Fielding tough question after question, a candid but occasionally testy Radcliffe College President Linda S. Wilson told about 35 undergraduates in the Lyman Common Room last night that Harvard College will be solely responsible for their concerns after the final merger agreement between the two schools is signed.

"If you have something you need or have to say, you need to say it to them, to Dean [of the Faculty Jeremy R.] Knowles and Dean [of the College Harry R.] Lewis ['68]," she said. "Radcliffe will no longer have responsibility for you as our students--but we will care."

The students, who included members of the Radcliffe Union of Students (RUS) as well as Women in Science at Harvard and Radcliffe (WISHR) and others, showered Wilson with questions about the future of their organizations and of women at Harvard.

Wilson told the assembled students that interest in the new Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies is running high. She said Radcliffe has received $6 million in new donations since the April 20 announcement. This was the first fundraising figure released by Radcliffe officials since the announcement--a full $2 million more than Radcliffe received in the first three-quarters of this fiscal year combined.

But in a conversation focused on undergraduates, Wilson, who was joined by other Radcliffe administrators including Dean of Educational Programs Tamar March, offered students no definitive commitments about the continuation of their groups.

"My questions weren't answered, and it wasn't because they weren't trying to answer, but because they aren't the ones with the answers," said RUS Co-President Kathryn B. Clancy '01 after the meeting.

"Every single time people asked a question, they would say 'Oh we're so excited [about the new Institute],'" she said. "It was so vacuous."

Wilson and March addressed questions about RUS's precarious future in the broadest possible terms. March called RUS funding a "student-to-student matter" and encouraged RUS members to engage in "consciousness-raising."