Word: rus
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First, administrators disclosed they were considering holding a student referendum on whether to choke off the Radcliffe Union of Students (RUS) by eliminating funds for the vocal women's interest group. Then word got out that Harvard had quietly withdrawn funding for the Women's Clearinghouse, a counseling and referral service for female undergraduates. And meanwhile, amid all the retrenchment, the major women's issue of recent months got no attention whatsoever. University Hall still refuses to say how, if at all, it intends to deal with the Faculty members who reportedly harass dozens of undergraduate women each year...
Paradoxical? Not really. Harvard's got good reasons to think it can silence bothersome groups like RUS, which has often stood alone in calling attention to sexual harassment and other problems. The University seems to be assuming that, encumbered by size and pacified by past gains, the campus women's movement has lost its militant zeal and become a silent (near)-majority. How else to explain University Hall's headlong rush to execute RUS, a move it wouldn't have dared to take just five years ago? Countless minority groups outside of Harvard have failed to capitalize on early successes...
...Harvard seems to be gambling that the same maxim will hold true again. It hopes the substantial gains women have made on campus will include similar complacency, allowing University Hall to pull out of RUS, the Clearinghouse and perhaps other commitments to women...
Many minority groups are realizing the possible advantages of getting alumni support along the lines of RUS. A group like the BSA is severely limited by the fact that Blacks have only been graduating from Harvard in large numbers since 1977, so their alumni pool is still relatively small and young. But Hairston says he anticipates a larger role for Black alumni this fall, noting that "most student organizations get a lot of their funding" from alumni. A recently formed group of Black alumni supporting Afro-American Studies has begun to exert some pressure on the University to continue...
...large extent, minority groups seem to see their role as just that--getting people's minds ticking about groups in a way they have not thought of them before. Every time RUS lobbies for a change in treatment for women, or disabled students hold a crawl-in, slowly but surely they are chipping away at the archetypal--but increasingly inaccurate--view of Harvard as 350 years of everything they...