FRESHMEN AND THE HOUSE PLAN

With the completion of the recent articles on the individual House, it is fitting and necessary to consider the success of the House Plan as a whole. while in certain direction it has fulfilled all expectations, there remain a number of distinctly unsatisfactory features which may nearly all be traced to one original error; the method by which the Freshmen are apportioned among the Houses.

The present preferential choice system might conceivably have worked if all the Houses had been given an equal start and if all had possessed the same physical advantages. Unfortunately neither of these conditions was fulfilled, with the result that the freshmen have rushed like sheep other toward the Houses which first got under way or toward those most attractive physically. Yet the majority of these Freshmen are only acting with the herd instinct; they have no real reason for preferring a particular House other than the fact that everybody else seems to be going there. The outcome of this stampeding has been deplorable; the desired cross sections are in certain cases either non-existent or overbalanced at one end, the demarcations of the different groups have become too distinct, men who only obtained their fourth or fifth choices are disgruntled, and in general snobbishness is at a premium in the Houses.

Obviously the solution of the problem is to change radically the methods by which the Freshmen are taken into the Houses. Two alternatives, both revolving around a central bureau plan, present themselves. The first and least preferable one is that about to be put into effect at Yale, where the authorities have evidently taken warning from Harvard's difficulties. At New Haven the Freshmen are first to list in order of preference the Houses which they desire to enter, but the applications are then to be sent to a central committee composed of three members of the Yale faculty. This committee tries to satisfy as many men as possible in regard to their first choices, and endeavors to grant every applicant either his first or second choice, while keeping a proportionate cross section in each house, or college. When the lists are finally made up, they will be sent to the masters of the "colleges," who are to have the power of vetoing men on good grounds or else of stating their preference for one of several groups.

Past experience would tend to show that the Yale plan would not be entirely satisfactory at Harvard. All considerations do point to the use of a central bureau; after that, suggestions can only be preferred. However, if all Freshmen wee to be assigned to Houses automatically through a central bureau, it would seem logical to permit them to put down on their applications one choice of a House incases where there might be real land valid reason for so doing: having had a brother in the House, having all close fiends there, finding the desired tutor only in that House, being acquainted with the House master, and similar reasons. (Under the present system the men with the most valid reasons for entering a particular House are often neglected in favor of a large group to whom the choice of Houses may make little difference.) The number of these "special claim" men would probably represent approximately the actual percentage of students who now receive their first choices. The master of each House might be allowed to fill a certain amount of his vacancies, say one-fifth, with these special-claim men, while the rest of the vacancies would be filled arbitrarily by the committee from among those students who had no valid grounds for preferring one House to another.

Under the above plan, it would be advisable not to break up a group of men trying to enter the same House, but merely to take care that that end of the cross-section in the House should not become over-balanced. In any case, the ideal of a cross-section should be fulfilled much more satisfactorily than now when it is far too little considered. Naturally the classification of the types of the cross-section must be broad and fairly elastic, but an intelligent central committee should be able to even out the present dissimilarities in the memberships of the different Houses and succeed in placing in each House a proportional cross-section.

House transfers, now prohibited as a protective measure, would undoubtedly be facilitated under the proposed system, for there would be much less pressure to change Houses and consequently more opportunity to do so. Yet the very similarity of the Houses, which will reduce the desire for transfers, will evoke the protest of some die-hards to the effect that the new system would merely recreate the old Freshman Halls. Such an expectation is unjustified, for while the Houses might take a little longer to form the desired traditions, atmosphere, and "Houses spirit," these would evolve eventually and perhaps in sounder fashion.

Only a few far-sighted men originally foresaw the possible difficulties which would arise from the present choice system. Their voices were not heard. Yet the House Plan was not and is not supposed to be either invulnerable or immutable. It must be realized now that there is a very real and immediate need for a change in the methods of apportioning freshmen among the Houses, a change probably in the direction of the creation of a central bureau, if the House Plan is to fulfill its original purpose and future destiny, and that there is barely time to effect such a change for this year's Freshmen.