Mrs. Bunting and the Girls

There was no substantive issue or philosophy difference between students and administration, but the quickness with which the disagreement escalated into name-calling testifies to some basic problem at the college.

In all the College hierarchy, there is no one besides Mrs. Bunting who has any real decision-making power.

For a shy woman, Mary I. Bunting has been the target for a surprising and clearly undeserved amount of virulent hostility in the past year. Radcliffe students have come away from meetings with her, convinced that she is either a "liar" or an "incompetent." The CRIMSON, in a series of articles, accused her of bargaining in bad faith and making promises she couldn't keep. Old friends among alumnae have shaken their heads at her decisions and vowed never to have dealings with her again.

Her growing reputation as an autocrat is particularly strange, because, during her seven years as president of Radcliffe, Mrs. Bunting has deliberately sought out student and alumnae opinion. While plans for a House system were being formulated in 1961, Mrs. Bunting worked hand-in-hand with a large committee of Cliffies and submitted her recommendations to a student referendum before they were presented to the College Council.

Mrs. Bunting's concern for student involvement in decision-making led her to reorganize the student government association at Radcliffe, making it a "community wide" organization which includes administrators and students alike as voting members. On numerous occasions, she has chided students who have cynically regarded her plans as fait accompli. At a Radcliffe Government Association meeting, she is apt to repeat, "I've come here because I want to hear what you think. Do you have any ideas? What shall we change?"

To a woman who obviously regards herself as a flexible and progressive administrator, the five-day hunger strike last month must have come as the final and inexplicable blow. That strike, organized by 23 upperclassmen who found themselves deadlocked with the administration over their housing arrangements, proved once and for all that the elaborate and superficially democratic decision-making structure at Radcliffe had failed. With which the disagreement escalated into name-calling testifies to some basic problem at the college. Probably the strike could have been averted and Radcliffe spared a week of embarrassing publicity; but Mrs. Bunting, it is clear, was the victim of her own bad public relations sense and the inoperable, attenuated administrative machinery in Fay House.

36 Off-Campus

The strike grew out of girls' distress that only 36 juniors are being allowed to move out of college housing and into their own apartments next year. The 23, cramped in Edmands House for the duration of the strike, argued that "every girl in next year's senior class ought to have the option of living in non-college housing." One-hundred-thirty-one juniors had applied for the 36 places after spring vacation, so that the residence office was forced to hold a lottery. Although the strikers, most of whom were juniors, had been meeting with administrators for six weeks to argue for more places off-campus, many of them drew. There was no substantive issue or philosophy difference between students and administration, but the quickness bad lots and were not among the lucky 36--which didn't help their case with the administration at all.

To this day, Mrs. Bunting thinks that the hunger strikers were disgruntled that they lost in the lottery. They, however, pointed to the girls in their number who had won places and reminded her that their concern with apartment living antedated the lottery. The strikers are probably correct in defending their long-range interest in the housing issue, but Mrs. Bunting is also justified in thinking that there is a good deal of self-interest involved. "The basic problem between us is not that I didn't understand what you wanted, but that you didn't get your own way," Mrs. Bunting told a leader of the strikers last week.

She became convinced of their "selfishness" because, as she explained, "they were deaf to any discussion of economics." During her first meeting with the girls last March, she argued that if the College allowed more than 36 girls to live in apartments, it would lose about $1000 for each girl, the amount each would normally pay in room and board.

Because Radcliffe has been operating a budget deficit of $100,000 each year, which has been made up by dipping into capital, Mrs. Bunting was reluctant to risk a still greater loss. She assured the girls that she and administrative officials were working on economy measures to allow more girls off-campus. "But we will not run a bigger deficit, raise room rates for everyone in the dorms, and lower the standards of dorm living to allow a few individuals to have apartments," she insisted.

The irony of this exchange is that the girls became convinced that Mrs. Bunting did not understand the "educational importance" of apartment living, when it was she who--18 months ago--first suggested that some seniors be allowed off. "Our girls move into the Houses as freshmen and by the time they're seniors, they're ready for their own apartments," she said last week. "For seniors, whose academic and social lives revolve around graduate and professional students, apartment living may be just the thing."

