Her friend rapidly gave up her career hopes. Davies says she suspects the incident was not isolated. Generally, she says, women were treated "somewhat dismissively."

Toni Shayes '50 says she also was discouraged from pursuing a career in medicine.

"The only place where I felt real discrimination was in a pre-med program," she says. "There they couldn't have been more discouraging. They told me all the places in med school were going to be reserved for veterans and I should just forget about it."

However, Davies says unequal treatment did not lead to a Radcliffe outcry because it seemed hardly to deviate from the norm.

"We didn't know enough. We didn't realize that we had the power to protest," Davies says. "We were just very happy to be there.... We had a sense of security and protected-ness."

Radcliffe and Marriage

Barbara W. Snelling '50--a former lieutenant governor of Vermont--did not have the conventional Radcliffe experience. A junior transfer from Smith, she arrived in Cambridge only shortly before her first child.

She lived off-campus with her husband, recently returned from the war.

"Transferring was the biggest challenge because Radcliffe was not very encouraging to married students at that point," she says. "They were really quite discouraging."

Unlike some of her classmates, she had more Harvard friends than Radcliffe friends. The men whom she met through her husband were "a trifle snobbish, but I also think liking the coeducation overall."

Coming from Smith, she did not find that coeducation made a significant difference in classroom dynamics, except in some large classes, "where women were less likely to speak."

Snelling was also subject to a stricter standard of grading than her unwed classmates.

"They thought I wouldn't do well married and with a child," she says.

She was told that if her marks at Radcliffe did not equal her marks at Smith, she would be dropped an additional grade. For example, if she got an A in freshman English at Smith, she had to get an A in senior English at Radcliffe. If she got a B, the grade would be bumped down to C. If she did as well at Radcliffe as she had done at Smith, then her grades would be moved back up prior to graduation.

"I said I didn't think I was going to have any problem," she says.

She and her husband had to meet in the Yard between classes to exchange the baby stroller.