Radcliffe No Longer an Educational Institution

To the editors:

We write to express our dismay at the attempt by Meredith Bagley, Anna Baldwin and Emma Cheuse to draw the recent debate over women's diplomas away from the root issue of the relationship of Radcliffe to women's undergraduate education and polarize it instead around the person of Dean of the College Harry R. Lewis '68 ("Hasty Rejection," Opinion, April 6). The accusations made against the Dean are unconscionable and unfair. As supporters of the original diploma bill, we feel it is necessary for Harvard University and Radcliffe College to begin a re-evaluation of their relationship regarding female undergraduates.

In 1977, Radcliffe abdicated its responsibility for women's academic education and yet held onto nominal rights regarding admittance and diplomas. This relationship is inconsistent and insulting to Harvard's women.

We laud Dean Lewis for vetoing the bill the Undergraduate Council passed. The bill sought to leave women's diplomas in basically the same format as prior to 1977, when Harvard became officially co-educational. It failed to recognize the fact that Radcliffe is no longer a college in any real sense. While the bill was based in valuable affection for Radcliffe's history and integral continued support of women's issues at Harvard, it ignored the fact that women are only channeled through Radcliffe because they are female. The bill supported the idea of "separate but equal"--something we can no longer tolerate at this University.

Further, the Dean, by refusing to sign the final bill, was not ignoring the opinions of most of the women on campus. True, "dozens of visiting students" did show up at the Feb. 22 council meeting and a large number of e-mails against the bill did flood the group's e-mail list. But these visits and e-mails were prompted by vigorous and inflammatory messages sent out by those who opposed the original bill. We encourage the administrators of Harvard and, especially, Radcliffe to be brave enough to recognize once and for all that Radcliffe is no longer an undergraduate educational institution.

Radcliffe must stop trying to cling to an undergraduate identity; it is unfair to women for it to do so. Radcliffe has a brilliant past in women's education, and it can have a brilliant future as an institute devoted to the study of women and women's history. The women who founded the Harvard Annex in 1879--Radcliffe's institutional predecessor--did so with the aim of giving women students access to a Harvard education. For these women, the standardization of present-day diplomas represents the achievement of their goal.

The state of women's education at Harvard is an enormous tribute to the success of Radcliffe, and the 1977 Agreement is a partial recognition of that accomplishment. But more than 20 years have passed, and the world and Harvard have changed a lot. It is time to negotiate a new agreement whereby female undergraduates are given the same status as males and officially admitted and graduated from the college that actually educates them: Harvard College. RACHEL E. BARBER '99   OLIVIA VERMA '00   April 7, 1998

The writers are representatives of Adams and Eliot Houses, respectively, on the Undergraduate Council.