One-to-One Ratios Once Again

In an impressive show of support for equal sex ratios, more than 1500 undergraduates signed petitions this week calling for a one-to-one Harvard admissions policy.

Despite several students' claims that they had not seen the petition, its organizers said they had collected 1520 signatures at registration and in dining halls by yesterday afternoon--with South House, Currier House and Kirkland House still to be counted.

Deborah B. Leiderman '76, a member of the and hoc group of women that distributed the petition, said yesterday that she expects to get a final signature total of over 2000.

The members of the group, all women living at Radcliffe, intend to present the signed petitions to the Committee on Houses and Undergraduate Life at its next meeting Wednesday night, and will ask CHUL to pass a resolution supporting equal sex ratios in the college.

Their voices are not expected to fall on deaf ears: Several members of CHUL said yesterday that the committee will probably make room on its agenda for discussion of the petition.

The petition says one-to-one admissions would create a "healthy living and educational environment," and cites the strong negative reaction at the Radcliffe Houses to the CHUL recommendation last month, that specific House sex ratios be eliminated, as proof that one-to-one is "desirable and beneficial."

The CHUL does not, of course, have any control over Harvard's admissions policies; the decision to switch to one-to-one would have to come from Presidents Bok and Horner with Corporation approval. But CHUL's support of the change would show Bok that students, if not administrators and alumni, want one-to-one.