What Radcliffe Does for You

So the Take Back the Night (TBTN) rally is tonight at 7:30 p.m. in front of the Mem Church steps. Big deal. You don't know any rape survivors, right? Wrong.

Date rape is so pervasive on this campus that I guarantee you know at least one survivor. And you don't know you know because she's afraid to tell her story. Other survivors who have come out to the Harvard administration have had their experiences invalidated and belittled. Your friend isn't going to tell anyone, and maybe she will never get to vocalize what she has to live every day: the horror, the terror, of her rape.

She has the option to voice her feelings at the vigil-rally. What's also important is that you have the option to support her by showing up. Whether or not she, or anyone else, decides to tell her story, you will have shown that you support and care about survivors of sexual assault. You will have acknowledged that rape happens on this campus.

The piece isn't mean to focus on Take Back the Night-I'm actually writing about the Harvard-Radcliffe merger. B.A. TBTN is the tangible connection between women's issues and the status of Radcliffe: no one realizes they know someone who has been raped, and no one realizes what Radcliffe has done for them.

The Radcliffe Union of Students (RUS) funds, and runs, Take Back the Night. No, we're not a "women's student government," and I don't believe we've been one since the '70s We are an umbrella organization devoted to women's issues--their funding, their organizations, their network. We hold dinner discussions every Thursday night at 6 p.m. in the Lyman Common Room (another unknown Radcliffe resource). We have occasional events of our own, like clothing swaps. And we do all this on the five dollars every Radcliffe undergraduate gives us in her tuition bill.

We receive about 20 letters a year from women requesting their five dollars back. Some of the letters are nasty; they say they don't know what RUS has ever done for them and don't think they should have to pay us anything. They're as nasty as the letters I've read from students angry about the Coalition Against Sexual Violence posters last fall (they displayed statistics found in the Harvard booklet on rape). But without RUS funding, many organizations could die. The organizations and events RUS has sponsored include The Male Athletes Forum, Swanwhite, Crimson Dance Team, the Coalition Against Sexual Violence, the Tampoon, individual student research in Nepal and Israel, Hillel speaker Lynn Davidman, Girlspot, WISHR, the Athena Conference, ECHO, Hillel Women's Group, Lighthouse Magazine, Radcliffe Rugby, BGLTSA, the Philippine Forum, Women and Youth in Support of Each Other (WYSE), Speak up, MHAAG speaker Kay Jamison, IMPACT, Mainly Jazz Dance Company, self defense courses, Latinas Unidas, Association of Black Radcliffe Women (ABRW), South Asian Women's Collective, Women in Economics and Government, and Women in Applied Math.

So you may have thought that RUS doesn't affect you, but it does and it needs your help. Without Radcliffe, what will happen to us? The Harvard-Radcliffe merger has affected more groups on campus than anyone realizes. And none of these groups were contacted during negotiations; not RUS, not our partners, not even administrators in Radcliffe Undergraduate Programs. We were not considered in the course of arrangements to merge the two schools because we as undergraduates don't seem to matter to Harvard administrators.

I challenge Harvard to prove to me that the merger took place because it wanted its female students to be full Harvard undergraduates. I challenge Harvard to prove to me that a piece of real estate doesn't matter more to them than I do.

I also challenge Harvard to make the death of Radcliffe undergraduate programming a birth of something more wonderful. Harvard is now accountable for all its students. I expect it to treat us with as much dignity as Radcliffe did.

There is no Radcliffe name to hide behind any more. Radcliffe cannot serve as a makeshift women's center. It is now Harvard's obligation to provide women with space. And Harvard must find a way to revamp RUS so that women's organizations still have funding. Harvard has to care for us.

Perhaps Harvard never wanted female undergraduates to begin with. But we were part of the bargain and we deserve what Radcliffe gave us, and more. Harvard has more resources than Radcliffe does and should therefore be able to fulfill more of our needs as women undergraduates with women's experiences. The unawareness of undergraduates about issues such as sexual assault on this campus can be changed with events like Take Back the Night. The lack of knowledge of most students here on what Radcliffe did for them, and what Harvard could do for them (with some serious pushing by undergraduates), can be changed with a little education, and a little action. Kathryn B. Clancy '01, a biological anthropology and women's studies concentrator in Currier House, is co-president of RUS.