293 Take Degrees At Radcliffe Today

Radcliffe will give degrees to 293 seniors at Commencement exercises today at 11 a.m. in Radcliffe Yard.

At the ceremony, one of the last bastions of Radcliffe exclusiveness in an age of creeping mergerism, the Class of '67 will hear a speech by Barbara Tuchman '33, author and historian.

Patricia Wynn '67, president of the Class, tried unsuccessfully this year -- as the president of the Class of '66 did last year -- to get permission for 'Cliffies to march in Harvard's commencement procession tomorrow morning. Radcliffe is the only school in the University not represented in the procession.

In a letter to President Pusey, Miss Wynn proposed that a "token group" of Cliffie officers and marshals be allowed to join the line of march. But she got no more than her predecessor did -- permission to march in the Harvard alumni procession Thursday afternoon.

"I have no doubt that eventually the Harvard and Radcliffe commencements will be combined," Pusey wrote her in reply. "But . . . at the present time the problems seem great. Until that millenium arrives, we hope you may be willing to follow the same course as the class officers did last year."

The Class of '67 will follow one other precedent set last year -- it will get its degrees in alphabetical order, not in order of academic distinction. Before last year, degrees were granted alphabetically within the categories of summa cum laude, magna cum laude, cum laude and B.A.

Yesterday, Jerome Kagan, professor of Developmental Psychology, addressed Radcliffe's Baccalaureate Service in Memorial Church, two hours before Harvard's Baccalaureate.

Declaring that "the mission of life is to perfect the self," Kagan pointed out "the seeds of a new morality" may lie in the urge to make "an effect on society" and to become involved with others.