Randomize Now

IMAGINE a Harvard Commencement at which one house graduates no summas. Picture another house which graduates no varsity hockey, football or basketball players. And a third which graduates fewer than a dozen Blacks.

If that is what you imagine the College to be, then the current lottery system is a dream come true.

Harvard ought to be a place where people from all backgrounds and of all abilities get to know each other. And the residential houses, the proverbial "microcosms of the University," should extend that much touted diversity to the living environment.

Alas, Harvard is not what it ought to be. And though it would not be a panacea, a fully random housing lottery is the only way to begin solving Harvard's diversity ailments.

The current system of house assignment breeds intolerance, fear and sometimes even loathing. A Crimson poll of undergraduates last year indicated that few students believed they could live comfortably at any of the 12 houses. By allowing students to choose the type of living environment they want, the current maximum first choice system makes everybody suffer.

If anything is clear, it's that the current housing lottery must be changed. Even the staunchest foes of randomization among the masters conceded that the College must alter the assignment process after viewing data on house populations released by Dean of the College L. Fred Jewett '57 last month.

According to the data, 67 percent of the students in one upperclass house are athletes, while in another, 48 percent of the residents graduated from private secondary schools. This isn't to say that all athletes fit one particular stereotype. It merely confirms the obvious: that they share a strong and exclusive commonality.

The numbers verify that house stereotypes are not just a figment of administrative imagination. They show a strong correlation between the house in which students live and their grade point average and honors graduation.

And when any group is concentrated in one house, everyone loses.

And as council member Joel Kaplan '91 of Eliot House put it, "Segregation, voluntary or involuntary, accentuates differences and breeds intolerance."

LAST Sunday, the Undergraduate Council voted to back the status quo, ignorantly failing to acknowledge the problems that riddle the house system. For reasons that were admittedly political, council members also voted to endorse "non-ordered choice" as an acceptable alternative.

Under non-ordered choice, students would be randomly assigned to one of three or four house preferences.

Surprisingly, the plan has also received the backing of the masters--despite the fact that a smaller majority of masters would prefer a 100 percent random lottery. A sincere concern is that the masters have compromised too much.

Non-ordered choice is clearly not the solution. Statistics prepared by Dean K. Whitla, director of the Office of Instructional Research and Evaluation, indicated that the proposal might take the edge off of some stereotypes, but Whitla relied on data from last year's lottery in which first-year students selected "unpopular" houses as a safe second or third choice.

But more fundamentally, non-ordered choice will fail because it will allow students who would ordinarily not live in the stereotyped houses to continue to avoid them. After all, a perennially popular first-choice house is "Anywhere but Adams, Eliot or Kirkland."

In essence, non-ordered choice would introduce randomization into all the houses except those that need it most.

THE current scheme of maximizing choice produces a less-than-optimal outcome year after year. Either you deny that there is a problem and retain the status quo, or you recognize that the magnitude of the problem calls for action--and not the token action of non-ordered choice.

That action must be full randomization.

An entirely random process would assure that diversity is more than a frequently-trumpeted virtue. It would put the athlete, academic, musician, artist, political activist in the same house, allowing them to bounce their ideas off each other.

First-year students could still choose their rooming blocks, so they would not be entirely isolated in their new houses. As added consolation, the administration should increase the maximum size of rooming blocks to 20 and allow greater flexibility in transfers among houses.

And evidence suggests that students probably would not feel uncomfortable with the change, even at first. A wide-ranging survey of upperclass students two springs ago showed that satisfaction with house life and success in the assignment lottery were virtually unrelated.

That survey also found that 69 percent of those surveyed said roommates were the most important factor in choosing a house. Full randomization could only ease the tension in rooming groups and allow students to room with people with whom they feel comfortable, instead of those who are willing to go to the Quad or go for a particular reputation.

JEWETT, the masters and the Undergraduate Council should recognize the merits of full randomization and implement it immediately--without experimenting with non-ordered choice or mechanical changes in the computer program.

The admissions office should send a letter to all accepted students this spring informing them of the new housing process. That way those who want "separate but equal" housing can seek it elsewhere.