Masters Dislike Yale's Plan For House Selections

A survey of House Masters yesterday revealed that in general they disapprove of ever abandoning the present system for assigning Freshmen to Houses. Only Reuben A. Brower, Master of Adams House, conceded that making assignments through the use of IBM machines, as done at Yale, might be worthwhile "with a lot of qualifications."

Yale instituted its method of using machines to decide assignment to upper-class "colleges" because 80 per cent of the Freshmen were applying to the two "popular" colleges, leaving the remaining eight with virtually no applications.

David E. Owen, Master of Winthrop House, claimed that applications to the various Houses at Harvard are distributed evenly enough to render Yale's method unnecessary.

Although the present procedure sometimes results in students being assigned to Houses they have not requested, John H. Finley '25, Master of Eliot, emphasized that at least 80 per cent of the Freshman class are assigned to the House of their first, second, or third choice.

"The program at Yale destroys the very essence of the House or College system," Finley added. "At the present time there are some inequalities among the Houses," he said. However, he expressed the belief that the possible construction of towers for "our little Versailles-on-the-Charles" would end any disparity.