Mrs. Bunting, in fact, is so convinced of the "educational importance" of apartment living that she has built a provision for it into her long-range plans for the House system. She envisions arrangements which will allow about 150 girls--including commuters, married students, and apartment dwellers--to live off-campus. (About 80 of these, she estimates, will be seniors in their own apartments.

But apartment living hinges on the completion of all Mrs. Bunting's other plans. Her "grand design"--as it has been called--cannot be effected until the College raises $7.5 million to supplement a $2.5 million challenge grant it received from the Ford Foundation this spring. A three-year campaign for the matching funds will get underway this summer; each October, beginning in 1968, Radcliffe can claim one-third of whatever has been raised. If plans move on schedule, the new House on Garden Street will be complete by September 1970. Once this is accomplished, girls can be moved from the badly-overcrowded older dorms in the Quad and renovation can begin on them. Eventually, Mrs. Bunting hopes for Houses which will physically resemble the Harvard Houses: large central kitchens and dining rooms, junior and senior commons rooms, house workshops, practice rooms and studios, tutors' suits, and--most important--a single room for each girl.

Yet Mrs. Bunting's pleas for economy and for the ultimate vision of the Houses were largely ignored by Cliffies this winter. "My real difference with the girls is they want everything--renovated dorms, apartment living--now, while I am forced to take things slowly and wait for financial support," she said several weeks ago. "I really can't think of myself as an ogre. We all want the same things." The 23 girls, before they went on strike, argued that economics ought not to be Mrs. Bunting's first concern. "It's important enough for us to live in our own apartments for the college to run a deficit," their spokesman insisted.

Voice in Decisions

When Mrs. Bunting and the House deans continued to insist that letting every senior move off would put Radcliffe in a dangerous financial position, the girls became convinced that there was "no way to effect our will through the regular channels of communication." During their discussions with Mrs. Bunting, they realized, they said, that "there is a greater problem at Radcliffe, something that goes beyond the immediate question of getting our own apartments: Do we as students have a real voice in the decision-making process of our college? Decisions at Radcliffe, it seems to us, are made completely from above."

Thus, at midnight on May 11, 15 girls went on strike and were joined by eight more the next day. They pledged to eat nothing until the administration agreed to let every senior have her own apartment. Reporters and friends who talked with the girls during the course of the strike remarked that they seemed "driven by some freakish, martyr-like vision of their cause. They talk as if they're a besieged people." In retrospect, it seems obvious that the girls' wrath far outran their reason, but during those five days, they were real celebrities in the Quad. Refusing at first even to chew gum or take vitamin capsules, the girls found their cheekbones becoming hollow, their eyes glazing; telegrams of support arrived from their families, friends at other colleges, and even from the National Student Association.

As can only happen among cerebral females, the girls quickly came to see their boycott as a strike for "freedom." They reported, by the fifth day, that "four have already become too weak to go on; one of them, Carole Adams, is in the infirmary." They published an elaborate history of their dealings with Mrs. Bunting, in which they tried to annotate her practice of dealing in bad faith. In the newspapers, Mrs. Bunting came across as a hard-hearted administrator, "maintaining silence in face of the fast" and professing her inability to "do anything, although they're perfectly free to express their opinion." Catherine Williston, acting dean of the College, is said to have come to a meeting with the strikers, begged them to give up "in her most sarcastic voice," and then, lifting her fingers to her lips, thrown them a good-by kiss.

Heated Emotions

These stories, probably apocryphal, and the girls' fervor testify to the virulence of feelings on both sides before and during the strike. (One dean, still unidentified, is said to have called the strikers "stupid little girls" in conversation with another student.) That emotions could become so heated over an issue as trivial as apartment living makes a farce of all the mechanisms that are supposed to settle conflict at Radcliffe. Mrs. Bunting was pulled into the controversy almost immediately; her underlings, in the residence and deans' office, were unable to head off the conflict with the disgruntled girls.

