1952 Graduate Claims New 'Cliffie Emerges Into Masculine World

It seems that "nearly total coexistence and coeducation" has done something to the Radcliffe girl--or at least, so says Michael J. Arlen '52 in Sunday's New York Times magazine.

Gone is the traditional 'Cliffie with "her stringy dark hair, long, pale, intense face and black wool stockings; her green bookbag, stapled at birth to her right shoulder." In her place has emerged, "with new plumage and pinfeathers, a species that would no doubt have startled her ancestors."

The new 'Cliffie has abandoned "those wretched black stockings," is brighter than her Harvard counterpart, and lives in a predominantly masculine environment, about which, Arlen writes, "she tends to be keenly enthusiastic." The Girl With the Harvard Degree can be "downright solemn at times" about such serious matters as "Independence, Privacy, Personal Freedom, Maturity, and Being-Left-Alone."

Eat Crackers in Bed

Emancipated, the new 'Cliffie can even "eat crackers in bed," Arlen reports. He notes the recent referendum in which Radcliffe approved a proposal to allow sign-outs to any hour of the morning.

The area in which the Radcliffe girl lives is "a kind of secular Vatican," Arlen says, "keeping its own counsel amid the sprawl and bafflements of the town." Here the sleeker, better-looking 'Cliffie drinks coffee in haunts such as "Leavitt & Pierce's [sic], as dark as any."

One problem remains, though, from the old days--"how to use one's Radcliffe diploma after graduation. "For the most part, Arlen says, the 'Cliffie doesn't "do much of anything beyond marrying and raising children."

Faced with a choice of Astee anthropology or marriage and children, Arlen says the 'Cliffie "takes the view that everything will somehow work out."