Radcliffe: Looking Backwards At Four Years

The Class of 1950, arriving at Radcliffe in September 1946, found an academic environment exhilarated by the end of World War II, and significantly different from the University of 10 years before.

The class was surprisingly limited in geographic representation.

At least half came from Massachusetts, and at least 20 percent were commuters. There were two black students in our class, which was unusual since there was generally only one.

We Come Together

The most visible change was joint instruction (read coeducation), forced on the reluctant university by wartime pressures.

The large survey courses like History 1 and English 1 were still taught to freshmen in the Radcliffe Yard by middle-aged white men who trundled over from the Harvard Yard to deliver the same lecture they had just given to male students.

Even that vestige would soon be phased out, but when Lamont opened in 1949, women students were firmly excluded.

Most classes and laboratories took place jointly in Harvard classrooms, often necessitating breakneck bike trips from our distant location in the Radcliffe Quad.

We were thrilled to have equal access to the riches in the course catalog. What would take us longer to realize was that, despite this academic breakthrough, faculty and administration attitudes did not keep pace with our heightened expectations.

One classmate reports that she got a B in Chemistry after earning all As on quizzes and labs. When she confronted the professor, he replied that the class was graded on a sliding scale, he could give just so many As and those had to go to boys because they need them to get into medical school.

Even more dismaying, she accepted the explanation without argument.

The New Curriculum

The bold new curriculum for the postwar generation introduced by President James B. Conant '14, was General Education in a Free Society and introduced the year we arrived.

Out of Gen Ed came my favorite course, Social Sciences 118: "Democratic Theory and its Critics."

It was taught by a little dynamo named Louis Hartz who whirled into the classroom, talking as he walked and shedding his overcoat, coat and tie as he warmed up to his subject.

No other class--and many were wonderful--ever equaled the sheer intellectual and dramatic power of Professor Hartz's analysis of political philosophy over the past 300 years.

I can't leave the subject of classes without mentioning those between-classes coffee-klatsches at St. Clairs where groups were infinitely expandable and the conversation covered all subjects under the sun. Golden moments.

Still A World Apart

Coeducation had no effect on traditional residential arrangements.

We continued to live in the Radcliffe dormitories that were far less spacious than the suites occupied by our Harvard counterparts.

There were no phones in our rooms, smoking was allowed only in the smoking room, a mecca for endless bridge games and conversation. Often we found ourselves in the middle of passionate polemics that tested the comfortable assumptions we had brought from home.

A lot of extracurricular learning took place in that haze of smoke and littered ashtrays. As there was always someone to argue with, there was always a shoulder to cry on. Dormitory living was the incubator of lifelong friendships.

Literature from the College described the residential ambience as gracious living.

We wore skirts to dinner every night and waited until the Head Resident led the procession into the dining room. After dinner, coffee was served in the Living Room. All the underclass persons waited on tables on a rotating basis.

When we reached upperclass status, we could choose bells instead. Being on bells meant answering the switchboard, routing the calls to the hall telephones, and, best of all, announcing the arrival of a visitor.

If we were going to be out after 10 p.m., we had to record our goings and comings in the sign-out book. We couldn't leave after 10 and had to be back y 1 a.m. unless we had special permission to stay out later.

If we sat in one of the first floor anterooms with a gentleman caller, the door had to remain open. Radcliffe honored its solemn obligation to guard our purity.

Parietal rules also applied in the Harvard Houses to protect female virtue, but any Harvard freshman had the right to leave his room at midnight and go into the Square for a late snack. No Radcliffe senior had that privilege.

The lopsided ratio of Harvard to Radcliffe students virtually guaranteed we would have ample opportunity to meet the young men our mothers expected us to marry as the crowning achievement of our Radcliffe experience.

We had dates with young men who walked up to the Quad to pick us up and bring us back. We went to football games, parties, and dances in the Houses. We wore date dresses, high heels and fur coats. We necked in the vestibule. We fell in love and out of love, and an astonishing number did what just our mothers expected--we married Harvard or MIT men.

Waiting for Feminism

Writing with the clarity of hindsight, I may have conveyed the impression we were unhappy with the status quo. Did we rail against the second-class status of women intelligent enough to attend the world's most prestigious university?

Except for a few perceptive early feminists, we did not.

Conditions that we now regard as inequitable and intolerable seemed at that time an acceptable expression of our culture.

As we went out to meet the world at midcentury, I think most of us expected to get married in a few years, have children and use our education in volunteer and community capacities.

In fact, a number who had launched careers felt constrained to abandon them when their children came along. Very few anticipated the women's movement and the revolutionary effect it would have on our lives.

Fortunately, we had a Harvard education to jump-start us into professions and careers when the opportunity or necessity met us halfway.