Housing vs. Scholarships

Radcliffe last week announced its participation in two federal aid-to-education programs that will enable it to enlarge its financial aid resources substantially and accept more students from low-income families. The college will receive $17,000 from the Federal Educational Opportunity Grants Program to be distributed among 50 students whose parents are able to contribute less than $600 yearly to their expenses. And for the first time, Radcliffe will participate in the College Work-Study Program which will provide term-time and summer jobs for 75 girls.

Yet these grants, despite all the hullabaloo created by the News Office, are piddling. Radcliffe will still offer only seven all-expense scholarships to students whose families can afford to pay nothing at all. The college, unlike Harvard, will continue to have almost no representation from the lower half of America's economy. President Bunting has acknowledged the college's inability to offer admission to these students but claims Radcliffe will seek them out more frequently once it obtains funds for the purpose.

That is likely never to happen. Although financial contributions to Radcliffe increase each year, it will be a long time before the college, with its present set of financial priorities, will be able to recruit students from the country's poor neighborhoods, from urban slums and small farms.

Essentially the college has decided that it cares more about housing all its present students in dormitories than in recruiting a more diversified, interesting student body. It doesn't have funds for both. Radcliffe has begun a vast campaign for funds to complete construction of the Fourth House and renovate and deconvert the existing dormitories. Until the college raises $16 million for building and then looks for scholarship money there will be few changes in its financial aid policy--and few changes in its students.

To Cliffies, the Fourth House has become a nightmare. It is Mrs. Bunting's private mania. She wants girls returned to the Quad and living in shiny new dormitories, eating their three meals each day together and studying at the new Hilles Library nearby. She wants something most Radcliffe students don't want and have rejected at every possible turn. Seventy of 290 girls in the junior class want to live in apartments next year; in addition, 100 students applied for seven places in Wolbach Hall, the college's only apartment building. Personal feelings and preferences have been sacrificed to the House system.

This is regrettable and contrary to the Cliffe's image of itself as a supporter of individual differences. Even more regrettable is the fact the Radcliffe gives housing expenditures a higher priority than money for scholarships, and will thus continue to educate only an elite which can afford to pay.