In many ways, Radcliffe disappeared in 1977.

Presidents Bok and Horner that year signed an agreement giving Harvard the tuition money and the responsibility for educating undergraduates. This ended Radcliffe's 98-year history as a private women's college with close historical ties to Harvard, whose students paid it tuition and got a Radcliffe diploma.

In the new Harvard-Radcliffe structure, Radcliffe students, who had gradually won many Harvard privileges over the two preceding decades, officially became Harvard students too. Gender-blind dormitories, admissions, and instruction were now the norm.

What remains of Radcliffe today, then, boils down to its money, its 38 buildings, its bureaucracy and several women's studies programs, institutions and fellowships. Its identity endures in the way it manages these corporate affairs--particularly in overseeing its $54,339,000 endowment and raising funds from its pre-1976 alumnae.

Like most organizations of its size and wealth, Radcliffe uses outside managers to invest its money. With direction from a trustees' investment policy committee, which meets nine times a year, the four managers specialize in fixed-income investments, growth stocks, blue-chip stocks and other special investments.

Although Radcliffe is less embroiled in the South African divestiture controversy than Harvard, the women's college has taken ethical concerns to heart in the investment of its $51 million (excluding property) endowment.

Radcliffe's investment in companies who do business in the apartheid regieme amounts to only 2 percent of its endowment, a tiny fraction compared to the 19 percent of Harvard's $2.3 billion endowment. Radcliffe Treasurer Louis Morrell estimates that Radcliffe has a total of $1 million invested in companies operating in South Africa, including Baxter Travenol, Eastman Kodak, and Schlumberger.

"We spent a lot of time on South Africa last year," says Morrell, pointing to a lengthy ethics report that the Radcliffe Advisory Committee on Investor Responsibility submitted last year to the executive board of the Radcliffe trustees, which must approve all investment decisions.

The Advisory Committee, formed three years ago to research the ethics of companies in which Radcliffe owns stock, does not make investment or divestment recommendations. A separate Investment Policy Committee oversees where the endowment goes.

Instead, the Advisory Committee develops long-term policies for voting on shareholder resolutions, says Karen M. Morrinsey '85 of Dunster House, the undergraduate member of the six-person trustee committee.

"When the committee abstains or votes against a company because it hasn't kept its word or has violated the Sullivan Principles, we submit a letter to the executive committee of the Board of Trustees," explains Massachusetts Supreme Court. Associate Justice Ruth I. Abrams '53, the committee's chairman. And while the committee does not necessarily have the final say on how the trustees will vote on a particular resolution. "They haven't rejected one of our letters yet," she adds.

This year the committee will turn its attention to issues of companies who manufacture nuclear weapons, committee members say, although the they will do the bulk of their work in the spring when prosy resolution votes are mailed to shareholders.

Harvard has its own 12-member Advisory Committee on Shareholder Responsibility (ACSR) which serves basically the same role as Radcliffe's advisory committee. Although South Africa-related questions make up-only a small portion of the issues addressed by the ACSR, they have attracted the most attention.

Last spring, for the first time ever, a plurality of the ACSR--which is made up of four students, four faculty and four alumni voted to call on Harvard to divest its stock in companies which to business in South Africa. However President Bok and the four members of the governing Corporation's Committee on Sharcholder Responsibility prepared reports this fall attacking divestiture and defending Harvard's position of "constructive engagement." According to that theory, the best way to fight against the racist apartheid system is through pushing American companies--through proxies and "intensive dialogue"--to improve opportunities for Blacks.

Radcliffe's endowment has increased about $20 million in the last 10 years, but it has moved in large swings according to the tickle winds of the stock market. For example, the fund rose 50 percent during the bull market of 1982-3 but slipped 3 percent the very next fiscal year.