Niemiec, who is a close friend of Winthrop, says that Winthrop sprang into action when her husband, Grant F. Winthrop `71, was contacted by Harvard to serve on the 30th reunion gift committee and she was not asked to serve as well.
Though Hope Winthrop was hesitant to talk about her interactions with the 30th reunion committee, Niemiec says that Winthrop felt it was unfair that Harvard only contacted its alumni—and not Radcliffe’s alumnae—to play a leading role in the reunion festivities.
“They called him and asked him to be a member and she said, ‘Why can’t I be on the committee?’” Niemiec says. “Even now the Harvard guys still really don’t think of us as classmates in many ways.”
After contacting Harvard herself, Winthrop succeeded in joining the 30th reunion gift committee that her husband was originally recruited for.
“I don’t understand why the pre-’77 women should be treated as a different class of people,” Winthrop says. “There’s just no rationale for it.”
Armstrong, Winthrop and Niemiec all agree that Harvard and Radcliffe should abolish the pre-’77 agreement so that Harvard could solicit all graduates of Radcliffe.
“[When I was in college] Harvard didn’t care about the women. The men got the football tickets and we didn’t. [The alumnae] are right to be offended,” Niemiec says. “Radcliffe is trying to establish itself with this new institute and the women are its base of donors. They’re worried Harvard will try to skim the cream off the top and get the more able donors.”
Change In the Air?
Administrators on both ends of Garden Street recognize that the agreement about fundraising has left a generation of women awkwardly in between Harvard and Radcliffe.
“We keep getting grumpy letters from couples,” Faust says. “My ultimate goal is to get rid of all these…complexities and Byzantine arrangements that kept Harvard [and Radcliffe apart].”
Dean of the College Harry R. Lewis ’68 calls the pre-`77 agreement “embarrassing.”
“It’s one of my few disappointments with the agreement that this wasn’t resolved,” Lewis says of the arrangement.
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