Horner's Radcliffe: A state of flux

in," she says. "I had a profound curiousity and at the same time a toleration for the ambiguities and a sense of humor and patience," she says.

The truth is that the 1971 arrangement has caused Horner much more trouble in her dealings with both the Faculty and the University than she had expected. And she frequently has had to draw on both her patience and sense of humor to cope with it. It's taken four years of haggling about the language and terms of the non-merger merger agreement--until last spring--before Harvard and Radcliffe could start negotiating the shape of Radcliffe's future. Unlike many people on the Radcliffe side of the negotiations, Horner does not attribute the four-year delay to any maliciousness on Harvard's part.

"Radcliffe trustees could not develop a sense of trust that the Faculty would care for women undergraduates" because of the disagreements over the '71 arrangement. Horner says. But she believes the distance between the positions of Harvard and Radcliffe had "grown out of a terrific misunderstandings rather than malice."

All the haggling has left Radcliffe in a state of flux for the past five years--an uninspiring track record for any president.

Although fault for the four years of dickering and Radcliffe's identity crisis cannot be directly attributed to Horner's leadership, her role as prime spokesman for the trustees and the institution reflects badly on her administration in the eyes of the Harvard community.

It's not unsurprising that Horner's behind-the-scenes negotiating technique has left many Harvard observers whispering that Radcliffe has nothing to do. This belief has some logic since Horner, albeit well known on the national scene, is rarely heard from in her own backyard. As one long-time Harvard observer put it, "Most people on this side of the Common have no reason to know the president of Radcliffe...From what anyone can gather, Radcliffe has spent the last four years deciding whether freshmen should live in the Quad and that's a pretty petty issue."

More than a few people in University Hall, the Faculty's nerve center, confess to being baffled by the vagueness of Horner's job. They know she has an office on the first floor of University Hall but they're not sure what she does there or what she wants. And since Horner symbolizes Radcliffe, that institution appears equally vague.

Edward T. Wilcox, a member of a committee Horner chairs and a resident of UHall, says about Horner: "It's hard to define her, hard for her to emerge or for anyone to react to her individually because of the unique complexity of the role she holds. The real profile is of the president non-president, dean non-dean."

On the concrete level, Horner spends her time as president of Radcliffe making appointments, giving speeches, smoothing out the non-merger merger agreement, sitting on University and national committees, visiting alumnae groups, raising funds for the College and traveling extensively.

Her calendar became so clogged early in her tenure as president that Horner found it necessary to set up bi-weekly office hours so that she'd have time for undergraduates. The problem of time has become acute over the past four years--Horner has had on occasion to leave one meeting, hold a conference in a taxi about the affairs of another board while on route to a third reception.

As president of Radcliffe she acts within her ceremonial role in the same manner as does President Bok. But the function the Radcliffe president considers most important is what she terms "the subtle issues in the process of becoming a coeducational institution." Out of the realm of philosophy, that role has entailed overseeing the passage of equal-access admissions, merged athletic facilities, the establishment of the freshman CORE groups and the Office of Women's Education, and the expansion of the programs at the Radcliffe Institute and the Schlesinger Library.

What Horner does as dean of Radcliffe is a more difficult question to answer, with less concrete accomplishments at which to point. She agrees that that particular function is a vague one.

"The role of Radcliffe in all areas except undergraduates is much easier to articulate since 1971. What is confusing is the dean of Radcliffe, its undergraduate role. The 1971 arrangement has made that confusing," Horner says.

She does not see the deanship as a position that involves her in the day-to-day management of undergraduate life. Rather, her concern in that capacity is with institutional issues like housing and admissions, and in commissioning research which will help to deal with these issues.

Both Horner and the trustees are aware of the amorphousness of Radcliffe's connection to undergraduates in the wake of non-merger merger. Over the past two years a panel of the trustees--the Futures Committee--has been grappling with just this problem. According to Susan Lyman '49, chairman of the trustees, a report of that committee is expected to be released sometime this fall with suggestions an approach that fits well with the peace-general direction of Radcliffe's future.

But again, the situation and Radcliffe's identity crisis are compounded somewhat by its pre-Horner history. Any discussion of Horner and Radcliffe today inevitably draws upon comparisons with past eras--particularly that of Mary I. Bunting, who preceded Horner.

Some people say that Bunting (referred to throughout Harvard and Radcliffe as "Polly") was a much better spokesman for Radcliffe than is Horner currently.

They say this is partially so because Bunting had a more visible institution to work with and more independent maneuverability. Anyone involved with the Bunting administration acknowledges that she had very specific ideas about what she wanted.

"She wanted this place to be coeducational and set out to do it quickly. Matina doesn't have those specific kinds of ideas, partially because she hasn't had as many years to formulate them," a long-time member of the Radcliffe community said recently.

Bunting had a vision and was able to take the Radcliffe trustees with her towards her goal. According to one dean, "when they [the trustees] got to 1971, they weren't sure they wanted to be there or wanted to go forward," and that's the situation into which Horner was plunged.

