Send My Daughter To Yale

TWO THINGS can effect change at Radcliffe: pressure and guilt. (The 'Cliffe's too poor to afford justice.) Sometimes enough of either will work, but it usually takes a mixture. Black Cliffies skillfully mixed the two at Fay House this week, and got what they wanted.

What they got, an outline from Mrs. Bunting of definite steps to be taken to achieve Radcliffe's goal of 30 blacks in the class of '73, was no less than they deserved. The goal, if achieved, will give blacks a share of Radcliffe's admissions commensurate with the black percentage of the nation's population. All things considered, including the debatable desirability of any sort of quota system, that goal is socially equitable, and it is to Radcliffe's credit that it has committed itself to achieving it.

On the other hand, Radcliffe's rapid response to blacks makes all the more glaring its failures to other groups--and leads one to ask just how it determines its response.

While there can be no doubt that blacks have been--and are--the most systematically and dramatically exploited racial or ethnic group in the nation, the fact remains that, in absolute numbers, there are more whites below the poverty line than blacks. (It is a fact that, somehow, seems lost on most of this academic community.)

That, combined with the observation that the average and median incomes of Radcliffe parents stand at $60,000 and $30,000 respectively, leaves little doubt that lower and lower-middle class whites have, to date, fared as poorly, and possibly worse, than blacks in Radcliffe's admissions.

The geographical distribution of Radcliffe admissions is skewed in a similarly dramatic way. A tabulation of home addresses in the 1969 Radcliffe Register revealed that eleven states--mainly in the South and Middle West--were not represented at all and sixteen more had managed to send only one girl to Cambridge. The 'Cliffe's Eastern, urban provincialism is further reflected in that half of the class of '69 comes from three states: Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New York.

Those facts are, of course, no news to the Radcliffe Admissions Committee. They know, and they occasionally seem concerned--but they don't sem concerned enough to do anything about it.

THE PROBLEMS they face in doing something about it are essentially the same as those they face in recruiting qualified blacks. Radcliffe simply doesn't receive enough applications from groups other than affluent, Eastern girls--and the reason is that few other groups know of Radcliffe's existence. And, even if it did manage to increase its applications from those groups which are currently under-represented, unless it also manages to greatly increase its scholarship resources few of them will be able to make the trip to Cambridge.

Under pressure, and out of its upper-middle class guilt, Radcliffe has yielded to the demands of its black students. Unfortunately, working class and non-Eastern Cliffies are not now as coherent a group as blacks, and so they will never exert the same sort of pressure on the Radcliffe Administration. But they really shouldn't have to. If Radcliffe is genuinely concerned about distributing its admissions with some semblance of socio-regional equity, it will do so of its own accord, without the stimulus of sit-ins.

That the 'Cliffe shows no signs of doing so indicates both the shabby content of its motivation in this week's decision and the idiocy of its general development plans. Until Radcliffe commits itself to recruiting other disadvantaged groups, it is rather difficult to believe that Mrs. Bunting's promises to black Cliffies stemmed from anything with greater moral depth than a desire to relieve immediate pressure.

At its present rate, barring bankruptcy, Radcliffe will find itself, several years from now, an imposingly brickish place populated by girls who grew up together in Scarsdale, or Darien, or Chevy Chase--with an occasional black face or two. Maybe that's what the administrators want.

If so, they can have it. I'll send my daughters to Yale.