Dropping Preferential House Admissions

Since the war, the Housemasters each year have applied a few more bandages to the ailing House admissions program. Although they usually manage to bind up some of the more obvious wounds, they always fail to cure the underlying malady. Every spring, therefore, Housemasters face the same old problem in a slightly different guise. How can they make freshmen assignments fairly, retaining a balanced distribution and at the same time not destroying individual House spirit? Their latest experiment, announced yesterday, will no more solve the basic problem than previous attempts, even though it does climinate the absurdities of the 70 percent ruling which has been in effect the last two years.

All House-assignment efforts have aimed at but fallen short of the ideal once voiced by President Lowell:" . . . what we need is a group of colleges each of which will be national and democratic a microcosm of the whole university." This statement and those by succeeding administrators have echoed the common desire to avoid the provincialism that often stems from residence with people of similar backgrounds and interests.

Such an ideal has caused Housemasters, deans, and tutors yearly to deny or minimize the actual variations in the Houses. But their warnings have largely gone unheeded, for the real differences are patent and widely discussed. While 36 percent of the whole College is on the Dean's List, one of the Houses has 43 percent of its members on the list, while another has only 29 percent. The lower ranking House finds it almost impossible to acquire tutors, who are discouraged by the prospect of ministering to weak academic groups. The familiar story of the tutor in one House who was overjoyed when he found he had two Group III tutees has more truth behind it than many would like to admit. Some Houses are so off-balance in the direction of the sciences or humanistic that they must import tutors from other Houses to compensate for their deficiencies. Other Houses are noted for their high percentages of prep-Schol graduates, or their athletes.

New Plan Unsatisfactory

The Housemasters have shown by their repeated attempts to revise the system that they recognize its weakness. Rather than correcting the present uneven distribution, however, the new system does little more than drop the 70 percent ruling. The Masters have recognized even before their plan starts that it is bound to fail, and have accordingly provided for a committee of deans to iron out differences among Housemasters and make the final decision on freshman assignment.

Over-application to certain Houses and the resulting inequitable distribution will not disappear, however, until the House stereotypes that cause them are destroyed. At the present rate, rather than dying out, the stereotypes cannot help perpetuating themselves. A student who enters a House hoping to find a party atmosphere, for example, will naturally help liven the festive air already there. Freshmen who dislike a House's label because they do not fit it will apply else-here. Housemasters, even those seeking varied composition, are largely limited to students who apply either as first, second, or third choice. So a House's atmosphere, at first derived from Master, tutors, and upperclassmen, is reinforced by its appeal to certain types of freshmen, and snowballs into a fixed stereotype.

If the Housemasters are finally to end annual distribution woes and complaints, they should attack the malady at its roots. They must end the preferential system of House assignment as Yale successfully did last year. Freshmen should still be able to choose roommates in groups up to six, but they should accept arbitrary assignment to Houses according to carefully defined criteria. Housemasters then could fairly distribute students according to their majors, group rank, secondary school background, and their activities and interests.

The arguments that have yearly been advanced against this plan do not counter the advantages it would have. Such assignments would neither throw freshmen into an uncongenial atmosphere nor destroy a House's uniqueness. Applicants, still choosing their own roommates, could not be thrust into a situation where they would be absolutely friendless. Individual spirit in a House is not created by students alone. Masters and tutors would still vary widely, each staff trying to express its own views and attitudes in the House program, each approaching the students from a different point of view.

Once in effect this system would soon be accepted as readily as the present arbitrary assignment of freshmen Yard dormitories. The stigma of not "getting the first choice" would disappear, along with cliques of dissatisfied people and uneven distribution.

Arbitrary as such a plan might appear, it remains the best method for attaining a system of Houses individually balanced but still distinctive. Housemasters should quickly stop attempts to reach President Lowell's ideal with halfway measures and drop the preferential system of Houses assignment.