CAMPUS CRITIC:

LAST WEEK freshmen chose their roommates and turned in their rooming group forms. House-mania '87--the now three-week ordeal of selecting a place to live for the next three years--has only just begun. It's a seemingly endless process that forces freshmen to spend their time choosing houses instead of choosing majors and studying house stereotypes instead of studying for midterms.

Next week, each rooming group will be given its lottery number. Then the fun really begins. Countless freshmen will attend countless ice-cream bashes and Masters' Open Houses and spend hours talking to upperclassmen in order to determine whether the "character" of each house is right for them.

Meanwhile, houses will sponsor tours and parties designed to recruit the "right types" of people. Then, after Harvard's peculiar version of fraternity rush closes, freshmen will play the numbers, attempting to select the ideal house to which their lottery numbers will permit entry. Not until the day before spring break will screams of anguish and joy emanate from the Yard, as freshmen finally learn where they will spend their next three years.

THE CURRENT housing system--implemented last year with the support of the Undergraduate Council--is more than just a drawn-out, complex, frustrating and anxiety-producing process. It betrays one of Harvard's most prized ideals--bringing students with different backgrounds together into tight-knit residential communities. By retaining a housing system that encourages us to live in self-sorted clusters with people of similar interests, character and outlook, we deny ourselves much of what Harvard is best able to offer.

Harvard's residential system gives student life stability and creates communities in which each student is an integral member. Yet what is arguably the best feature of Harvard life can also be its greatest drawback. Rather than living in neighborhoods which reflect the true character of the College, we live in self-defined islands which do not even begin to capture the nature of Harvard's student population. Although we experience Harvard's mythologized diversity during our freshman year, that pretty much ends when we leave the Yard.

Ironically, the current system's most visible fault--unnecessary complexity--works to create the more substantial problem of homogeneity within the houses. As the weeks drag on, the importance of where one will live seems to increase; the more time devoted to the house-selecting process, the more important the whole ordeal appears. And since freshmen--barricaded in the Yard and consequently isolated from the houses--have little idea of what house life is really like, they are all too likely to get caught up in the lottery hysteria and give undue weight to stereotypes and indeed, to the entire issue of housing.

The current long, drawn-out process--which only complicated an older but similarly long and anxiety-producing process--must give way to a more simple system. It must do so out of respect for the nerves of freshmen, and, more importantly, in order to allow students to benefit from Harvard's diversity.

The solution, then, to the annual housing fiasco is a completely random lottery. Let freshmen choose with whom they wish to live, but end the complexity there and leave the rest to fate and the University Hall computer.

SUPPOSEDLY, THE current system is designed to provide "first- choice maximization." Translated, that means, among other things, that each student will do everything within his limited powers to get into his favorite house. Unfortunately, while the system does allow people to choose houses, it simultaneously limits one's choice of roommates and blockmates. Afraid of being turned away from the ideal house, freshmen are reluctant to form big blocks Maximizing housing choices virtually necessitate minimizing--or at least limiting--the size of rooming blocks.

So while a random housing system would prevent us from choosing where to live, it would put a premium on choosing with whom to live. Groups of 20 people could block together because they would no long have to fear being turned away from a favorite house.

While a random system would create greater diversity within each house, it would nonetheless allow and even encourage people with similar interests and characteristics to move through the lottery to a house together. That's how it should be Freshmen would have to give up their nightly ice-cream bashes but the resulting calm nerves and diverse houses would more than compensate.