If the admissions office conducted information sessions the way students really wanted, the primary question asked would not be: “What SAT scores do I need to get in?” but instead the far more important: “Is it true that there’s no sex at Harvard?”

One need only walk through the Yard to discover that there is indeed sex at the ancient center of academia. However, sex at Harvard has less to do with the foibles of first-years and far more to do with that damned tourist trap of the John Harvard statue.

Images of and memorials to men are omnipresent on the Harvard Campus; take a look around in Annenberg and discover three hundred years worth of dead white men staring down at the buffet line. As Harvard was an all-boys club until 1872, founded by Puritan white men, it is not surprising that the majority of visual representation honors the accomplishments of white males.

Yet, Harvard College is at an interesting point in its history. The class of 2008 is particularly significant; it is the first class ever that has more women than men. To the joy of the men of 2008, women make up 50.3%—828 of the 1646 students—of the class. That is a whopping difference of ten students.

The recent tenure disputes, discussion of lack of diversity among the Faculty and never-ending debate on finals clubs, reflect that there is still something missing in Harvard’s attempt to be a progressive institution. While those in the bubble of Harvard can feel this tension, what kind of equality does Harvard project to outsiders?

HARVARD’S MASCULINE HERITAGE

Without rewriting history, it is still important to question whether there is a sexual context to the public image of Harvard and whether it is possible to include a feminine representation in this picture. Do the architecture, art and statuary over campus, particularly in the Yard, reinforce ideas of traditionalism and masculine superiority? And the most pressing question about Harvard’s visual presentation: what is that weird phallic statue next to Boylston?

It is undeniable that Harvard Yard is a veritable Mecca for tourists to the New England area (particularly of the elderly and foreign persuasion), as well as any high school valedictorian-to-be looking to see what this esteemed institution is really like. Despite the frustration that comes from accidentally stepping into thousands of pictures of John Harvard, one can see how the beauty of the Yard floors visitors. Harvard College has a phenomenally pretty campus, groomed by millions of dollars of donations and maintained by an institutional philosophy of seeming perfect in the eyes of the outside world.

While colonial brick architecture is generally more warm and welcoming than the stone gothic of Yale and Princeton, there remains something distinctly aggressive and traditionalist about Harvard’s architecture. Phallic associations aside, the thrusting vertical columns and gothic spires still speak of forcefulness and imperialism. In a stroll down Garden Street to Radcliffe Yard, one will find a much lighter, gentler architecture with domestic qualities, such as the numerous chimneystacks of Byerly Hall.

It is hard to say if there is really a feminine or masculine in architecture. Laura Crescimano, leader of Women in Design, a Graduate School of Design organization dedicated to supporting the work of female designers, admits, “We cannot say that gender does not exist in architecture, but the differentiation of architects, or architecture, along gender lines is tricky, and sometimes dangerous.”

Much of the perception one receives from a building has to do with what goes on inside the walls. Mary McLeod, a professor of architecture Graduate School of Architecture Planning and Preservation at Columbia University, and previously the second tenured female Faculty member of Harvard’s School of Design, believes that “even in the early ’90s, it was almost in fashion to look at sex and architecture—not a very present issue right now for students. I think women in the field still feel it very strongly. Many of the Faculty feels like for the current generation of women students, even feminism isn’t an issue.”

Annabel Wharton of Duke University published an examination of Duke’s extremely sexualized architecture in 1991. West Campus, identified as the men’s campus until 1972, starkly contrasts with East Campus, the women’s campus. Wharton mentions a university-authorized publication describing the “restless,” intriguing gothic architecture of West Campus, which creates a “harmonious atmosphere for learning,” in comparison to the bland and stately Georgian architecture of East Campus, “an integral part of the tranquil dignity found there.”

Wharton asserts that the construction of Duke University reflects the cultural assumptions of the early twentieth century, of men’s space as a place of learning and women’s space as a place of respectability and etiquette. While Harvard and Radcliffe Yards are not nearly as polarized in design as Duke University, nearly every building in the College still archives the history of Harvard’s great alumni—male alumni.

An inscription on Emerson Hall prominently states: “What is man that thou art mindful of him.” It is impossible not be mindful of men when nearly every statue, building and piece of artwork on campus was either donated by or dedicated to the great men who have passed through Johnston Gate. Female donors commissioned two of the most prominent buildings on campus—Sever Hall and Widener Library. Mrs. Widener even had a profound influence over the design of the hulking imperial library.

Floyd’s Harvard: An Architectural History discusses President Lowell’s reluctant confession of the impact of Mrs. Widener on the architectural plans: “Mrs. Widener does not give the university the money to build the library, but has offered to build a library satisfactory in external appearance to herself. She accepted the plans of the former committee of architects as far as the size of the building and its interior…were concerned…but the exterior was her own choice, and she has decided architectural options.”