Word: rus
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Early American suffragists would probably be amused that Harvard is likely to have a referendum in which only women can vote. The question is whether women undergraduates want to keep the five dollar charge on their term bill that currently funds the Radcliffe Union of Students (RUS...
They should be, for women on campus all owe a lot to RUS. When issues affecting women come up at University Hall, most women on campus do not even know about it. But RUS is often there with information, lobbying hard for women's interests...
Indeed, both men and women have a stake in the future of RUS. In the past years of lame student government, RUS has provided a steady supply of money for a variety of worthy student enterprises. It has helped the Black Students Association (BSA), for instance, and has also regularly helped underwritten such diverse institutions on campus as the Women's Clearinghouse and the annual Carribbean Club spring carnival. The Clearinghouse would sorely miss RUS; administrators recently eliminated the budget of the women's counseling and referral service...
Groups like RUS and BSA and others that represent minority constituencies often appear strident and unsympathetic to the student body at large. Most people, for example, know little about sexual harassment in Harvard classrooms, and tend to underestimate its importance. But this does not make RUS's mission any less crucial. If a suitable substitute ever emerges perhaps a referendum would be more palatable, but now, it seems a blunt tool to stamp out a University Hall gadfly...
...RUS deserves a massive vote of confidence in any referendum University Hall chooses to hold. But it also deserves to be freed from the harassment of whimsical, politically timed referenda that University Hall dreams up to stir up a little trouble...