Frothingham Award Faces Legal Review

The Paul Revere Frothingham Scholarship--a cash prize traditionally given to a male member of the College's graduating class--has been submitted to Harvard's top attorneys for legal review and may not be awarded this year, Paul A. Bohlmann, director of fellowships at the Office of Career Services (OCS) confirmed yesterday.

The prize recognizes "qualities of excellent scholarship, manliness, and effective support of ...Harvard University."

Harvard lawyers will determine whether the prize's criteria comply with Title IX of the 1972 educational amendments to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which bars educational institutions who receive federal aid from discriminating on the basis of gender in any of their educational programs.

"The College is currently looking into the legality of the wording [of the Frothingham], and whether it will be awarded this year," Bohlmann said.

The Shaw Award, a travelling fellowship traditionally given to a graduating male, is also being reviewed, Bohlmann said.

Harry R. Lewis '68, dean of Harvard College and chair of the committee which selects the recipient of the Frothingham, wrote yesterday in an e-mail message, "my request that the terms of the remaining College gender-restricted prizes be reviewed was made in the context of Harvard College assuming responsibility for a number of what had been Radcliffe awards."

Lewis said late last week that the legal terms of the Frothingham were last examined in 1977, when Harvard made most of its prizes open to female applicants.

"In 1977, a vast number, and almost all, of the previously males-only prizes and scholarships were opened to women. But to do so required a detailed examination by legal authorities of the precise wording of the terms under which the various prizes were established. As I understand it, the terms of the Frothingham could not be changed," Lewis wrote last Saturday.

Neither Lewis nor Jeremy R. Knowles, dean of the Faculty, would acknowledge last week that the Frothingham was under or needed legal review.

But with Radcliffe College's merger with Harvard last year, the newly formed Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study transferred responsibility for every Radcliffe award except the Fay Prize to the College. Since then, sorting through the legalities of gender-restricted prizes has been on the College's agenda.

Many of Radcliffe's prizes carried gender restrictions with them--Radcliffe had always given them to a woman, and as an all-women's college, had been exempt from the gender-blind policies Title IX mandates.

After officially becoming part of Harvard, Radcliffe lost its exemption status, and was forced to open up its prizes to applicants of all genders.

The legal process of removing the gender restrictions brought Radcliffe's prizes to the Holyoke Center desks of Harvard's Office of General Counsel.

Lewis said yesterday that during this process, he asked for the College's gender-restricted prizes to be examined as well.

The Crimson reported last Friday that the Fay Prize--what had been Radcliffe College's highest honor for a graduating woman--would not be awarded this year.

Lewis had said the Fay Prize couldn't legally be given in the future under the gender restriction that had governed it in the past.

"For many prizes it was possible simply to lift the gender restriction, but this one seemed to have a special status," Lewis wrote last week.

But Frank J. Connors, the Harvard attorney who reviewed the terms of the Fay Prize, said that legally the gender restriction can easily be removed and the prize made open to both men and women.

Indeed, said Connors, once the gender restriction is removed, the Institute would be free to award the prize this year from a legal perspective.

Yet, Radcliffe will not be awarding the prize this year.

Lewis said last week that "the Fay Prize was and is Radcliffe's to award."

And Acting Dean of the Institute Mary Maples Dunn said the Institute was prepared to eliminate the gender restrictions, but the character of the Fay prize still needs to change.

"We want to give a prize consistent with our mission," she said.

Dunn said she and Knowles discussed changing the prize so it could be awarded on the basis of academic merit--a departure from the "citizenship' criteria of recent years, but still in keeping with the donors' original intentions.

"The question is what kind of prize [the Fay will be]. It is the only prize the Institute has retained," she said. "We needed to develop a different process; we probably will not [get nominations] through the Houses."

Dunn said a process that involved the Faculty would probably be necessary to award an academic prize, and by the time she and Knowles had reached a consensus, there was not enough time left before Commencement to develop such a process.

When the Fay prize returns next year, its selection criteria may well have changed. But according to Dunn and Connors, it will have to be open to both men and women.

Connors said yesterday he could not speak in detail about the Fay prize without breaching his attorney/client privilege with the University.

But he emphasized that the Fay prize comes under the jurisdiction of Title IX because it is classified as a prize, not an undergraduate financial aid award.

Connors said if a man and a woman both qualify for financial aid, the man may legally receive money from a males-only fund, because the woman will also get the amount of aid she needs--though from a different source.

But the Fay prize is different.

"In the case of the Fay prize, only one person gets it because of whatever criteria are spelled out in terms [of the original gift]," Connors said.

Dunn said Radcliffe willingly handed over responsibility for its undergraduate prizes to the College, but wanted to maintain control over the Fay.

Last year, the Institute submitted the prize to the General Counsel.

"We submitted the prize to [the lawyers and they] responded that they thought the prize should not be gender specific," Dunn said.

"We said fine, it's never been an issue to us," she continued. "We were a bit disappointed maybe, but now we're part of the University."

"It's not just our prize to give," she continued. "They don't let any old body come in and give prizes to undergraduates. You have to seek approval of the dean [of the Faculty]."

She said the Institute may award two prizes next year, after a selection process has been established.

"We'll have some money saved from not giving the prize this year," she said.

Dunn said Radcliffe does not harbor hard feelings about the Fay Prize's hiatus this year, even though the College still lists the Frothingham--with its "manliness" qualifications--as a Commencement prize.

"Don't consider us hurt. We're big girls," she said.