1-1-2 and Walden III

WHAT TAX REFORM is to the House Ways and Means Committee, housing reform is to the Harvard administration: an annoyingly perennial issue never resolved because of its complexity and volatility. This year, while the congressional panel makes another try at overhauling U.S. tax structure, Harvard is once again attempting to tackle the troublesome issue of how to house its undergraduates.

The latest in a long line of "innovative" proposals for housing students is the so-called 1-1-2 plan. While it may sound like the College's sex ratio, 1-1-2 actually describes the geographic location of each class in descending order -- descending, that is, from north to south, from the Quad to the Yard to the River Houses. The initial (1) symbolizes freshmen, who would no longer engage in "Matthews Sucks, Holworthy Sucks" contests. Instead they would be embroiled in yelling epithets across the Quad, between Whitman and Briggs, for example. The second (1) represents sophomores, who would migrate en masse to the Yard their second year under 1-1-2. There they would apparently be grouped by concentration. Finally the (2), juniors and seniors, would reside in the nine River Houses.

Undergraduates have been distinctly cool to 1-1-2. No one in the Quad Houses likes the system because it would do away with North, South and Currier Houses and presumably leave no House with a 1-1 sex ratio. The proposal doesn't charm CHUL representatives from the River Houses either; they fear wholesale change in the life in their Houses and in the undergraduate education Harvard offers.

The only people taking 1-1-2 as a "viable" proposal are Harvard administrators, and even they come down schizophrenically on the idea. Dean Rosovsky, for one, describes 1-1-2 as "in some sense the most radical, least likely, and most exciting" of five housing options Harvard is studying. Why, one asks, does the Administration fiddle with 1-1-2 when it raises so many hackles and is so unlikely to pass the Faculty? Well, after some thinking, it becomes clear that what really attracts University Hall to 1-1-2 is its potential for social engineering. Finally Harvard can throw off its burdensome cloak of tradition and become Walden III.

Imagine how 1-1-2 could solve Harvard's problems (and who knows what might follow from that on a world scale!). Consider, for example, the current popularity of Social Studies and other elite majors that admit limited numbers of students. Remember that sophomores living in the Yard under 1-1-2 would be housed with other in their concentration. A careful choice of dorms for sophomores in Soc Stud might reverse the trend in applications. Most suitable for Soc Stud would be Claverly Hall, which soaks up the ambience of Mt. Auburn traffic and often welcomes interesting outsiders from the streets. With this switch few freshmen would apply to Social Studies if seeking only association with its elite image or promised ego reinforcement. And even better (listen to this, Dean Rosovsky and your task forces), the hardy Soc Stud sophomores could mix some real experience in society with the heavy dose of theory they face in Soc Stud 10.

THE 1-1-2 SYSTEM could also achieve attractive results in the much neglected area of departmental reform. Imagine housing History majors in the eastern end of Canaday Hall where they could maintain constant pressure on senior faculty in the department. Had this been done before, the widely detested departmental requirements in History might have fallen years ago as the Bastille did centuries before; but the department's isolation in an obscure corner of the Yard has made reform as unlikely as spontaneous and surprise attack by Parisian mobs on Versailles.

These examples only scratch the surface of 1-1-2's behavioristic potential. Pre-meds could all be stuck in one dorm, and the results would indicate much about the nature of the human and Harvard beasts. Would masses of pre-meds realize from this proximity to other pre-meds how crazy their grind is? Would they eventually self-destruct under heightened competition or would they just work harder?

Perhaps the rooming arrangements could even be extended to extracurricular activities. The Crimson might pick up a little levity and the Lampoon a social conscience if sophomore members of the organizations lived together. Potential do-gooders housed in Mower and Stoughton would reject all past reluctance to engage in social work full-time when subjected to the looming, guilt-trip-inducing presence of Phillips Brooks House. Likewise, potential converts could be placed in Thayer north or the western end of Canaday, where the mystical magnetism of Memorial Church would soon prove irresistable.

The possibilities are endless, as this brief review shows. Despite all the shrill criticism of 1-1-2, the housing plan does have a rosy, "exciting" side to it. There's enough there to warm the heart of B.F. Skinner.