Barnard Bulletin from New York, New York • Page 4

Is the Customer Always Right? Helen McCann, Director of Admissions, has reiterated the sentiment that one of Barnard's strengths is Columbia. While the relationship has been useful in the past in terms of establishing Barnard's academic reputation and broadening students' opportunities, the intricate and ambiguous quality of the relationship has lent an ambiguity to Barnard's identity which the Admissions Office is only helping to perpetuate. Barnard's image and self-image are greatly affected by the presentation which the Office offers to prospective students. Barnard's nebulous identity has enabled the Admissions Office to straddle the fence when taking a stand for women's education is imperative. The importance of the Admissions Office is self-evident; they decide who will be here.

We can't begin to estimate to what extent the Office's conflicting stances have kept Barnard from defining itself clearly. The apparent conflicts in policy of Admissions are baffling. They say they "stress the individualism at Barnard," but in the next breath they are presenting Barnard and Columbia as identical with Harvard and Radcliffe, who are merged in practically everything but name at this point. In addition, their refusal to mention the Women's Center to applicants and their stubborn adherence to "Miss" as a title for applicants detract from Barnard's image as a school devoted to women and women's education. As a result, many women seeking a college like Barnard may be driven away.

The picture painted by the Admissions Office can easily turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy. Presenting Barnard as a women's school will attract those students who are looking for that "small independent women's college in Columbia University." But if the Admissions Office in their stress on a coed Barnard is attracting women who really want to go to Columbia, a merger will be the result. Nonetheless, the presentation of either image would at least be consistent. But showing one picture to some women and another picture to others leads us to conclude the Admissions Office is telling applicants what they want to hear. Selling the school's image is their job.

But when they say in their salesprtch that the customer is always right, they are selling Barnard right across the street. Not for Women Only Jack Rohan, the chairman of Columbia's physical education department, was undoubtedly right when he commented, "Let's face it, I couldn't possibly have a woman's viewpoint of a woman's situation." This magnanimous admission, however, has done nothing to solve what must seem insurmountable and unnecessary difficulties to those women in Columbia University who would only like to use the gym and the sauna. The incomplete and inconvenient locker system, the poorly archi- tectured heating in the sauna and its ridiculous proportions are indicative of the poor planning which the officials admit to. Adequate research before the sauna had been built would have been a sensible alternative to this slipshod method of approaching a project. Now we urge Columbia to begin to rectify this annoying situation.

Rohan does not need a woman's viewpoint to realize that the facility is not serving women's needs. What is demanded is thoroughness and a concern for the gym's participants. --Janet Blair and Sarah Gold 8--BARNARD BULLETIN--February 2,1976 Incites Incites Incites by lami Bernard Howwid gets her ass pinched at CDR one Thursday night, and casts aspersions on the gentleman's mother. Lucidly, the gentleman is a football hero, and Howwid'practices the art of self-defense by cowering in fear under the table. How fortunate we are at Columbia University to have such a swinging social situation.

Come the weekend, there are so many scintillating possibilities for amusement, the mind is simply boggled, and we wind up doing nothing. A typical Morningside Heights weekend begins Thursday night at CDR. If you like a genuine pub atmosphere, then Lord knows why you want to go to CDR, or why it has become a campus tradition. CDR is a luncheonette. Unless it is packed so full that you are squashed behind the juke box, it is inescapable that it is only a luncheonette, and you may forget yourself and order a Sprite.

CDR lends itself to being packed on Thursday, at the expense of the "mingling" quality many find conducive to meeting people. Once you've found your niche at CDR it is impossible leave it; if some of your group go back for a refill at the bar, chances are you won't see them again sometime Friday afternoon. CDR is a great place to get beer spilled on your coat and meet F.I.T. chicks. The frat party is a sad sort of institution.

You may have convinced yourself that you attend it to get drunk or watch the funny faces, but your presence is actually due to a stilted social life. The women arrive at a fashionably late hour to give the guys a chance to line up against the wall with their hands in their pockets. The guys are there to get drunk and get laid and are going about the former with a vengeance; the women are there to develop a meaningful relationship and get drunk and are going about the latter with a passion. The dancing starts late and threatens to continue non-stop to unintelligible disco music. The women get cornered by local high school seniors.

New people come in late, trip over the broken front stoop and pretend they are just stopping in on (Continued on page 11).