"Any precautions taken by the University would be paternalistic at best," she said. She added that women should learn self-defense if they feel threatened by the crime wave.

But few Radcliffe women contacted in the survey had considered self-defense lessons as a necessary safety precaution. Mary G. Paget, coordinator of Sports, Dance and Recreaton at Radcliffe, said yesterday that the number of women enrolled in Radcliffe's Korean Karate class has not increased this semester. "In fact, we have more men than women in the class," she said.

Some women have chosen less formal safety precautions such as bicycle-riding rather than walking alone at night. "It's a lot easier to dodge an assailant when you're on a bike than when you're walking," one Radcliffe sophomore said.

Additional Protection

For additional protection, most women in Lowell and Leverett -- the only two Houses which have installed peepholes in the women's doors -- reported that they have recently become more scrupulous about using their peepholes.

Several Radcliffe women attributed their recent cautiousness to parental pressure. "My friends and I have been deluged by letters from home, replete with clippings and gory details about ill-fated hitchhikers," a junior said yesterday.

All women contacted in the survey said that they are concerned about the murders and the dangers of thumbing and being out alone at night. "Whether I change my habits or not, I'm definitely pissed off," one senior said