When Sue Carey '74, now a Radcliffe Institute Fellow, graduated, she went as far away from Cambridge as possible--to Tanzania to teach political refugees who are now powerful in Mozambique and Zimbabwe. She was leaving behind Radcliffe's then jail-like atmosphere.

During Carey's freshman year, no men were allowed in women's rooms except on Sunday afternoons. Matrons patrolled the halls, ensuring that doors were held open with the six-inch "parental hooks," and that a women and her visitor "kept three feet on the ground." Lamont didn't admit women, yet many math classes were held there. Because students had to pay to eat at the other college, dining was virtually single-sex.

Radcliffe's relative poverty resulted in overcrowding. What are now single rooms were "economy doubles;" in 12 Walker Street, two women shared the bedroom of a two-room apartment, while a third lived in the dining alcove. At the obligatory sit-down dinners, Radcliffe students took turns clearing, washing dishes, and waiting on tables.

"The atmosphere was stifling," says Carey. "Women formed cliques, gossiping." The women's movement didn't exist yet, and the civil rights movement and Selma were yet to come. In the dating culture, women without Saturday night dates were even too embarrassed to come to their consolation milk and cookies. Yet, by the '70s, Carey "would definitely have chosen to live at the Quad."

While Radcliffe was still archaic and poor, the mood on campus shifted strongly to the left. Michael Smith '73, now a tutor in Social Studies, explains the spirit of the time. "We cut our teeth on Vietnam, he says. People were much less grade conscious then, and "everything seemed possible."

But after the nation-wide student strikes of spring, 1970, protesting the invasion of Cambodia and the murders at Kent and Jackson State, "there was a lot of disillusionment" among radicals at Harvard, Smith says. Attracted by the alternative lifestyle, many radicals moved to the Quad. Subsequently, radical groups such as the New American Movement (NAM), and events such as the protest against Honeywell (which manufactured anti-personnel weapons) emanated from the Quad.

In the spring of 1970, co-residence--"The Experiment"--began. Parietals were abolished, and a few upperclass Harvard and Radcliffe students switched their residences from River to Quad. Next year, Currier opened, relieving overcrowding at Radcliffe. By the fall of 1972, the Quad male-to-female ratio had been fixed at 1:1.

Smith chose the Quad as his home after his freshman year in the fall of 1970. He and his roommates didn't like the "preppie, water-balloon" atmosphere of the River; he says the 4:1 sex ratio there was "ridiculous, unhealthy, and led to screwed-up social relations."

Most of our friends thought it just this side of insane to go to Radcliffe," Smith says. "They'd say, 'You mean you're going to live with all those Cliffie bitches?'"

At the Quad, the atmosphere of the '50s had turned into one of experimentation, new ideas and excitement. "Milk and cookies turned from a 'consolation prize' into an expression of community," says Smith, adding that Quad male students baked, "taking a naive joy in turning role stereotypes on their heads. There was learning on both sides."

Carey, a tutor at Currier House when co-residence began, says the men who chose the Quad were "the nicest men in the University--sympathetic, more intellectual, less oriented towards beer drinking and sports."

Smith says, "People spent a lot of time at dinner talking about the content of their work, about what interested them in it, not about its quantity. If you were committed to the work, to your place in it, and to getting an education, Radcliffe was the place to live."

This attitude didn't preclude sports as an activity for men. In a South House handbook, Grant Segal '76 praised the Quad as a ballfield, writing, "the House you've been told has no one but tea drinkers and folk dancers is the best House for sports. To a man whose masculinity depends on his jockdom, saying he is the star of a Radcliffe team won't solve his problem. (But then, nothing will. If, man or woman, you're with good sports and teammates, then South House is your place.")

The Quad was not the first choice of Peter Hogness '76. He had also heard that Dunster House had artistic and political people. During his freshman year, Hogness lived in all-male Holworthy, and knew only his roommates well. He says the Quad was "more social, in a relaxed way, not riddled with conventions and scoring points."

"I really liked the social pressure against being sexist at Radcliffe," Hogness says. "The kind of man I was trying to be was respected."