RUS Backs Women's Center

The Radcliffe Union of Students voted last night to support the new Radcliffe Women's Center in principle and to give it $600 in seed money. RUS decided to defer consideration of the center's major funding request until its next legislative meeting on November 4.

The center, located in two rooms in Moors basement, is scheduled to open with a party on October 28. Women working on the center constituted themselves as Friends of the Women's Center at an organizational meeting on October 14.

Women at that meeting decided to ask RUS for the funds necessary for the center's existence. "The women's center could get money from alumnae and the Graduate Women's Organization, but we would like it to come from RUS," Lynn Y. Sakai '73, North House Committee Chairman, said last night.

Sakai urged women at the October 14 meeting to come to last night's RUS session as legislators, not just as interested observers. Many RUS seats were still vacant because of the unwieldy election procedures and the apparent lack of interest in student government. Of the 20 legislators present last night, about one third were friends of the Women's Center who had come to use RUS power and money on behalf of the center.

The RUS members expressed basic agreement with the purpose of the center. "RUS is concerned with the same thing the women's center is--to give an identity to Radcliffe women," Geri R. Benstein '72 said.

The agreement was not complete, however. "I sense a split," said M. Elizabeth Jeffrey '73. Some RUS members expressed concern primarily over the large sum requested, the lack of organization of the center, and their responsibility to save money for other worthy causes later in the year.