Comstock feels a women's studies department should be created since it would have more political weight than the existing Committee on Women's Studies. However, forum director Reagor feels "a lot would be lost by having a separate women's studies department." Instead of concentrating all attention to women in a single department, Reagor says all fields should be taught with an emphasison women. When studying the history of a period in which women apparently made no contributions, scholars should ask, "How was the thinking of that time affected by the fact that women were excluded?" Reagan says.

President Comstock finds the approach of Radcliffe administrators a difficult one with which to work. "Everything is sort of off the record. It makes it harder for students to have input, but it is also the reason administrators give for not making a fuss," she says.

According to the 1977 agreement, "Undergraduates admitted to and subsequently enrolled in Radcliffe will thereby be enrolled, in accordance with present practice, in Harvard College with all the rights and privileges accorded Harvard College enrollment." Therefore, Comstock feels, women should get the same financial aid and work-study opportunities as men.

But they do not. Proportionately fewer work-study jobs are open to women than to men. "Work-study is a very important part of financial aid," Comstock says, since it enables women to have research jobs, rather than more traditional housekeeping or secretarial jobs which they are forced to take if work-study is not available.

"It's very frustrating for a student who has only four years here to see things change so slowly," she says, adding, "I wish it was more clear what women students here feel." Steps toward finding out exactly what Radcliffe students feel have begun already. The 1977 agreement created the Office of Institutional Policy Research on Women's Education, which Director Susan M. Bailey says is "charged with informing, not making, policy on issues of particular relevance to women in the University." For example, the office will examine questions such as women's experiences in various concentrations," Bailey adds.

Since its opening in January, the office has concentrated on gathering background information and centralizing previously-collected data. The temptation to rush into more specific research projects is great, Bailey says, but "if we rush in, people will be able to criticize the results and therefore ignore the results." She also senses her office may find "there are many relatively small-scale things that could be done to make Harvard a more comfortable environment."

The Harvard-Radcliffe agreements took care of most of the technical legalities such as affording women equal access, Bailey says. But other situations that women find non-supportive--situations "rooted in following traditional assumptions of students who have been male"--should be explored and probably changed, Bailey says.

For example, Bailey feels graduate students' child care programs might be expanded. In some cases men would benefit from these reforms, Bailey adds.

The Office for the Arts represents, in many ways, the idea Radcliffe is striving for. Jointly administered by Presidents Horner and Bok, it is located in Agassiz House in Radcliffe Yard, but Myra Mayman, coordinator of the office, says, "The important thing is students interested in art," not whether they are Harvard or Radcliffe students.

Mayman points out, however, that the white columns and elegantly-arched windows of Agassiz House are representative of a time when security was not a worry and when life was slower and quieter. To some, that is the essence of Radcliffe: a peaceful part of the Harvard setting. But to others, Radcliffe still stands for women's constant struggle for equality, a struggle not peculiar to this University.