One-to-One

TOMORROW the Committee on Houses and Undergraduate Life will consider endorsing a petition for a one-to-one Harvard admissions policy. A group of women living at Radcliffe wrote and circulated the petition last week, after protests against last month's CHUL recommendation that House sex ratios be eliminated showed once again how strongly students feel about one-to-one. In fact, the whole controversy over the CHUL vote sprang from everyone wanting one-to-one ratios; the Harvard representatives took away Radcliffe's one-to-one so that the Harvard Houses could be closer to equal sex ratios themselves.

It's hard to think of any good reasons why Harvard shouldn't have one-to-one admissions, and there are lots of good reasons why it should. A one-to-one sex ratio would help create an atmosphere of equality and cooperation rather than one of domination of one group by another.

Harvard is very conscious of its role as a social force in America; the University sees itself, for instance, as making disadvantaged students upwardly mobile. So by the same logic, Harvard should try to work toward a society where women have the same opportunities as men by producing equal numbers of qualified male and female graduates. One of the tired old justifications of admissions policies skewed in favor of men is that Harvard has a responsibility to educate male leaders. But Harvard's real responsibility is to work toward a society where both men and women are leaders. In the same way, the argument that male graduates give Harvard more money than female graduates works on the assumption of inequalities that Harvard should be trying to end, not adapting itself to.

Harvard should have a single, one-to-one-based admissions office, and accept more women and fewer men than it does now. The financial aid departments should also be united, so that women can get as much aid as men do, and the admissions office should recruit women as actively as it does men.