“I’m a member of a group of women that has a pot luck supper once a month. Most of them are just ignored [by Radcliffe] and don’t understand much about the Institute,” Niemiec says.

Even Nancy Sinsabaugh `71, a co-chair of the 30th Reunion Committee, says she is still unsure of what is happening at Radcliffe. She says that she is counting on Faust to illuminate her during the reunion.

“One of my goals for next week is to find out what direction Radcliffe is going in because I do not know,” Sainsabar says.

Central to the communication problem with alumnae is the fundraising agreement that prohibits Harvard from soliciting funds from alumnae that graduated before 1977.

The infamous “non-merger merger” was brokered between Harvard and Radcliffe in 1977, granting formal responsibility for female undergraduates to Harvard. Harvard and Radcliffe agreed to collaborate on fundraising from new alumnae, but only Radcliffe would be able to solicit money from those who graduated before 1977.

In the 1999 merger, overseen by University President Neil L. Rudenstine and Radcliffe President Linda S. Wilson, the fundraising agreement remained.

Without the tuition provided by undergraduates, alumnae donations became the core of Radcliffe’s financial structure and Radcliffe negotiators worried that without a guaranteed alumnae base, the Institute would be lefthigh and dry.

“They were very concerned about the ability of Radcliffe to function on a year-to-year basis,” Fineberg says.

“People were afraid that alumnae would give money to Harvard or that Harvard would solicit them very hard to do so,” explains Dunn, who helped negotiate the agreement.

But while the agreement has protected alumnae who graduated before 1977 from being trampled by Harvard for donations, it has left many alumnae feeling like that they are not part of the Harvard community.

These women are not eager to give money to the institute.

“What you’ve done is put a whole group of women out in Siberia,” former President of the Board of Overseers Charlotte H. Armstrong ’49 says. “They say ‘I never hear from Harvard.’ They don’t feel part of Harvard, yet the Radcliffe that they knew is gone.”

Armstrong calls the fundraising agreement “a big mistake” and Rudenstine says that the negotiators compromised on the arrangement even though they recognized it could cause problems in the future.

But alumnae point out that an agreement designed to include alumnae in Radcliffe’s development has also served to exclude them from participating in Harvard alumni life.

“If you look at who’s on committees at Harvard, it’s people who give the money. If women aren’t being solicited then they’re not going to be picked for the committees,” Hope B. Winthrop ’71 says.