The women of 1977 went to Harvard classes, lived in Harvard Houses and studied in Harvard libraries.

But they were admitted to and graduated from Radcliffe College—and many refer to themelves as Radcliffe alumnae.

Still, 25 years later, a number of ’Cliffies continue to question their association with their nominal alma mater.

Today, some say they are surprised or disappointed with the 1999 merger and dissolution of Radcliffe College and had hoped that Radcliffe could be an advocate for women at Harvard.

At the same time, however, many graduates say they only rarely saw Radcliffe as an important force in their lives during their undergraduate years.

As the second class to have totally coeducational residences, women in the Class of 1977—who graduated in the year that Radcliffe officially ceded responsiblity for female undergraduates to Harvard—identified almost entirely with Harvard.

‘Male Bastion’

In the early ’70s, alums and some administrators had expressed fear that if “equal access” admissions became a reality, the school would educate fewer world leaders and receive fewer donations from wealthy alums.

“They kept saying ‘men won’t give to Harvard if their sons don’t come,’” Diana Krumholz McDonald ’77 says, recalling arguments made at events for alums, at football games, and in Harvard Magazine letters to the editor.

A 1971 article in The Harvard Crimson called Harvard Yard a “male bastion for the past 335 years.”

In the same year, a “non-merger merger” officially put Harvard in charge of the dorm life of Radcliffe women, and the class of 1977 was the second class whose women were integrated into both the Houses and the first-year dorms.

In 1972, then-Harvard President Derek Bok made the controversial decision to aim for an admissions ratio of 2.5 men for every woman, down from the four-to-one ratio of previous years.

In 1975, the Harvard and Radcliffe admissions offices officially merged and for the rest of the ’70s, female-to-male ratios inched closer and closer to one-to-one.