We usually boiled down these choices to one interest. The science majors were at a real disadvantage, with long labs, long walks and Dracula-like section men. We were generally devoted to our group, whether club, clique or corridor. One's group of caring friends was always very important, but increasingly so during my junior and senior years as the undergraduates (both Harvard and Radcliffe) developed great apathy and cynicism I saw this distressing anomie show up in colder personal relations, disillusionment with the administration and college institutions, political disinterest and constant major-switching, especially with the boys. We didn't know the reasons for it, and many people kept the momentum going, but it was uphill work.

National and foreign news seemed much less important than college and local issues. Cuba seemed more remote than Europe. However, for those interested. Israel's heritage beckoned to many Jewish classmates. Its future seemed very bright. Other nationalities existed only through friends' backgrounds and summer travels. We were all wild to travel in Europe. We began to think about Africa as Nigeria's and Algeria's revolutions penetrated our Cambridge bubble. A few people tutored and coached needy kids, while the rest of us let the world's troubles wait. We studied a lot and aimed to qualify for honors--the only route to small-group intellectual activity. We hated the Cambridge government, felt superior to other colleges, and thought Boston to be a great city.

Drinking was something we could take or leave, depending on the company. I don't remember Radcliffe girls drinking too much but I could be wrong. One's social life was determined by the company and that seemed to be determined largely by the boy's pocket book. Boys were expected to pay for everything on a date. But dates did not need to be expensive--there were lots of plays, concerts, lectures, two movie theaters, cheap eateries and pleasant excursions locally. I went to only one or two football games a year I think--a game with the wrong person was a very long, expensive date.

We had study dates in the many libraries except for Lamont which was closed to girls. We considered that very unfair as Harvard boys could use the Radcliffe library, and everyone knew Lamont had a much larger pool of reserve books. People were quite frank about their money or lack of it. Scholarship girls were required to live in economy doubles and had to keep their marks up to a B average.

But there were things not talked about, either in our late night bull sessions in the dorm smokers, or at the much franker evenings at The Crimson. We never mentioned homosexuality. The tragedy of this ignorance was brought home to me when a good friend committed sulcide on her discovery that her boy friend was a homosexual. Sex was private, surreptitious with complex arrangements, at least from a girl's point of view. Even when we knew a sexual relation existed, we did not talk about it. The complexity gave many Radcliffe girls an easy excuse to postpone such activities, with great relief, since sex was closely connected with commitment and marriage--a direction many of us were not interested in following right away. There was no pressure to "have a ring by graduation", unlike the reputed atmosphere at many girls' colleges. Many of us who stuck with college through senior year had many things we wanted to do after college.

But what? We had no official career advisement except one interview the last month of senior year. The science majors seemed to know where they were headed, the engaged seemed to have their futures settled, the few law and medical school people seemed to know, while most of the rest of us had ideas but not much self-confidence to make them happen.

This lack of guidance is my biggest gripe about my college experience. We felt and knew there was a void but found the male tutors little help except in preparing for graduate school. The two Radcliffe deans seemed oriented to PhD. work. Our education did not seem to have direction for itself. We had worked hard, harder than many of our Harvard classmates, and done well. We felt triumphant academically at graduation but very unsure.

The announcement of Mrs. Bunting's appointment (as the new president of Radcliffe) coincided with a stirring in the Radcliffe Yard. Along with Mrs. Bunting's new ideas, expressed before her arrival, came a new dean of residence who actually formed a student committee to discuss dorm life. The new freshmen and sophomores ('61 and '62) had more direction and confidently spoke their minds. At graduation I felt I had been born two years too soon. The college was just beginning to be the place it should have been for us.

I now see that our class was in a bridge era During our four years the all-Radcliffe activities which had given may women meaningful leadership roles had dried up as the active people started to break into the parallel Harvard groups (if I had come five years earlier I would have probably been happy to write for the Radcliffe News). From the faculty's point of view we were an able, but sometimes inconvenient afterthought. As woman students we had not been able to improve things for ourselves because we lacked leadership against the immense Harvard bureaucracy. Any triumphs we had achieved, whether academically or extra-curricular, had come to us only with that extra push. Our close friendships sustained us through those four years.

We knew we had earned those diplomas, many of them with honors--a great accomplishment but typical of our time. I don't remember whether President Pusey or President Jordan handed them out on that broiling hot day in the Radcliffe Yar