Word: level
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...advocate according to the geographical location of his secondary school. The advocate is one of three men who read and evaluate an applicant's folder, after which a preliminary decision is made in a small sub-committee responsible for a geographical area. If a student is rejected at this level, he is probably through. His case will not even be presented before the full admissions committee unless new evidence becomes available or, as Whitla puts it, "the advocate decides after sleeping on it that he didn't argue a certain case effectively in the area committee...
Liquor and sex are left up to the individual as long as the student adheres to a few very general rules. Parties must be kept at a reasonable level so that Cambridge police don't need to be called, and practical regulations (rules governing the hours girls are allowed into Harvard rooms) must be upheld. The Administration, possessed with a Harvardian sense of history, demands that you register your marriage and the resulting change in room at the Dean's Office so that "we will know where to hang the plaque in case there is any future need...
Radcliffe dorms are not unlike Revere Beach for people who live there without wanting to. There is the same uncontrollable carnival of the senses in both. Hemmed into twelve square feet of space or less, constantly under the eyes of roommates and wandering acquaintances, subjected to a level of noise that has killed hamsters, girls who live in the brick dorms are so existentially stunted that they only point to parietal rules and the lack of "intellectual conversation" as reasons for doing away with dorms. But these complaints are abstractions on the periphery: the experience itself is too overwhelming...
...just hanging around. The sense of being under observation is so strong it sometimes seems the hallways are tunnels hung with rolling eyeballs. There are no free distances for the eyes and no space for the body. The confinement imposed by rules and restrictions is paralleled on the physical level by the sheer lack of room and privacy...
Even her own contributions to the noise level are beyond her control. People, especially female people, deal with the tension caused by having so many together in such close quarters by talking. The only way to get back at them all is to talk at them. Nicely. Everyone must be nice. There are eight girls in these rooms. Patty and Sally, who are nice, Jane and Tina, they're nice. Sandy and Betty and Linda and Mary, also nice. When one of them gets tired of being nice and would like to play a record very loudly and perhaps scream...