Save the Quad

THIS AFTERNOON the Committee on Houses and Undergraduate Life will vote on a proposal by Zeph Stewart, master of Lowell House, to end the one-to-one male-female ratio at the Quadrangle Houses. Stewart contends that sex quotas should be eliminated because they "make the Houses dissimilar," and represent a form of possible coercive "social engineering." The enforced ratios, Stewart believes, are merely arbitrary criteria that end up depriving people of the freedom to decide where they want to live.

Yet the proposal, essentially the same as the one defeated last year by CHUL would remove all guarantees that both men and women would have an alternative choice to the male-dominated Harvard housing system. In the name of free choice. Stewart's plan would effectively eliminate the only option Harvard and Radcliffe students now have to live in a non-engineered social environment where men and women can reside together on equal terms.

Understandably, the River House masters want to improve or equalize the sex ratios in their Houses. The obvious way to achieve this is to admit more women instead of attempting to spread them more thinly through the system. Until the College no longer arbitrarily engineers the undergraduate student body by admitting more than twice as many men as women, there is a need for a community in the housing system where women are not outnumbered. The Quadrangle is now such a community.

If Stewart's plan is implemented there is no guarantee that there would be a ratio approaching one-to-one in any House. The stipulation that a minimum number of women be set for each House would only further ensure that women could not find a co-equal living arrangement on more than a small entry-by-entry basis.

The need for a larger community not dominated by men would not be met by Stewart's alternative proposal to designate one River House and one Quad House as one to one. The three Quad Houses are integrally linked by Hilles Library, their other Quad Houses are integrally linked by Hilles Library, their other shared facilities and their location apart from the other undergraduate Houses. To remove the equalized ratios in any of these Houses would disrupt them for the entire Quadrangle community.

Last year, Stewart's suggestion was greeted with a storm of protest by students in both the Quad and the River Houses. Earlier in the year, students in South House petitioned the Radcliffe and Harvard Administrations to maintain the present ratios at the Quad. For an overwhelming majority of those people who now live at the Quad, the equal ratios are one of the main reasons for their choosing to remain there. Stewart's proposal, which would change the make-up of the Quad as early as next year, ignores this fact.

As long as men and women are not admitted to this university on an equal basis, the need for a community more equitable than Harvard's must be recognized by CHUL and the College administration. Stewart's proposal should once again he rejected.