Mrs. Bunting's involvement in what should have been an issue between students and their deans or House masters would surprise people at other colleges--particularly Harvard--but it is typical of Radcliffe. In all the College hierarchy, there is no one besides Mrs. Bunting who has any real decision-making power. All questions of housing, admission, fund-raising, social rules, and employment are inevitably pushed into her lap by administrators who are either unsure of their own ability or uncertain of Radcliffe's policies. Unlike other college presidents, Mrs. Bunting has intimate knowledge of the most mundane aspects of the whole operation. It is difficult to imagine President Pusey or even the deans of the other faculties taking an interest in the draperies that are to be hung in a university building; Mrs. Bunting, though, personally selected the curtains for Mabel Daniels.

Her supervision of the operation can be understood in two ways. First of all, it is possible to argue that her personal attention is required, Radcliffe's financial condition being as precarious as it is. Those who would espouse this line maintain that all details of the operation of the College must be watched and economies applied unsparingly. This, they say, has been Mrs. Bunting's role.

No matter how many meetings Mrs. Bunting agreed to, no matter how highly she regards RGA, her tendency is to make decisions first and seek student opinion later

It is also possible, however, to argue that Mrs. Bunting's attention is necessary because she is surrounded by incompetents. Students and senior residents who have had to deal extensively with the Radcliffe hierarchy sometimes claim, for instance, that one has to get Mrs. Bunting's permission before Buildings and Grounds will turn up the heat during the winter. No one below her sets policies: the three Deans administer Harvard's academic policies according to the "Rules Relating to College Studies." Mrs. Bunting, it is said, makes all the other decisions for her flaccid bureaucracy. (She is surrounded. one alumna says, by a "Greek chorus," which nods agreeably at her every move.)

A president's accessibility can be a real advantage in dealing with students (how many college students wish the presidents of their institutions were as accessible as Mrs. Bunting?), but Mrs. Bunting's involvement in every mundane issue has only weakened her position. In a series of confrontations over the past two years, Mrs. Bunting has come to seem less reasonable and more autocratic, simply because -- in each case -- she personally had to announce a decision unfavorable to students.

The deans and the other administrators, who were often more closely involved with the problem at issue, failed to serve as buffers for her. Her energies have too often been absorbed by soothing personalities all around or arguing trivialties, when she might more profitably have been raising funds or devoting her talents to specific problems like economizing or finishing plans for the Houses.

Mrs. Bunting's position within the hierarchy, then, has pushed upon her duties which might be more efficiently handled by her subordinates. But the furor over apartments which resulted in the hunger strike developed not just because Mrs. Bunting was thrust into the conflict at its outset, but because her position has been poisoned in the past by her own terrible public relations sense. She has shown a gift for alienating students; her conception of her job has involved her, time after time, in altercations which have reduced students' confidence in her and cast her in an unfavorable light.

The girls on the hunger strike openly accused her of duplicity in her past relations with them. They point to a long series of incidents in which she has acted in a high-handed manner or made promises she could not keep. In a "short history" they published after the strike, the strikers noted that Mrs. Bunting has sought out student advice only about the decor of the new dormitories, but never solicited student reaction to her grand design for the House system.

There is evidence, in fact, to suggest that Mrs. Bunting has consistently disregarded wide-spread student opposition to aspects of her project. The bitter protests over the destruction of Gilman House two years ago, last year's furor over flat room and board rates, and the off-campus houses' fight for breakfast subsidies are indications that at least a few Cliffies want an option to the restrictive dormitory living Mrs. Bunting would like to see effected throughout Radcliffe. Girls like the strikers, who are clearly a minority, are afraid that the intimate atmosphere of the small wooden frame off-campus houses now run by the college will be sacrificed when, by 1970, those houses will be sold and every girl required to live either in a dormitory or a non-college apartment. Yet Mrs. Bunting has continued to see these protests as the work of a tiny group of troublemakers.

