Switch 'Freshman' To 'First-Year'

Dean of First-Years Elizabeth S. Nathans. Office of the Dean of First-Years. First-Year Orientation Week. The First-Year Mixer. We admit that these constructions, using the term "first-year" rather than "freshman," may not be entirely aesthetically pleasing. Yet they would make an important statement: that Harvard is committed enough to gender equality and neutrality to go through the trouble of changing its stationery and its phone books.

But when Dean of the College Harry R. Lewis '68 recently vetoed the Undergraduate Council's recommendation to replace all official uses of the term "freshman" with "first-year," he effectively killed the possibility. No matter that Radcliffe President Linda S. Wilson wrote him a letter supporting it; no matter that the council voted 42-8 in favor of it. Dean Lewis did not want to waste his "political capital" by bringing an issue as purportedly small as this to the Corporation for approval. This change, however, would be more far-reaching than he seems to believe.

Most people treat the term "freshman" as gender-neutral. One does not say "freshwoman." But it is difficult for female first-years, many of them struggling to establish their identifies as woman and as Harvard student, to hear the term "freshman" day after day during their first year at Harvard. At a university where "old boys" is used as an adjective for everything from locker rooms to architecture, changing the term is the least Harvard could do to make its female students feel more comfortable.

Of course, the proposal is a semantic one. Some might argue that language is unimportant. At one level, it is, but on another, it shapes the way we think about the world. For Lewis, a semantic change doesn't seem to mean much. As he wrote in his three-and-a-quarter page memo to council President Robert M. Hyman '98-'97, "It will not work to the advantage of women to advance proposals that thoughtful people in this community will regard as trivilizing women's issues." By thoughtful people, Lewis means the few "well-placed women and men" with whom he spoke about the issue. There are many others, including Andrea Walsh, director of women's studies, and Alice Jardine, chair of women's studies, who do support the change. Are they so unimportant compared to the ones Dean Lewis spoke with?

Lewis is correct to say that "first-year" can make for some awkward linguistics. If there were a "grammatically convenient and linguistically graceful alternative [to 'freshman'] that could be used everywhere," he wrote, he would prefer using it. It is true that "first-year" can make for some awkward constructions, but when has less-than-graceful wording ever stopped Harvard before? And schools that have already adopted "first-year," such as Columbia, Williams, Brandeis, Bowdoin, Trinity, Bates and Colby seem to have no problem with it.

Two things need to be done. First, Lewis needs to reconsider his decision. Take it to the Corporation. Maybe then its members will realize the depth of concern about women's issues on campus. Second, as Lewis rightly suggests in his memo, a "small working group of students and members of the College administration" should be appointed "to discuss gender issues that are of concern." We can think of a few off the bat, such as the small number of female tenured professors and female undergraduates in high positions in student organizations.

But Lewis should go even further. He should press President Neil L. Rudenstine to organize a commission inquiring into the status of women at Harvard. The last such report was done in 1971, when our mothers confronted the first wave of the modern women's movement. Then, maybe, we can treat "serious" issues. Then, maybe, such a