At the time, Harvard’s attitude toward women, according to Patricia A. Marks Greenfield ’62, was based on the idea that “‘The problem is women.’ Not, ‘The problem is men.’”

For the women of Radcliffe, the curfew was inextricably linked with the deeper feelings that male members of the Harvard community had about their presence there.

“We were ‘tolerated’ but we were also put down to some degree. There were things we weren’t permitted to do,” Caroline R. Herron ’62 said.

Moreover, by the beginning of the 1960s a feeling arose that the increasingly available ways to get around the curfew had rendered the rules useless.

Herron recalled missing the curfew twice during her time at Radcliffe. Once, she remembered, she was in a car that broke down, and another time she and a group of friends had trouble getting back from Revere Beach.

“Once I managed not to be detected and once I went and confessed,” she said of the incidents. And when she did turn herself in, the consequences were not very severe.

“I don’t remember being chained to my bed or anything,” she said. “I believe I may have gotten a talking-to.”

REVOLUTION OF ’62

In November of 1961, the Radcliffe Student Government Association announced a plan to restructure student government at the college.

As the school year progressed, the debates over legislative representation for Radcliffe students had opened up into a discussion of the value of The Red Book and the larger relationship of Radcliffe students to the University.

Increasingly, students demanded that the proposed student government have more control over the rules at Radcliffe, especially concerning their curfew.

Then, in December, the Freshman Class Committee demanded later curfews and less restrictive policies on exceptions to the curfew rules. The SGA backed the proposal, and upperclassmen commented to The Crimson at the time that the rules for freshman should be relaxed past even what the freshmen had proposed.

In February, Radcliffe student leaders and administrators discussed academic and social issues facing the college at the Cedar Hill Conference, a biennial meeting between the SGA and Radcliffe deans. In 1962, the big occasion at the forum was the presentation of a new constitution, penned by Ruth Wyler Messinger ’62, which would establish a new central governing body for the college’s students: the Radcliffe Government Association.

The official proposal would already mark a major shift in control of the school’s parietal rules. Under the new system, the RGA would set social regulations of the college, a duty that traditionally fell under the jurisdiction of the Dean of Residence and Student Affairs along with the Board of Hall Presidents.

But at the conference, Elizabeth Holtzman ’62 and Deborah Stone ’62 presented their own ideas about new freedoms for Radcliffe’s women: an end to curfew hours for upperclassmen, the abolition of the college’s chaperonage rules, and the elimination of the series of permissions that Radcliffe women had to obtain to sign out for a night.