In the last decade a stream articles purporting to present an intimate portrait of the Radcliffe dating community has flooded our national magazines. Usually these articles do not claim to discuss Harvard alone; they offer glimpses of promiscuity at Smith or tradition at Wassar, but in the end they focus Cambridge--the apex of college romance. For somehow, to the eyes of the world, the Harvard romance is indeed romantic.

Boroff records a conversation fragment with a Radcliffe campus U.S.A.: "While I was having lunch at Radcliffe someone referred to a magazine story about Harvard-Radcliffe romance. 'Does it deal with a seduction?' I asked. 'No,' a girl snapped, 'It deals with an affair."

One fumbles for the distinction romance, affair, and seduction, but call it what you will, an image of dating at Harvard has clearly emerged from recent literature. From a library of short stories, novels, and factual analyses dating habits, can be extracted a romantic tale of love in Harvard Square.

They has three distinctive parts: the need for affection, the and the affair itself. Happily there is rarely a question of ability to get the girl.

The Short story, "Sentimental Education", Harold Brodkey some of the reasons why Elgin Smith wanted to fall in love. On a warm September evening, standing on the steps of Widener Library, Elgin Smith "was thinking what it would be like to fall in love, worship a girl and put his life at her feet. He despised because he feared he was incapable of passion.... He was curses in English Literature, German Literature, in literature, in History--ancient and medieval, and every one of them was full of incidents that he thought mocked him, since they seemed to say that the meaning of life, the peak of existence, the core of events was one certain emotion, to which he was a stranger, and for which he was very likely too rational."

Radcliffe girls, almost all are agree that after an initial Freshman year carnival of dates, they are anxious to enter into an affair.

In an article published in the Atlantic Monthly last February, Dr. Carl Binger attributed the college girl's desire for an affair to a need for security engendered by social and academic pressure. Dr. Binger explains that the college girl is plagued by depression resulting from fears of inadequacy. She comes to fear comment or criticism and seeks security in the esteem of a young man whom she admires, and whose approbation hopefully will offset her self-doubt and feelings of insufficiency.

Thus, seeking security, fearing impotency, and hoping to realize a romantic conception of an affair, the actors take ther places.

NEXT comes the meeting.

For Boroff its terms are predetermined: "Boy meets girl at Harvard in an atmosphere of stylized distaste. The cold sneer directed at Radcliffe girls is a fixed part of the Harvard physiognomy. In the end, after the requisite sparring they marry."

But of course Boroff's comments neglect the personal agony of involvement, an agony which Jonathan Kozol in The Fume of Poppies, and Brodkey in "Sentimental Education", deal with at length.

Kozel's description of the meeting was in the form of excerpts from lecture notes in English 163:

Tuesday: Don't believe she's real

Thursday: She is. Flicks tongue to wet lips. Teeth are gleaming. Would like to be swallowed. Turns her head and touches her nose's tip with one little finger, to scratch. Don't like her jaw. Love her eyes. Twinkle.

Tuesday: First time I looked at bosom. Name is Wendy.