Gail, 35, is a brisk woman. Commuting from Haverhill, Mass, leaves her only six hours a day in Cambridge in which to accomplish all Harvard-related chores. Married at 19, she was divorced two years ago. "I had a 16-year marriage. I think the tensions associated with this particular experience made it just the straw that broke the camel's back."

Gail said that the friends and relatives with whom she had spent time before going back to college seemed to drop away, as their lives became more and more different. In their place came new people, many of them undergraduates. Though Katiti and Gail expressed fear that Harvard creates a mindset that in the long run destroys the diversity Harvard advertises, they envy the average House dweller's liberty.

Gail said, "what I love is their youth and lack of dehabilitating responsibility," compared with the restrictions that a child forces on each of these women, They felt that the average undergraduate lives a marvelously free existence. Where they are committed to the child, most other students "have the freedom to let everything go." What they love about relating to 18 to 20 year olds is that "they are so unspoiled, uncynical."

But Susanna said there are times when the different life experiences set up a wall between her and younger undergraduates. When at lunch with other older friends, she talks about supermarkets and other day-to-day subjects. But "I would feel so dumb if an undergraduate heard me. I would feel inferior in some way, like I sounded like a housewife."

Occasionally, Harvard officialdom makes these mothers feel inferior as well. An incident in Gayle's first semester demonstrates how the University often ignores the demands put on student mothers. In one of her classes, an evening hourly was scheduled. Some varsity athletes were permitted to take the test early, but Gail, though she told the head section person she had to be home with her children in the evening, was not. "They couldn't take into account my problem--I wasn't even as good as a jock. They didn't care about my children, as long as I took that fucking exam. I hated myself taking it."

The four women agreed that section leaders cause the greatest problems. These women, older than most of the section people who give them their grades, see many of them as narrow individuals, inundated with academia. Susanna's darkest hour came during her freshman year in biology class. Her section leader was explaining how wonderful were all the new machines that aid childbirth. Susanna "just started tentatively trying to talk about how I have had a kid and I hadn't wanted any machines around and it was very important to me to expose myself in some way to the furies of nature. And there were all these kids sitting there sneering at me, and this 23-year-old little asshole of a section man said. "I suppose for some women the emotional side of childbirth is important." I had exposed some part of me that was very intimate, and I felt wounded for weeks afterward."

There are difficulties involved in being both mother and student, these women knew. But still, each woman emphasized how Harvard, or at least college, was one of the best things that had happened in their lives. For all four, it has been important to break out of the lives they were leading. And, as Katiti said, other women, other mothers, might benefit, as well: "Women aren't just 18 year olds. There are women out there in the community who have the ability, but are living in homes that they use as a sanctuary. It is easy to hide in the obscurity of home. If they are really interested in educating women. Harvard and Radcliffe should reach those women. Women's integrity must break through."