Diversity Comes First

JUST like trying to nail Jello to a tree, it is difficult to pin down the argument against randomization. In one instant, opponents of randomization contend that the house system is just fine as it is: "We're all diverse here." And in the next instant, they anxiously plead against a system that a could land them in--God forbid--Adams or Kirkland.

The tricky thing about pinning down opponents of randomization is that they tend to do what lawyers call "arguing by alternative." It's like defending a client accused of stealing a car and denting the fender by saying, "The fender isn't dented, and if it is, my client didn't steal the car, and if he did, the fender was dented before he stole it."

In the Harvard Political Union's open forum on randomization, I heard opponents of randomization (mostly first-year students) argue that the house system is already sufficiently diverse, and if it's not, there's nothing wrong with having stereotypes, and if there is something wrong, randomization won't fix it, and if randomization will fix it, there are better ways of doing it.

Where do I start?

THE argument that the houses are already sufficiently diverse is transparently specious. I don't need to cite statistics for you to know that house stereotypes are not entirely unfounded.

So there are a lot of "artsy" types in Adams House. Is that necessarily bad? In some ideal sense, it isn't fair to categorize people according to a single trait. There is no doubt that every Harvard student has unique qualities that defy pigeon-holing.

But to say that Kirkland House is not maximally diverse is not to say that athletes fit some stereotype of "a jock," because they surely do not. It merely affirms the obvious: that people who spend most of their waking hours doing similar things share a strong commonality that distinguishes them in a very real sense from everyone else.

The same is true of any group. No one at Harvard thinks that all Black students fit a particular stereotype. Yet we would never tolerate a residential system that strongly segregated Blacks. Is it fair to classify Black students according to a single trait in this case?

Whether we are talking about ethnic minorities, Groton grads, hockey players or Lit. majors, lack of diversity in housing hurts everyone.

In the case of athletes in Kirkland House, it hurts non-athletes in Kirkland who feel uncomfortable with their surroundings. It hurts athletes who lose the chance to live in a maximally diverse house. It hurts students who would otherwise like to live in Kirkland, but who are discouraged by the stereotype. And it hurts students in other houses who might miss the chance to share a house with athletes.

To argue that the current assignment system is problem-free is--not to put too fine a point on it--intellectually dishonest. Clearly, a house system that consistently produces clusters of groups in certain houses is not in everyone's best interest. Diversity among houses is not enough. The house system must maintain diversity within every house.

And the house system is important. Few things amuse me as much as Yardlings who insist that house life doesn't matter. (Especially when those same students quake at the prospect of living in Adams of Eliot.) Like it or not, Harvard's campus-wide social life is insignificant in relation to house life.

CLEARLY, something has to change. Allowing student choice would be fine if it worked, but it doesn't. Maximizing choice results in a faulty distribution that perpetuates itself year after year. Randomization would ensure maximal diversity and dynamism. For proof, we need only look at Currier House, which is largely randomized already.

It's true, the benefits of randomization would not be fully realized for several years--a fault that would plague any change in the assignment system. But after that, the problem is solved. If we do nothing, the deficiencies of the current system will continue to exist with no chance for improvement.

Personally, I would prefer 100 percent randomization to the 50 percent or more plan proposed last year by Dean of the College L. Fred Jewett '57. But no matter what solution the College implements, it must be based on random assignments. No other alternative produces the same result with fewer drawbacks.

The so-called "negative choice" solution, in which students list the three houses in which they don't want to live, will fail as long as the students who are intended to round out the stereotyped houses don't want to live in them. There's also the problem of three houses down Garden St. that so many first-years want to avoid.

The "non-ordered choice" solution suffers from essentially the same defect. The object of housing reform is to get students who otherwise would not live in certain houses to live there, and to get the students who otherwise would live in those houses to live somewhere else. Non-ordered choice fails to do that.

After all, "anywhere but Adams, Eliot or Kirkland," is a perenially popular first-choice house. Students who are disinclined to live in stereotyped houses could still avoid them under the non-ordered choice system. Non-ordered choice would thus introduce randomization to every house except the ones that need it.