Last June, Radcliffe President Linda S. Wilson mailed letters to 28,000 of her closest friends.

After two months, only 569 had written back.

Wilson, President of the Radcliffe Alumni Association Joy K. Fallon '78-'82 and Chair of the Committee for the Equality of Women at Harvard Peggy B. Schmertzler '53 signed the letters.

They appealed to every living graduate of Radcliffe College for support in "increasing the number of tenured women on the faculty."

And even though their response rate was just over two percent, Radcliffe easily made back its $8,120 postage outlay.

Over the summer the 569 graduates donated $48,000 for the establishment of a new fellowship for junior faculty women at Radcliffe's Bunting Institute.

By September the collection had grown to $62,576.

The fellowship will provide female junior faculty with, in Wilson's words, "the precious gift of time and a room of one's own."

She also hopes, along with at least 569 other Radcliffe supporters, that the fellowship will put at least a few female scholars on the path to full Harvard professorships.

"Harvard makes a big deal about having a diverse student body, but more than any other Ivy it doesn't have a diverse faculty," said Sarah M. Rose '96. "What you've got is a student body learning from all white males."

Only 94 of 1074, or 8.8 percent, of Harvard's tenured faculty are women.

With even Princeton and Dartmouth, two schools with similar problems, ahead of Harvard with 12 and 15 percent tenured women

respectively, female professors at Harvard could easily feel lonely.

"Harvard's faculty doesn't reflect the pool of scholars teaching in other universities," said Professor of Sociology Mary C. Waters.

Weary Professor of German and Comparative Literature Judith Ryan said, "I can't judge if there's a problem in the pool or a partial blindness to qualifications."

When the Radcliffe classes of 1953 and 1958 returned to Cambridge for reunions in 1988, they found that the makeup of the faculty hadn't changed much.

"At our 35th reunion we wanted to know whether Harvard was as sexist as it was in our day," said Schmertzler, of the Committee for the Equality of Women at Harvard (CEWH).

Schmertzler and her reunited classmates said they weren't impressed with what they found here. So they formed CEWH in response.

Rose and Virginia S. Loo '96 are leading undergraduates on the same path. They founded and now lead the Committee for Women Faculty.

The committee is sponsoring a student-faculty rap session in the Lyman Common Room this Sunday.

They've already made plans for a debate at the Institute of Politics on November 30 over the push for tenuring women at Harvard.

For Wilson, the efforts of these groups cannot take effect quickly enough.

"Unless procedures are changed, [attempts to increase women faculty hiring] will be slow and frustrating," Wilson said. "It is moving too slowly for undergraduates that are here now."

But the alumni and undergraduate committees both face obstacles that could bring efforts to increase the number of tenured women to a near standstill.

A new federal law took effect last year making mandatory retirement ages illegal.

"You knew before that there would be movement in the pipeline and new opportunities to get tenure," said Vice President for College Relations Bonnie R. Clendenning. "That's not the case any more."

"You can't take a tenured professor and say, 'I'm sorry, we have to [fire] you because you're not a woman," said Clendenning.

And so the various committees have joined Radcliffe administrators in adopting a mantra of "awareness" and "proaction" to effect change in decisions over which they have no real say.

"The decision of who to hire and who not to hire is strictly a Harvard [administration] decision," Clendenning said. "We have no choice, only opinions."

According to an alumni association brochure entitled. "Taking a Stand for Women in the Harvard-Radcliffe Community." Harvard would have to tenure at least 12 women this year just to meet average standards set by other institutions in the country