RUS Dinner

DEAN EPPS'S DECISION last week to deny permission for the Radcliffe Union of Students to hold an all-women's dinner at the Mather House dining hall reveals both a lack of sympathy with the legitimate interests of Radcliffe women, and an overly rigid interpretation of a general University policy. The prohibition was occasioned by RUS's request that one of its monthly women's dinners be held at Mather, partly to encourage River House women to attend a usually Quad-based activity. In previous months the dinner has been held at South House's Moors Hall facility.

The women asked that they be allowed to use the dining hall from 5:15 to 6 p.m. on March 15. The Mather House Council voted to recommend that the dinner be allowed, and Mather's master, David Herlihy, agreed to permit the dinner, with the stipulation that Mather men who wished to attend not be barred, in an effort to avoid sexual discrimination. One day before the dinner was scheduled to be held, Epps announced that Mather could not be used, citing University policy that House residents not be denied use of their dining facilities because of any outside group.

While the policy Epps cites is an undeniably sensible effort to protect the rights of undergraduate residents, it is being interpreted in an unnecessarily inflexible way. The policy should be seen as a guideline for what is desirable rather than as a rule. The RUS women's dinner clearly deserves to have an exception made for it, both because of its careful planning and the positive effect it can have. Closing the dining hall to male Mather residents for 45 minutes would cause little inconvenience. The closed class dinners, permitted, and commonly held at many Houses, involve more disruption for students than the RUS dinner would. RUS dinners have been held many times in the past, and the issue of inconvenience and University policy for Moors Hall residents has never been raised apparently because Epps has chosen to classify that facility as a private dining hall. Herlihy's proviso that men be permitted in the dining hall, and past Moors policy that men be allowed to stay if they arrive in the dining room, make it unlikely that any Mather resident who really found it necessary to eat at that particular time period would have been prohibited from doing so.

Finally, the representatives of the residents of Mather, in the form of the House Council, actually voted in favor of this dinner, presumably with the wishes and interests of their constituents in mind. It seems foolish of Epps to prohibit a regular dinner that had been designed to inconvenience Mather residents as little as possible, and which residents' representatives had endorsed.

Far more serious than the rigidity of University policy is the apparent insensitivity to the legitimate needs of the women at Harvard. The inconvenience caused by the dinner could only have been negligible, while it would conceivably have done appreciable good that the administration should encourage. Dinners of the type proposed can help women develop a solidarity, and a sense of belonging in a sometimes alien atmosphere. Such a dinner at a River House, where women are in a minority, without actually refusing anyone admittance, would be a valuable project that the University should endorse, rather than prohibit on a technicality. Epps's refusal to let a small-scale, carefully thought out dinner take place one time because of a technicality is an unfortunate example of lack of sympathy for the needs of an often forgotten, but sizeable part of the University.