River-Quad Shuttle Bus To Begin Service in Fall

Harvard will probably provide bus service to Radcliffe at night this Fall because men assigned to live in the Quad have flooded the Administration with complaints about the long walk to Radcliffe.

Dean Whitlock said yesterday he is "90 per cent sure" that Harvard will approve plans this month to run a bus at 6 p.m. daily from Dillon Field House to Radcliffe. He added the Administration is considering running another continuous nightly shuttle from the Yard to the Quad, but a decision on the second bus will depend on whether one of the University's departments can be persuaded to foot the $40,000 bill.

Although shuttle service to Radcliffe is a perennial suggestion, the impending decision to act was boosted by a host of complaints from men--primarily athletes--assigned to live at Radcliffe.

Housing assignments always provoke a number of complaints from freshmen who are placed in one of their last choice houses. But this Spring the complaints were especially numerous and bitter after men, for the first time, were assigned to live at the Radcliffe Quad against their will.

Several groups of students tried to convince the Committee on Houses and Undergraduate Life (CHUL)-which determines the way in which students are assigned to Houses--to allow freshmen to choose between living in the Quad or in one of the river Houses.

One particularly vocal group, consisting of 35 freshman athletes, claimed that the walk to Radcliffe would interfere with their participation in sports. They stood firm on what they called "their right to choose between Harvard and Radcliffe."

CHUL denied their claim and the Housing Office received complaints from athletes who had been assigned to live at "the Cliffe."

Whitlock said he has also received close to 90 letters this summer from Harvard parents objecting to the University's decision to assign their sons to live at Radcliffe.

"The tone [of the letters] has ranged from expression of disappointment to the feeling that living at Radcliffe is going to castrate their sons permanently," Whitlock said.

"About five of these parents even hinted of a possible lawsuit."

Daniel Steiner '54, general counsel, said Tuesday that he had not heard of any lawsuits being filed. "One parent wrote that we are endangering the life of her son by making him walk to Radcliffe," Whitlock said. I later found that the son is a varsity track man. He went down by car from the Yard to Dillon Field House every day this year and then ran eight miles.

"It would endanger his life to walk to Radcliffe?" Whitlock asked.

Harvard experimented with a Radcliffe shuttle in 1966, when only women lived in the Quad, but discontinued it after one year "because no one used it," Whitlock said.

The proposal to run a Radcliffe bus service lay dormant until 1970 when Harvard and Radcliffe began discussing the possibility of a coresidential exchange. Several men said they would not live in the Quad unless a bus ran to the yard, Whitlock said