When an issue arose with a female student--had they been hurt or were having problems of adjustment--Radcliffe felt it had the right to be informed, but Wilson would not always find out in a timely manner, Bovet says.

"There was a sense that we had a certain kind or responsibility, and some students wanted us involved too. It was important for Radcliffe, for Wilson, to know what was going on. People like The Crimson, the outside press, would expect us to know what was going on," she says.

Lewis says that he did not always tell Radcliffe as much as he should have.

"They would occasionally be annoyed when I would forget something," he says.

The Letter of the Law

Lewis says he would take out his copy of the 1977 agreement to remind officials of their place when Radcliffe tried to assert itself in undergraduate affairs. And by the end of its time as a college, Radcliffe wasn't doing anything a college does--it didn't offer classes, discipline or even feed students.

And Lewis has the calculating mind of a computer scientist. He loathes theoretical questions from interviewers, preferring instead to answer specifics. Lewis moves fast, thinks fast, fires out e-mail at an exceptional pace. He interpreted the 1977 Harvard Radcliffe agreement as taking Radcliffe out of undergraduate affairs almost completely.

He had the wording of the agreement to back up his premise that he, and only his office, should be involved in undergraduate affairs.

"Radcliffe will delegate to Harvard...all responsibility for undergraduate instruction and for the administration and management of undergraduate affairs" the document reads.

"Radcliffe had sometime ago ceased to be a college in reality," Lewis says.

But Radcliffe interpreted the agreement differently. After all, Radcliffe still technically admitted and graduated women undergraduates. Radcliffe said it wanted to maintain a watchdog role, making sure Harvard treated its women fairly.

But Lewis dismisses the idea that Radcliffe served as an advocate for women during his tenure.

"They didn't really do it," he says.

"In that way, I'm very appreciative...I never felt that we were being harangued."

If Lewis didn't feel like he was being "harangued," people close to Radcliffe say he was willing to out-muscle the women's college in any way possible.

In the fall of 1997, for example, Harvard College organized a celebration to commemorate the 25th anniversary of women living in the Yard.