Radcliffe: The Institution and the Tin Cup

"I do not intend to contribute any money to Radcliffe College, as I am in favor of a total merger with Harvard University, and I cannot see supporting an institution which should be done away with."

This is one senior woman's response to being asked to contribute to a drive for scholarship funds organized and carried out by other women of the class of 1973.

It is one legitimate response, one surely shared by a number of women admitted by Radcliffe and educated at Harvard. Senior Solicitation, Radcliffe's undergraduate effort to raise scholarship funds for women, has attracted only $680 so far in support. Last year's class by this time had raised $3,252.50.

Underlying this disappointing response is a legitimate question: "What is Radcliffe, anyway?"

A group of women, known commonly as the "Future" Committee and made up of concerned alumnae, trustees, officers of the Alumnae Association and staff members of the administration, has discussed this question at length in its efforts to define the implications of the 1971 Agreement and supply those concerned with concrete recommendations for future directions and policies for Radcliffe. The committee has arrived at a series of conclusions about what Radcliffe today represents:

* Radcliffe is an idea: that of equal educational opportunities for women. This is her historic and continuing function, one which remains valid even after many traditional obstacles to the education of women have been surmounted. The task is not complete;

* A corporate entity, with her own board of directors, free to direct and manage her own affairs, to own property, etc.;

* The body of women admitted by the Radcliffe Admissions Office;

* An accumulation of alumnae--women of public distinction and accomplishment, and women exercising a wide range of alternative life styles;

* A representative of co-education; a community;

* A geographic reality--a residential set of buildings in which men and women live, each House with a distinctive way of life;

* Continuing education, on women's terms (e.g., the Radcliffe Institute, the Radcliffe Seminars); and,

* The Schlesinger Library, foremost in housing materials on the history and accomplishments of women.

And finally, "Radcliffe represents flexibility"--flexibility in response to the large array of sometimes apparently conflicting or mutually exclusive demands and roles in a woman's life: career, home, husband, children, volunteer causes. A woman's educational system can consider more paths to the goal of education than the traditional male routine has permitted. Today when both men and women are reassessing traditional education, Radcliffe's history of efforts to respond with flexibility to women's needs allows her to assume leadership in the entire re-assessing process.

Perhaps this is the key to the argument for Radcliffe's continued existence and worthiness of support, regardless of the specifics of financial arrangements: that she continues to be the spokeswoman for women within the University, to respond to women's needs, to represent their interests, to seek money for their education and support for programs of particular value for women.

Radcliffe's present relationship with Harvard will continue at least until the re-evaluation in 1975; it is unlikely that Radcliffe will either withdraw to her former degree of separateness, or yet become totally "merged." Because women still remain in a minority at most levels within the University, and will undoubtedly remain so for some time to come, total absorption into a complex organization with a multitude of other pressing concerns could lessen the volume of women's voices considerably. The present separate advocacy will not permit this.

But perhaps to answer the senior in another way: The present reality is that there is an urgent need to support higher education in general, and women in particular. The great financial pressures on Radcliffe are measured in the persistent, almost yearly increases in tuition. If Radcliffe is to maintain the diversity of its student body, it must be able to offer scholarship assistance to those promising women who would not otherwise be able to attend. All private institutions are under threat of being unable to support students of middle income.

If we want to rectify an imbalance of men and women within the University; if we want more women: Women must assume at least part of the cost. If women are not willing to back their own self-interest, who else should?

Ellen Jameson Chvany '62 is administrative assistant of the Radcliffe College Fund.