Div Program For Women Finds Funds

The Divinity School has found the funds to finance the coordinator's office of its women's studies program for another year, ensuring the survival of the threatened program, its current director said yesterday.

The coordinator's office, now a full-time position with a budget of about $13,000, will be changed to a half-time post at a salary of $6000, M. Brinton Lykes, coordinator of women's programs, said yesterday.

Lykes said the funds will save the program from the complete abolition that the school's dean proposed as a money saving measure in January.

Krister Stendahl, dean of the Divinity School, refused to confirm Lykes' statement yesterday, but said the final decision on the continuation of the office has been postponed because of an "expectation" of finding the necessary funds.

Stendahl said he will make an official announcement about the office's future at a Div School faculty meeting on March 21.

Hard to Continue

The elimination of the office would have made it very difficult for the program, the only organized one of its kind at Harvard, to continue, Lykes said when the budget cut was proposed.

The proposal was one of several recommendations Stendahl made to prevent a budget deficit similar to the $21,000 short fall the school had in fiscal year 1976.

Stendahl said the original recommendation that the office be left vacant after Lykes leaves at the end of this semester was always conditional on the financial situation of the school.

He declined to comment on where the school expected to find extra funds, adding, "I wish that the money could come out of my own pocket, but it can't."

Student Support

Student response to the proposed cut has been negative. Students met and signed petitions in support of the office after Stendahl's January recommendations. The Div School faculty also voted for the continuation of the position in February.

"I think it was clearly necessary for the faculty to vote for the program. It needed that support," Lykes said, adding that student protest may also have pressured the School into finding funds.

She said that although she was pleased that the office would be saved, she was dissatisfied that the full-time job had been cut.

The duties of the position include coordinating the school's women's studies courses and counseling individual students