There is no question that the hunger strike was long in coming. In the spring of 1966, when Mrs. Bunting announced that the three meals per day contract would apply to every college resident, girls in off-campus houses far from the dining halls appealed to her to give them a breakfast subsidy and she agreed. But, the following fall, Mrs. Bunting seemed to have reversed her decision. As the strikers have said, "this announcement took the proportions of a small scandal in the eyes of the girls who had moved off-campus to save money and avoid ... eating breakfast in the large dormitory dining rooms." Meetings with Mrs. Bunting followed; the CRIMSON denounced her; and finally she said the College could afford a partial rebate, but only to girls in off-campus houses more than a block away from the Quad.

Throughout this turmoil, Mrs. Bunting appealed to girls to understand the College's financial troubles and the losses it would sustain if the rebate were granted. The College's difficulties are undoubtedly legitimate, but Mrs. Bunting's appeals for finances, in the girls' minds, came rather late. However valid her reasons for reneging on a promise, it was clear to girls that she was reneging. This incident is typical of Mrs. Bunting's tactics: she maneuvers herself into conflicts, speaks too soon, and later finds that she must go back on her word. Continued contact with their president has eroded students' confidence in her--and in her word.

Their confidence was at its lowest ebb at the beginning of this term: the memory of the breakfast subsidy fiasco still rankled. Starting early in February, two months before housing decisions were to be made, girls began having appointments with Mrs. Frederick Bolman, the dean of residence, to ask about apartment living. Many were opposed to a lottery system, which had been used for this year's seniors. They were put off by Mrs. Bolman, who told them that the procedure had not been set up because the administration was busy with admissions meetings for the class of 1971. By the end of March, a few girls had gotten wind of a lottery; they drew up a letter protesting this method of selection and requested a meeting with Mrs. Bunting for a reconsideration of the matter. Sixty-five juniors signed that letter. The same day the letter reached Mrs. Bunting -- March 28 -- the bills for next year's room deposit were delivered without prior notice. And students were also informed that the lottery would take place immediately after spring vacation. Thus, there was very little time to question the method of selection; spring vacation came in the interim, which meant most girls were away from Radcliffe between their notice of the lottery and the day it was to begin.

Mrs. Bunting agreed to see the girls who had asked for a meeting with her. There she reiterated her reasons, all financial, for not allowing more girls into apartments. The girls also objected to the arrangement of having 12 girls from each House chosen, since East House sign-ups for the lottery far outnumbered the other two Houses. They specifically requested that the whole issue be given more consideration and the lottery postponed. Mrs. Bunting apparently refused this request, but "promised to do whatever was in her power to change the 12-per-house arrangement."

After the lottery was drawn on Wednesday of that week, Mrs. Bunting met with RGA on Thursday to discuss the 12-12-12 arrangement. She was told that selecting the girls who had drawn highest in the all-college list was more desirable, but on the following day, 12 girls from each House were informed that they had "won" the right to their own apartments.

A series of meetings and phone calls with Mrs. Bunting followed, most of them devoted to girls' questions about finances. They began arguing for a shifting of priorities, that is, girls' preferences before financial needs. Mrs. Bunting told them that the final decision would come from the College Council and suggested that they meet informally with Council members. Before their May 1 meeting, three trustees had tea with selected girls to discuss non-college housing. When a spokesman for the girls called Mrs. Bunting to learn what conclusions the trustees had drawn from the meeting, she said that discussion was over, that an "impasse" had been reached because the Council had decided it was financially impossible for any more girls to move off.

After several days of meetings, the girls decided that a hunger strike was their most efficient means of protest, since--unlike a sit-in--it would not interfere with the College's business. On midnight Wednesday, May 10, they stopped eating.

The merits of the strikers' complaints, which have been widely discussed at Radcliffe, are less important, in retrospect, than the fact that they felt moved to strike in the first place. Some of the 23 girls on the strike -- and the 50 who held a one day sympathy strike -- obviously were not as intense about getting their own apartments as were the handful of leaders. But all of them, and others who only observed from afar, agreed that they had been tricked, deceived, and put off through three months of bureaucratic mismanagement. Had the dean of residence told them of the lottery a reasonable length of time before it began, the girls might have been able to work out a method of selection to which both sides could agree. Had Mrs. Bunting not appeared to be merely listening to their complaints29Architect RONALD GOURLEY shows girls his plans for a renovated Quad