'Radcliffe' Name Survives College

Years after Radcliffe College ceased to exist, many student groups continue to keep Radcliffe alive in their names.

After the 1999 Harvard-Radcliffe merger, a flurry of student groups removed “Radcliffe” from their names.

Earlier this month, the Undergraduate Council voted to remove Radcliffe from its name. And leaders of other organizations say that being named for a long-gone college causes confusion.

But members of many groups say they can’t imagine taking Radcliffe out of their official names—either out of inertia, to preserve a link to women’s tradition or to keep a catchy acronym.

Their allegiance to the Radcliffe name, they say, has little to do with the its current incarnation as the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Instead, it’s a symbolic statement both about the history of Radcliffe and the student groups’ beginnings.

Radcliffe rugby and Radcliffe crew, for example, both sport Radcliffe’s black and white colors and don uniforms bearing the Radcliffe shields.

Members of these women’s sports say it’s just easier to be known as “Radcliffe” rather than “Harvard Women’s”—and they continue to feel an allegiance to the Radcliffe name.

They say they enjoy having a history independent of men’s sports.

“When you’re playing a sport like rugby that people tend to think of as aggressive and male dominated, [keeping the Radcliffe name] gives a sense of the strong female tradition that has been involved,” says Kate Greenthal ’03, president of the club Radcliffe rugby team.

Greenthal says the team would resist changing its name to Harvard Women’s rugby even when the NCAA makes an official league for women’s rugby and it becomes a Harvard varsity sport.

Forwards captain Sarah Tavel ’04 says that by keeping the Radcliffe name, colors, and shield, the team maintains a link to its history.

“It’s about keeping the tradition of Radcliffe with us,” Tavel says. “I guess you could analogize it to getting married, and you don’t want to lose your name. We don’t want to lose our name.”

Similarly, members of the varsity Radcliffe crew team—which has long had its own boat house, colors, and oars—say the Racliffe name is particularly important in the “old school” sport of rowing.

“For us, the hugest thing is tradition,” says Captain Michelle Guerette ’02. “To change it would be to separate ourselves from that history.”

Guerette says that Weld boat house is decorated with photos of old teams wearing Radcliffe henleys—the same shirts that the current team will wear for its pictures. “I hope it never changes,” Guerette says.

While the names of the Radcliffe rugby and crew teams are well-established in their respective leagues, being billed as Radcliffe has caused some confusion for the Radcliffe Pitches.

The Pitches—the University’s oldest women’s a capella group—frequently has to explain its name while on tour, according to Pitches President Vivian Lien ’03.

“When we say ‘We’re the Radcliffe Pitches and we’re from Harvard,’ a lot of people don’t understand what that means,” says Lien. “We’ve definitely been introduced as the Harvard Pitches a lot.”

But no one has seriously discussed becoming the Harvard Pitches, Lien says.

“There’s a lot of tradition tied to it,” Lien says.

For the council, however—which has both male and female members—this tradition was no longer desirable.

The council quietly changed its name from the Harvard-Radcliffe Undergraduate Council to the Harvard Undergraduate Council with a motion which passed nearly unanimously after failing in 1999.

Council President Sujean S. Lee ’03 recalls voting in favor of removing the Radcliffe name both times.

“People interpreted the removal of Radcliffe as sort of a slight to women,” Lee says. “When that bill was first brought up the change was more recent and Radcliffe was seen as an embodiment of women at Harvard.”

Lee thinks that time has made the change more palatable.

“I just feel like having the name ‘Radcliffe’ emphasizes a separateness that no longer exists,” Lee says. “In people’s minds it almost make sense that Harvard represents Harvard-Radcliffe.”

—Staff writer Lauren R. Dorgan can be reached at dorgan@fas.harvard.edu.