To the Editors of the Crimson:

Harvard's decision to lobby against the so-called "1 to 1 ratio bill" of the House Higher Education Act was apparently based on a serious misinterpretation of the content of the legislation.

According the the Crimson story, President Bok said the bill required immediate adoption of a 1 to 1 admissions ratio. This is false. The bill did not require equal admissions in selection of next year's entering class: rather it allowed a reasonable seven year transition period.

Further, the bill never dictated a strict 1 to 1 ratio. Rep. Edith Green (D-Ore.), author of the bill, has opposed admissions quotas of any kind and required in her legislation only a non-discriminatory admissions policy. Harvard would not have been penalized if it had honest difficulty enlarging its pool of qualified women applicants and fell short of a full 1 to 1 balance.

There is another more substantial caveat. Despite the mistaken impression of the press and the University, the equal admissions bill would actually not have affected Harvard's undergraduate admissions at all. Staff members of the House Special Education Subcommittee insist that the equal admissions requirement was written to exempt all schools that are nominally still one sex institutions, including Harvard and Radcliffe. In supposing a federal challenge to its admissions policies where none existed. Harvard has damaged unnecessarily the chances for equal admissions progress at other colleges whose leaders may not share Mr. Bok's intention of moving voluntarily toward equal opportunity.

There are several other equal opportunity provisions in the Higher Education Act that have survived the backlash in the House and deserve more publicity. The House bill would:

* bring executive, administrative, and professional employees under the protection of "the equal pay for equal work" guarantee of the Fair Labor Standards Act:

* forbid sex discrimination in the hiring and salaries of university employees, including faculty members:

* prohibit use of sexually discriminatory quotas in graduate and professional school admissions (in any federally-aided institution already more than 10 per cent coeducational). In this case, Harvard would not be exempt from compliance.

It is to be hoped that Harvard will actively seek approval of these guarantees in the House-Senate conference committee, rather than repeating its ill-informed opposition. Ruth N. Glushien '72