The practical reasons given in the report for maintaining the present ratio were excruciatingly revealing. An increase in total enrollment to 9000 was convincingly dismissed because of the drain it would cause on money and on Cambridge housing space. But the reasons given against equalizing male and female enrollment at 3000 each had no foundation other than male supremacy. The first was based on the idea that only male companionship is important for both women and men. (Remember the construction of dorms at Harvard and Radcliffe.) A decrease in the number of men, the report argued, would mean that the remaining men, especially those in racial, geographical, and class minorities, would be so small in absolute numbers that they would have no male friends. In fact, the committee threatened, admitting more women "might force us to eliminate a number of such distinctive groups entirely." Not only were they saying that women from minorities need no female companionship so 1200 women is enough while 3000 men is too few, but they were dusting off the familiar tactic of dividing one oppressed group's fight from another's.

The second reason was that the departments now restricted by socialization to men would suffer from decreased male enrollment. Even for those who believe that a department can "suffer," the report was simply admitting that equal enrollment must be accompanied by abolition of all sex discrimination in the University, in employment, on the Faculty and Administration, and in the graduate and professional schools.

The committee also said that Radcliffe should be preserved as a women's voice, that if it did not exist, it would have to be created anew. It is true that women need to meet, talk, and act collectively, but Radcliffe, like a company union, does not serve that purpose. Radcliffe perhaps serves to help a few women escape a few of the worst effects of sexism. But in its size, its housing, its administration, it is an integral part of Harvard sexism, and certainly not a force demanding or teaching equality for all women.

Besides the practical reasons against equal enrollment, Dean Peterson and his committee alternated between two theoretical or philosophical reasons, the pluralism idea that "women are different" and the straightforward declaration that women are inferior.

Pluralism is a common way of obscuring power relations. A warden doesn't have power over his prisoner; they have just have different roles within the prison system. The reasoning is that women fill different roles in society so they must be different. And if they are different they can have their own colleges and shouldn't be at Harvard. Women's Liberation explains how social roles have prescribed women's behavior, not vice versa. Dean Peterson does not even pretend that Harvard and Radcliffe are separate but equal, just separate and different. He wants to maintain the 4-to-1 ration not because they are getting an equal education elsewhere but because they can be better kept in their place elsewhere.

As euphemism, as politeness, the argument that women are "different" is sure to become the most popular argument for men to use against Women's Liberation, but Dean Peterson does not stop there. He teaches outright female inferiority:

'Would increased enrollment of women be a fairer policy'...If the question was taken to its logical conclusion, then all identifiable groups should receive representation proportionate just to their numbers at large and not to the ability and potential of the individual applicants within a group, race, or area.

This pure sexism is the same as Agnew racism. In its theory it sees a choice between admitting members of population groups according to numbers or according to ability, as though ability is naturally distributed unevenly between men and women, for example. And in its practice, it means channeling women away from preparation for Harvard from the day they are born until the end of high school, and "discovering" that they don't meet "admissions standards," or that they can better find what they "want" elsewhere.

DEAN PETERSON and other "teachers" have begun our education about Women's Liberation. We can see that Women's Liberation does not mean more sex or less paying for girls on dates, that is, not merely less inconvenience for men, but a whole revolution in our attitudes and practices. Men need to take Women's Liberation seriously. If there are jokes and sarcasm they should be directed at men who live male supremacy and not at women who live women's liberation. We have to develop alternatives to the nuclear family which imprisons women. And, for the benefit of all of us, we must make ourselves those "forces of change," changing ourselves, changing society, changing Harvard beginning with equal enrollment immediately and moving toward general sex, race, and class justice in every aspect of this University.

We have been promised by President Pusey that alumni will be our greatest obstacle in obtaining equal enrollment. It does not seem that their world has been so happy that they could not benefit from Women's Liberation. Surely their wives and maids and secretaries will. But it seems clear that most of them do not and will not reject their roles and their security. We have images to help us understand the strength of the socialization that makes rich, privileged people continue to put everyone else and themselves through such inhuman punishment, through such hatred and violence, through racism and sexism and pollution. The most useful image is of "interests." Not interests of the human beings involved, but interests of the roles we serve and have become.

But it must be said that, whatever the alumni's interests, whatever the interests of the Faculty and Administration, they must understand that in the face of sexism, racism, pollution, and imperialist wars, the very survival of our generation as human beings capable of love, dignity, and sanity is at stake. It may be that most of them will not remake their own lives, but we must remake ours and cannot afford to let them block our way.