Mrs. B's Grand Design

The "arbitration" committee which meets this week at Radcliffe to make recommendations about the house system is like one of those loftily named advisory committees President Johnson is in the habit of appointing. The committee has no real function, the issue at stake has grown tiresome, and each side knows what the other thinks before the meetings begin. Because the recommendations are not binding on President Bunting and the College Council, they--in the end--will probably overrule any proposals that are not in keeping with their own ideas.

Consultation is as much a myth at Radcliffe as it is in the Johnson administration. Like RGA's inoperative Committee on the Fourth House, the newly-appointed committee may discuss specific details of the house system. It may in fact recommend that some of the 23 girls who went on a five-day hunger strike be allowed to move into apartments, which would at least make those people happy.

But the new committee will never be able to challenge Mrs.Bunting's basic premise: that Radcliffe ought to be a fully-residential college. The house system is her own private dream. Since she announced plans for the house system six years ago this month, she has sought out student advice about the decor of the new dormitories, the placement of dining rooms, and the like, but she has never solicited student reaction to her grand design.

There is evidence, in fact, to suggest that Mrs. Bunting has consistently disregarded wide-spread student opposition to her pet project. The bitter protests over the destruction of Gilman House two years ago, last year's furor over the flat room and board rates, and the recently concluded hunger strike are indications that Cliffies want an option to the restrictive dormitory living Mrs. Bunting would like to see effected throughout Radcliffe.

Given Mrs. Bunting's commitment to the house system and her widely-publicized $7 million fund drive, one can only be pessimistic about the chances of this committee's stopping a project that has picked up its own momentum. And given her history of making decisions first and seeking student opinion afterward, one can only smile at the hunger strikers' suggestion that their committee become a "permanent" and "independent" part of Radcliffe's administrative process. Mrs. Bunting's repeated refrain at RGA meetings, that Radcliffe is run both by its students and administrators, has always been a deception. And always will be.