Voice in Decisions

When Mrs. Bunting and the House deans continued to insist that letting every senior move off would put Radcliffe in a dangerous financial position, the girls became convinced that there was "no way to effect our will through the regular channels of communication." During their discussions with Mrs. Bunting, they realized, they said, that "there is a greater problem at Radcliffe, something that goes beyond the immediate question of getting our own apartments: Do we as students have a real voice in the decision-making process of our college? Decisions at Radcliffe, it seems to us, are made completely from above."

Thus, at midnight on May 11, 15 girls went on strike and were joined by eight more the next day. They pledged to eat nothing until the administration agreed to let every senior have her own apartment. Reporters and friends who talked with the girls during the course of the strike remarked that they seemed "driven by some freakish, martyr-like vision of their cause. They talk as if they're a besieged people." In retrospect, it seems obvious that the girls' wrath far outran their reason, but during those five days, they were real celebrities in the Quad. Refusing at first even to chew gum or take vitamin capsules, the girls found their cheekbones becoming hollow, their eyes glazing; telegrams of support arrived from their families, friends at other colleges, and even from the National Student Association.

As can only happen among cerebral females, the girls quickly came to see their boycott as a strike for "freedom." They reported, by the fifth day, that "four have already become too weak to go on; one of them, Carole Adams, is in the infirmary." They published an elaborate history of their dealings with Mrs. Bunting, in which they tried to annotate her practice of dealing in bad faith. In the newspapers, Mrs. Bunting came across as a hard-hearted administrator, "maintaining silence in face of the fast" and professing her inability to "do anything, although they're perfectly free to express their opinion." Catherine Williston, acting dean of the College, is said to have come to a meeting with the strikers, begged them to give up "in her most sarcastic voice," and then, lifting her fingers to her lips, thrown them a good-by kiss.

Heated Emotions

These stories, probably apocryphal, and the girls' fervor testify to the virulence of feelings on both sides before and during the strike. (One dean, still unidentified, is said to have called the strikers "stupid little girls" in conversation with another student.) That emotions could become so heated over an issue as trivial as apartment living makes a farce of all the mechanisms that are supposed to settle conflict at Radcliffe. Mrs. Bunting was pulled into the controversy almost immediately; her underlings, in the residence and deans' office, were unable to head off the conflict with the disgruntled girls.

Mrs. Bunting's involvement in what should have been an issue between students and their deans or House masters would surprise people at other colleges--particularly Harvard--but it is typical of Radcliffe. In all the College hierarchy, there is no one besides Mrs. Bunting who has any real decision-making power. All questions of housing, admission, fund-raising, social rules, and employment are inevitably pushed into her lap by administrators who are either unsure of their own ability or uncertain of Radcliffe's policies. Unlike other college presidents, Mrs. Bunting has intimate knowledge of the most mundane aspects of the whole operation. It is difficult to imagine President Pusey or even the deans of the other faculties taking an interest in the draperies that are to be hung in a university building; Mrs. Bunting, though, personally selected the curtains for Mabel Daniels.

Her supervision of the operation can be understood in two ways. First of all, it is possible to argue that her personal attention is required, Radcliffe's financial condition being as precarious as it is. Those who would espouse this line maintain that all details of the operation of the College must be watched and economies applied unsparingly. This, they say, has been Mrs. Bunting's role.

No matter how many meetings Mrs. Bunting agreed to, no matter how highly she regards RGA, her tendency is to make decisions first and seek student opinion later

It is also possible, however, to argue that Mrs. Bunting's attention is necessary because she is surrounded by incompetents. Students and senior residents who have had to deal extensively with the Radcliffe hierarchy sometimes claim, for instance, that one has to get Mrs. Bunting's permission before Buildings and Grounds will turn up the heat during the winter. No one below her sets policies: the three Deans administer Harvard's academic policies according to the "Rules Relating to College Studies." Mrs. Bunting, it is said, makes all the other decisions for her flaccid bureaucracy. (She is surrounded. one alumna says, by a "Greek chorus," which nods agreeably at her every move.)

A president's accessibility can be a real advantage in dealing with students (how many college students wish the presidents of their institutions were as accessible as Mrs. Bunting?), but Mrs. Bunting's involvement in every mundane issue has only weakened her position. In a series of confrontations over the past two years, Mrs. Bunting has come to seem less reasonable and more autocratic, simply because -- in each case -- she personally had to announce a decision unfavorable to students.

The deans and the other administrators, who were often more closely involved with the problem at issue, failed to serve as buffers for her. Her energies have too often been absorbed by soothing personalities all around or arguing trivialties, when she might more profitably have been raising funds or devoting her talents to specific problems like economizing or finishing plans for the Houses.

Mrs. Bunting's position within the hierarchy, then, has pushed upon her duties which might be more efficiently handled by her subordinates. But the furor over apartments which resulted in the hunger strike developed not just because Mrs. Bunting was thrust into the conflict at its outset, but because her position has been poisoned in the past by her own terrible public relations sense. She has shown a gift for alienating students; her conception of her job has involved her, time after time, in altercations which have reduced students' confidence in her and cast her in an unfavorable light.

The girls on the hunger strike openly accused her of duplicity in her past relations with them. They point to a long series of incidents in which she has acted in a high-handed manner or made promises she could not keep. In a "short history" they published after the strike, the strikers noted that Mrs. Bunting has sought out student advice only about the decor of the new dormitories, but never solicited student reaction to her grand design for the House system.

There is evidence, in fact, to suggest that Mrs. Bunting has consistently disregarded wide-spread student opposition to aspects of her project. The bitter protests over the destruction of Gilman House two years ago, last year's furor over flat room and board rates, and the off-campus houses' fight for breakfast subsidies are indications that at least a few Cliffies want an option to the restrictive dormitory living Mrs. Bunting would like to see effected throughout Radcliffe. Girls like the strikers, who are clearly a minority, are afraid that the intimate atmosphere of the small wooden frame off-campus houses now run by the college will be sacrificed when, by 1970, those houses will be sold and every girl required to live either in a dormitory or a non-college apartment. Yet Mrs. Bunting has continued to see these protests as the work of a tiny group of troublemakers.