It's hard to estimate the actual meaning of the 2.5 to 1 ratio, simply because it's impossible to tell what things would be like if the ratio were equal. But it's a safe bet to attribute the dismal history of women's organizations at Harvard in large part to the fact that women have felt too isolated and scattered to develop much of a sense of solidarity. Women in the Yard and the River Houses have complained that it's hard for them to simply meet other women and make friends, and women's groups in the Houses have tended to fill more of a social purpose than a political one. The organizers of the Radcliffe/Harvard Women's Center, located in Phillips Brooks House, are promising to be more active this year, sponsoring consciousness-raising groups and speakers, but their effectiveness will be limited unless they can stir up more general interest and support than they did last year.

The ratio also seems to have reverberations that affect the quality of male-female relationships. From what I know about other colleges, most Harvard men are unusually reluctant to involve themselves in anything more than platonic relationships--with Radcliffe women, that is. It's hard to pin down the reasons for this, and of course they vary from case to case. One big factor is probably the fear that if you start something with a woman in your House, as opposed to a woman at Wellesley or Pine Manor, it will inevitably become something "intense." But another big factor is probably the mistaken impression that many men have that every Radcliffe woman has 2.5 men beating down her door. They just give up before they start. As a result, many of the women are developing all sorts of insecurities, asking themselves continually, "What's wrong with me?"

One advantage to the way things are now is that women have a group of administrators of their very own, much more kindly and sympathetic than the Harvard variety. Radcliffe's Office of Women's Education has as its sole purpose in life ministering to women's so-called "special needs," and it does things like putting out the Women's Guide to Harvard and organizing special "core groups" for freshwomen. But whether the office really does enough right now to justify its existence is unclear. Many women know little or nothing about it, and many--especially those in the River Houses--feel no ties to the Radcliffe administration whatsoever. And women who do know about the place and are constantly trying to steer it along a strong feminist path often get frustrated by the lady-like, coffe-klatch atmosphere that prevails. Again, they mean well, but...

If there is any villain in all this, it is probably the ratio. And the ratio has become a hot topic of late. Last spring, a committee chaired by Karl Strauch, professor of Physics, issued a much-ballyhooed list of recommendations about the Harvard-Radcliffe relationship, the most important of which was that the ratio be dropped in favor of an admissions policy of "equal access." Equal access sounds great on paper: every applicant will be judged solely on the basis of his or her qualifications, without regard to sex. No longer will there be any of those artificial quotas. The vast majority of students supported the policy. Matina Horner, in a not-too-surprising role as a defender of the Harvard administration, declared that equal access was really the best thing for women, since women admitted under a 1 to 1 ratio would always wonder whether or not they'd been admitted just because they were women. Being against equal access was roughly on a level with being against motherhood.

But any feminist who thinks equal access is the answer is overlooking a few things. First of all, any admissions policy, no matter how "equal," depends on the people who are doing the admitting, and if those people continue to apply male criteria of success--looking for football players, student council presidents, etc.--they will continue to choose men over women. And at the moment, Radcliffe's applicant pool is less than half the size of Harvard's. Another problem is that there is a large and powerful group of Harvard alumni who are adamantly opposed to lowering the number of men admitted. Nearly everyone is opposed to increasing the size of the college, and it remains to be explained how in the world Harvard plans to increase the number of women and maintain the same number of men without making the total number of students any larger. And one crucial point is that no one has ever predicted that equal access will lead to a 1 to 1 ratio in the forseeable future. The best that can be hoped for, apparently, is a 60-40 split of men to women over the next 5 years.

If the Harvard administration wanted to do any one thing to make things easier for women here, it would institute a 1 to 1 ratio. But now that the days of equal access are upon us, the likelihood of that happening is just about nil. Equal access, like the Radcliffe bitch myth, is an instance of Harvard's subtle sexism surfacing--and again, surfacing in a way that is ambiguous enough so that many women don't see anything sexist about it at all. As usual, there's no one specific to blame, and everyone means well and sincerely believes that they're doing the best they can.

So women at Harvard are in a pretty uncomfortable position. Something is wrong here, but it's not always clear what it is, or what to do about it. Women get angry, but when their anger has no specific object it often turns against itself or against a scapegoat. But one important thing to remember is not to be taken in by Harvard's pro-feminist veneer or rhetoric. Harvard is still a man's castle and at this point sexism, whether intentional or not, is one of its tallest turrets