“I felt a lopsidedness of gender balance,” she says.

“I felt that if I said something stupid in my math class, I wasn’t just a bad student, but I was a stupid woman among male students and a male professor,” adds Hamelin, who was “briefly a math concentrator” during her time at Harvard.

Former President of the Radcliffe Union of Students (RUS) Jennifer L. Pensler ’80 says apprehension about participating in the classroom was a common sentiment among female students.

“Most women didn’t feel that there was any sex discrimination on the surface, but I think that women may have not been quite as comfortable participating in classes, asking questions, etc.,” Pensler says, citing courses taught by female professors as “the best ones.”

“I attributed it more to Harvard and undergraduate education than I did to sexism and gender, but I had a much easier time asking questions and developing rapport with female professors or instructors.”

Although female undergraduates had the option to take courses taught by women, according to Pensler, there was no department dedicated solely to the study of women or gender issues at the time.

“Women’s Studies was sort of marginalized then,” Hamelin says. “Those of us who took Women’s Studies courses felt we were studying something the majority of people didn’t think was legitimate.”

FINDING SPACE FOR WOMEN

While discussions over the role of women in an increasingly integrated campus penetrated student conversations, brewing tensions erupted in April 1980.

Despite student protest, the Radcliffe Board of Trustees voted to eliminate the Radcliffe Forum—which sponsored speeches, seminars and grants about women—as part of an effort to save almost $400,000 for Harvard and Radcliffe.

The elimination sparked many questions about Harvard’s commitment to Radcliffe and its women. Without a central agency dedicated to their needs, women worried they were becoming marginalized by the administration.

Rallying together in vehement reaction to the Forum’s elimination, students formed organizations they hoped would help coordinate events targeted at women.

The Feminist Alliance sought to “raise the awareness of the Harvard-Radcliffe population to women’s issues through events and actions,” organizer Gail M. Pendelton ’81 told The Crimson in 1980. A second group, The Coalition, was an umbrella organization that would include the Feminist Alliance and other women’s groups.

HERE TO STAY

It was not until October of 1999 that the two colleges officially merged, ending Radcliffe’s tenure as an independent college.