Aggravating this situation is the feeling of some RUS legislators, former and current, that the organizations is dominated by a small clique. One legislator who doesn't want to be identified, says she has not been to any meeting since the first one in the early fall where she felt "like a token."

"The committees were already made up," she says. "There was a core of in-members."

"It's true that the leadership is very tight," says Aldrich. "The people at the top are all people who live at the Quad and are all very close." She speaks of RUS as "it" or "them," not "us."

Mary Ann Pesce '77, a Winthrop representative still active in RUS and vocal at the meetings, feels that organizations is dominated by a clique of women who are "too feminist-oriented."

But charges of militant feminism certainly seem misplaced, up there in that bare room on the fourth floor of Agassiz, when Norris extracts a jug of cider and packages of chocolate chip cookies from her knapsack before the meeting. She says that all those who have resigned--about a third of the 26 representatives--have done so because of lack of time and that the legislature represents Radcliffe women as well as any government can represent a group of people.

"People come in without looking at RUS' history and what we've had to do to get it organized," says Norris.

Indeed, organizations has been much more of an issue in RUS this semester than self-definition. The first thing the legislature did this year was formally amend the by-laws to take care of some bureaucratic hassles that had arisen. Norris has organized the files from a loose collection of papers and folders that for years lay forgotten at the bottom of somebody's drawer into an efficient orange file cabinet, one of the few pieces of furniture in the RUS room. The recording secretary takes impressive minutes, which are read aloud at the beginning of each biweekly meeting.

Some find all this administrative detail annoying. "It's all so mickey-mouse," complains a woman who resigned after one meeting. "I would have stuck with it and tried to change it but I just didn't have the time."

But for Norris and those committed to RUS this is the only way to get organization back into shape. They are convinced that RUS is not just a remnant of the old Radcliffe that seems to be fading out of existence, and that despite the all too evident lack of interest in it, RUS can be of use to women in the University. There is no question in their minds that RUS must survive. And maintaining it takes work.

"When you find yourself responsible for an organization like this and everybody's money, you have to get things done," says Norris. "And if other people aren't willing to help you, well, then, you just have to do it yourself."