In contrast to Payanzo's first impression, UHS has no general policy for dealing with pregnant women, says Dr. Randolph Catlin, chief of mental health services at UHS.

"We don't encourage one way or the other," he says. "You can't generalize on anything that has to do with an individual. It would depend on the individual's resources, inclination and the issues involved."

Mothers Who Went Before Them

As unusual as Ocon's and Payanzo's cases may be, neither woman is the first kind of her kind to graduate from Harvard.

Handy says that she remembers dealing with at least one undergraduate parent every year for as long as she has been here.

But Handy is quick to point out that for the most part, these students were each part of a married couple in which at least one parent attended Harvard.

"Some have been older, but others are young and married while raising a family," Handy says. "Sometimes they return to school when they are older, when their own children--those born when their parents were Harvard undergraduates-- are college-age."

Handy says that it was not unusual in the '70s for students to get married when they were undergraduates. In fact, there were so many married undergraduates that there was a married students' group advised by their own dean.

"We didn't think of it as being all that unusual married students with children," Handy says.

But Handy is quick to point out that single parenting--a newer phenomenon at the College--is different because the mothers are generally without much of a support system.

"Gina's not the only single parent we've ever had, and she's not particularly younger than others," Handy says.

According to Handy, the exact number of married or single students with children either previously or currently enrolled at the College is almost impossible to determine conclusively. Harvard never surveyed students about their marital status or family arrangement because the number of married or single undergraduates was never especially high, Handy says.

But Thomas E. Crooks '49, who served as Dudley House master from 1963 to 1972, says that he never bothered to count the number of children who visited him on a daily basis in his office. He says that meeting an undergraduate with a child or a family was not an unusual part of his job.

"I do remember children being born. I even remember going to the hospital to visit some of the mothers," Crooks says.

Dingman agrees with Handy and Crooks, explaining that such information has never been part of the College's database of student information.