A Yale Plan

ONCE AGAIN UNDERGRADUATE housing is preoccupying administrators and exciting students. This year discussion is focussing on five options chosen by the Administration, which hopes to resolve the annoyingly familiar issue by spring.

CHUL's proposal and Harvard's choice should meet several goals, decision should resolve the endless and self-perpetuating debate. With attention continually focussed on housing, students have grown concerned with minuscule differences between specific houses. But the next housing plan must leave certain fundamental alternatives for the undergraduate. At present, Currier, North and South Houses offer students a lifestyle much different from that in the River Houses: an even male-female ratio, a mixture of all four classes, and an escape for many from an overbearing old Harvard atmosphere. Eliminating this choice would seriously narrow the range of undergraduate experiences.

Harvard faces a difficult decision on whether to retain an element of free choice in housing assignments. While the goal of free choice is attractive, it is unattainable with Harvard's varied housing alternatives. The best way to avoid or diminish the annual agonizing of freshmen assigned to Houses they dislike is a move to Yale's assignment system. Under this plan, all first-year students would be associated randomly with a House before they arrive in Cambridge, and allowed to transfer before sophomore year.

This system may seem like killing the patient to cure the disease, but actually it leaves the opportunity for changing Houses--particularly between the Quad and River dorms--while destroying many of the stereotypes that make housing a disputed subject here. Students assigned from the start to a House with a second-class image would enjoy it far more than they would after a year of indoctrination.

Three of the Administration's five housing options violate these criteria. The most repugnant alternative is the 1-1-2 plan, which would house freshmen in the Quad and sophomores in the Yard and leave only juniors and seniors in the River Houses. The system would eliminate the Quad Houses with their even sex ratio and deprive all first-year students of an opportunity to live in a House with supportive upperclassmen. Even worse, 1-1-2 would force students into a second isolated, one-class year. This may be healthy for class-giving at 25th reunions but it certainly wouldn't be for undergraduates themselves.

Anyone with lingering regard for 1-1-2 should reconsider their position in light of the recently released letter by David Riesman '31, Ford Professor of Social Sciences, favoring 1-1-2. The document illustrates how seriously 1-1-2 advocates misperceive undergraduate life. Is Riesman correct, for example, in saying that 1-1-2 is opposed by a "tyrannous" minority, part of which is "female or female-influenced" and is seeking only an "opportunity to impose its will on male captives and women who flee the milieux as soon as they can"? Does a four-class House, as Riesman suggests, place "freshman women...in a position to be put down--literally as well as metaphorically--by junior and senior men"?

Along with 1-1-2, CHUL and the Administration should drop the option placing all freshmen in the Yard, which would eliminate the four year Houses and force more sophomores to the Quad. Likewise, housing all freshmen in the Quad, another alternative, would leave only three-year Houses while incurring high conversion costs for making Houses in the Yard. This financial barrier also eliminates the otherwise attractive plan for 16 four-year Houses, which would cut enrollment and cost a prohibitive $20 million.

This leaves only the present system, which can work with several crucial adjustments--at least until the College has a 1:1 male-female ratio. The first of these is the Yale assignment plan. The second is a program for improving life in the Quad. Shuttle-bus service should be extended into the day and past 1 a.m. Harvard should expedite renovations and new athletic facilities and ease overcrowding in the three Houses.

Several primarily symbolic steps are important. The University should fight sub rosa bias against Radcliffe, whether it is failure to place books on reserve in Hilles or creation of only "Quad" sections when each River House gets its own section. Harvard should enforce its system for freshmen dining on weekends instead of looking the other way when freshmen assigned to the Quad eat at the River Houses. Otherwise, these students will lose an important chance to overcome stereotypes and decide for themselves what Currier, North and South are like.

These additional steps can rescue the present system if the Administration pursues them systematically. Belief in Harvard's good faith has suffered during the lengthy housing debate, especially in the recent blowup over 1-1-2. This is the University's chance to fight such cynicism.