A New Era for Women

A minute after midnight this morning, Radcliffe College's 105-year history quietly came to an end. Once an all-women's college, starting today Radcliffe is an "Institute for Advanced Study" and a part of Harvard.

Though it took more than a year of agonizing negotiations shrouded in secrecy, this change will have little impact on most students. The "college" label has long been inaccurate; undergraduate education and housing has been handled solely by Harvard for just under 30 years. While Radcliffe remained a great resource for many Harvard women in the years since, it was far from a college.

So why did it take until today to get rid of the obsolete moniker? Radcliffe, certainly, had a financial interest in maintaining the pretense it educated undergraduates. Over the long run, Radcliffe alumnae with fond memories of Radcliffe the college might not be so eager to donate to Radcliffe the institute.

But however much retaining the college label may have gratified alumnae, the resulting confusion over its mission only hurt Radcliffe. Now that it no longer has to pretend to be something it is not, we are hopeful that a redefined Radcliffe can truly focus on what it is good at: advanced study focused especially on women, gender and society.

In the meantime, Harvard has to fill what was left of the role Radcliffe played in the lives of undergraduate women. This means, more than anything else, funding groups that specialize in addressing the concerns of women on campus. The $5 Radcliffe Union of Students (RUS) fee supported dozens of student groups on campus, but will be discontinued next year as part of the merger agreement. The groups that depended on RUS funding will now look to the College to fill its place.

Fortunately, the College appears to be ready for this responsibility. A new Ann Radcliffe Trust, under the direction of Assistant Dean of the College Karen E. Avery '87, is being set up to fund student groups as part of the Harvard College Women's Initiative. But the details of the trust have not been worked out, and it is unclear exactly who will be reviewing grant requests. It is important that RUS or some other group with substantial student input has control over how the money in the Radcliffe Trust is distributed; otherwise, the trust will be a step backwards from the way the student groups that depend on RUS are currently funded.

We believe today's redefinition of Radcliffe will be a good thing for both Harvard and Radcliffe. The Radcliffe Institute has a bright future ahead of it, and in the long run will benefit from having a clearly defined status within the University, something Radcliffe College did not have in its final years. Harvard, on the other hand, now can no longer defer responsibility for women's issues to Radcliffe.

The end of a college will always inspire deep emotions, and it will anger many to see Radcliffe College go. But today's metamorphosis is the right thing to do; Radcliffe deserves a clear role as it continues its mission of advancing women in society into the next century.

DISSENT: Cork the Champagne

We share the staff's general approbation of Radcliffe's historic transformation. Indeed, this transistion is long overdue. However, the staff fails to recognize the many significant dangers in the creation of an institute devoted to the study of gender, and perhaps more importantly, they are sorely misguided in their support of the Ann Radcliffe Trust.

The Radcliffe Institute's mission to study "women, gender and society" may surely result in the production of worthwhile scholarship. It may also result in an outpouring of Leftist, post-modern nonsense. Only time will tell, but surely our enthusiasm must be mitigated when we consider the unfortunate track record of gender studies.

More immediately, the staff's endorsement of the Ann Radcliffe Trust is ill-considered. If the staff truly believes that student groups "addressing the concerns of women" have legitimate claim to funding, then such groups should have no problem receiving their funding from the same general pool as everyone else. The creation of a separate Trust symbolically, and unnecessarily, ghettoizes women's groups on campus.

Further we are confused that the staff, which ordinarily is so unyielding in its defense of the University's non-discrimination policy, does not see the problem that the existence of the Radcliffe Trust represents. Even if the Trust remains in technical compliance with the policy, it will have a difficult time not violating its spirit. Groups likely to receive funding from the Trust will almost always be de facto single sex in their nature.

--Noah D. Oppenheim '00

Marc J. Ambinder '01