Committee on Status of Women Airs Grad Student and Employee Demands

"There are a lot of groups around here who are interested in getting day care, and they're getting more and more impatient and more and more militant," Virginia Demos said yesterday afternoon at an open hearing of the Faculty Committee on the Status of Women.

Demos, a student at the Graduate School of Education, was one of six women who spoke before a large predominantly female audience in the library of the Faculty Club. The subjects of the hearing were day care and provisions for allowing women to work and study at Harvard part-time.

Demos announced that KNOW, an offshoot of the Radcliffe alumnae organization NOW (New Opportunities for Women), had proposed to the Harvard administration that an expert steering committee with an adequate budget be set up to consider the problem of day care.

No Reply

Demos said the proposal was to have been considered by a meeting of the Deans of the University, but no one in KNOW has ever heard anything more about it.

"It's silly for Harvard faculty to be wasting their time taking testimony on day care, when there are real experts around already. This committee won't make its report until March and by then it'll be too late to do anything this year. We can't wait," she said.

Dean May said last night that the KNOW proposal was referred to Edward S. Gruson. Assistant to the President for Community Affairs, who reported that it would cost the University $10 million a year but that he would study it. "Then Gruson was ill for six weeks. So I really don't know what the status is right now," Dean May said.

The cost of day care was of central concern at the hearing and Kim Clark, a student in the GSAS, and representative of the Ad Hoe Committee for Day Care at Harvard, maintained that free day care is the right of every student and employee. However, she said, untilthere were enough facilities for everyone, priority should be given to low income parents. "Graduate students are notoriously low-income," she said.

Clark also said that the University had rejected a petition signed by 1000 people calling for free day care on the grounds that it was "enclavist," or exclusive of the Cambridge community. "But," Clark added, "I have yet to see the University begin work on 'non-enclavist' day care, which would benefit the community."

In the discussion of Clark's proposals confusion was apparent on several points, such as the number of eligible children in the Harvard community, the actual cost of day care, how much Harvard could afford to subsidize it, how much parents should be expected to pay, who should have first priority on limited space, and whether day care was an appropriate area for the University to enter.

A letter from Dr. Mary Howell, instructor in Pediatrics at Mass. General Hospital, proposed that the University pay subsidies to parents to arrange their own care, but one speaker alone questioned the value of any form of day care.

"Day care encourages women to believe that kids are only a problem until they go to school. It also encourages the false assumption that women can achieve pinnacles of success both in their careers and in their families. Most families are only big enough for one real success, and it's usually the husband," said Jean H. Slingerland, graduate student in English.

"We women are very expensive creatures in a time of very tight money," Slingerland, who said she had waited to continue her education until her children were grown, continued. "These expensive demands of ours could very well prejudice institutions against granting us equality. Also the demands raise costs for students who have more emotional control, who are willing to forego children, even husbands, for the sake of scholarship. There are going to be more and more of these women a time goes on."

Slingerland's comments evoked a strong reaction from the audience and the members of the Committee, Linda B. Sibley, a graduate student, said that many husbands do not like to work while their wives have to give up everything for the children. "There are going to be more and more men who don't want to have to look back at age 55 and say, 'My God, I've missed bringing up my children'," Sibley said.

Alice Smith, assistant to the dean of the Radcliffe Institute, said that four of the Institute's 24 seminars this year are in child development and care. Those completing the four courses will receive state certification for day care, she added.

In the discussion of part-time work and study for women in the University, two speakers defended the right of women to have children while going to school.

Ann Challender, Medical student and representative of the Graduate Women's Organization, said that women faculty and graduate students should have the option of spending two years on a half-time basis in order to have and care for children.

At the present, Challender said, only women who are ill or who are divorced and have children can study on a part-time basis and continue to receive financial assistance.

Janet M. Higonnet, a student in the GSAS, said, "If you're having kids, you can keep up with the pace of full-time study, but you can't keep up with the men and women who are really forging ahead with a career. It's a constant source of frustration. But making too much provision for part-time study is a way of copping out of the problems of people who want to go full-time."