A Trust We Can Trust

Meeting tonight will help answer questions about Radcliffe Trust

The much ballyhooed combination of Harvard and Radcliffe, now complete, has invited almost as many doomsday predictions as the coming turn of the millennium. While the optimists claim that Radcliffe's conversion into an institute for advanced study will allow the former college to expand its presence within the University community, the naysayers believe that Radcliffe--and its role as a strong advocate for women on campus--will fade quietly into the woodwork.

Though the jury is still out on what exactly the merger will mean for Radcliffe itself and for Harvard as a whole, it appears as if the union has already spawned one unfortunate and unforeseeable consequence. In its formative stages, the Ann Radcliffe Trust seems to have taken to incorporating one of the University's worst attributes--a love for the cloak of secrecy.

From a Harvard standpoint, it might not seem so odd that the College administrators have employed a closed-door process for choosing the undergraduate representatives to a new committee which will oversee the Trust. The Trust, a powerful group created in the wake of the merger, will dole out nearly $20,000 in annual funding to student groups interested in women's and gender issues.

But to those who are familiar with the Radcliffe Union of Students (RUS), the body formerly responsible for making such funding decisions, the news is disturbing. RUS was known for its warm, inclusive spirit and for encouraging a maximum of student input. Its members were elected yearly from the female undergraduate population, and topics discussed at weekly meetings were openly publicized.

In contrast, the students on the committee for the Ann Radcliffe Trust are being chosen in a manner which seems capricious at best and, at worst, a dangerous threat to the future of true undergraduate participation and interest in women's issues on campus. A single administrator, Assistant Dean of the College Karen E. Avery '87, has quietly been contacting specific members of the student body with an invitation to sit on the committee. Some of these individuals are directly linked to women's groups, while others have been chosen seemingly at random.

This is not to say that these individuals will not do a good job on the committee. Many of the students might be extremely experienced or otherwise qualified for the position. Still, the fact that there has been no open application process for the positions, nor any real disclosure about how exactly the Trust will be run, is deeply troubling. Will these handpicked student representatives be voting members of the committee with equal status to the other members? Who will preside over the committee? What kind of criteria will they employ for dispensing funds?

We understand that the answers to some of these questions might be several months in coming. As with any new organization, there are probably many procedural details that still need to be straightened out. And we are encouraged that Harvard is interested enough in undergraduate input to appoint students to the Trust committee in the first place.

But the manner in which they have conducted their business is all wrong. If the administration is truly concerned about how we feel, why don't they just ask? The dispensation of information is the best place to start; let us know exactly what the Trust is, what its goals purport to be and how it fits into the grand scheme of funding Harvard student groups. Most importantly, the Trust needs to give anyone who is truly motivated the opportunity to become involved. By appointing a select group of students, an instant wedge is driven between the representatives and the people whom they are supposed to serve.

Tonight we will start to get some of those answers. At 8 p.m. in Emerson 108, Dean of the College Harry R. Lewis '68, Acting Dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study Mary Maples Dunn, Dean Avery and Julia G. Fox, will be available to answer questions about the Ann Radcliffe Trust and women's issues on campus more generally. We welcome this meeting and hope a plan involving substantial, open student involvement can be worked out for governance of the Ann Radcliffe Trust.