The Original Old Boys Club

While Lamont might be depressing during reading period, we can all take comfort in that fact that it’s depressing for everyone. Students—regardless of color, creed, class, or gender—can gather to have their spirits crushed during marathon study sessions 24/5.

But this wasn’t always the case. For almost two decades after its opening in 1949, Lamont Library was closed to female students.

In the days before the full merger between Harvard and Radcliffe Colleges, a “separate but equal” doctrine ruled the campus. Yet the “equal” part was far from realized—the Radcliffe Library (now Hilles) paled in comparison to the state-of-the-art Lamont.

Every once and a while, however, Harvard College Librarian Keyes D. Metcalf would allow Radcliffe girls to visit at special hours for “inspection tours.”

“At other times visitors tend to disturb the students using the library and will not be admitted except by special permission,” Metcalf said.

While some disgruntled Radcliffe students expressed their indignation, Gabriella P. Schlesinger ’58 remembers that resistance in the next decade was generally muted—common for what is known as the “Silent Generation.”

“There was none of the activism you would see today,” says Schlesinger. “We knew that Harvard men had privileges that we did not, but we were just grateful to be getting a Harvard education.”

It was the revolutionary spirit of the late sixties and the continuing progress towards full coeducation that led to the eventual opening of Lamont Library to women in early 1967. Yet these are all faint memories in 2008.

“We forget these old institutional policies at Harvard,” says Jenna M. Mellor ’08, a member of the Radcliffe Union of Students. “We think there are no gender differences here.”

And in modern-day Lamont, at least, this is true—everyone has the chance to experience confusing stairs, hidden bathrooms, and stale sushi at three in the morning. Equality rocks.