Cliffies Graduate, Wearing Armbands

Two hundred ninety-two girls, more than three-quarters of them wearing white armbands over their black robes, received their Bachelor of Arts degrees from Radcliffe College yesterday.

The armbands, symbolizing a hope for peace, were bisected with a black mourning band for Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy.

In an event unprecedented in Radcliffe commencement history, Rachel Radio Lieberman '68 read a statement voted overwhelmingly by the senior class supporting men who refuse to serve in the armed forces. The crowd applauded the statement vigorously.

The commencement speaker, Walter Washington, mayor of Washington, D.C., said that universities can help solve our urban problems by learning how to "translate scholarly knowledge into practical action." Frequently departing from his prepared text, Washington (whose daughter Bennetta Jules-Rosette is in the senior class) noted that city administrations and colleges must work together to get anything done.

"The colleges, properly speaking," Washington said, "do not exist by granting degrees, but by their success in fostering a favorable and positive association of human beings."

Washington deplored the fact that it was possible to go through four years of dormitory living at college, without getting to know the girl down the hall, but he quickly added--turning to Mrs. Mary I. Bunting, president of Radcliffe--that he did not mean here.

Inclement weather hampered the commencement exercises. As Dean Kathleen O. Elliott reached the letter "m" in the process of calling out each girl's name, the rain began to fall. Mrs. Bunting, who had been shaking each girl's hand and giving her her diploma, asked the class of '68 to decide "democratically" whether to continue the service outdoors in the Radcliffe Yard, or move into the gymnasium. The black-capped girls voted overwhelmingly to continue outdoors in the rain.

During the ceremonies, Radcliffe honored Charles A. Coolidge '17 retired member of the Harvard Corporation and former Radcliffe trustee, and Wilma A. Kerby-Miller, dean of the Radcliffe Graduate School Emerita.

87 per cent of the 292 girls in the class took their degree with honors, a new Radcliffe record. There were 11 summa cum laude degrees, 2 magna cum laude with highest honors, 64 magna cum laude, and 176 cum laude, 84 of these in general studies.