Notes of a Lottery Watcher

WHEN A YARD full of frenzied freshmen feels compelled to conduct sham polls of housing choices and spread anxious rumors about people being "Quincied," it signals loudly that something has gone profoundly wrong with the way Harvard runs its housing system.

And what it really boils down to is not Winthrop over Adams, or Eliot over Adams over Winthrop, but getting Quadded.

Throughout the ongoing hoopla about how the housing lottery should work, administrators and students have agreed on one point only: that there is no "fair" way to assign houses to rising sophomores. This is simply not true.

Certainly, there is no way to prevent a percentage of the student body from spending three years in nefarious Radcliffe Quadrangle, upon which students heap even more abuse than on the Kool-Aid art that not so long ago gave it a sticky winter coat of many colors. But there are alternatives to both the current lottery system and to completely "random" solutions.

The only objectively fair system--also the only one which would remove permanently the stigma of living at the Quad--is to have every student do at least a year-long stint up Garden Street. The easiest way to do this?

Quad the freshmen.

First of all, freshmen, by and large, don't know any better. Secondly, this system would benefit the newcomers, since the "hall" system of the Quad houses--which is likely to remain intact as long as the university lags on renovations--fosters a far more communal atmosphere than the entryway system of most of the Yard dorms. Under this system, the Yard dorms could be affiliated with River Houses, and would doubtlessly become priority housing for seniors.

Objections? Living at the Quad does not sufficiently introduce freshmen to official life at Harvard? Fine, then Quad the sophomores.

ARE THERE ANY alternatives to the current system which do not involve having entire classes live at the Quad?

"Life isn't fair," is the proverbial response to a bad lottery number. This axiom is indeed a truism in the real world where people who have more money are able to afford better housing. Why not adopt this approach for housing at Harvard? Undeniably, a suite in Lowell House would get more on the market than one at North House, in Harvard's terms. How about offering those spacious suites to the highest freshmen bidders?

If laissez-faire housing makes your stomache turn, here's another fair solution: housing based on merit. When Phi Beta Kappa keys or summa and magna degrees are awarded, few people question how deserving the recipients are. If academic achievement and distinction are the currency of the Harvard community, why not let this success principle determine the housing system?

Students could be ranked by grade group, the top minds--with first crack at the choices--most likely opting for the river houses where they would closer to classes. But under this system the Quad would gain an additional stigma: "I live at the Quad" might become "I'm on Ac Pro."

A system of choice according to grades--while undeniably a "fair" solution--would raise several objections, many of them by students enrolled in courses like Chem 20 or introductory Russian. Admittedly, this system could cause undue strain on long-standing guts.

The merit-based system also might be unfair to students who, recovering from a freshmen slump, brought their grades up during their upperclass years. A built-in "Horatio Alger clause" would clearly be in order--entitling those with rising grade point averages to bump slumping students from their rooms.

Still not fair enough? How about Quadding the overweight?

It seems that neither the present system nor any possible alternative can solve the current inequities. The idealized image of Harvard, peddled to students by the admissions office and the media, by mass and highbrow culture alike, is not an image that encompasses living at the Quad. Freshmen fears--abetted especially by the current lottery system--feed on the disastrous recognition that the Ivy Dream may lie unfulfilled, and lead thousands of people yearly to compete for a fireplace.