Freely translated: no assistant for Paget, and little change in the concept of men's priorities over prime time and limited facilities.

However, plans made by the Athletics Department for next year indicate that Harvard may be abandoning that concept. Whether it is the natural course of merger, as Watson claims, or whether it is largely a consequence of the HEW regulations, next year women athletes at Harvard will get a much better deal than they have in the past few years. "Now I can say that it was good that Radcliffe athletics merged with Harvard athletics," Paget said last week.

Over the summer, Watson and Paget arranged meetings with the coaches of the Harvard and Radcliffe swim, crew, basketball and squash teams to work out the details of how they will share the facilities that are available this coming year. The results so far--the squash and basketball meetings are scheduled for the next few weeks--have been considerable. The plan for swimming, for example, is that both teams will practice at the same time in the IAB. The Radcliffe team, about half the size of Harvard's, will have two lanes, and the Harvard swimmers will have four lanes.

This represents quite a change from last year's situation when Harvard swimmers granted the Radcliffe swimmers an hour a day in the IAB pool. Watson says that the total number of Harvard swimmers will have to be cut this year from around 30 to 25 to make room for the Radcliffe team. He also lists some other areas in which Harvard athletes will have to give up their priority over prime time and facilities: the Radcliffe field hockey team will have what Watson describes as the best field at Soldiers Field to practice on this year, and the Radcliffe crew will have some afternoon hours in the tank, instead of always having to practice there in the early morning as before.

The Title IX regulations were helpful in working out the training schedules this summer, Watson says, because they demonstrated to Harvard coaches that it was not just Watson who was changing old athletic policies. "The coaches were hired with definite ideas," Watson says, "They didn't know why they should have anything taken away from them. Now they have to accept it."

It remains to be seen whether the new plans will work when the athletes get back and practice begins. There is still potential for the kind of friction that marred relations between Harvard and Radcliffe athletes and administrators last year. But, Horner feels, an important step has been taken in getting people to talk to each other and understand the different needs involved.

"Athletics is a good testing ground for merger," Horner said last week. The problems the athletics merger had last year, Horner said, highlight what equality is all about: The two departments merged in 1971, and it took three years for them to learn the difference between merger and submersion.

Many Harvard administrators lament the battle that grew out of the athletics merger, and point out that the Faculty spent more funds and effort in that area last year than in any other part of the merger. But money couldn't buy an answer to the needs of Radcliffe's athletes.

RoAnn Costin '74, swim team captain and past member of the crew, sums up the women's status: "As long as you show you're willing to train like a man, Harvard will accept you," she says. "And then if there's no threat on the men's program, facilities, or funding, there's no restriction on women."

Costin and many women athletes and administrators clearly don't find that summary comforting. It neglects the basic philosophy of women's sports that Paget advanced during the past year and that the students' letter to Horner clearly articulated. And it overlooks the seeds of a possibly more equal relationship between men's and women's sports: Equal treatment does not mean identical treatment in dollars or practice time.

It means, simply, that an athletic program serving men and women undergraduates should allow women--as well as men--to develop their teams and individual skills to the level that serves them most fully.