In addition, Radcliffe supports programs for continuing education and guidance for its graduates. Nancy Downey, administrative director of the Radcliffe seminar program, says almost 1200 women participated in seminars this year. One seminar in middle management teaches business techniques to women who have been out of school for several years as an alternative to the rigors of the Harvard Business School.

But the most important influence of Radcliffe on undergraduate life, according to Lyman, is Horner's increased clout in policymaking decisions since the 1977 clarifying agreement. "We (the Board) are all here to support her, and Matina is heard. She's got to be heard." Horner now sits in on many of Harvard's policymaking committees--but she's quick to distinguish between policy-and decision-making. "Policy's not day-to-day management," she notes, "but it's now clearer that Radcliffe is not under Harvard but has an equal responsibility for its students."

Horner also believes that Radcliffe's duty to fulfill its first mandate is not over yet. "If equal access to a Harvard education means becoming one of the boys--if it's an end and not a means--then that's not what we want. Radcliffe cannot be absorbed, assimilated or co-opted into the pie, it's got to add another piece to it. And that's an ongoing process."

Radcliffe officials cite the school's programs for undergraduates and its participation in the development of Harvard policy as sufficient justification for its identity as Harvard's college for undergraduate women. It admits that more modifications will be necessary if Radcliffe's rebound is to succeed. But administrators also believe that undergraduates can be proud of their affiliation with the college now. As Horner puts it, "Some Radcliffe women say they're from Harvard because they don't feel equal saying 'Radcliffe.' That's like immigrants to the United States changing their names. If you have to change your identity, you don't feel equal. Women here must learn that 'Radcliffe' means Harvard in a real way."

Theoretically, Horner's argument makes sense: Radcliffe, unlike coeducational or single sex colleges, provides women with both a Harvard education and the added plus of the watchful and concerned eyes of the Board of Trustees--as well as their money. But as Charles William Eliot, president of Harvard from 1869 to 1909, said in his inaugural address, "Practical, not theoretical considerations determine the policy of the University." James B. Conant '14, president of Harvard from 1933 to 1953, reaffirmed that stance in 1952 when he said, "Harvard is not coeducational in theory, only in practice."

And today, while the Radcliffe Board of Trustees works to justify its theoretical role as a hidden helping hand for undergraduate women, its constituents are reiterating the positions of Eliot and Conant--in practice, Radcliffe women are taking courses from Harvard's faculty, eating meals in Harvard's dining halls, using Harvard's libraries, laboratories, and classrooms, and living in Harvard's dormitories.