Support the Women's Center

WHEN militant women occupied a Harvard building last Saturday, the majority of the Radcliffe-Harvard community was left floundering. The issues seemed unclear, the original decision to take the building shrouded in mystery, and no one-including the Harvard administration-was quite sure how to respond. But we have waited and debated too long. The women need and deserve our support.

The building at 888 Memorial Drive was not taken as a "hostage." It is not merely a symbol of women's togetherness; it is the vibrant reality of what these particular women are asking for, of what women have desperately needed all along. It fills the empty slogan "female solidarity" with the joy, love and activity these words were meant to connote. These women are not simply asking for a women's center; they have created one.

The need for such a center is obvious. Women-and Radcliffe women are no exception-have long been trained as accessories of men. They have been warped and molded, in body and in mind, and have rarely been able to know other women or themselves as individuals. "The whole education of women" must no longer, as Rousseau put it, "be relative to men." By giving woman a place to meet, to work and be together, away from the influences of a male-dominated society, the Women's Center at 888 Memorial Drive gives women a chance to get out from under the debilitating weight of a sexist society.

The question will inevitably be raised-why Harvard? Given the clear need for a community women's center, why should Harvard be called upon to provide it? The question cannot be approached without dealing with Harvard's already well-entrenched presence within this community. Harvard is not an island. The vast amounts of power and wealth at Harvard's disposal brings with it an equally vast amount of responsibility that it can no longer afford to neglect. Harvard's charges of criminal trespass carry little weight in view of its long-standing insensitivity to the needs of the community.

This is particularly apparent in Harvard's dealings with the people of Riverside. In line with their charge that in fact it is Harvard who is guilty of criminal trespass, the women have joined the Riverside Planning Team in demanding low-income housing on the site of the occupied building.

Although the University has promised to match its plans for graduate student housing with a low-income project on Howard St., there is no reason why Harvard should be allowed to seize and control more of Cambridge's desirable riverfront land than it now has. The Treeland site should be used for more low-income housing because that alone-together with a reduction in the total enrollment of the University-will stop the violent destruction of the community.

HARVARD has suggested that the women move to a building in Central Square. But the Women's Center should remain where it is for the moment for two reasons. First, because Harvard's proposed center in Central Square is physically inadequate. Second, because the continued occupation will force, Harvard to negotiate meaningfully over the Treeland Bindery site.

Certain questions remain. The planning of the occupation, as far as anyone can tell, is open to charges of elitism. Whether or not the seizure of a building was the best method of bringing Harvard's community responsibilities to its attention is also open to debate. But the building has been taken: these women have gotten together and taken positive action while the rest were busy deploring the sodden state of our lives.

Further, the building has so far been closed to men, a measure clearly necessary only as long as security is a problem, an open issue after that. Certainly if the building is going to be used for day-care, men must be allowed in at least during those hours, for to do otherwise makes child care once again solely the responsibility of women.

Nonetheless, it cannot be emphasized strongly enough: the women must have our support. The Harvard administration-despite verbose public statements-is not considering the women's demands at all seriously. For behind their protestations of sincerity, at their closed meeting University officials suggest "mice and dildoes" as means of smoking the women out, while privately referring to them as "a bunch of prostitutes." This attitude is completely in line with the approach that Harvard has taken toward women's demands within the University for years.

There can be no more delay. Radcliffe and Harvard students must support the Women's Center, not merely because, in this case, a police bust is so abhorrent, but because by doing so we recognize that the women's concerns are our concerns. We must come to terms with the implications of living in a sexist society, implications that every one of us faces every day of our lives.