“There was a real difference of opinion among women,” Mitchell says. “Some in the Quad felt that those of us in the Yard were selling out and giving in, and we felt that we were breaking down barriers.”

Borthwick says, “I chose to live in the Yard more out of curiosity than anything else. It wasn’t exactly an issue of loyalty to or disinterest in Radcliffe.”

The women who chose to spend freshman year in the Quad were also choosing a more balanced male to female ratio, something that many men and women perceived as necessary for more healthy and normal social relations.

“I remember choosing to live in the Quad freshman year because I knew there would be more women there; we wouldn’t be so spread out,” Joanna Blum Jerison ’76 says.

While it may have taken decades for Harvard to agree to allow women to take up residence in the Yard, the new living situation was not such an outrageous idea for many women who lived there.

“For people on the outside it was a big deal. For people living in the Yard, it was not a big deal,” says Sheila Quinn Cox ’76. “I grew up with two brothers.”

Having women in the Yard was not necessarily momentous for men either. “It was kind of a non-event,” says Mark R. Depman ’76, who lived in Thayer. “We arrived at Harvard and assumed that it was the norm. Our entryway was all male anyway, but there was a very collegial atmosphere with the women who were around.”

Outnumbered

In 1971 Harvard had a rigid admissions policy that admitted four male students for every one female student. Former President Derek C. Bok mandated that the ratio for the Class of 1976 be changed to 2.5 to one. The debate over the admissions policy took place and was resolved during the Class of 1976’s time on campus. Administrators finally abolished the gender quotas for the class of 1980.

Bok’s move for the Class of 1976 prompted a closer examination of the admissions policy.

“When President Bok changed the ratio, he knew that the question of whether we were getting the strongest candidates possible under the current admissions system had to be addressed,” Director of Admissions Marlyn McGrath Lewis ’71-73 says.

Bok appointed a committee, chaired by Leverett Professor of Physics Karl Strauch, to look into the admissions policy. Opponents of an equal access admissions policy argued that Harvard alumni would not stand to see women admitted at the expense of men, and that donations to the College could drop significantly if women were admitted on an equal access basis.

Dean of Freshmen F. Skiddy von Stade ’38 landed in hot water when a letter he wrote to the director of admissions at Radcliffe opposing any change in the four to one ratio was obtained and published by The Crimson. Von Stade wrote that he “thought that the world in the foreseeable future was going to be primarily run by men.” For this reason, he argued it would be impractical to try to increase the number of women, whom he saw as less likely to rise to leadership positions.

“I don’t think most of [the women] want a childless marriage,” he wrote.

The push for equal admissions had a great deal of support from undergraduates, male and female alike. In the 1972 Commencement ceremonies, 70 percent of the graduates attended with red armbands over their black robes to protest the quota system of admissions.