The Quad: Off the Common Path

When Sue Carey '74, now a Radcliffe Institute Fellow, graduated, she went as far away from Cambridge as possible--to Tanzania to teach political refugees who are now powerful in Mozambique and Zimbabwe. She was leaving behind Radcliffe's then jail-like atmosphere.

During Carey's freshman year, no men were allowed in women's rooms except on Sunday afternoons. Matrons patrolled the halls, ensuring that doors were held open with the six-inch "parental hooks," and that a women and her visitor "kept three feet on the ground." Lamont didn't admit women, yet many math classes were held there. Because students had to pay to eat at the other college, dining was virtually single-sex.

Radcliffe's relative poverty resulted in overcrowding. What are now single rooms were "economy doubles;" in 12 Walker Street, two women shared the bedroom of a two-room apartment, while a third lived in the dining alcove. At the obligatory sit-down dinners, Radcliffe students took turns clearing, washing dishes, and waiting on tables.

"The atmosphere was stifling," says Carey. "Women formed cliques, gossiping." The women's movement didn't exist yet, and the civil rights movement and Selma were yet to come. In the dating culture, women without Saturday night dates were even too embarrassed to come to their consolation milk and cookies. Yet, by the '70s, Carey "would definitely have chosen to live at the Quad."

While Radcliffe was still archaic and poor, the mood on campus shifted strongly to the left. Michael Smith '73, now a tutor in Social Studies, explains the spirit of the time. "We cut our teeth on Vietnam, he says. People were much less grade conscious then, and "everything seemed possible."

But after the nation-wide student strikes of spring, 1970, protesting the invasion of Cambodia and the murders at Kent and Jackson State, "there was a lot of disillusionment" among radicals at Harvard, Smith says. Attracted by the alternative lifestyle, many radicals moved to the Quad. Subsequently, radical groups such as the New American Movement (NAM), and events such as the protest against Honeywell (which manufactured anti-personnel weapons) emanated from the Quad.

In the spring of 1970, co-residence--"The Experiment"--began. Parietals were abolished, and a few upperclass Harvard and Radcliffe students switched their residences from River to Quad. Next year, Currier opened, relieving overcrowding at Radcliffe. By the fall of 1972, the Quad male-to-female ratio had been fixed at 1:1.

Smith chose the Quad as his home after his freshman year in the fall of 1970. He and his roommates didn't like the "preppie, water-balloon" atmosphere of the River; he says the 4:1 sex ratio there was "ridiculous, unhealthy, and led to screwed-up social relations."

Most of our friends thought it just this side of insane to go to Radcliffe," Smith says. "They'd say, 'You mean you're going to live with all those Cliffie bitches?'"

At the Quad, the atmosphere of the '50s had turned into one of experimentation, new ideas and excitement. "Milk and cookies turned from a 'consolation prize' into an expression of community," says Smith, adding that Quad male students baked, "taking a naive joy in turning role stereotypes on their heads. There was learning on both sides."

Carey, a tutor at Currier House when co-residence began, says the men who chose the Quad were "the nicest men in the University--sympathetic, more intellectual, less oriented towards beer drinking and sports."

Smith says, "People spent a lot of time at dinner talking about the content of their work, about what interested them in it, not about its quantity. If you were committed to the work, to your place in it, and to getting an education, Radcliffe was the place to live."

This attitude didn't preclude sports as an activity for men. In a South House handbook, Grant Segal '76 praised the Quad as a ballfield, writing, "the House you've been told has no one but tea drinkers and folk dancers is the best House for sports. To a man whose masculinity depends on his jockdom, saying he is the star of a Radcliffe team won't solve his problem. (But then, nothing will. If, man or woman, you're with good sports and teammates, then South House is your place.")

The Quad was not the first choice of Peter Hogness '76. He had also heard that Dunster House had artistic and political people. During his freshman year, Hogness lived in all-male Holworthy, and knew only his roommates well. He says the Quad was "more social, in a relaxed way, not riddled with conventions and scoring points."

"I really liked the social pressure against being sexist at Radcliffe," Hogness says. "The kind of man I was trying to be was respected."

During the first two years of co-residence, it seems North House was most popular, followed by South House. Hogness denies men moved to the Quad to pick up women. "The pickup mentality reflects not being able to relate to women as people...distance is needed for this, not being bleary-eyed together, brushing your teeth," he says.

Feminism thrived at the Quad in the early '70s. At that time when Quad women organized the Women's Center. Joanne Tuller said, "Though many women were active in women's activities, weird things happen when women are in the minority." During these years, some River House male-to-female ratios were 8:1.

At that time in North House, Tuller said, "There was a feeling women weren't getting to know each other," so women organized an all-women's dinner. Though approved by the House Committee, the event provoked University-wide controversy. Tuller thinks the debate it provoked was a good thing. Occasional women's dining halls, with female House associates invited, women's collectives, as well as all-female halls in dorms, gained acceptance. It seemed to me the women's dining halls were an interesting chance to meet older women, who had gone through more of life and academia.

Corridor living encouraged a more informal and communal life than that found at the River Houses. Ellen Kellman '76, now pursuing a joint degree in public policy and law, says, "When people hang out with large groups in the halls, they do weird things." This self-mocking humor inspired such institutions as the North House Annual Christmas Matzoh Ball and the pre-exam Quad Howl.

Bill Poser '79 says "My freshman year, I felt a sense of belonging in North House. When I was a sophomore, I realized that it was nice to have people around who weren't departmentalized."

Until this year, when Dean Fox's housing plan took the freshmen away, Radcliffe had always housed all four classes together. Robert Sapolsky '78 calls this "the best freshman advising system around." Radcliffe's Senior Sister program, in which upperclasspeople welcomed and visited freshmen, continued until the Fox plan took effect this year.

A week before Christmas vacation in 1976, Dean Fox proposed to take freshmen away from the Quad. "Here we go again," was the reaction of North House resident Robert Sapolsky '78. "For three years the annual assault on the Quad was timed during vacation, reading period, or exams." In previous years, attempts to rescind the 1:1 ratio and to institute the "1-1-2 Plan" (freshmen in the Quad, sophomores in the Yard, and others at the River) met with widespread undergraduate resistance.

"In previous years the ends of University Hall were horrible, but last year the means were odious," Sapolsky says. Quad activists said Fox implied improvements such as an Observatory Hill athletic complex and a South House dining hall would not be built unless the Quad knuckled under to his plan.

"The Quad stalwarts and the North House co-masters fought a singular battle. We lost," Sapolsky says. "People at the Quad had a humane, supportive community; the Fox plan was the last straw in the University's attempt to destroy it. The Quad was everything Harvard feared: Radcliffe College, the vestiges of the '60s, and a community that wasn't and didn't want to be Harvard."

In my experience and that of many others, including those who have recently returned to the Quad from the River Houses, the Quad community and its alternative lifestyle still exist. Whether they will survive depends on the commitment of future Quad residents to these values.

Emmy Goldknopf '77-4 has lived at Currier and Adams Houses, and now lives at North House.