TAKING SIDES

Holtzman and Stone’s proposal set off a flurry of debate among Harvard and Radcliffe students, one that would come to represent the changing views of Radcliffe and its students’ proper role on campus.

For some, The Red Book, and in particular its parietal rules, served its intended purpose as a means of maintaining the reputation and safety of Radcliffe women.

“At the time I thought it was not a terribly good idea to end the curfew,” Thalassa Hencken

Ali Walsh ’62 remembered. “I’d seen too many people getting in trouble. With no curfew, you had the possibility of date rape and other things like that.”

In addition, the curfew was for some an essential part of keeping up the Radcliffe woman’s veneer of propriety.

In February of 1962, one Radcliffe junior told The Crimson, “Abolishing the curfew might give Radcliffe an awfully bad reputation, not necessarily because of immoral behavior but because of what boys expect to go along with a great deal of freedom.”

Essentially, some argued that Radcliffe students were just not ready.

“The supposition that Radcliffe girls are intelligent, responsible adults is largely false,” Carol E. Hagemann-White ’64 told the Crimson in March of 1962.

But for many students, the changes that Holtzman and Stone proposed would address an already broken system and bring Radcliffe’s policies in line with a cultural demand for greater equality.

According to Holtzman, one of the greatest problems with the curfew was that it was often ignored, with many women coming in after curfew and self-reporting an earlier return to their dorms. The proposal to abolish the curfew was merely about adapting policy to reality.

“The parietal rules were a nuisance,” she recalled. “The question was whether we were going to go with an honor system, whether we were going to change the rules, or whether we were going to, as an alternative, simply fudge.”

For others, the proposed eliminations of the parietals would be an important step in increasing the equality of Radcliffe and Harvard students. Crimson reporter Mary Ellen Gale ’62, for example, found that the curfew, the very issue that she spent much of her time writing about, made it difficult for her to pursue her journalistic aspirations.

“I wanted to have the same opportunities that the men did,” she said. The fight to eliminate the curfew, according to Gale, “was important, from the point of view of someone who wanted to be a part of that man’s world.”

According to Crimson editor Michael Churchill ’61, the men of Harvard were split on the issue: a majority believed that the curfew should be abolished, but others maintained that it was a necessary “protective” measure for the women at Radcliffe.