Harvard Students Describe Plight of Women Graduates

The Faculty Committee on the Status of Women held its final open hearing yesterday, this one concerning problems women students face in the Harvard University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.

About 100 people, mostly women, attended the hearing.

The Graduate Women's Organization (GWO) presented a tape of women graduate students describing some of their problems.

On the tape one graduate student in the English department described a letter she received from a professor commenting on her paper: "I had difficulty in grading this paper because I don't like women but I made an effort to forget that as I read this paper."

Another woman related an incident at a cocktail party when a professor said: "Well, I understand that women's lib is flourishing at Harvard. I always see all these dickey types walking into so and so's office."

Phyllis Jones, co-chairman of the GWO, called for an improvement in the status of women on the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and a total change in both graduate and undergraduate life at Harvard.

"The notion of a 4:1 ratio means that women are only one-fifth as worthy of being educated in Liberal Arts as men," Jones said.

Meatballs

Paula Laurans, also of GWO, said that a Harvard-Radcliffe merger is crucial to change the University.

"They want us to treat the status of women but without hurting the structure. It's like saying Make a cake. Here are the ingredients.' And they hand you Spaghetti and Meatballs," she said.

Other women graduates spoke about discrimination against women in job placement, in Harvard housing and in financial aid.

Suggestions from the floor included "maternity leave," day care centers. a job placement service, an ombudsman, and the creation of places for women who want to return to the Graduate School after leaving the University.

Phillip J. Stone III. professor of Social Relations, accused the hearings of being "elitist." He said that the women at the hearings "are trying to in-crease their status at the expense of other groups" and that the hearings did not include peripheral groups such as secretaries and faculty wives.

Caroline W. Bynum, assistant professor of History, who was in charge of the meeting, said "the mandate to the committee was to consider the status of women in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and that their mandate did not allow them to include other groups."

Of the three male members on the twelve person committee, only Professor Michael Walzerstayed until tend. As at previous hearings Professors Dudley R. Herschbach and Morton W. Bloomfield left early.

The committee's final report to the Faculty will not be ready until March.