When Coach Harry Parker wanted to send his men's crew team to Egypt in 1979 to race against the Cairo Police Department on the Nile, all he had to do was pick up the phone and give his team's top fundraiser, Nick Bancroft, a ring. Bancroft then put the proposal before the management committee of the Friends of Harvard Rowing--and the rowers were on their way.

Since its establishment in 1955, this network of former oarsmen has funded trips and other vacation time activities for the approximately 250 men and women undergraduate rowers each year. Today, virtually every other Harvard sport has a "friends group" for such amenities as vacation trips and training--programs beyond the range of the University's sports budgets. Fundraising for men's and women's athletics is the sole responsibility of these friends groups and they do it through solicitation of the alumni of that particular sport.

But, until recently, the amounts of money raised often differed significantly between men's and women's teams. Back when the women's sports programs began at Harvard during the 1970s, women were unable to accrue as much funding for their programs as the men could. In the track and field program, for example, women were only able to pay for one third of their amenity activities by themselves. At that time the graduates of women's athletics were too young, too few and too poor relative to their male counterparts that Radcliffe sports could not keep pace with the level of funds raised by the men, says Robert Rittenberg '55, chairman of the Friends of Harvard Track. While the men being solicited "were from the 20's, 30's and 40's," he says, the Friends of Radcliffe track were "a struggling undergraduate group."

To remedy the situation, most of the friends groups for men's sports, including Friends of Harvard Track, gave some money to the women's groups to help them out. Friends of Harvard Track, for example, paid for one third of the women's travel and vacation fees. An anonymous donor paid another third, while the women only paid for the final third, according to Rittenberg.

The Coming of Title IX

In 1972, this type of assistance to women finally became federal law with the passage of Title IX, which mandated equal opportunity for men and women in all aspects of collegiate life. At first, colleges were under the impression that equal opportunity meant only that the budget of the university had to be set so that men and women's sports programs would be of the same quality, says Joseph D. Bertagna '73, the executive director of the Harvard Varsity Club, which serves as a liaison between alumni and the college. Later, though, the courts ruled that it was not fair if donations from alumni allowed men to be training in distant lands while women couldn't afford to travel beyond the boundaries of the college.

In order to reconcile the disparaging incomes of men's and women's friends groups, the friends took two different approaches. While most men's groups simply continued to supplement the women's income, the friends of crew and track opted for a different alternative.

In 1981, the Friends of Harvard's men's and women's rowing merged to form the Friends of Harvard Rowing. Under the new system, men and women apply for grants for individual programs. The managing committee, which accepted its first woman member in that year, judges the applications on the basis of merit, regardless of sex.

With alumni funding both men's and women's teams, the overall quality of rowing amenities has not suffered because the Friends of Harvard Rowing is such a wealthy organization, according to Parker.

But Clara L. Bui '86, co-captain of the women's lightweight crew team, says that the men still receive some preferential treatment in terms of better uniforms, the number of training trips, and the amounts of money that cover spring break meals.

"There are discrepancies [between the two programs], but mostly because alums contribute to the guys," says Bui, a Lowell House resident. "I guess that will change when we get enough alumni of our own."

Bui says, however, that because the friends group is so heavily endowed, Radcliffe is the only college in the nation which can afford a separate women's lightweight team. "We're so completely spoiled compared to other college programs," she says.

The amenities of the Track and Field program have not suffered either since the male donators merged with their female counterparts in 1983, says Head Coach Frank J. Hagery '68. To date, these are the only two friends groups to share fundraising sources, although the Friends of Men's Tennis and Friends of Women's Tennis have entered into an agreement which will merge the two groups over a five year period.

While the Friends of Crew frequently aided the women's crew program before 1981, the process of actually bringing women onto the management committee was a slow one. In the annual awards banquet sponsored by the friends, "there wasn't even the question of inviting women to the dinner" in 1960, Bancroft says. In the mid-60s, only wives were allowed to attend the festivities while later in the decade rowers were allowed to be accompanied by "credited females," which meant a girlfriend of wife.

In 1975, after the Radcliffe crew program started, the alumni organization inaugurated the tradition of joint dinners for men and women. The final step of the merger occurred when the first woman was elected to the managing committee in 1981.