Cliffies to Receive Tickets For Most Athletic Events

A long-standing anti-feminine tradition will disappear next fall when the University offers Radcliffe students a limited version of the Harvard undergraduate's ticket book for home Harvard athletic events.

Radcliffe undergraduates will be able to purchase $2 coupons books that will admit them to all but the most important and most crowded Harvard sports events. To contests such as home Dartmouth, Princeton, and Yale football games, Cliffies will still be given no special admissions privileges.

Although most hockey games and a few of the more important basketball and swimming contests are also expected to fall in this category, Cliffies will have unrestricted admission to more than 40 events that require a ticket at the gate.

Under the new plan, the Cliffie undergraduates will enjoy privileges slightly less than those of a Harvard undergraduate, who receives free coupons to all home games, but considerably more than a graduate student, who receives no coupon book at all.

The Corporation officially approved the program at its regular Monday meeting a week ago. Franklin L. Ford, dean of the Faculty, who submitted the plan, said Friday that the "Corporation initially was not very excited about this idea, but it came around very warmly."

Ford attributed the program's acceptance in part to the fact that it is expected to pay for itself. "We're pretty well convinced that the $2 charge will cover expenses," he said.

Despite the $2 purchase price, Mary I. Bunting, president of Radcliffe, is reportedly very happy about the arrangement and Ford hailed it as a "major step forward in giving girls some type of status" on Harvard's sidelines.

The $2 fee was necessary, he said, because the free coupon books given to Harvard undergraduates were supported by private endowment funds.

Dean Ford sought to allay, however, the fear of at least one alumnus who called him last November to protest a rumor that Cliffies had taken over as Harvard cheerleaders. "The Radcliffe pom-pom girl is a long way off," he said Friday.