A Great Leap Backwards

A week from Thursday the RGA will vote on a proposal to limit junior and senior privileges to students with good social and work records. If adopted, such a regulation would be close to impossible to administer fairly and would, at best, be useless. The decisions of house committees would probably vary from dorm to dorm, and granting of the privileges would have to become automatic to avoid seeming arbitrary.

Radcliffe protects each student with rules for two years, before granting her anything like the freedom of every Harvard freshman. In two years she gets enough experience to make her own decisions. Even if her behavior illustrates irresponsibility, no one pretends that strict rules in her final two years succeed in protecting her from herself.

Radcliffe has been showing signs of streamlining its cumbersome system of rules. Passing this rule would be a long step backwards.