Enrollment Drop Threatens Next Year's House System

An intensive draft could turn the seven College Houses once more into glorified dormitories, as Adams and Lowell were during World War II when the services occupied the other five Houses.

Just when the effects of the veteran-crowded, post-war years are beginning to clear, the University faces a severe drop in enrollment up to one-third next year. Before the Korean incident began, the faculty had hoped that each House would soon have expanded activities.

Instead, as the College tightens its budget, there presumably would be less money to spend on the House system. This could effect the implementation of the Bender Report if the faculty adopts the plans which include the increase of the Houses' use in the College's educational program.

During a crisis, professors and students usually devote more time to their regular courses and less to the extras of which the House system is one. After World War II, the Houses were too crowded to permit the breakfast table education that President Lowell had in mind when the system was planned 20 years ago.

More Effective in '30's

In the '30's all the Houses had a great many special activities; students got to know the faculty better through informal lectures, courses in the Houses, and the like.

For the first time since the war all men will be in Houses in September of their sophomore year. However, Harvard is anxious to avoid the next step after that which might put freshmen into the Houses when they arrive at College.

The feeling is that freshmen need the additional supervision that they get in the Yard; certainly there are no immediate plans to put entering classes in the upperclass Houses, but in the fall of 1952 it might have to be considered should a military training program keep cutting into the enrollment before the first trainees had finished their service.

The immediate problems caused by the draft have temporarily turned attention away from the bigger problem that has worried the University administration since the start of the Houses.

Should the Houses be a cross-section of the undergraduates or should each House mostly have one type of student?

What Price Individuality?

The Dean's Office and the Housemasters agree that each one of the seven Houses should have distinct characteristics, but the question remains what is needed to produce that individuality.

At times in the past, that search for distinctiveness has led a House to admit mostly one type of student, all Dean's List men or prep school graduates, for example. Once that policy is followed for a single class, the situation can snowball.

In succeeding classes men of the same type will often be attracted to the House so that in a few years that House takes on a definite character through its admissions policy, not its activities. In the minds of some, this is contrary to the Harvard educational philosophy under which different types of people "rub their minds together."

Freedom of Choice

If a large number of people of any type apply to a certain House, the University must decide whether it will violate the individual's freedom of choice and assign him to a different House to keep the Houses cross-sections.

The University policy today seems to set broad limits on the number of prep school students, for example, who can be in a single House. The limit is loose enough so that Housemasters do not have severe difficulty in enforcing the quotas.

Once you have some sort of cross-section in each House, how can you give Houses character so that they will mean something to their residents. With today's limited program, caused in part by a small budget, many students view their Houses merely as the place "where they sleep."

Although the Houses were designed after the English University colleges, Harvard's policy at no time has given the Housemasters anything like the power held by the foreign schools.

Housemasters at Harvard do tend, however, to set the tone of their House. Some masters have been hampered in the past because teaching duties used up too much of their time.

The House system was supposed to bring a certain amount of small college life to Harvard. Today, the full realization of the program has once more been delayed, so that the system will have to wait for a long peaceful period for a large-scale test of the Houses' potentialities