But if women remember many of their instructors as sexist, 1960 alumnae interviewed say that was not at all the case with their fellow Harvard students. The Radcliffe women presented fierce competition for grades--as can be seen in many quips about them in issues of The Lampoon and The Crimson. "Our class was smarter than the boys because only three of use out of 300 graduated without honors, and there was a much larger proportion, of then," Hohenberg say.

Russel agrees that Harvard men were not responstore for the sexual discrimination, but that instead, "there was a kind of institutional sexism in the air." Russell says she realized it when she recalled how she responded to the news that Mary I. Bunting had been appointed president of Radcliffe: "Wow, a woman is president. I never questioned that a man should be president of a woman's college.

Another example of that institutionalized discrimination came at the Baccalaureate Address of the Class of 1960, Charlene Horn Posner of Illinois remembers. "The speaker told us that when we were up to our elbows in diapers and dishes, it would enrich us to have read Anna Karenina," Posner says.

And another example was the lack of career counseling available to the Radcliffe student. "Someone who knew what she wanted to do could get a lot of help, but the average student didn't get any assistance," says Posner. "At the moment of graduation, I was left high and dry."

To compensate for the lack of guidance from Radcliffe, and be taken seriously, Kneerim says that during college she "had to take on masculine attributes." At the time, she remembers thinking that "getting a Harvard degree would qualify me as a person to be taken seriously."

Yet, for the Radcliffe women, says O'Connor, "There were certain things you didn't do, some stated, some not."

Among these things were: venturing to the Square in slacks or Bermuda shorts without wearing a concealing raincoat, entering the sacred masculine halls of Lamont, or holding office in any of the Harvard student organizations.

Still, Radcliffe women sometimes did not content themselves with participating in Radcliffe's extracurricular, which were roundly considered inferior and often frivolous. "If you were any good at all, then you didn't work for the Radcliffe News, you worked for the Crimson," Darst says.

Likewise, Darst preferred to work for The Advocate rather than--as the Fay House administrator asked her--resurrect a similar defunct Radcliffe publication. A member of the second Advocate editorial board that included women, Kneerim says, "We felt like pioneers."

Just attending Radcliffe made many women, they say, feel like pioneers. "We all knew we were pretty special to go to place like Radcliffe," says Hohenberg.

"Radcliffe opened my eyes to things I had never known. There were little seeds planted that gave me the feeling there were resources out there," says Russell.

Kneerim agrees: "I felt like I was entering a vast city of sophisticated women." And Kay says, upon reflection. "You will never find so man, educated women in one place... I learned at Radcliffe that it wasn't a penalty to have a good mind."

Talking to dormmates until all hours of the night was an essential part of the Radcliffe experience then. "We never realized what a sense of unity we drew from each other," says Kneerim. "Radcliffe was a very friendly cozy place that would go to bat for your if you needed it."

The third floor of Moors, Vilms's home 25 years ago, was the site of a nightly bridge game--but. Vilims's own floor often hosted four solitaire games at once. "We would like to come up with analogies of how solitaire was like life," she says, laughing.

Suzanne Hodes Linschitz '60, now an artist in the Boston area, also laughs when recalling some of the follies of her two years at Radcliffe. Soon captivated by painting through the classes of Agnus Magnon, Linschitz left Radcliffe after two years to attend a college where she could major in art.