Early American suffragists would probably be amused that Harvard is likely to have a referendum in which only women can vote. The question is whether women undergraduates want to keep the five dollar charge on their term bill that currently funds the Radcliffe Union of Students (RUS).

Administrators say the idea of a referendum has been around for years, and that particularly now that the new Undergraduate Council is taking form, it would be useful to see if women undergraduates still want to support the group.

RUS leaders maintain that their group has long done the kind of work on issues like sexual harassment, rape security, and women's studies that regular student governments have never addressed.

For now, they say their job is simply one of salesmanship. "We are going to do the same things we've always done." RUS president Sharon J. Orr '83 says, "but now we are going to make sure people know that we are doing them."

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During her first five years at Harvard. Lee Perry '64 was known only to the handful of students familiar with her psychology courses at the Graduate School of Education. But the assistant professor's anonymity was shattered recently when the national press learned of a sensational lawsuit she had filed against a leading California educator.

Perry, 38, charges that Richard C. Atkinson, chancellor of the University of California at San Diego, impregnated her in 1977 during a protracted affair talked her into having an abortion and then reneged on his promise to impregnate her again. Atkinson denies the charges, but Perry seems serious until she changed her mind last week, she had been willing to drop her suit in return for being impregnated again by Atkinson.

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The Sociology Department's embattled effort to build up its faculty was dealt a blow last week when a University of Chicago scholar announced that he plans to turn down Harvard's tenure offer.

Edward L. Laumann, the chairman of Chicago's sociology department, attributed his decision primarily to the fact that Chicago's department is considerably larger than Harvard's and stronger in his specialty of data analysis.

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People don't usually care about course enrollment levels, unless they have been sent packing from a class like Stephen J. Gould's Science B-16. But many people at the Law School were eager to find out that about 60 students had signed up for a course in civil rights law.

The course--being taught by Civil rights lawyers Julius Levonne Chambers and Jack Greenberg--has been the subject of an active boycott by the Black Law Students Association (BLSA), which had called on the Law School to bring in a tenure track minority professor to teach the course.

Professor Derek Bell, who taught the course before he left the Law School, said last week that his course usually attracted about 40 to 90 people, and that boycott or no boycott, the 59 people that enrolled in this year's course "is definitely in the ballpark."

But BLSA executive committee member Donald Christopher Tyler said last week that his group would not judge the success of its boycott strictly by numbers. "I do feel the boycott will emphasize to the Law School the need for more minorities and women professors."

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The old adage about politics and bed-fellows rang true yet again this week, when Edward J. King supported Michael S. Dukakis in his quest to become Massachusetts' next governor. The bitter ideological and personal rivalry goes back to 1978, when King unseated Dukakis--who was governor at the time--in the Democratic primary. At a Statehouse press conference Thursday. King announced. "I will support the Democratic ticket. Michael Dukakis is on that ticket." The lame duck governor went on to say he would not campaign in the next five weeks.

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Harvard's ivy may disappear from the walls of Lowell and Winthrop House this year, but if an Arnold Arboretum fundraising scheme is successful, it will continue to thrive in the gardens and yards of University alums.

The Harvard-affiliated arboretum sent letters to Lowell and Winthrop House alumni last week offering a rooted cutting of Ivy and membership in a special "Ivy League" in exchange for a gift of a mere $100.

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A recent change in College housing policy came under fire this week when residents of Harvard's Jordan Cooperatives charged that the new rule might lead to the demise of their cooperative living alternative.

Because of a severe housing crunch. College officials received permission from Radcliffe to house some students paying for dining hall meals in the Radcliffe-owned co-ops which in recent years have been partially empty.

The News in Review page is a regular feature of The Harvard Crimson.