Integration at Last

AND there were 12.

Starting next fall, undergraduate houses will no longer be able to count Dudley House as one of their own. Recognizing that transfer students deserve the same options as current undergraduates, Dean of the College L. Fred Jewett '57, Dudley Master Paul D. Hanson and the Committee on House Life decided to allow transfer students to claim affiliation with one of the residential houses in their first semester at the University. Its undergraduate population thus cut in half, Dudley will officially be designated a graduate house.

Prior to the decision, transfer students had to spend at least one semester living off campus affiliated with Dudley. Many complained that the requirement isolated them from the mainstream of undergraduate life. The new plan allows transfers to plunge right in to one of Harvard's purported "microcosms of the University."

We applaud University officials for designating much of the new housing complex on DeWolfe St. for undergraduate overflow housing--the precondition for the current reform. The challenge now is for Dudley House to continue providing key services to its remaining undergraduate affiliates and for the residential houses to welcome new transfer students.

The house system isn't everything Harvard says it is, and we have been critical, of "house life" in the past. But integration into one of the houses, however imperfect they may be, is surely preferable to being left out in the cold.