Crimson Guide to Harvard Houses

"If it ever really worked--and I'm not sure it ever did to everybody's satisfaction--the system is now outmoded."

F. Skiddy Von Stade, dean of freshman, belongs to that strong minority at the College that believes that the current way freshmen go about selecting their House--and the House selecting them--is a stupid, and even dangerous, waste of time.

"This is the time of year when the freshmen should be thinking about their fields of concentration and hour exams. Instead, the choice of a House becomes Topic A to the exclusion of everything else," Von Stade complains. Moreover, those who don't get their first choice--40 per cent last year--or one of their top three choices--20 per cent last year--unnecessarily feel rejected, after in many cases they've received warm welcomes during interviews," he adds.

To replace the present ritual of "April Chaos"--the complicated process of bartering and raiding by which Masters fill their quotas--Von Stade suggests a more peaceful procedure: an "anonymous" committee would relieve the Masters of their selection duties. Freshmen would still be able to apply in roommate groups, but they would express no House choice. Left essentially unchanged would be the intricate formula that restricts each House to a certain number of Group One students, preppies, jocks, and other personality types. The new committee would attempt to create the same rough balance in each House that the Masters now labor to do.

Underlying Von Stade's call for change is his assumption that choosing a House is a relatively unimportant decision. "The Houses just aren't that different... You can't really tell what Harvard College is going to be like as a high school senior." And regardless of what House a freshman is placed in, "nobody's unhappy by the middle of his sophomore year," he says.

As a former acting Master of Kirkland House, Von Stade sympathizes with the "amount of sweat that the Masters go through." And indications are that the nine men who shape the House are beginning to feel a bit soggy. Although the Masters last year rejected a proposal to overhaul the present system, the vote was reportedly very close.

Even if its defenders admit that the present system is time-consuming. After freshmen submit their applications, secretaries add a number of background facts to the forms and then send them along to the Masters of the students' first choice Houses. Masters have six days to fill 70 per cent of their vacancies, although they must stay within the stricter requirement of the distribution formula.

Three years ago, however, the Masters, confronted by an avalanche of first place applications to the newly-built Houses, agreed to allow under-subscribed House "raid" their over-popular brothers. Masters with a surfeit of aplications must now open their files to a limited number of raids after they have filled only 30 per cent of their House's quota. Then they resume filling up their own Houses. The process goes on to the stages of the second and third choice until the Houses reach 70 per cent capacity.

Dean Watson does what he pleases with the remaining 30 per cent of the applications. Although he takes into account the students' choices, his main objective is to assure a balance of different types of people in each House.

Von Stade observed the irony of the whole affair: "Right now we're in the middle of admissions for 1969. We have 6500 people of whom 6000 are absolutely qualified. We'll sift through the applications and try to pick the 1200 most promising and exciting people. And yet, a year hence, the Masters will took at some of these fellows and say 'What an uninteresting and dull group.'"

Still, Von Stade objects to any really radical change, and rejects Yale's current system. There all freshmen are affiliated with one of the upperclass colleges (New Haven's counterpart of the House). "The logical extension of the Yale system is that freshman would eventually live in the Colleges," he says.

The man who is the "Master" of the freshmen class didn't like that. "It would segment a class before people got to know each other. That's for the birds."