Rage, Apathy Greet House Selections

Freshman reaction to House selection ranged as usual yesterday from "perfectly satisfied" to unquotable rage, with a considerable dose of "who cares?"

But compared to the mass disappointment last year, this year's plan, in which each student listed up to four choices, worked well.

A spot survey indicated that fortune varied with Yard geography. On one floor of Grays, every freshman got the House he wanted. But forty per cent of Greenough was assigned to Dunster, although most of them did not list it as one of their four choices.

The Greenough students are especially morose because they feel they got the worst rooms as freshmen. One student, stretching his arms out and scraping his knuckles against two opposite walls of his bedroom, griped, "I'm moving from one palace to another."

Another Greenough dweller called it "the double shaft."

No man bound for an unwanted House can match the wrath of the student separated from his chosen roommate. The plaster wall of one fourth-floor corridor sports a newly-kicked hole to prove it. The kicker, who said the wall gave very easily, will be floating in Leverett and his roommate, in Dunster.

The early morning kickers are the afternoon rationalizers. One Winthrop-elect said stoically, "Once I didn't get into Adams, I didn't give a damn." Other losers muttered, "It didn't make a whole lot of difference to me."

Students who got their first choice--about half the class--naturally had little to say about the matter. One winner explained his choice: "I like Adams House. Its pseudo-intellectuality appeals to me."

Fewer than one out of ten got none of his first four choices, according to the Administration. But the statistics miss the sapping despair of the student who hates his House's image before he ever steps into its courtyard. One freshman who asked for Adams and was dealt Eliot said that if he had known, he would have written a letter specifically requesting not to be in Eliot.

He wished to remain anonymous.