Not Always Action

But much of the fear and anger generated by last year's rape did not translate to action, as Women's Alliance Co-Chair Ann E. Blais '91 notes. While the rape generated "a lot of motivational energy," it was more of a powerful emotional statement than a call to action, she says.

Morse says he thinks it is important that the rape raised that kind of consciousness in the community.

"Good, healthy fear doesn't hurt," Morse says.

But often, observers say, it is the hurt which remains after a rape, and the concrete changes which are slow in coming.

Blais says she thinks that Harvard has had problems reaching a consensus on what needs to be done because there is not yet a common set of assumptions about what the true state of security is. She says she hopes continued campus research and continued meetings with the CCL can merge students' fears with University action.

"If women feel unsafe, if women feel threatened, then something has to be done. We have a lot of the subjectivity--you're down at Mather, the shuttles have stopped running, you don't have money for a taxi, what do you do?" Blais asks. "The University isn't can't be, in touch with that kind of subjectivity."

Most often, that kind of subjectivity is what makes security a women's issue, according to some on campus. Fear of violence may be a universal undergraduate preoccupation, Zellweger says, but women's concerns about rape--about security in general--merit special attention.

"I think that fear of being raped is different than fear of being beaten up," Zellweger says. "You could look at rape as the systematic subjugation of women, to keep them in their place, keep them afraid, keep them running scared."

One manifestation of that is who uses the escort services and why, students say. Timothy P. McCormack '91, a member of the SafeStreets steering committee, says he believes more women use the escort service than men do, because women on campus have less of a feeling of "invincibility" than men do.

But there are women on campus who are reluctant to take the escort service, because they feel it connotes a kind of helplessness.

"I always feel guilty or silly taking [the escort service], when it shouldn't be that way," says Zellweger. "I took it once with a friend of mine, and the driver was essentially telling us how easy it would have been to walk home."

Walking home alone, however, is still a fearful thing, women undergraduates say. A year after the rape, security activism has still not--and possibly can never--undo the lessons of women's precarious status in a world of violence.

Deakins, who says she thinks there has not been a great deal of sensitization on campus to women's fear, recalls an incident that highlighted her uneasiness.

Deakins says her roommate, a sexton in Memorial Church, saw a strange man on the premises when she was closing up. She saw him again, later in the night, and grew nervous enough that she told a security guard about it.