Women Wanted

At their fall meeting, the Trustees endorsed a call by President James O. Freedman to encourage greater numbers of qualified women to attend Dartmouth. The board asked that efforts be made "to achieve more substantial parity in the number of men and women undergraduates at the College ... in order to sustain an academic and social environment fully supportive of the educational mission."

Women comprise 38 percent of this year's freshman class, a figure lower than that at Harvard, Yale and Princeton. A report released last spring by the Wright Committee on Student Life concluded that the student body should contain roughly equal numbers of women and men.

Dean of Admissions Al Quirk acknowledged that attracting a greater number of the nation's most qualified female applicants would take a vigorous recruitment effort, but he feels that the Trustees' public welcome to females will have immediate effects. "They want to make it clear that parity is the aim," Quirk said, adding that he felt one reason women have been underrepresented in the Ivies is that few schools have actually stated they wanted to achieve equal numbers.