Classrooms went in 1943, diplomas in 1962 and Lamont Library in 1966. And in the spring of 1970, three Harvard houses and three Radcliffe dorms also went the way of coeducation.

The merging of Harvard and Radcliffe had begun during March of 1969 but had stalled during the general campus unrest later that spring.

By the fall, however, negotiations for pushing forward with coeducational living were back in full swing, despite an angry alumni response and a hesitant University president.

At students' urgings, Radcliffe President Mary I. Bunting and Harvard President Nathan Marsh Pusey '28 agreed to a trial run of coed housing, and three spring "exchanges" were planned.

East House and Lowell House, South House and Adams, and North House and Winthrop paired up and exchanged approximately 50 students each. Harvard houses were integrated by suite and Radcliffe's long hallways by floor.

Though the changes were overshadowed by the war and the general tumult of the times, integration of the houses would change the stubbly face of Harvard undergraduate life forever.

Both Harvard and Radcliffe students said they were eager for the change--the women reportedly even more so than the men.

According to Anne de Saint Phalle '70, women considered the atmosphere in the Radcliffe houses stifling--and close to unbearable. "Hemmed into 12 square feet of space or less, constantly under the eyes of roommates and wandering acquaintances, subjected to a level of noise that has killed hamsters, girls who live in the brick dorms are...existentially stunted," she wrote in the Crimson's 1969 registration issue.

"I was glad for the merger," says Barbara Fitch Cobb '70. "I always felt out in left field being in the Radcliffe dorms. They were overcrowded. Usually, two of us were in what was intended to be a single. Harvard houses seemed to have much more space--the suites were bigger."

But it wasn't simply the relative luxury of the houses the women coveted.

"The Harvard dorms were much more interesting than Radcliffe's," Cobb adds. "The Radcliffe tutors seemed to be more interested in enforcing parietals than in stimulating an intellectual environment."

It seems a bit ironic that the cramped houses alumnae describe are now renowned for their roominess and privacy, not to mention the studious atmosphere they reputedly engender. But in 1969-70, undergraduate women wanted out.

Rules Made to Be Broken

Many of the last barriers to coeducational living were the official ones. In an age of free love and STD ignorance, Harvard and Radcliffe students seemed to have few qualms about spending substantial amounts of time in one another's rooms.

General Education Teaching Fellow Roger D. Thomas complained in 1970 that parietals were anachronistic and that he was "very concerned about keeping a rule that is largely disregarded."