Adult Fiction, college friends, Lacey, Portia

This may be about 20 years old or more, that is about how long ago I read it anyway.

Set in the 60s – 70’s I think (tear gas on Berkeley campus, murder of Harvey Milk)

Here is what I remember of the friends:

(Ann?) famous and beloved news anchor. I think Ann (gay) is in the closet due to her high profile. Late in the book, Ann outs herself at a hospital when her lover gets hurt. Notable moment: Ann doing a live street interview with a Vietnam vet who lives on a rooftop and he commits suicide by leaping off it.

Portia ends up in hiding due to her political actions which I don’t remember. But before going underground, she pretended to work at a Head Start program. A big theme moment is when she sneaks into town to visit friend Ann, and Ann realizes if she rats out Portia, it would help her career. Of course, she does not do it.

Lacey tries on different roles, through need, she can't live as just herself, it's a metaphor for empathy I think... most notable role is as a rock singer. She actually becomes famous but then just walks away from it... time for a new role. (it’s because of Lacey I would like to track it down, there was some pretty interesting themes there with her roles etc.

One woman (kicked out of the woman’s college for being gay and then I believe goes to Berkeley) writes boys adventure stories. I think a woman named Meagan rats on her to the Dean. Eventually she moves in with a graphic designer and they host weekly dinners for the other friends.

Another woman I recall as being a clothing designer, either that or she produces commercials for clothing. She marries, I think, a doctor. Her name may be Carolyn, but can't be sure.

The book opens during frosh week at the woman’s college where the returning students critique the cafeteria lineup of new students.

The college was interesting itself. The students didn't get graded in the traditional way. They did have to do papers etc but the progrma wasn't built on how many A's you got.

Oh, a theme: a mother of one of the women may have a very early case of AIDS from a blood transfusion. Possibly. That may be from an entirely different book :/

I would love to track down this book. I read it at an impressionable age and I want to see how I would view the thing now.

Maybe one of Katherine Stone's books? I haven't read one with the plotline you describe, but a hallmark of her books is the complex, grand-scope plotline with inter-related characters like what you described and she published in the correct timeframe. According to Google Books, there's a character Lacey in The Cinderella Hour, but I'm not seeing any matches for Portia.

A little searching on Novelist came up with this: Give me Time by Linnea Due

Here's a summary from Kirkus:

Yet another saga of women-classmates through the Sixties and Seventies, this one with an earnest, talky, lesbian/feminist coloration. In 1968, at Ridgedale College for Women, senior Hadel Farnon walks "straight into her own pure happiness, pure passion"--when she's seduced by gorgeous Laney Villano and embraces her long-repressed lesbianism. Thanks to prim preppy Megan (who pops pills), however, the Hadel/Laney affair comes to the dean's attention--and both Hadel and stoolie Megan are nudged out of school (completing degrees elsewhere), while Laney finds a far more serious passion with young Boston reporter Ann: they're soon "married," sharing a house midway between Ridgedale and Boston. The Laney/ Ann relationship will be rocky through the next ten years, however: when Ann's career-moves take her away, furious/dependent/possessive Laney gets married (to a man), then must fake her suicide to reunite with Ann; and Laney's taste for role-playing (prostitute, feminist rock-singer, etc.) will become more and more desperately psychopathological, "this bizarre other means to control her environment," with a predictable suicide at the close. Meanwhile, Hadel settles in Berkeley (where most of the novel takes place), has a crummy affair with bitchy Michelle, a better one with political Thea, sells stories to boys'-adventure magazines, and eventually gets involved with gay rights activism--admiring the soon-martyred Harvey Milk. (In an ensuing riot Hadel beams through the violence: "For once we're saying, 'Stop pissing on me.'") There are occasional visits from Hadel's best friend Natalie, Jewish and straight ("Why wasn't I born gay?"), who has rotten luck with men while making low-budget/low-income social-issue documentaries. There are occasional glimpses of vile Megan, now on the rise in college administration--still working against gay liberation, bolstering up convention and the Establishment, And classmate Portia, a bomber/radical who has to go underground for most of the Seventies, resurfaces here and there. Throughout, novelist Due (High and Outside, 1980) does attempt to sharpen and lighten the proceedings with a measure of irony, some nicely edgy dialogue, the sweet Hadel/Natalie chumship. The blend of murky psychology and shrill sexual politics remains a stultifying one, however--with little real personality in the prototypes, virtually no drama in their static, churned-over relationships. (Kirkus Reviews, September 15, 1984)

That is the correct book. Thanks so much