First 'Cliffe Correspondent Remembers Pioneering at All-Male Harvard Crimson

In the January 22, 1973 issue of the Boston Globe, staff writer Joan McPartlin Mahoney '49 wrote a memoir of her years as The Crimson's first female correspondent. The occasion was the student daily's 100th birthday celebration, to which Mahoney was not invited.

Although Mahoney did not go through the traditional training period--called the "comp"--that groomed out her male counter-parts, she had worked at the Boston Globe the summer before taking a position at The Crimson.

Her article, "Alumni editors mark Harvard Crimson's 100th, Cliffe still waiting for her invitation," ran with a companion article describing the festivities.

Reprinted courtesy of the Boston Globe.

The Harvard Crimson had a 100th birthday party over the weekend and that's one party I'm sorry to have missed, because I still think of myself as the first girl reporter ever to have worked for the Crimson.

So if I had been invited, I'd have gone like a shot to that party and I'd have met a lot of friends and big names there. Some of them would have been both.

But I marked the centennial anyway. Just for the day, I got out my Crimson medal and propped it against the typewriter. Draped my Crimson tie over the hanging lamp and taped my Crimson "Press" sign to the wall.

I hauled out my 1948-49 bound volumes of the Crimson and rifled through the pages, reading my bylined stories.

And then read, for the first time in years, the closing paragraphs of the 75th anniversary history of the Crimson.

J. Anthony Lewis, then of the Crimson now of the New York Times, had noted my appearance. "In the fall of 1947, President Leavitt added a Radcliffe correspondent to the staff and this miss, Joan McPartlin '49, proved so successful at the 'Cliffe and other women's hide-outs that the Crimson seethed with discussion about having females on the sacrosanct staff."

That discussion didn't last long. Lewis wrote in 1947; but 1949 a group picture of the Crimson staff showed four Radcliffe girls, although it would be the 1950s before they were admitted to full membership as editors and business board members, and the 1960s before a Radcliffe student became a Crimson managing editor.

In those days they called us members of the Radcliffe Bureau.

How, and when, did it all start? For the cause of history and Women's Lib, the official date was September, 1947, and I recorded that fact in a 1948 Crimson:

"With a ceremony not even so formal as wrapping the old wheeze in a discarded gallery proof and throwing it on the Lampoon's steps, the Crimson on Sept. 21, 1947, scrapped the Radcliffe jape.

"The old feud was at an end. The Crimson ceased treating Radcliffe girls as Hatfields and recognized them as the real McCoys."

That's when. The why? Not so simple to answer. Economics, philosophy and a new kind of education in Cambridge entered into it. The Crimson was rebuilding after the war, and the staff was heavy with veterans, Harvard juniors and seniors who were years older and more mature than their pre-war counterparts.

Canny Crimson businessmen looked across Harvard Square and saw a new market, both for circulation and advertising, at Radcliffe. To Crimson editors, an old joke had staled. The portrayal of a Radcliffe girl as a female with brains but no beauty was a pallid sketch after they had seen women at work in the war.

And most of all, the girls were there in Harvard Yard. In 1943, Harvard and Radcliffe had agreed on a system of joint education, which brought Radcliffe girlsinto Harvard classes for the first time in thecolleges' history. It was now time to coverRadcliffe, not just joke about it.

I had worked with Crimson editors that summeron The Globe.

So I was in, by the back door perhaps, butworking for the Crimson nonetheless.

And with the men of the Crimson. Scot Levitt,who rose high in the hierarchy of Life. Tony Lewisof the Times, Church Bailey, newspaperman, author,newly named to the board of the Neiman Fellows.Burt Glinn, the sprightly soul who became a Lifeand Magnum photographer. Dozens of other who wenton to every field of publishing and some who brokecompletely to enter law and medicine and politics.And every one a nice guy.

Of those days on the Crimson, two impressionslinger. One is that Crimson editors worked hardand turned out a good product.

