Two Steps Forward

THE UNIVERSITY indicated last week that it is increasingly ready to give women's issues the attention they deserve On two fronts. Harvard has undertaken concrete action to identify the concerns of its women students and professors.

One of these efforts is a comprehensive study of the impact of gender differences in the classroom, planned for the spring. The study is worth while because previous, more limited evidence has indicated that men and women both learn and teach differently, women students may respond better to female professors while women professors may, in turn, have difficulty establishing authority with male students. Dean K. Whitla, director of the Harvard-Danforth Center that will conduct the study, said that if the findings confirm these trends, they may encourage the University to hire more female professors.

Administrators last week also confirmed that the University will almost definitely fund a wide-scale survey on sexual harassment. Several students, working with Associate Dean for Undergraduate Education Sidney Verba '53, have already drawn up a preliminary draft of the questionnaire, also slated for distribution this spring.

Sexual harassment became an important campus issue last school year when the Radcliffe Union of Students began an intensive lobbying effort for university guidelines on harassment. A highly publicized harassment case last spring involving a visiting professor placed further pressure on the University to review its treatment of that issue. In its meeting this year, the Faculty Council has begun to hammer out sexual harassment guidelines for the University, a project which should be completed by spring.

The survey fills an important need because, as administrators admit, they know little about the extent of harassment on campus. The study is designed to examine both the extent and nature of harassment cases as well as community attitudes toward the issue. Planners hope that the survey--more extensive than any other undertaken by a university--will serve as a model for other schools. Verba said last week that both studies stem from the administration's "growing concern over sex-related problems on campus."

The University deserves credit for responding to pressures to address these issues and for seizing the initiative by funding these two comprehensive and largely unprecedented studies. We encourage Harvard to support more efforts to pinpoint the concerns of women on campus and to take positive steps to meet these needs once they have been identified.