus. That committee should also take a careful look at Mrs. Bunting's proposed residential college system.

The hunger strike might have been better received by the Radcliffe Administration had it been staged before the lottery determining which girls may live off-campus. The girls who were starving themselves seemed as upset over their bad luck in the lottery as over the policy of restricting off campus living.

It became clear in the course of the strike, however, that the strikers commanded a good deal of sympathy from their fellow students.

More important, the protest served to spotlight at least two student attitudes which Mrs. Bunting has heretofore ignored. First, a good many Cliffies have reservations about Mrs. Bunting's plans to make Radcliffe a residential college modeled on the Harvard House plan. With only minimal consultation with undergraduates. Mrs. Bunting has committed herself to a mammoth $7.5 million fund-raising drive to complement a gift from the Ford Foundation for undergraduate dormitory housing. Her plans fail to deal with the vital question of whether girls should be forced to live in the clearly restrictive, prep-school atmosphere of a dormitory, however lavish, rather than in the free environment of an apartment of off-campus house.

In addition, during the strike, the participants raised questions about how such decisions are made at Radcliffe in the first place. Many of the regulations put through in the last year-although a number have been modified-bear directly on the problem of where students live and eat Each has aroused sharp cries of student protest, and on each occasion Mrs. Bunting has offered the explanation of the college's financial woes.

Radcliffe's deficit is a grave consideration-but not one which should force a substantial number of girls to live in a situation they find intolerable. Mrs. Bunting has been unwise in her decision to embark on an ambitious campaign to raise more funds for a project which many students bitterly oppose. It would be preferable for her to seek additional funds to ensure that girls could move off- campus without ruining Radcliffe's finances.