Keeping an Eye on Radcliffe, Security, Tenure

The spring semester should prove challenging for Harvard-Radcliffe undergraduate women. Following a fall term marked by safety concerns, upheaval in the Radcliffe administration and few female faculty appointments, students will have to work hard to ensure that their voices are heard in the coming months.

On the heels of the announcement of the impending Radcliffe restructuring, in which the position of Dean of Students for undergraduates will be eliminated, female students must make sure Radcliffe continues to offer the resources they need. Since the College has promised that the changes will actually make more funding available to promote new programs for undergraduates, it will be critical to make sure that the student groups and individual projects--from the Radcliffe Choral Society to Research Partnerships--which Radcliffe promotes will be enhanced, not weakened, by the changes.

President Linda S. Wilson has promised that students will be able to participate in the committees that implement the changes. Demanding that this promise is kept will be a crucial task for undergraduate women this spring.

Even though changes at Radcliffe have attracted much attention, it will be just as important for undergraduate women to make their needs known to the Harvard administration. Perhaps the most pressing concern facing female students is to turn the fear generated this fall by attacks along the river and near Mather House into positive strides toward a safer campus.

The newly-formed Harvard Alliance for Safety Training and Education (HASTE) will sponsor Pizza Safety Breaks in each house during February to promote discussion about how the campus can be made safer for women. In addition, self-defense workshops will be offered on a regular basis, and a Runners Alliance is being formed. Campus safety will also be one of the main themes of the annual "Take Back the Night" week in April--five days of workshops and discussions about violence against women sponsored by the Radcliffe Union of Students (RUS). A "Take Back the River" five-kilometer run will kick off the week, which will feature workshops geared toward improving feelings of security on campus. All of these events will hopefully continue to bring issues of safety to the attention of the administration.

Another area in which women must demand administrative involvement this spring is the hiring of faculty members who are women. Each year, little discussion on gender disparity in the tenure process is initiated until Commencement time, when a Radcliffe reunion class makes noise about withholding its contribution because so few female faculty members have been hired. Although groups promoting criticism of tenuring practices have formed both among Radcliffe alumnae and within RUS, neither has worked extensively with the Harvard administration to examine possible short-falls in tenure procedures. After fall tenure announcements proved once again that men seem to be far more successful in this process, it is critical that this topic finally be examined closely. To be on a campus with so many illustrious figures is a great honor; to realize how few of them are women is a great disappointment. Promoting the appointment of more women as tenured faculty members is only one facet of a greater need for female role models among our teaching fellows, the authors of our textbooks and the theorists in our fields.

This need for female role models is not limited to our campus. Another male-only presidential race is taking shape, and the only national news about politically active women seems to involve the never-ending suspicions cast upon Hillary Rodham Clinton. As a result, yet another challenge for campus women this semester will be to make the political world relevant to our lives. The Institute of Politics will sponsor countless events this spring leading up to the November elections in which undergraduate women should become involved. Aside from the need for more women on campus to participate in campaign work for the presidential race, many state and local races that feature women and candidates who support women will need our support.

Radcliffe also will be sponsoring a number of events to promote political involvement. The Lyman Common Room in Agassiz House will be holding a day-long conference February 17 with discussion groups about how to turn the ideas generated at last fall's Beijing conference into practical action for young women. Also next month is the annual Light-house Conference for girls, in which undergraduates host area high school students for discussions about women's history, self-image and potential for activism. In late spring, RUS will host a weekend conference addressing women's health concerns. All these events will serve as links between women on campus and the issues they face in the wider world.

Spring semester will no doubt be an exciting one for women on campus. We will have the opportunity to translate the momentum generated over concerns last semester into action this semester. It will be crucial for the leaders of the epicenter of women's resources on campus, Radcliffe, to be held accountable for their restructuring decisions so that changes are made for the good of the students and not the good of the College's finances. At the same time, issues important to women on campus are not and should not be cloistered in Radcliffe Yard. Concerns about safety, tenure and political participation will propel discussion for women all over campus this spring and will hopefully lead to significant improvements in the learning environment for all female undergraduates.

Corinne E. Funk '97 is co-president of the Radcliffe Union of Students and is a Crimson editorial columnist.