`Comstock Plan' to Revive Radcliffe Misses Key Issues

To the editors:

I am writing in reaction to Richard Shames' May 11 op-ed asking Harvard to institute his so-called "Comstock Plan," a plan, as he puts it, to "bring back Radcliffe!"

Shames seems to think the answer to the Radcliffe debate is to reinstitute women's separate but equal education at Harvard. I am opposed to the existence of Radcliffe as it stands, but reading this column enraged me. I am crossing my fingers that the administrators of both Harvard and Radcliffe who are currently engaged in discussion are aware enough of student feelings to know that no one has expressed a concern for any problems whose resolution would take the form of reviving a separate education for women at Harvard.

I think it would be well worth everyone's time to assess just what exactly is being argued. I strongly feel that Harvard, as the educational institution which I attend, should have responsibility for my well-being while I am here. Female students who support Radcliffe do so because they feel a need and a love for structures that support women and that provide women with a space of their own. They gripe that Harvard doesn't do that for its female students and that thus Radcliffe is necessary to ensure women a fair deal while attending Harvard.

My response to the women who feel that way is this: Harvard has never had to take responsibility for its women because Radcliffe has been there to fill that role. I don't even feel Radcliffe does fill that role for me or many of my friends, nor do I want it to--but the point here is that the question that arises in debating these two sides of the argument is not one of educational possibilities.

Radcliffe offers extracurricular activities and organizations for women, not academic opportunities. Radcliffe is in no way a part of my or any Harvard woman's journey toward receiving a degree here. It doesn't have a faculty; it doesn't offer classes for degree-seeking credit. It's not that kind of institution. And the women who want to keep it around aren't asking for it to become one.

Shames's assertions are misguided and unhelpful. I write because I worry that the powers that be might read his words and lend them even the smallest amount of merit.

I will be the fifth woman in my family to receive a Harvard degree: my grandmother received a Ph.D. in Chemistry from Harvard, my mother graduated from Radcliffe in 1968 and two aunts graduated from Harvard subsequently. Having quickly started considering this perennial family question after a friend's father asked me how I was liking Radcliffe (honestly thinking that it was still a separate women's college attached to Harvard), I have also come to a conclusion about Radcliffe. Though once an open door to intelligent and ambitious women, Radcliffe now serves more as an obstacle for me to maneuver around once I leave Harvard and enter a world where the "-Radcliffe" attached to "Harvard" on my diploma will carry an impression handed to me against my wishes. J. LARA FOX '99   May 11, 1998