At Harvard, however, University Health Services (UHS) has a policy of sending rape victims to area hospitals whose staffs are trained to deal with them.

For example, the undergraduate who accused D. Drew Douglas, Class of 2000, of rape last year says she was told after arriving at UHS to take a cab to a Boston hospital for treatment.

Harvard officials have explained this deficiency by saying that there are not enough sexual assaults on campus to warrant a staff member specifically trained in rape response.

Harvard does offer psychological counseling for rape victims through UHS' Mental Health Services.

Centralization

Coalition Co-Chairs Alexis B. Karteron '01 and Kaitlin McGaw '00 say that, despite the services that Harvard already provides, centralizing information and resources in one building would provide a number of intangible benefits.

So while their proposal for a women's center is not yet final, they say the most important quality of any plan must be its centralizing quality.

"People don't know where to go" Karteron says. "[Women] feel like they're going at it alone."

"The sum of the parts isn't the same as the whole," she adds.

A full-time administrator should staff the center, the co-chairs say. The administrator would be able to point women in the direction of Harvard's specialized resources.

The center would be "a logical space for people to turn to," Karteron says.

But this is the point at which exactly what the coalition wants becomes murky. The College has suggested a program on the model of the Harvard Foundation for Intercultural and Race Relations, where a women's group could have an administrator but no space larger than an office.

But the coalition has rejected this proposal.

"It's not enough to have simply an administrator," Karteron says. "A celebration [like Cultural Rhythms] is not enough."

"Harvard is a men's club," Karteron says. "Women need, are entitled to, a separate space."