While the issues that had galvanized the previous decade were dying down, an issue that would galvanize the coming decades was arising--race relations.

At Harvard, affirmative action was first coming into play, and the process of instituting it at the school was a rocky one.

When the federal government's Department of Health, Education and Welfare set regulations for the fair hiring of women and minorities, it took Harvard three years and four separate attempts before a plan was finally approved in fall of 1973.

John says activists were angry at the treatment of black faculty members working under the auspices of the affirmativeaction plan.

"The way it was designed, they were supposed tomove up in the ranks...but they were not beingmoved up into the higher paid positions," shesays.

While the administration dealt with affirmativeaction, race relations among the student body wereanother occasional source of tension. Inextracurriculars and social situations, studentstended to segregate themselves along color lines.

"In most of the [dining halls] students ofcolor sat together. There was a fair amount ofhostility and distrust. It was challenging to havecross-racial friendships," Piltch says

Diversity was not yet a watchword, thoughstudents pushed for the admittance of moreminorities.

"My class was the class that had the mostAfrican-Americans accepted. I think there were 43of us," John says. But despite the small numbers,she says she found "solidarity" and feltcomfortable in student groups like the Black Unionof Students, the predecessor to today's BlackStudents Association.

John and other students say while theself-segregation existed, it rarely caused seriousproblems among a student body concerned withchanging politics.

"The politics of race and gender [while I wasthere] are more visible now," says Michelle Green'74.

Welcoming to Women?

As political activism slowly died down,quality-of-life issues began to take center stagefor Harvard and Radcliffe students.

Women were balancing the advantages of aHarvard education with the second-rate treatmentthey felt they were given as "'Cliffies."

"There were very few choices where you couldget a co-education and still have a sense ofidentity with a group of women," Piltch says."Places like Williams and Amherst weren't co-ed.There were limited choices and Radcliffe was anespecially interesting place."

Radcliffe was made a little moreinteresting--and a little more nebulous--with the"non-merger merger," an agreement between thecolleges approved by the Board of Overseers andthe Radcliffe Board of Trustees in 1971. Under theagreement, Harvard absorbed responsibility for allof Radcliffe's finances. Radcliffe, however,maintained its governing board, presidency, andtitle to its land in Cambridge.