"How can we run editorials like this," The Crimson asked in a fall 1973 comp advertisement, "with a staff that looks like this?"

The ad featured a staff editorial on gender parity in admissions, next to a table showing that, 26 years after the first woman joined The Crimson staff, fully five-sixths of all staffers and 20 out of 23 executives were male.

One year after that comp ad ran, Gay W. Seidman '78, an outstanding news camper, was encouraged by a male editorial chair to seek The Crimson's top position.

Seidman later became the first female president in the newspaper's 104-year history. Four women have followed Seidman into the president's office since 1977, the most recent in 1994.

Over the years, The Crimson has proven less successful in attracting and retaining staff members of different ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds, leading some to question the newspaper's ability to cover an increasingly diverse campus.

Seidman and `the Boys'

"I have to say that the boys were not bad," Seidman says. "The whole time I was there, the boys were very supportive of women working for the paper."

James Cramer '77, The Crimson's president in 1976, says Seidman, gender aside, was the most qualified candidate in that year's class.

"I went in and nominated Gay, and it was unanimous," Cramer says. "We talked about it all of 22 seconds."

Seidman was not the first female executive to walk through The Crimson's doors. More than a decade earlier, Linda McVeigh Mathews '67 had become the newspaper's first female managing editor. Several women have led the newsroom as managing editor since then.

Still, Seidman's presidency opened doors for women on their way to The Crimson's top executive position.

Two years later, Susan D. Chira '80 assumed the presidency, leading an executive board that included a female managing editor, a female associate managing editor and a female editorial chair.

"Obviously, Gay's election was a big step," says Francis J. Connolly '79, president of The Crimson in 1978.

"I didn't perceive a tremendous amount of sexist feeling," he says. "She had nothing to overcome except tradition-there was no sense of `A woman can't do this, damn it.'"

Later, female executives tried to make their own marks as leaders at The Crimson.