The Tower Fallacy

The recent rumpus about Leverett House has illustrated an apparently common fallacy--that there is a scale of quality among the Houses. There appears to be a widespread belief among freshmen at least that certain Houses rank at the bottom of a College-wide caste system. One pictures the word sweeping around the Union: "Gad man, don't go to Leverett, it hasn't got a tower." Of course it might just as well be the size of courtyards, but this season it is towers, so hundreds of freshmen gallop off to beat on other portals.

Only later does the freshman realize that Houses, unlike fraternities, have no rank, that "a House is what you make it" that they all offer the same facilities with only a few idiosyncratic variations, towers being one. Only later does he learn that Harvard has no House ranking ladder.