Corporate Merger: Not This Year, Anyway

This is the year for a full review of the 1971 non-merger merger agreement, but the review by no means implies that there will be substantive change in the agreement this year. Full, fairly immediate merger--which would mean the dissolution of Radcliffe as an institution--seems to be out of the question.

So no one should worry that the Harvard-Radcliffe Joint Policy Committee, a nine-member group made up of the highest of University higher-ups, is going to legislate Radcliffe out of existence. What the committee will do, however, is issue a report, probably in mid-October, that will include recommendations to the Harvard Corporation and the Radcliffe Trustees on the corporate aspects of merger.

So far the Joint Policy Committee has been a very informal body, still lacking any official charter from the Harvard and Radcliffe governing boards. The committee grew out of an organization called the Joint Budget Committee, a group of governing boards members set up in 1971 to review Radcliffe's finances every year. The budget committee evolved into the Joint Policy Committee almost two years ago, and when the issue of merger began to loom on the horizon last year the Joint Policy Committee's members decided that they were the people who should be conducting the 1974-75 merger re-evaluation.

The committee met once last spring, twice during the summer and again last week, and although it has no official authority its membership--which includes three-sevenths of the Harvard Corporation--guarantees that the governing boards will not take its recommendations lightly.

The Joint Policy Committee's members are:

* Harvard President Derek C. Bok, who instituted the 2.5-to-1 male-female ratio here and reportedly favors what administrators like to call "equal access" admissions, keeping mum on merger;

* Radcliffe President Matina S. Horner, who has a more personal stake in the merger negotiations than anyone else on the committee since changes in the agreement could substantially change the nature of her job;

* Henry Rosovsky, dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and the person ultimately in charge of the teaching of all male and female undergraduates, who like Bok has never made a public statement on merger;

* Susan Storey Lyman '49, chairman of the Radcliffe Trustees and until last month acting director of the Radcliffe Institute, the program for women scholars that is the single biggest item on Radcliffe's budget;

* Francis H. Burr '35, a Boston lawyer who is the senior fellow of the seven-member Harvard Corporation as well as a Radcliffe Trustee;

* Mary Lothrop Bundy, a Radcliffe Trustee and the second woman member of the Harvard Board of Overseers, whose husband, McGeorge Bundy, was dean of the Faculty here in the fifties;

* G. D'Andelot Belin, Radcliffe's lawyer and the husband of Harriet Belin, a former Radcliffe dean of admissions;

* Daniel Steiner '54, general counsel to the University and a close adviser to Bok on a wide range of issues; and,

Mobil Oil executive who is second to Burr in seniority on the Corporation.

The committee is roughly split between Harvard and Radcliffe officials, although there is a great deal of overlap, with Bok, Burr, Steiner and Nickerson representing Harvard; Horner, Lyman, Belin and Bundy representing Radcliffe; and, Rosovsky somewhere in between.

Committee members say, however, that there is not strict division of opinion along Harvard-Radcliffe lines--largely because the Radcliffe contingent has secured complete agreement that for the moment, Radcliffe is an institution worth preserving. "There are differing views," Belin says, "but the Radcliffe representatives feel it would be premature to have a full merger, that there's not enough to be gained."

Burr says a full merger this year is "extremely improbable" and that "we don't want to let Radcliffe get swallowed up into Harvard if it is much smaller." The idea seems to be that given the choice between a Harvard that includes a womens' institution and one that is overwhelmingly male, women here would choose the former.

The unlikeliness of merger, though, does not mean that the Joint Policy Committee will opt for the other extreme and move Harvard and Radcliffe farther apart. Steiner says that while the committee has three broad options--separating Harvard and Radcliffe, moving them closer together or staying with the present arrangement--it is generally "moving in the direction of one institution."

All that does not leave much room for drastic action by the committee, only slow unification of the two institutions while keeping Radcliffe alive. Committee members will not say exactly what they are likely to report in October, but it is possible to make some educated guesses about the immediate future of the committee and of Radcliffe.

The committee will probably ask for some sort of official recognition by the governing boards, which should be granted almost automatically. The committee is still technically just an informal group, not officially organized and with no official powers. Its recommendations might include a request that it become the official arm of the Corporation and the Trustees that will deal with the Harvard-Radcliffe relationship. This would probably mean the dissolution of the old Budget Committee.

Increased cooperation between the Harvard and Radcliffe administrations seems to be a priority for the committee. Horner's dual appointment three years ago as a Radcliffe president and a Harvard dean was the first step toward this goal, and Horner has been focusing more and more attention on her deanship during the last year. The committee could recommend an increase in Horner's Harvard powers, new Harvard titles for Radcliffe administrators, or new Radcliffe seats on Harvard administrative institutions like the Administrative Board or the Council of Deans.

Radcliffe's present institutions--with the possible exception of admissions--are likely to remain Radcliffe property for the next year. The Radcliffe Institute and the Office of Women's Education both have recently-appointed directors and are among the institutions Horner regards as most important to Radcliffe.

The financial arrangement between Harvard and Radcliffe will probably remain the same through this year. If Radcliffe were to try to keep its income and achieve financial independence from Harvard it would be moving in a direction opposite to that of the committee. On the other hand, committee members see the Radcliffe endowment and properties as essential to the institution; Steiner says that Radcliffe "will retain its property as long as it remains an institution." Much of the protective attitude toward Radcliffe's endowment must come from alumnae, who are afraid the day is fast approaching when they will have to tell people they went to a college that no longer exists--and if Radcliffe got swallowed up, its alumnae might be reluctant to give money to Harvard.

The fate of the admissions office depends completely on what the Strauch committee concludes; if it recommends sex-blind admissions, as expected, there will be little sense in maintaining separate admissions offices. And if there is a single admissions office, separate financial aid offices would make little sense, especially since Radcliffe would not have enough money to handle the increased financial aid burdens sex-blind admissions would bring.

An admissions merger would bring considerable pressure for corporate merger. Radcliffe is, after all, an undergraduate college, and if it were to lose its admissions office its only undergraduate-related branch would be the OWE. The Joint Policy Committee may be against full merger at the moment, but whatever it does this year will probably end up as a series of stop gap measures paving the way to merger. The University cannot keep inching Harvard and Radcliffe closer together while avoiding merger forever.