Harvard Fails Female Students

Four years ago, I was admitted to Harvard-Radcliffe College. In a few short weeks, I will become a Harvard graduate. During the last four years an enormous change has taken place on campus, and yet, as is the nature of college, few students took note. And yet, this change in the status of Radcliffe—one of the oldest and most revered American educational institutions for women—has not, unfortunately, been accompanied by a change in the status of women at Harvard.

Radcliffe’s transformation into the Institute for Advanced Study was supposed to make official what had been the unspoken status quo since the integration of the two colleges; Harvard was responsible for male and female students. The passing of the torch, as it were, was also supposed to goad Harvard to take more responsibility for the safety, education and well being of women undergraduates. As the Dean of the Institute, Drew Gilpin Faust, said recently, “By saying I’m not dealing with final clubs, I’m not dealing with date rape, it means Harry Lewis’ office is completely responsible for that.” Faust was reiterating the point proponents of the merger had made all along—Radcliffe had not been functioning as a college for many years, but as long as it retained its title, Harvard could pretend that final clubs, date rape, and other concerns were under Radcliffe’s purview.

Today, Harvard stands alone in loco parentis for all its students. Yet, it has not stepped up to provide for its female undergraduates as it should.

In the veritable flood of seven sexual assault cases that appeared before the Ad Board last year (in the previous year, there had been only two), only one resulted in disciplinary action. This provoked Dean of the College Harry R. Lewis to propose in his annual report that the Ad Board take less responsibility for fact-finding in “he-said, she-said” cases. This change in policy will take effect in September, sharply curtailing the amount of investigation the Ad Board does into sexual assault cases.

Lewis has rightly recognized that the Ad Board cannot properly investigate essentially criminal allegations. It is only really capable of effectively handling problems like study card extensions, plagiarism and party violations. When it comes to rape, Lewis is right: The Ad Board can neither issue subpoenas nor collect rape kits. But, if Lewis is going to encourage more women to take their sexual assault cases to court—as he says he will—then he must provide support for women who choose to do so.

Moreover, the Ad Board’s inability to function as a court of law does not excuse Harvard for its refusal to function as a college. As a College disciplinary body, the Ad Board is responsible for upholding campus standards which, even though not punishable in criminal court, are still enforced at Harvard. The College has made it against the rules to sexually assault another student. It cannot now admit its inability to enforce that rule and go back to dealing with plagiarism cases and study cards. The Ad Board must be trained to deal with sexual assault cases and to discipline students who break Harvard’s rules but who may never be found guilty in a court of law. When the College admits that its current response to sexual assault is riddled with flaws—as Lewis did in his annual report—it cannot simply throw its hands up in the air. It must craft a new, effective response mechanism through which it can ensure the safety and welfare of its female students.

Yet, just this week, Harvard failed to endorse the Coalition Against Sexual Violence’s attempt to gain federal funding to help redress the current dearth of resources available for sexual assault victims on campus. The grant would have funded a review of Harvard’s current sexual violence education and the implementation of suggested changes as well as sexual violence education for members of the Ad Board. Lewis has declared the Ad Board to be ill-equipped to handle sexual assault cases; how can it then be denied that an evaluation of its processes and the College’s responsiveness is in order? Given Lewis’ statements in the annual report, his foot-dragging on the endorsement seems all the more reprehensible.

Not that Lewis alone is to blame.

This most recent incident is just part of a long history of the College’s abdication of responsibility for the welfare of its female students. From its silence on final clubs to its continued female faculty under-representation, the College has not proven that it has any interest in or intent to take up Radcliffe’s former charges as equally precious and protectable members of the Harvard community. Instead, the College prefers procedural equality which ignores the substantive challenges women face on this campus—sexual assault being but one.

I will leave Cambridge as a Harvard graduate this June. Yet, I will not give a dime to my alma mater until it takes responsibility, as quickly and easily as it does the credit, for the women Radcliffe entrusted to its care.

Meredith B. Osborn ’02 is a social studies concentrator in Leverett House. Her column appears on alternate Fridays.