Moving in, Moving on

Fifteen years after Harvard permanently opened its house doors to Radcliffe students, it seems a woman is as much a Harvard student as a man.

But that reality is rather new to the ivy-covered buildings of the nation's oldest institution of higher learning. Only in 1971 did Harvard and Radcliffe finalize the agreement that forever altered the nature of the 350-year-old men's school and the 92-year-old women's college. For it was in that year that women, previously housed mostly at the Quad, could live in the Harvard houses, which are at the center of the undergraduate sense of community.

In the fall of 1976, five years after the decision to go forward with coeducational living, the Harvard and Radcliffe admissions offices merged. As Class of 1980 applications rolled in, admissions officers began looking at the old forms in a new way; male or female, your chances were the same.

To the current Harvard student, it seems self-apparent that women are integral to the institution. But, says one woman from the Radcliffe Class of 1961, telling her that men and women consider themselves Harvard students is like telling her Harvard and Yale have merged.

Before men and women lived together in the houses, things were very different. The doors to rooms in North House bear mute testimony to the old way of life. On almost every door hangs a 6-in. hook, which, legend says, young Radcliffe students had to use as a door prop whenever they had a male visitor. After all, no young lady could have her door closed with a man in the room. Today, male and female North House students pry the hooks off their doors as mementos of a bygone era.

In the days before coeducational residency, women searching for a niche in the Harvard community had to shoulder extra burdens. One active female member of Students for a Democratic Society remembers the paradox of trying to participate in a group predicated on "participatory democracy" at a school where men and women lived apart.

Recalls Barbara L. Easton '66: "All the decisions got made in Adams House, which was where all the men lived. They'd get together at two o'clock in the morning and make decisions, and then we'd all read about it next morning in The Crimson."

In one case, a female Crimson photographer, who returned from an assignment around 5 a.m., was confronted by an irate dorm mother. The photographer offered a good excuse, but she was grounded for two weeks.

When coresidency came, some houses, such as Eliot, resisted the effort and passed resolutions rejecting female residents. Other groups quibbled over the ratio of men to women or the timetable. Those arguments now belong to the intangible past.

Also in the past is Harvard's reluctance to admit women and men on an equal basis. Harvard administrators at the time said they were worried that alumni would stop giving to the University if women were admitted, especially if they were accepted in lieu of alumni children.

Radcliffe President Matina S. Horner quickly quashed the debate. Said Horner to Harvard administrators: Since when do male alumni bear only male children?