Horner supposedly does not exercise the control over the trustees that Bunting did, which has sparked some speculation that a configuration on the executive board of the trustees--Lyman, Burr and Mary Bundy '46, vice-chairman of the trustees and the wife of former dean of the Faculty McGeorge Bundy--is, in fact, the inspiration behind Radcliffe.

Horner says that as president she administers under the broad guidelines of the trustees. "The president executes their policies and informs and recommends on as much solid information as I can," she says.

The trustees credit Horner for many vital diplomatic missions onto Harvard turf--it was she who asked for the formation of the Joint Policy Committee. Composed of members at the highest level of the Radcliffe and Harvard administration, the committee is trying to find a workable solution for the problem of Radcliffe's relationship to the University, and to articulate exactly what parts of the two institutions have been merged already.

And she, the trustees say, has been instrumental in eliminating the pervading sense of mistrust--some would maintain it's healthy skepticism--that Radcliffe has traditionally felt when confronted by Harvard.

The mutual distrust and suspicion on the part of the two institutions stymied for the past four years any forward momentum toward defining Radcliffe and its role in the University.

The Radcliffe administration still fears that the Faculty and the University may withdraw from its newly found concern for women and what Horner calls its role of "informed advocacy," hence the hesitancy in dissolving what remains of Radcliffe.

After all, Horner says, "Harvard has been an androcentric university for a long time and it's hard to change."

It took a while, she says, before people at University Hall stopped feeling that Radcliffe was intruding.

Some people say that UHall will never entirely stop feeling this intrusion because it often operates as an old-boy network and Radcliffe women are simply not old boys. As one UHall administrator says, "Mrs. Horner is sitting in the cat-bird seat and the people here just don't know how to fathom her."

In relations with Mass Hall and President Bok's universe Horner has also been aware that she is dealing with an institution steeped in male values and traditions. But she says that the Mass Hall administration and the Harvard Corporation have been "enormously supportive."

On a personal level she says she no longer notices that she is the only woman or one of very few women at a given meeting. Change, according to Horner, is coming to Harvard but the process is a slow one. She says she hopes that by Radcliffe's centennial in 1979 a definite direction and future will have been publicly plotted out for Radcliffe. She also says she believes that as attention is focused around the community and among alumnae on the centennial, Radcliffe "will come to stand for the rubric of feminism."

It's undoubtedly too early to gauge the effects of the Horner style and administration as it enters its fifth year. It can only be speculated whether Radcliffe need not have been in a state of flux for the past few years if more aggressive action, that had captivated Faculty and student attention, had been used to define Radcliffe's relationship with the University. Horner obviously does not think so and she points to the new programs developed to bolster her claims.

One Radcliffe observer probably explained Horner's administration best when she said, "I just picture a smiling, open woman who would have been a better professor than an administrator. I think the place got what it deserves, for better or worse. A stronger person wouldn't want the job.