"We didn't have the same expectations then that young women do today. I wasn't one of the ones who questioned," Opel says, adding that she feels she should have spoken up. "We were much too naive and accepting of the status quo."

Survey Says

The Harvard Yearbook editors for the Class of 1950 edition described it as a "stroke of genius."

For the 1950 yearbook, they decided to administer their annual survey not only to Harvard students, but also to Radcliffe students--with one catch. The 'Cliffies were to answer the questions as they thought the average Harvard man would. The answers showed that the women were not the only misunderstood students in the Yard.

"Their answers, we reasoned, should reflect two things: first, Radcliffe's particularly warped impression of this vital modern creature, and second, the extent to which the information that the Harvard man passed along at Radcliffe corresponded with that he passed to us," the editors wrote.

The language of the yearbook also reflects the sentiment of the times. The 'Cliffies are referred to as "girls" (one was also referred to as "this young thing") while their counterparts were ubiquitously referred to as Harvard men.

The "girls" were considerably off the mark in assessing their male counterparts, the editors noted with some satisfaction.

"Radcliffe's cheerful estimate of the money we spend each week compliments our capacity to impress on a shoestring," they wrote. The 'Cliffies ball-parked the budget at $21. In fact, it was half that.

Among other misconceptions, Radcliffe thought Harvard was full of inebriated fellows. The editors waxed indignant on this point.

"In the matter of drinking, too, we are unjustly made out to be nourishing ourselves from the bottle," they wrote.

"The Radcliffe maiden has in general two sources of information: her own imagination, and her date's. Neither one of these agencies seems to be very reliable," they concluded.

An Unequal Status Quo

In the end, Radcliffe women say, they felt segregated from Harvard--whether in their classes, in their friendships or simply by the remote location of their dormitories.

"There was no relationship [between Harvard and Radcliffe]. In the dormitories, we were totally Radcliffe," Shayes says. "We had these ridiculous parietal rules...in the second year I got married so I was free."

Even in marriage, however, Shayes says the Cliffies remained under strict surveillance.

"I had to get the approval of the dean to get married. She finally gave me her grudging approval," she says.

Shayes got married at 18 and went on to have five children.

And for many Radcliffe students, any attempt to break the mold which Harvard and society dictated quickly revealed the double standard that was implicitly implied to the 'other' sex.

"The expectations of women were so low and so stereotyped that if you tried to break the mold you hit on a certain amount of consternation from everybody, including one's own family...that's rough," Shayes says.

"It made me a feminist before my time...any woman who chose a profession became a feminist before Betty Friedan ever thought about the subject," she concludes.