Radcliffe Aid Drive Falls Short of Goal

The University's fund drive to support financial aid for undergraduate women has fallen more than $700,000 short of its predicted $2 million total.

Susan F. Lyman '36, chairman of the Radcliffe Board of Trustees, said last night that the fund drive, which has received gifts and pledges of slightly over $100,000 in the past year, was stymied by the University's decision to implement equal access admissions shortly after the drive began.

Describing the new admissions process, implemented last year, as "a wonderful monkey wrench in the middle of the drive," Lyman said many potential donors questioned why they should give money to Radcliffe. She said many of them believed the Harvard endowment ought to support all students, since the Radcliffe admissions office would no longer exist.

The decision to institute a policy of equal access followed approval last year of the report of the Strauch Committee, which recommended a reduction of the 2.3-to-1 male-female ratio through the recruitment of an enlarged female applicant pool.

However, Harvard and Radcliffe continue to maintain separate scholarship funds.

Lyman also attributed the unencouraging results of the drive, which has now become an open-ended, low-key effort to solicit special gifts, to a national decline in interest in scholarship support and the faltering economy.

The fund drive, begun in fall 1973, was initially scheduled to end last June.

Emily L. McGregor '49, coordinator of the Harvard-Radcliffe scholarship program, said yesterday the national economic do turn had a serious effect on donations.

"As we progressed, we kept seeing it as longer range," she said, adding that in the course of last year the drive's coordinators decided to change their initial plan and pursue it on a long-range, lower key basis.

She said the fundraisers have finished the initial phase of tapping alumni couples and have set a tentative long-range goal of $5 million.

Seamus P. Malin '62, director of financial aid for Harvard and Radcliffe, said yesterday the University undertook the fund drive to close the gap between the Radcliffe endowment and the much larger Harvard endowment.

In November 1975, when the fund drive had raised about $1.1 million, Hugh Calkins '45, its chairman, predicted it would yield $2 million of the $4.4 million needed to put Radcliffe's endowment for financial aid on an equal footing with Harvard's.

Though both Harvard and Radcliffe at that time made scholarship awards according to the same formula, Radcliffe's per-student scholarship endowment was less than Harvard's.

The Faculty was then forced to subsidize the Radcliffe financial aid grants.

Lyman said yesterday that in the past few years Harvard has been "quite desperate," operating at a deficit. "But now that the budget is balanced, we're back on the road," she said.

She added that she does not feel "one can fail or succeed in a fund drive of this sort. You just have to postpone it until the climate is right."