Room for Improvement

High up on the fourth floor of Thayer Hall, two adjoining suites of rooms house two freshmen apiece. The suites are identical in very way: both have one bedroom and one living room, both are the same size, both are the same distance from the stairway and from the communal bathroom. Since rooms in the Yard are supposedly priced according to their desirability, one might assume that the rents for these two suites are equal. But the freshmen living in one are paying $185 per term, while the residents of the other pay only $160.

This is not an isolated case; there are many such inequities in the Yard. Like the Houses, freshman dormitories operated on a widely-varying rent term. Unlike suites in the Houses, however, Yard rooms are priced and assigned so that what a student pays often has little relation to what he gets.

Although the Administration recognizes the unfairness of this situation, it has done nothing to dispel the confusion over rents. There has never been a complete re-assessment of all rooms in the Yard. NO one knows when the current prices were set or exactly how they were determined. According to the Department of Buildings and Grounds, such factors as size, floor, and bathroom facilities were probably among the original criteria. But the Department admits that there is no standard system for applying these criteria. In addition, the price of a given room depends on such factors as the view, which may have changed appreciably since the dormitory was built.

The Administration has one explanation for the present discrepancy between a room's price and its desirability. If freshmen got exactly what they paid for, the argument runs, all the wealthiest men would be living in such new dormitories as Wigglesworth, and all the poorer ones in buildings like Matthews and Hollis. In order to make each dormitory representative of the whole class, it is necessary to put some freshmen in less desirable rooms, even though they pay higher rents. This argument would be valid if its promise were true that is, if each dormitory did contain an economic cross section of the freshman class. A study of student backgrounds in the Yard, however, provides another strong reason for revising the present rental system. More than sixty-seven percent of the freshmen now living in Wigglesworth, for example, came to the College from a private preparatory school. The corresponding proportion in Hollis is about twenty-seven percent. Similar differences exist between various other dormitories.

Another factor besides differential room rents contributes t the concentrations of wealthier students in the newer dormitories. The Dean's Office, in sending out room applications to incoming freshmen, does not ask what dormitory the student would prefer. If the applicant should happen to name Wigglesworth, however, he is invariably assigned to live in Wigglesworth for in any other dormitory he has put down. Incoming freshmen who are familiar with Harvard through family or school background are usually aware of this Dean's Office idiosyncrasy. Thus they fill up the better dorms, while the uninitiated freshmen suffer. Fortunately this problem is easily solved. The Dean's Office need only state on its rooming blank that it will not honor any requests for specific dormitories.

The overall inequities of the room rental system are more difficult to remedy. A careful re-assessment of all freshman rooms would eliminate the discrepancy between the price and the value of a given suite, but it would still concentrate the wealthier students in the newer dormitories. A better solution is the one that Yale has used successfully for several years: the establishment of an equal rent for all freshman rooms, and the assignment of these rooms on a chance basis.

Under such a system, the uniform price would probably be about $180 per term. This figure, of course, is higher than many freshmen now pay, but it would bring in enough revenue to compensate for those students who cannot afford the new price. More important, such a plan would allow each dormitory a representative cross section of the freshman class. And while it is unfortunate to pay as much for a room in Matthews as for one in Wigglesworth, the freshman would at least know that his chance of getting a good room was the same as everyone else's.