Magazine Lauds 2 at Harvard

Two Harvard graduates are among those selected as Glamour Magazine's Top 10 College Women, the women's journal announced last week.

Nadine F. M. Pinede '86 and Mary M. Hastings '86 were chosen from among the 30-year-old contest's several hundred applicants for their "academic achievement and remarkable extracurricular activism," said Ruth Whitney, Glamour's editor-in-chief.

"These women are bright, ambitious, compassionate, they prove that college women in the eighties are not just achievement-oriented, but nurturing," she said.

Pinede, a native of Norwalk, Conn., has demonstrated her interest in issues affecting Black Americans in a variety of fascinating ways, said Glamour spokesman Michelle Evans.

The Leverett House resident volunteered at an excavation site in Africa's Ivory Coast as part of Operation Crossroads Africa and trekked through Mali during her college summers.

These travels led her to create a special concentration in the literature and social criticism of Black and women writers, her write-up in Glamour said.

In addition to her academic interests, Pinede was active in the Cambridge community, said the magazine. She founded Harvard's Colprep Committee, which started a program at an inner-city high school to teach classes in college and job preparation for seniors.

She was graduated summa cum laude in the spring and won a Rhodes Scholarship. She will attend Oxford in the fall and study modern literature.

According to Glamour, Pinede's Haitian immigrant parents influenced her decision to study Afro-American literature. "Unlike me, my parents did not have the freedom to study their own culture in school; the colonists' culture was the only legitimate one. Literature by outsiders of a particular society can show us injustice and prejudice, but it can also offer hope for pluralism and reform. By distilling human suffering and triumph, literature can teach compassion and respect for human potential," Pinede told Glamour.

Hastings, a native of Kennilworth, Ill., worked as a consultant with a Harvard international development team analyzing the impact of Indonesia's crumbling rice economy on rural incomes and employment in that country, Glamour said.

The Adams House resident was the only undergraduate ever to serve in this capacity. Hastings plans to continue studying business-economics, and told Glamour that she "hopes to spend many years wading through rice paddies and banging on ministerial doors."

Hastings was also the senior editor of the Harvard International Review and a violist with the Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra, Evans said.

Both women are currently travelling in Europe and could not be reached for comment. The prizes awarded to the winners of the competition included $500, an all-expense paid trip to New York to meet the professional woman of their choice, and a 10-diamond "I" pin, said Wanda Bolton, Glamour's competitions editor.