Urge to Merge

A topic which was beaten to death in University Hall last year is showing new and encouraging signs of life. This year a student committee is attempting to keep alive a proposal to allow full Radcliffe membership in Harvard extracurricular organizations.

Unfortunately, the committee's members feel that they have serious dilemmas to solve before the club revision can become a reality. They haven't.

They haven't unless the Radcliffe Administration, despite its recent statements, tries to block the activities merger. Such a move, though, would be contrary to the strongly pro-merger sentiments of Annex students.

There are four major questions which the committee seems to view as barriers to changing the membership ruling. Should organizations with Radcliffe members be forced to adopt a title containing both the words Harvard and Radcliffe? There is no reason for existing Harvard organizations, when admitting girls to full membership, to change their names to the Harvard-Radcliffe Advocate, WHRRB, or indeed, the Harvard-Radcliffe CRIMSON. Few 'Cliffites are concerned about the names and it would be unfortunate if the Annex Administration insisted on putting this stumbling block in the way of a worthwhile proposal. We can assume, however, that a newlyformed joint organization would select a dual name at its outset. Of course, any existing group wishing to revise its title could do so.

At the suggestion of the Radcliffe Administration, the committee is considering whether a Harvard organization which admits Radcliffe members must promise to keep at least one girl on its policy-making board. Such a requirement is both unnecessary and unfair to the organizations involved. Radcliffe girls should be treated, and will expect to be treated no differently from other members. A girl should have the same opportunities as her male counterparts to run for executive office. But there is no more reason to guarantee female representation on a policy board than to insist that such boards always include a Catholic, a Southerner, or an economics concentrator.

The chartering of joint organizations and the Administrative responsibility for them also have the committee in a needless dither. Perhaps its members are forgetting to make a clear distinction between joint organizations which may be formed in the future and existing Harvard activities which decide to extend full status to Radcliffe members.

For established clubs there would be no chartering problem. A group would simply amend its constitution to permit Annex members on an equal footing. The organizations would still come under the responsibility of the University's Faculty Committee on Extracurricular Activities for problems requiring administrative attention. In the rare cases in which a problem specifically involved Radcliffe members, the Annex Dean of Student Affairs could be asked to confer with the Harvard supervisors on an informal basis.

Even the chartering and supervision of new joint clubs can be handled easily. To receive a charter, the founders would apply for approval to both the Harvard and Radcliffe Student Councils and the appropriate Administration channels at both colleges. For administrative responsibility, an informal arrangement between the Radcliffe deans and the Harvard administrators would suffice. It does not seem necessary that Miss Frances R. Brown, Radcliffe Dean of Residence and Student Affairs, should become a permanent member of the University committee, a plan which some Radcliffe officials have proposed.

Naturally, any organization which wants to preserve its single-sex character will be free to do so. The Radcliffe Student Council will probably continue to accept financial responsibility for strictly Radcliffe clubs, but would not be expected to give funds to joint organizations.

If the student and administrative committees considering joint membership are sincerely in favor of the proposal, as they claim to be, they will realize that the first two problems can be dismissed as no problems at all, and that the third and fourth can be resolved by a few simple administrative adjustments.