Dunster Group Fights Coed Plan

A group of students from Dunster House is circulating a petition demanding that Harvard and Radcliffe have equal admissions, beginning with the class of 1976-and opposing the coed plan proposed by the Committee on Houses and Undergraduate Life CHUL).

The Dunster Equal Rights Group, an ad hoc organization born Monday evening at a meeting of 40 undergraduates in the Dunster JCR, has collected more than 500 signatures the first day they circulated their petition.

Amy C. Brodkey '71, an organizer of the group, said last night that "there is a lot of sentiment at Radcliffe for an equal admissions policy, and the number of men who have signed shows that they also support equal admissions."

Four hundred men and one hundred women have signed the petition thus far, members of the group said.

In addition to the demand for equal admissions, the petition calls for non-cooperation with the housing proposal put forward by the CHUL subcommittee on co-residency, and a demand that the Harvard HEW "affirmative action plan" be made public.

The CHUL plan recommended that all Harvard and Radcliffe Houses become coed next year. Such a plan would mean that each House would have an approximately 5:1 male: female ratio The Dunster group is demanding a 1:1 ratio in each House which becomes coed.

An RUS poll conducted last Thursday and Friday showed that a predominant number of women living at Harvard were dissatisfied with the current ratios, and wanted more women in their Houses.

[Results of the poll will appear in tomorrow's CBIMSON.]

RUS, responding to the CHUL subcommittee recommendation, proposed that a limited number of Houses go coed next year, with each coed dorm having a 2:1 male: female ratio.

Brodkey said that "the petition campaign is to raise people's consciousness about sexist issues."

Rebecca Scott '71, another organizer of the petition, was more adamant in her analysis of the male: female ratio at Harvard. "The petition is intended to change the nature of Harvard, and to force Harvard to do something it obviously doesn't want to do, i. e. make Harvard change its concept of being responsible for training the elitist maleleadership in this country," she said.

The third demand on the petition asks Harvard to make public the affirmative action plan it submitted to the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare.

Last Friday President Pusey announced that HEW had accepted the University's plans for increasing the number of women and minority group members employed by Harvard. Details of the plan have not been made public.

This fall, HEW forced the University of Michigan to adopt specific plans for total equity in all university positions, and to give retroactive pay to women and minority group members who had been discriminated against because of sexist and racist pay differentials.

The Dunster group plans an open meeting for 7:30 p. m. tonight in the Dunster JCR.