This weekend, Harvard hosted a three-day symposium entitled "Harvard's campuses and women's experience: where do we fit in?" on women's representation and experiences in academia.

The conference was sponsored by the Radcliffe Union of Students (RUS) and the Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences' Women in Social Sciences.

"I would consider the whole weekend to be an amazing success," said Kathryn B. Clancy '01, president of RUS.

"The most amazing thing about all the events is that they all ran over," Clancy said. "People were just talking and talking. That really speaks to how important these issues are and that these hadn't yet been addressed."

Of the six events that comprised the symposium, Clancy cites "Beyond Gender," in which issues such as ethnicity and sexuality became the focus of the discussion, as the session that most surprised her.

"What really struck home is that some of the topics we were talking about were things we've never even thought of," Clancy said.

"We talked about how race, gender and sexuality influence the way your academic life is, and the intersectionality of these, particularly within Harvard," said Sarah E. Tavel '04, who organized the discussion.

The audience at the first event of the symposium, a panel discussion called "Women and Tenure at Harvard," was less sizable than Tavel had hoped it would be, she said.