The Master Plan

The Committee on House Assignments has decided to keep the House selection system it devised last year, and thus resolve years of debate. It will select 400 to 500 members of the freshman class who represent the "strength of the class" based on their accomplishments here so far. They will be distributed by the committee among the eight residence Houses to make sure that each House gets an even share of athletes, musicians, and actors. The committee will, of course, try to follow the preferences of the Masters and the students in this first group. The rest of the class, presumably the "un-strength of the class," will be distributed among the Houses mostly on preferences of students and Masters.

This represents a compromise between the once traditional system, where the Masters handled the whole business, and the system used for the class of '69, which was distributed without regard to preferences. The new system is meant to eliminate the old House popularity contest, yet still follow preferences as far as possible. Apparently, the Committee on House Assignments was satisfied that is what happened last year, and the Committee should be congratulated for ending one of Harvard's many low-key debates.

Still, the suspicion exists in many quarters that the Committee has been even more artful than appears on the surface. Despite the apparent efforts of the new system and the one used for the class of '69, Adams House still finishes second to last in the Straus Cup races, awarded for all around excellence in House sports. Eliot House sophomores still seem to appear in black tie more often. The question remains: what if the Committee has made no changes at all in the past three years, but has merely been announcing new plans?

Then this latest announcement is surely a tribute to Harvard ingenuity. All the freshmen who are now assigned to Houses they did not want--presumably, the usual 800 or 900 as in past years--can comfort themselves with the thought that they, like the Greek tragic hero, are victims of their own great qualities. Those few who wind up in a House they wanted, can feel that the strong urgings of their House Master won over the Committee's desire to cut them into eight pieces so as to make sure each House got its fair share. Surely, then, one can only marvel at the ingenuity with which the Committee on House Assignments has handled this problem.