Equal Access

WE too believe that the College should adopt a uniform policy for limiting course enrollments. It is unfair that different overcrowded courses were limited by different methods this year. But we disagree with the majority's view that a weighted lottery is the answer. In fact, a completely random lottery is the only way to fairly administer course sizes.

The fundamental problem with a weighted lottery which gives highest preference to seniors is that it fails to take into account the fact that Harvard's course offerings are constantly changing. Courses appear and disappear from the catalogue; professors come and go; guts become surprisingly difficult.

The argument that seniors should get priority because it is their "last chance" to take a course fails because so few courses actually remain the same from year to year. It is incorrect and unfair to assume that younger students will have an opportunity to follow an academic program identical to that of older students. A random lottery avoids this problem by giving underclassmen--who must fulfill more cumbersome Core requirements--an equal shot.

In addition to establishing the random system, the College should find a way to implement it smoothly. The random lottery used two weeks ago in Literature and Arts B-16, "Abstraction in Modern Art," was poorly publicized and administered. An explanation of the random lottery system should be published in the future and the machinery for potential lotteries set up in advance.

We also take issue with the vagueness of the majority's "proposal." The opinion is void of specific details concerning exactly how this lottery would be weighted, or how the policy could be uniformly applied to courses with varying percentages of applicants from the four classes.

The majority makes clear the incompleteness of their purported solution, by failing to detail how exactly a weighted lottery system would work. A simple call for a "weighted system" does nothing to further the debate on course enrollment, nor does it approach a solution.