ROOM RENTS

(The following letter was sent recently to Radcliffe President, Mrs. Mary I Bunting--Ed)

The raising of room rates by Radcliffe administration brings to the fore many questions about living conditions at Radcliffe--questions that have been present but not answered in the past few years. While the rise in rates has been presented as a financial decision. It generates problems which are far broader than financial considerations. Since Radcliffe administration purports to work with its students through RGA, these issues ought to be worked out by students and administration together. The announcement of the raised rates came largely in the form of an unanticipated decree; if students had known about the problem before it was "solved" they might have offered constructive suggestions. Arbitrary action from above in matters that directly concern students certainly seems to oppose the overall Radcliffe philosophy of education.

While we realize that, if the College is in real financial distress, it would be useless to protest the raise in rates per cent, we feel that strong efforts ought to be made to improve some of the outstanding defects in present and future living conditions at Radcliffe. First, what specifically caused the change in room rates? Perhaps a cost efficiency analysis of Radcliffe's use of funds would show that the necessary money could be procured some other way, leaving off-campus living intact.

While students living in Radcliffe dormitories now pay $40 more than Harvard students, and will be paying an additional $70 more next year, their rooms are smaller, their dorms are noisier--in general, their living conditions are much poorer. With the rise in rates, this inequity will become even more pronounced. Two paths ought to be considered to remedy this. The first is some sort of financial merger with Harvard University, which is obviously no longer a men's college in the same sense that the other Ivy League schools are.

If such a merger is currently impossible, then efforts should be made within Radcliffe itself to improve living conditions. Last year some suggestions were offered by students in a questionnaire about the fourth house. These included: many more single rooms: quiet places to study; better lighting; food machines and typing rooms in all dormitories: more flexibility by buildings and grounds about room arrangements and repairs. In addition, perhaps arrangements could be made for bells and wait-one to be paid jobs, since there will be practically no other way to reduce living costs at Radcliffe.

Admittedly, each of these improvements is fairly minor in itself, but, combined, they would make a significant difference in the living conditions at Radcliffe. The core of the problem is that there seems to be no way left to combine quiet, a minimum expenditure of money, proximity to the main activities of Radcliffe, and comfortable living conditions. Off-campus living has been a fair solution to this problem in the past, but now even the desirability of that answer has been reduced; we feel it is time for a more satisfactory solution to be made. Elien Schwartz '68   Julia Spring '67   Jane Ceresty '67