The other impression is of a faint haze ofzaniness that hung over the Crimson building at 14Plympton St. I remember an eight-day bicycle racestaged when Crimson editors lugged bikes into thebig news room and made a raceway by pushing allthe desks together in a tight rectangle. Writersworked imperviously, tossing copy to the desk inthe intervals between riders.

When I arrived, the president's privatewashroom was turned into a ladies' room (no breakwith precedent; it had always been so used duringCrimson dances,) I remember that for days someobject stolen from the Lampoon was stashed awaythere in the simple belief that no gentleman wouldeven enter a ladies' room, even in search ofstolen goods.

Vignettes pop up. The sound of music throughoutwarm June weeks as one editor tape-recorded (verynew then) stacks of borrowed records so he couldtake home an instant music library afterCommencement. The editor who was rarely seenwithout a yo-yo; the senior who spent, or so hesaid, a whole term in the stacks of WidenerLibrary, working out a system to beat the horses.Endless poker games.

While waiting for proofs in the basement of theadjoining Crimson Printing Company, we used to siton, and read, great stacks of uncut pages of aparticularly macabre journal-a trade magazine forundertakers.

Even after 25 years, the memories are warm andso is the feeling that we of the Crimson'sRadcliffe Bureau were a feisty, doughty bunch ofpioneers. So I was put out at being left out ofthe party. And don't think I was soothed byCrimson president Robert Decherd's explanation,either. Crimson records are so bad, he syas, that"hundreds of people" never knew about the party,either.

But he gives me an idea. How about it, all ofus Crimson leftovers? How about a party just forus? Anyone feel like starting one? If so, put meon the list and mark me "first Radcliffecorrespondent."

It's still a pretty good title to have held

I had worked with Crimson editors that summeron The Globe.

So I was in, by the back door perhaps, butworking for the Crimson nonetheless.

And with the men of the Crimson. Scot Levitt,who rose high in the hierarchy of Life. Tony Lewisof the Times, Church Bailey, newspaperman, author,newly named to the board of the Neiman Fellows.Burt Glinn, the sprightly soul who became a Lifeand Magnum photographer. Dozens of other who wenton to every field of publishing and some who brokecompletely to enter law and medicine and politics.And every one a nice guy.

Of those days on the Crimson, two impressionslinger. One is that Crimson editors worked hardand turned out a good product.

The other impression is of a faint haze ofzaniness that hung over the Crimson building at 14Plympton St. I remember an eight-day bicycle racestaged when Crimson editors lugged bikes into thebig news room and made a raceway by pushing allthe desks together in a tight rectangle. Writersworked imperviously, tossing copy to the desk inthe intervals between riders.

When I arrived, the president's privatewashroom was turned into a ladies' room (no breakwith precedent; it had always been so used duringCrimson dances,) I remember that for days someobject stolen from the Lampoon was stashed awaythere in the simple belief that no gentleman wouldeven enter a ladies' room, even in search ofstolen goods.

Vignettes pop up. The sound of music throughoutwarm June weeks as one editor tape-recorded (verynew then) stacks of borrowed records so he couldtake home an instant music library afterCommencement. The editor who was rarely seenwithout a yo-yo; the senior who spent, or so hesaid, a whole term in the stacks of WidenerLibrary, working out a system to beat the horses.Endless poker games.

While waiting for proofs in the basement of theadjoining Crimson Printing Company, we used to siton, and read, great stacks of uncut pages of aparticularly macabre journal-a trade magazine forundertakers.

Even after 25 years, the memories are warm andso is the feeling that we of the Crimson'sRadcliffe Bureau were a feisty, doughty bunch ofpioneers. So I was put out at being left out ofthe party. And don't think I was soothed byCrimson president Robert Decherd's explanation,either. Crimson records are so bad, he syas, that"hundreds of people" never knew about the party,either.

But he gives me an idea. How about it, all ofus Crimson leftovers? How about a party just forus? Anyone feel like starting one? If so, put meon the list and mark me "first Radcliffecorrespondent."

It's still a pretty good title to have held