A YEAR and a half ago, Radcliffe's proposal of merger was eagerly anticipated by most of the Harvard-Radcliffe community. The merger was to be an easy and straightforward move-to be accomplished by this Fall. Since then, the issue has become bogged down in a morass of some hard-headed Harvard administrators, professors, and confused and worried alumnae and alumni. Some form of merger probably will pass eventually, but whether anyone presently enrolled in the Colleges will be around to see it is a moot point.

The major reasons that Faculty members and Harvard administrators cite against merger are ratio and finances. The primary concern of women opposed to merger is the question of a continuing commitment to education for women.

If Harvard and Radcliffe were to merge totally, there would undoubtedly be pressure to change the present four-to-one male-female ratio to an equal one. Some Harvard administrators fear that legislation now pending in Congress might make the present ratio an illegal one if men and woman were part of the same undergraduate body. Cogent arguments against increasing the total number of students in the Colleges have been advanced from many sides.

If the male enrollment were to stay at its present 4800, the female enrollment would have to jump by 3600, bringing the number of undergraduates to 9600. Although Harvard is one of the wealthier universities in the nation, it could not allocate enough resources for an expansion to accommodate 40 per cent more than the present numbers. So large an increase also would be undesirable if Harvard is to retain any of the advantages of its present size. Lectures would be even larger than they are now, with far fewer small courses. The Faculty would be overtaxed; tutors would be spread thin across the expanded undergraduate group. Everyone in Cambridge would be much unhappier than they are already.

The other alternative for obtaining an equal ratio is to cut down the present male enrollment by 1800, adding that number of women. Many of the men conditioned to look upon Harvard as a male institution hotly protest this alternative. Pusey has said that Harvard has "an obligation to the nation" to train men for their careers. Last February, when a delegation from the National Organization for Women (NOW) met with him to ask for an increased female enrollment, he reportedly said. "But to do that, we would have to cut down on the number of qualified people we admit." "Qualified men, you mean." one of the women commented, "Yes-qualified people." he repeated.

The administrator most vocal in his opposition to more women at Harvard-and his opposition to merger-is Dr. Chase N. Peterson '52, dean of Admissions and Financial Aid for Harvard College. In a report he wrote as chairman of a Faculty subcommittee to study the admissions and financial aid aspects of merger, Peterson argued against more women by citing the admissions policy he helped form:

What are the problems in reducing male admissions? We have worked hard for, and now benefit from, representation of significant numbers of students from a wide variety of social, economic, and cultural backgrounds. But in fact we should have more third-world students. We should have more sons of alumni. We should have more lower-middle-class and lower-class economic representation. There are many special groups and constituencies within the Harvard undergraduate body. The New England college flavor, which lends a cultural distinctiveness to what otherwise might be a homogenized University of the United States, requires significant enrollment of New Englanders of all flavors and background.... Finally, there is a desire to have Harvard participate more fully in the minority racial cultures of this country.

Homogeneity breeds comfortable stagnation. But diversity also threatens loneliness and isolation. Each group within the college requires a certain critical mass to allow it to fit with reasonable comfort.... For this reason a smaller male enrollment might force us to eliminate a number of such distinctive groups entirely when their numbers fell below a tolerance threshold... Reduced admission of men would force us into less diversity at a time when we are being asked for more. (This argument has assumed perhaps debatedly, that men and women students are not fully interchangeable within "delegations." This assumption may not be correct, but we believe it is.)

As numbers increase, we are in danger of having so many good applicants rejected that even superior applicants in the future will be discouraged from applying. Given a reduction in male admissions, such heightened frustrations and negative feedback might literally destroy the richness of our applicant pool, our national Schools Committee apparatus, and the interest of the secondary schools they contact.

... Finally, if we tried to maintain departmental representation in the face of reduced numbers, we would be forced to develop and abide by distastefully rigid admissions criteria. An engineer, a physicist, an actor, or a percussionist would have to be selected with far greater predictability than is now our desire or practice. Undergraduate admissions would become as the graduate schools necessarily are, a departmental phnomenon.

Throughout Peterson's argument (and, unfortunately, the thinking of many men at Harvard) is the idea that women are all alike, not quite individual people: "in the face of reduced admissions," meaning fewer men and more women: "We should have more sons of alumni"-a dubious necessity anyway. When speaking of his "delegations." Peterson does not consider the possibility that Harvard might have a responsibility to educate the women of those groups as well. If the present Harvard undergraduate body is a more diverse group than Radcliffe's, it stems from Radcliffe's smaller scholarship fund-a deficiency that would be ameliorated after merger.

Many faculty members feel that the ratio question is the most important one about merger, but Mrs. Bunting, a strong proponent of merger, has not seen it as such. "The feeling that the ratio would be changed much doesn't have a high priority with me-nor with Radcliffe students." she said last week. She said that pressure might come from Harvard students who want an equal ratio in the Houses. "Our principal job right now is to fix this place up for the women who are here," she said.

She emphasizes equal conditions for women before equal numbers. "We have to try to get conditions equal for women, especially in the subtle ways-ways in which the Faculty will expect an equal amount from women." She feels strongly that certain crucial aspects of Radcliffe should be kept, and perhaps expanded, for specialized education for women in the future.

ANOTHER item of concern for those opposed to merger is money. Although both Harvard and Radcliffe have financial problems at the moment, Radcliffe's are much worse than Harvard's. Radcliffe was in the middle of a campaign to raise $30 million when negotiations for merger were announced in February 1969. This discouraged many alumnae from giving until they know what the future status of Harvard and Radcliffe would be. Radcliffe, however, has always had fewer resources than Harvard, and for this reason its schol-arship program has suffered. Were the two Colleges to merge financially, Harvard would have to shoulder the responsibility for Radcliffe's deficits.

This viewpoint overlooks some obvious advantages of merger. Many functions that are presently carried on separately could be joined, such as Buildings and Grounds, Comptroller's offices, career planning offices, and probably the Admissions offices. Although the immediate impact would be a heavier drain on Harvard funds, the following drop in Radcliffe's expenses would compensate in the long run.