Radcliffe Organizes History Tour

The Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study hosted a brunch and walking tour on Saturday in celebration of Harvard women's history.

The two hour-long walking tours, led by students, gathered tourists despite the windy, brisk weather.

The tour began in Harvard Square and ended in Radcliffe Yard, encompassing 27 stops at significant locations in the history of Harvard and Radcliffe women.

Many of the stops were sites that are now commonly frequented spots on campus. They included Lamont Library, closed to women until 1967, and Widener Library, which hired women, but did not allow them to use it until 1943.

"Librarians believed women would be disruptive and feared scandalous behavior between the sexes in the library's dark corners," according to a Radcliffe Institute history brochure.

Johnston Gate was also a symbol of inequity for women until 1943. Radcliffe women had 10 p.m. curfews and were banned from Harvard Yard without "hats and gloves."

The new Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard is the fruit of a merger between Radcliffe College and Harvard in 1999. Tour guides pitched the merger as the culmination of a century-long struggle for equality for women at Harvard.

Harriot Hunt, the first woman who attempted to enter Harvard, applied to the Medical School in 1847. Sarah Pellet, in 1849, was the first to apply to the College, but immediately withdrew her application when then Harvard President Jared Sparks admonished her for applying.

"I should doubt whether a solitary female, mingling as she must do promiscuously with so large a number of the other sex, would find her situation either agreeable or advantageous," wrote Sparks to Pellet.

Yet women students continued to attempt access to Harvard's elite education by arranging private tutorials with Harvard faculty.

In 1879, the first 27 women were enrolled into the "Harvard Annex." In 1894, Radcliffe was acknowledged as a degree-giving college, and the school shared Harvard's faculty.

According to the Radcliffe Institute, Radcliffe leaders in the 19th century hoped that Harvard would eventually absorb Radcliffe into the University and open its doors to all.

Almost a century later, in 1943, Harvard classes became co-ed, and Harvard commencement finally included Radcliffe women in 1970. By 1975, quotas against the number of women allowed in Harvard were abolished.

Today, Radcliffe is expected to be "the center of the study of women, gender and society at Harvard...in five years," according to acting dean of the Institute Mary Maples Dunn.

The Radcliffe Institute includes non-degree educational programs along with four major research branches: the Bunting Fellowship Program, the Murray Research Center, the Public Policy Center and the Schlesinger Library.