Susan Lyman labels the differences between the Bunting and Horner years as one of style. "Matina is not a person who has bought the national PR approach. We want to do a good job and we aren't anxious to blow our horn," she says.

"She's not militant and angry. She knows that we're dealing with a long male tradition. Radcliffe is not in a stance that is angry," the trustee says.

Former Master Stewart says the job of Radcliffe president and dean is now a very different one than a decade ago when Bunting was at her peak. "The president of Radcliffe is in a rather restricted position--not a completely free agent. The job entails much more diplomacy and negotiation. It's less a job of setting policy for Radcliffe than finding the best way to fit Radcliffe into Harvard."

Besides, he says, if Horner chose to charge ahead in the Bunting style, "if Mrs. Horner said 'I think this is what we should do,' it would only divide the trustees," a situation everybody associated with Radcliffe is anxious to avoid.

Alberta Arthurs, former dean of Radcliffe admissions who is now acting dean of freshman, says that Horner's low profile in comparison to Bunting has to do with a feeling that women at Harvard have won all the gains they're going to through militancy and a new tactic is now necessary.

"A lot of us feel very much that the time has come to give up being adversaries and become administrators within the system. Radcliffe has gone from administrative militancy to administrative management and that makes fewer headlines."

Horner agrees with this assessment. "Carrying banners forth is not going to solve administrative issues. That era sensitized people," but, she adds, it is no longer applicable to the Harvard-Radcliffe situation.

In her gradual approach to these problems, an approach that fits well with the peace-seeking style of leadership practiced by Bok, Horner has been just what the trustees have wanted.

"This has been a touchy period and some people on both sides have been abrasive. I think she has been very good at seeing the right thing and not creating trouble and frustrations," says Radcliffe trustee and executive committee member Francis H. Burr '35.

From all accounts Horner and the Radcliffe trustees see eye-to-eye on almost all issues. She has long expressed her sympathy with the non-merger merger agreement, an arrangement with which the trustees now feel comfortable.

Horner supposedly does not exercise the control over the trustees that Bunting did, which has sparked some speculation that a configuration on the executive board of the trustees--Lyman, Burr and Mary Bundy '46, vice-chairman of the trustees and the wife of former dean of the Faculty McGeorge Bundy--is, in fact, the inspiration behind Radcliffe.

Horner says that as president she administers under the broad guidelines of the trustees. "The president executes their policies and informs and recommends on as much solid information as I can," she says.

The trustees credit Horner for many vital diplomatic missions onto Harvard turf--it was she who asked for the formation of the Joint Policy Committee. Composed of members at the highest level of the Radcliffe and Harvard administration, the committee is trying to find a workable solution for the problem of Radcliffe's relationship to the University, and to articulate exactly what parts of the two institutions have been merged already.

And she, the trustees say, has been instrumental in eliminating the pervading sense of mistrust--some would maintain it's healthy skepticism--that Radcliffe has traditionally felt when confronted by Harvard.

The mutual distrust and suspicion on the part of the two institutions stymied for the past four years any forward momentum toward defining Radcliffe and its role in the University.

The Radcliffe administration still fears that the Faculty and the University may withdraw from its newly found concern for women and what Horner calls its role of "informed advocacy," hence the hesitancy in dissolving what remains of Radcliffe.

After all, Horner says, "Harvard has been an androcentric university for a long time and it's hard to change."

It took a while, she says, before people at University Hall stopped feeling that Radcliffe was intruding.

Some people say that UHall will never entirely stop feeling this intrusion because it often operates as an old-boy network and Radcliffe women are simply not old boys. As one UHall administrator says, "Mrs. Horner is sitting in the cat-bird seat and the people here just don't know how to fathom her."

In relations with Mass Hall and President Bok's universe Horner has also been aware that she is dealing with an institution steeped in male values and traditions. But she says that the Mass Hall administration and the Harvard Corporation have been "enormously supportive."

On a personal level she says she no longer notices that she is the only woman or one of very few women at a given meeting. Change, according to Horner, is coming to Harvard but the process is a slow one. She says she hopes that by Radcliffe's centennial in 1979 a definite direction and future will have been publicly plotted out for Radcliffe. She also says she believes that as attention is focused around the community and among alumnae on the centennial, Radcliffe "will come to stand for the rubric of feminism."

It's undoubtedly too early to gauge the effects of the Horner style and administration as it enters its fifth year. It can only be speculated whether Radcliffe need not have been in a state of flux for the past few years if more aggressive action, that had captivated Faculty and student attention, had been used to define Radcliffe's relationship with the University. Horner obviously does not think so and she points to the new programs developed to bolster her claims.

One Radcliffe observer probably explained Horner's administration best when she said, "I just picture a smiling, open woman who would have been a better professor than an administrator. I think the place got what it deserves, for better or worse. A stronger person wouldn't want the job.