The Radcliffe Yearbook

Acclimated to our IBM-ized society, yearbooks at Harvard are distinguished by serial numbers--321, 322, and now 323. While the Radcliffe yearbooks is a recent convert to the merger trend, it has at least escaped being reduced to a cipher. The new volume is not "80;" it is still The Radcliffe Yearbook.

But in many other respects, the current Annex annual is a smaller replica of its brother publication, 323. Indeed, its pages 9 through 63 and some of the later ones are duplicates of pages in the Harvard book. There is the same faculty section, the same photo essay of Cambridge at night, the same love poem. And this is as it should be, since these things are shared by Harvardmen and 'Cliffies alike. For those elements which are still "strictly Radcliffe," there are other sections unique to the Annex volume.

The amalgamation of the Radcliffe Yearbook staff with the Harvard Yearbook Publications, Inc., has given Radcliffe girls a book that is bigger, thicker, and slicker than those of the by-gone era of separateness. For some features, the new enlarged book merits enthusiastic praise. The quality of the photography, for instance, is incomparably superior to that of the former all Radcliffe volumes.

And yet, the new Radcliffe Yearbook is a disappointment in other respects. Most notably, it suffers from too much written copy and too few photographs in proportion. While this criticism is equally applicable to 323, it is especially evident to Radcliffe girls, since previous Annex yearbooks had almost no written matter except a few captions.

The overabundance of copy is particularly striking in the section on the dormitories. In truth, there is very little to say about the difference in "character" among the dorms, even less than among the Harvard Houses. A lengthy blurb on each dorm is bound to deteriorate into a few private jokes or a questionable attempt to attach cliches to each one--Briggs: "cool, self-assured sophistication;" Eliot: "talkative;" Holmes: "musical, spirited, homey;" Whitman: "slightly mad potpourri."

A reduction in the amount of copy would provide more space for informal pictures of typical Radcliffe occurrences which have meaning for everyone--fire drills, gym classes, library lines, cookies-and-milk at exam time, thesis writing. Hopefully, a compromise can be reached between copy and photographs, and the "Social Life" section in this year's book offers a good example of such balance.

It is inexcusable that the Radcliffe Yearbook does not contain even one picture of the exterior of a Radcliffe building--not the Fay House gate nor Agassiz nor even a dormitory. And while the faculty is certainly a vital part of a Radcliffe education, devoting one-fifth of the total pages to the professors seems a bit over-generous.

In the final analysis, while the Annex yearbook has gained something in professional quality from the advantages of a larger and better-equipped yearbook staff, the book has perhaps sacrificed a little too much of its former folksiness as a memorable picture-book of life at the 'Cliffe. But at least this year's seniors have the privilege of carrying away with them the first Radcliffe Yearbook of the new and beautiful era of merger.