There was no substantive issue or philosophy difference between students and administration, but the quickness with which the disagreement escalated into name-calling testifies to some basic problem at the college.

In all the College hierarchy, there is no one besides Mrs. Bunting who has any real decision-making power.

For a shy woman, Mary I. Bunting has been the target for a surprising and clearly undeserved amount of virulent hostility in the past year. Radcliffe students have come away from meetings with her, convinced that she is either a "liar" or an "incompetent." The CRIMSON, in a series of articles, accused her of bargaining in bad faith and making promises she couldn't keep. Old friends among alumnae have shaken their heads at her decisions and vowed never to have dealings with her again.

Her growing reputation as an autocrat is particularly strange, because, during her seven years as president of Radcliffe, Mrs. Bunting has deliberately sought out student and alumnae opinion. While plans for a House system were being formulated in 1961, Mrs. Bunting worked hand-in-hand with a large committee of Cliffies and submitted her recommendations to a student referendum before they were presented to the College Council.

Mrs. Bunting's concern for student involvement in decision-making led her to reorganize the student government association at Radcliffe, making it a "community wide" organization which includes administrators and students alike as voting members. On numerous occasions, she has chided students who have cynically regarded her plans as fait accompli. At a Radcliffe Government Association meeting, she is apt to repeat, "I've come here because I want to hear what you think. Do you have any ideas? What shall we change?"

To a woman who obviously regards herself as a flexible and progressive administrator, the five-day hunger strike last month must have come as the final and inexplicable blow. That strike, organized by 23 upperclassmen who found themselves deadlocked with the administration over their housing arrangements, proved once and for all that the elaborate and superficially democratic decision-making structure at Radcliffe had failed. With which the disagreement escalated into name-calling testifies to some basic problem at the college. Probably the strike could have been averted and Radcliffe spared a week of embarrassing publicity; but Mrs. Bunting, it is clear, was the victim of her own bad public relations sense and the inoperable, attenuated administrative machinery in Fay House.

36 Off-Campus

The strike grew out of girls' distress that only 36 juniors are being allowed to move out of college housing and into their own apartments next year. The 23, cramped in Edmands House for the duration of the strike, argued that "every girl in next year's senior class ought to have the option of living in non-college housing." One-hundred-thirty-one juniors had applied for the 36 places after spring vacation, so that the residence office was forced to hold a lottery. Although the strikers, most of whom were juniors, had been meeting with administrators for six weeks to argue for more places off-campus, many of them drew. There was no substantive issue or philosophy difference between students and administration, but the quickness bad lots and were not among the lucky 36--which didn't help their case with the administration at all.

To this day, Mrs. Bunting thinks that the hunger strikers were disgruntled that they lost in the lottery. They, however, pointed to the girls in their number who had won places and reminded her that their concern with apartment living antedated the lottery. The strikers are probably correct in defending their long-range interest in the housing issue, but Mrs. Bunting is also justified in thinking that there is a good deal of self-interest involved. "The basic problem between us is not that I didn't understand what you wanted, but that you didn't get your own way," Mrs. Bunting told a leader of the strikers last week.

She became convinced of their "selfishness" because, as she explained, "they were deaf to any discussion of economics." During her first meeting with the girls last March, she argued that if the College allowed more than 36 girls to live in apartments, it would lose about $1000 for each girl, the amount each would normally pay in room and board.

Because Radcliffe has been operating a budget deficit of $100,000 each year, which has been made up by dipping into capital, Mrs. Bunting was reluctant to risk a still greater loss. She assured the girls that she and administrative officials were working on economy measures to allow more girls off-campus. "But we will not run a bigger deficit, raise room rates for everyone in the dorms, and lower the standards of dorm living to allow a few individuals to have apartments," she insisted.

The irony of this exchange is that the girls became convinced that Mrs. Bunting did not understand the "educational importance" of apartment living, when it was she who--18 months ago--first suggested that some seniors be allowed off. "Our girls move into the Houses as freshmen and by the time they're seniors, they're ready for their own apartments," she said last week. "For seniors, whose academic and social lives revolve around graduate and professional students, apartment living may be just the thing."

Mrs. Bunting, in fact, is so convinced of the "educational importance" of apartment living that she has built a provision for it into her long-range plans for the House system. She envisions arrangements which will allow about 150 girls--including commuters, married students, and apartment dwellers--to live off-campus. (About 80 of these, she estimates, will be seniors in their own apartments.

But apartment living hinges on the completion of all Mrs. Bunting's other plans. Her "grand design"--as it has been called--cannot be effected until the College raises $7.5 million to supplement a $2.5 million challenge grant it received from the Ford Foundation this spring. A three-year campaign for the matching funds will get underway this summer; each October, beginning in 1968, Radcliffe can claim one-third of whatever has been raised. If plans move on schedule, the new House on Garden Street will be complete by September 1970. Once this is accomplished, girls can be moved from the badly-overcrowded older dorms in the Quad and renovation can begin on them. Eventually, Mrs. Bunting hopes for Houses which will physically resemble the Harvard Houses: large central kitchens and dining rooms, junior and senior commons rooms, house workshops, practice rooms and studios, tutors' suits, and--most important--a single room for each girl.

Yet Mrs. Bunting's pleas for economy and for the ultimate vision of the Houses were largely ignored by Cliffies this winter. "My real difference with the girls is they want everything--renovated dorms, apartment living--now, while I am forced to take things slowly and wait for financial support," she said several weeks ago. "I really can't think of myself as an ogre. We all want the same things." The 23 girls, before they went on strike, argued that economics ought not to be Mrs. Bunting's first concern. "It's important enough for us to live in our own apartments for the college to run a deficit," their spokesman insisted.