'OFF' AND 'OFF-OFF'

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

Few Harvard students understand what a frustrating and totally neurotic experience it is to live in a dormitory at Radecliffe, for the Harvard houses and even the freshman dorms have multiple-room suite arrangements which eliminate such invasions of privacy as "long halls"- where everyone knows who comes to visit everyone else, or who stays in on Saturday nights-or shared bathrooms, where one doesn't see just one person behind one's medicine chest, but ten females, some of them as obnoxious (at least in the morning) as those in the Right Guard ad.

For this reason, the Radcliffe administration's recent announcement (Jan. 8 issue). that it is eliminating four more off-campus houses, was probably greeted at Harvard with a reaction bordering on apathy. At Radcliffe, however, the announcement brought rage frustration, and a certain amount of defeatism-after all, it is the continuance of a trend toward "dormitization" which no student protest has been able to halt or even slow down in the face of President Bunting's cheerful determination to make Radcliffe's students choose between dormitory life or "off-off" apartment living. With the former, students can opt for institutional food, rigid existence, and the mass culture that dormitory life entails: or they can choose the latter alternative, and live in a run-down apartment in Cambridge and pay atrocious rent for it, and have a private life but little or no connection with campus life or the main body of Racliffe's students. Both these alternatives are a bit grim for those who want to have a private life and still retain close ties with the college; but in the past, these students have been able to choose "off-campus" buildings, where at least they are allowed more privacy, if not the right of cooking their own food. (They can also apply for the co-ops; of course, but these are so crowded that most of their occupants share double rooms-and there goes one's private life, to a good extent.)

And co-ed living at Harvard? As anyone who reads the CRIMSON should perceive, that system has a long way to go before it is acceptable in terms of the range of accommodations, not to mention its acceptance by Harvard students on a personal level. In short, to those who are freshmen and sophomores, coed living must seem like a shining ray of hope but, as yet, not much more than that.

In all fairness to the Radcliffe administration, one must say that its decision was motivated by quite legitimate financial reasons. With each off-campus house involved there were real problems: the lease had expired in most cases, and the houses were either too expensive to buy or too dilapidated to make them financially justifiable for either purchase or another five-year lease, particularly when the Radcliffe housing situation is in such a state of flux.

However, it is unconscionable that the decision was made unilaterally. There was no discussion with Radcliffe students of viable alternatives, say, higher room fees for them without involving the rest of the college. (It is not self-evident that the students, when faced with limited housing alternatives, would turn this down, since the rent they would pay would in any case be lower than that required in the Cambridge housing market for similar accommodations.)

In "pushing" off-off campus housing by eliminating many of the alternatives. Radcliffe is doing a great disservice to itself, to its students, and to the Cambridge community. By giving its prospective seniors few reasonable alternatives other than moving away from the campus, it forces upon them geographical isolation from the campus, and that results in much less frequent participation in student activities, particularly during the winter months, when distance becomes an important consideration for those without cars. This is a disservice to the college and to its students because it dilutes the diversity on campus: the individualists tend to move off-off, and the more group-oriented seniors opt to stay on campus.

A final consideration is that the college is harming the Cambridge community by forcing Radcliffe seniors to compete in the Cambridge housing market, further increasing demand and accelerating rent increases. This is particularly unfair to those Cambridge residents who are not affiliated with Harvard or Radcliffe, but must nevertheless suffer the consequences of their decisions regarding student housing.

The Radcliffe administration has my sympathy, for it has been placed in an impossible position in having to cope with an impending institutional merger, with all the politics and complexities therein, and also having to hassle with problems arising out of the present system. Such are the problems of transition. The Radcliffe administration creates much of the burden it carries, however, in that it tries to solve these problems unilaterally, without recourse to student opinion, or to student participation in the decision-making process. Many Radcliffe students would be ready and enthusiastic to help Radcliffe solve its many problems, but on such crucial issues as housing the Radcliffe administration refuses to ask for, or even accept, their help.