While some women felt that they were considered a lower priority than their male counterparts, some Harvard students said they disagreed.

“I don’t think that most of the men thought that they were at two different colleges,” Paul A. Buttenwieser ’60 said. “While Radcliffe undergraduates couldn’t go to a lot of places that today would seem outrageous, there were places at Radcliffe that we didn’t particularly go to either.”

But Metz said that most people do not realize that the quality of a Radcliffe education was affected by the way the institution was structured.

“By the way that things were set up in Radcliffe, we were being trained to be good hostesses,” Metz added.

She said that during meals, about nine people would sit at a round table, and they were expected to make conversation with each other. When students came to clear the tables, everyone was expected to leave.

“It was wonderful training for making small-talk as a hostess, but it was lousy stimulation for intellectual conversations,” Metz said. “Men would sit at tables of two to four and talk for hours.”

CHANGING ATTITUDES

Bunting-Smith had a very different idea about women’s education. As she stated in a 1966 address to Southern Methodist University, higher education should “provide freedom and backing for those of identified ability and high motivation to move as their talent takes them.” Universities, she said, “must seek to develop the potentialities of people in all segments of society,” an idea that is implicit in the concept of democracy.

Bunting-Smith spoke openly about the unfortunate disparities in the way that society viewed education for men and women—a mindset that she hoped to change.

In the same address to SMU, she said that “there was a real difference in the way most adults talked to little girls and little boys about their futures and in the expectations of their teachers in school and college.”

This widespread attitude, Bunting-Smith argued, was one that had to go.

“Universities in this country have found it convenient to prejudge women’s potential contribution for leadership,” she said. “What I ask is that they experiment.”

THE NEW EXPERIMENT

When Bunting-Smith arrived at Radcliffe in early 1960, her actions and perspective departed from those of the previous president, Wilbur K. Jordan.

“Mary Bunting came in during our last semester. We hardly got the opportunity to see her, but it was such a morale-booster to have her show up,” Metz said. “Her predecessor was just kind of sleep-walking through the role. She came in full of energy and affirmation and really cheered us on.”