The Strauch Committee Considers Equal Admissions for Women

When the Class of 1975 arrived at Harvard in the fall of 1971, the school enrolled men and women at a ratio of 4 to 1, enforced by the University’s president. But by the time the class left, mandated gender ratios were on their way out.

Harvard President Derek C. Bok began his tenure just as the Class of 1975 arrived on campus, and immediately went about equalizing access for men and women — who were still technically students at Radcliffe College, though they lived in co-ed dorms and studied with men. In the fall of 1971, Bok announced that the ratio would be lowered from 4 to 1 to 2.5 to 1.

But it was in 1974, when Bok and Radcliffe President Matina S. Horner — who had assumed office just two years earlier — created a committee to consider admissions reforms at Harvard and Radcliffe, that Harvard took a serious step toward total equality between the two schools.

The relationship between Harvard and Radcliffe was radically transformed in 1969, when the two institutions began to merge. Though classes became co-ed in 1946, the residential unification of undergrads took shape in the 1970s, when upperclassmen Houses were integrated in 1971 and freshman dorms in 1972.

The two institutions also came to a temporary compromise in 1971 over administrative consolidation, dubbed the “non-merger merger,” under which Harvard would assume Radcliffe’s debts and begin administering other parts of the school.

But the non-merger merger avoided the thorny question of a gender ratio — the very question that Bok and Horner tasked 16 faculty, administrators, alumni, and students, led by Physics professor Karl Strauch, with studying in January 1974.

For the next year, the committee — which, along with students and faculty, featured the Harvard and Radcliffe deans of admissions and financial aid, as well as the deans of the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Harvard College, and Radcliffe College — worked to determine whether to maintain separate Harvard and Radcliffe admissions offices and what gender ratio the College should enforce.

Renée M. Landers ’77, one of the four student members of the committee, said that many representatives were concerned about how a more united admissions process would affect various parts of the University, including its financial health.

“There were discussions and concerns about, is it going to affect fundraising?” Landers said. “There were concerns about development risk.”

If Harvard admitted fewer men, some administrators and faculty worried, it could see donations plummet in the future because alumnae might have lower earnings and less control over their money than male peers.

Robert L. Schram ’76, another student member, said that other members were concerned about the state of Harvard’s athletics, as some representatives “worried about not being able to have a strong football team or how we were going to field teams for all of our sports.”

The issue that split the committee, though, was expanding the size of the undergraduate body. While Chase N. Peterson ’52, then Harvard’s vice president for alumni affairs and development, advocated strongly for an expanded class size, the four students fiercely resisted.

Peterson argued that if the number of men at Harvard decreased — which would happen if more women were admitted but the class size did not increase — donations to the University would be seriously jeopardized. But the students felt that Harvard did not have the resources to enroll more students.

“I think the feeling was that Harvard was already, in some ways, a big, impersonal kind of place, and that expanding the class size would only make that worse,” Landers said. “I think there was a feeling that it would reduce that kind of intimacy.”

“My pet peeve at Harvard was class size, interaction with professors, the predominance of teaching by grad students rather than professors, things like that which affected the college experience,” Schram said.

According to Schram, Radcliffe’s smaller class size meant that “by being at Radcliffe and being a part of Radcliffe, you had a more intimate college experience than Harvard.” Preserving that feeling, and Radcliffe’s institutional heritage, became a focus for some of the school’s representatives on the committee.

Though Schram said the student members “felt a little bit like fish out of water” in a body full of Harvard’s top officials, both Schram and Landers said that they felt their voices were respected on the committee, which Schram said was “remarkably collegial and cordial.”

“I think just everybody, everybody knew that the world was changing and that things could not go on as they always had gone on,” Landers said.

By February 1975, after over a year of work, the Committee was preparing to issue its final report. When it was finally released, it contained several major policy recommendations, including an “equal access admissions policy” and the unification of the Harvard and Radcliffe admissions offices.

The committee also proposed increasing recruiting efforts for women, particularly with a focus on attracting women scientists, increased female representation among faculty and administrators, and equal access to prizes, fellowships, and athletic facilities — all without increasing class size.

But despite the tectonic shift, the proposal proved to be noncontroversial. In April 1975, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences voted nearly unanimously to approve the Strauch committee’s recommendation for equal access admissions, and Harvard’s and Radcliffe’s governing boards followed suit in May. Effective with the Class of 1980, a merged Harvard-Radcliffe admissions office would give men and women equal access in admission.

Still, despite the monumental step towards a total merger, Schram said that the student body was “oblivious” to the work the Strauch Committee was doing.

“This was all sort of driven not by the students. This was something that needed to be resolved amongst the bureaucracy, the powers that be,” he said.

But there was still a feeling that things needed to change, especially among the women on campus, according to Landers.

“It was a period of time when women wanted to be equal to men, and the same,” Landers said.

“There were some women in my class who deeply resented the fact that, because of the Radcliffe name, perhaps women could be viewed as kind of second-class citizens, not really Harvard people, but other people,” she added.

Schram said that implementing the Strauch Committee’s recommendations helped lead to a more diverse Harvard today.

“People of my age at the time, 50 years ago, and people at Harvard were looking for a diverse experience,” Schram said. “We were looking for the melting pot experience at school, and to some extent we got it. To some extent, we needed to work more at it. And my sense is that Harvard did most of the things right that happened to where they are today.”

—Staff writer Stephanie Dragoi can be reached at stephanie.dragoi@thecrimson.com.