There is no question that the hunger strike was long in coming. In the spring of 1966, when Mrs. Bunting announced that the three meals per day contract would apply to every college resident, girls in off-campus houses far from the dining halls appealed to her to give them a breakfast subsidy and she agreed. But, the following fall, Mrs. Bunting seemed to have reversed her decision. As the strikers have said, "this announcement took the proportions of a small scandal in the eyes of the girls who had moved off-campus to save money and avoid ... eating breakfast in the large dormitory dining rooms." Meetings with Mrs. Bunting followed; the CRIMSON denounced her; and finally she said the College could afford a partial rebate, but only to girls in off-campus houses more than a block away from the Quad.
Throughout this turmoil, Mrs. Bunting appealed to girls to understand the College's financial troubles and the losses it would sustain if the rebate were granted. The College's difficulties are undoubtedly legitimate, but Mrs. Bunting's appeals for finances, in the girls' minds, came rather late. However valid her reasons for reneging on a promise, it was clear to girls that she was reneging. This incident is typical of Mrs. Bunting's tactics: she maneuvers herself into conflicts, speaks too soon, and later finds that she must go back on her word. Continued contact with their president has eroded students' confidence in her--and in her word.
Their confidence was at its lowest ebb at the beginning of this term: the memory of the breakfast subsidy fiasco still rankled. Starting early in February, two months before housing decisions were to be made, girls began having appointments with Mrs. Frederick Bolman, the dean of residence, to ask about apartment living. Many were opposed to a lottery system, which had been used for this year's seniors. They were put off by Mrs. Bolman, who told them that the procedure had not been set up because the administration was busy with admissions meetings for the class of 1971. By the end of March, a few girls had gotten wind of a lottery; they drew up a letter protesting this method of selection and requested a meeting with Mrs. Bunting for a reconsideration of the matter. Sixty-five juniors signed that letter. The same day the letter reached Mrs. Bunting -- March 28 -- the bills for next year's room deposit were delivered without prior notice. And students were also informed that the lottery would take place immediately after spring vacation. Thus, there was very little time to question the method of selection; spring vacation came in the interim, which meant most girls were away from Radcliffe between their notice of the lottery and the day it was to begin.
Mrs. Bunting agreed to see the girls who had asked for a meeting with her. There she reiterated her reasons, all financial, for not allowing more girls into apartments. The girls also objected to the arrangement of having 12 girls from each House chosen, since East House sign-ups for the lottery far outnumbered the other two Houses. They specifically requested that the whole issue be given more consideration and the lottery postponed. Mrs. Bunting apparently refused this request, but "promised to do whatever was in her power to change the 12-per-house arrangement."
After the lottery was drawn on Wednesday of that week, Mrs. Bunting met with RGA on Thursday to discuss the 12-12-12 arrangement. She was told that selecting the girls who had drawn highest in the all-college list was more desirable, but on the following day, 12 girls from each House were informed that they had "won" the right to their own apartments.
A series of meetings and phone calls with Mrs. Bunting followed, most of them devoted to girls' questions about finances. They began arguing for a shifting of priorities, that is, girls' preferences before financial needs. Mrs. Bunting told them that the final decision would come from the College Council and suggested that they meet informally with Council members. Before their May 1 meeting, three trustees had tea with selected girls to discuss non-college housing. When a spokesman for the girls called Mrs. Bunting to learn what conclusions the trustees had drawn from the meeting, she said that discussion was over, that an "impasse" had been reached because the Council had decided it was financially impossible for any more girls to move off.
After several days of meetings, the girls decided that a hunger strike was their most efficient means of protest, since--unlike a sit-in--it would not interfere with the College's business. On midnight Wednesday, May 10, they stopped eating.
The merits of the strikers' complaints, which have been widely discussed at Radcliffe, are less important, in retrospect, than the fact that they felt moved to strike in the first place. Some of the 23 girls on the strike -- and the 50 who held a one day sympathy strike -- obviously were not as intense about getting their own apartments as were the handful of leaders. But all of them, and others who only observed from afar, agreed that they had been tricked, deceived, and put off through three months of bureaucratic mismanagement. Had the dean of residence told them of the lottery a reasonable length of time before it began, the girls might have been able to work out a method of selection to which both sides could agree. Had Mrs. Bunting not appeared to be merely listening to their complaints