Radcliffe Entertains Juniors and Parents

IN BETWEEN FRESHMAN orientation week and commencement week there is Junior Parents Weekend. They came last week: curious and bearing gifts.

My roommate's mother brought us two kinds of toothpaste because she wasn't sure which kind we'd like, and several dozen chocolate cookies so we'd have something to brush off our teeth. My mother brought me telephone message paper "From the pen of Joyce Heard."

We were all very happy. There were cocktails at Adams House and I told my parents to drink up. "Better get your $5000 worth," I said, and they tried.

After three days of giving guided tours, eating larger than usual dinners, attending discussions and speeches, and slinging the bull across the generation gap, I think most of us ended up enjoying the weekend with our parents more than we expected to.

Parents coming to Radcliffe for the first time during freshman week are nervous and tired from carrying in lots of trunks. They are worried about what will happen to us at the big university. At commencement they are nervous and tired of carrying out lots of trunks, and worried about what will happen to us in the big world.

But at Junior Parents Weekend they can relax. They see we've survived two years at Harvard, that we're doing interesting things, that we're thinking, learning, growing up, changing and yet still recognizable somehow as their own.

Forty per cent of the Radcliffe class of '73 had one or more parents who attended the weekend. Although the weekend committee scheduled a wide variety of events, most groups spent a good deal of time on their own as well. Parents went scouting everywhere from the Hasty Pudding to Harvard Yard, from Pier Four to the Freedom Trail. They saw the rooms where we live, the classes we attend; some of the places we spend our lives. As my mother left she said, "Well I feel I know more about you now, not more about Harvard, but more about you."

This is perhaps the goal of Junior Parents Weekend, a two day event that most students think little about, but which means a great deal to parents who have sat at home and wondered.

Marion Dry. Radcliffe Marshal, has been in charge of planning parents weekend for the past eight years. Although a parents weekend of some sort has been a longstanding Radcliffe tradition, it has only taken its present form since Dry became Marshal. About ten years ago Radcliffe had a "Father's Weekend." This event gradually declined in popularity because women didn't like excluding their mothers and mothers didn't like being excluded.

According to Dry. Junior Parents Weekend has recently enjoyed a fairly stable popularity. "Every year we can count on about forty per cent of parents attending." she said.

UNDER NON-MERGER MERGER there have been some changes in organizing the weekend. For example this year, with so many Radcliffe women living at Harvard, one of the dinners was held at Lowell House. Costs of the weekend have also risen under the non-merger plan. Some services that used to be provided by Radcliffe now must be paid to Harvard. According to Dry, previous budgets for the weekend have run around $2,000 but this year's expenses will likely be $3,000.

With the new Harvard-Radcliffe relationship the question also arises as to whether the weekend should be extended to men. This year Harvard men living at Radcliffe were invited by Radcliffe to participate in the weekend, but they were unable to invite their parents because Harvard was unwilling to foot the added $600 cost.

As the University changes, the nature of Junior Parents Weekend will have to be reassessed every year. A combined Harvard-Radcliffe parents weekend is one possibility, but in terms of numbers it would be a complicated affair. Perhaps then, it is best that Junior Parents Weekend remain a strictly Radcliffe affair. For me the fact that last weekend was Radcliffe Junior Parents Weekend and not Harvard Weekend, was one of the main points of appeal. I remember my first day here President Bunting addressed us in Agassiz theater and told us that with the new merger plans this might be the only time we would ever be together in one room as one class. I wasn't sure I liked that idea; I didn't want to just be mixed in at four parts to one.

Parents coming to Radcliffe for the first time during freshman week are nervous and tired from carrying in lots of trunks. They are worried about what will happen to us at the big university. At commencement they are nervous and tired of carrying out lots of trunks, and worried about what will happen to us in the big world.