Too Late for Choice

Well, I'd have to say I was pleasantly impressed by the 200 of my classmates who showed up to protest Dean of the College L. Fred Jewett '57's decision to randomize the housing lottery. My surprise is based on my expectations, and I didn't foresee any more students showing up for this protest than for that "Save Gina" rally a few weeks ago.

There are easy reasons for me not to care about housing randomization. I will graduate before a single randomized first-year destroys Lowell House's cherished stereotype. I have two finals over the next two days that I should be studying for. And I'm too busy organizing a "Bring Back Connie Chung" march on New York City.

But I am disappointed in the administration's decision to randomize the housing lottery. I'm not quite incensed, and I can hardly say I'm indignant, but I am disappointed.

I can understand the administration's decision to tamper with the housing lottery. Self-segregation based on interests and ethnic background may be an understandable human phenomena, but it is not a pleasant one for people who hope to live in a pluralistic society. And so I would agree with the University's decision if I thought it would achieve some real kind of integration.

But it won't. Throwing students together will not make them friends. The Freshman Dean's Office already tries that for incoming first-years, and the massive defection toward homogeneous rooming groups in the spring proves them wrong.

While I can respect the College's right to disagree, I'm disappointed in the administration for the way in which this decision was made. It's not fair to argue that the administration simply doesn't care what students think. If Dean Jewett didn't care, he would have randomized the lottery many years ago.

But it's not quite fair for the dean to wait until the end of the term to make his decision, when students are immersed in the drain of finals. If the retiring Jewett needed to wait so long to make the decision, it would have been better for him to allow his successor to make the decision in the fall, when there was time for students to voice their opposition.

Yes, he did announce that he was considering randomization way back at the beginning of this school year, but students have made their opinions clear. Several opinion polls have indicated that students support some choice by a margin of over four to one.

As 200 angry protesters showed yesterday, the lack of student protest prior to the decision did not reflect a general indifference to the issue. But it's difficult to organize a protest on a nonissue, and Jewett's announcement that he was reviewing a process that has more or less been continually reviewed for the past five years was not in itself a cause for alarm.

The timing of Dean Jewett's decision is wrong because it appears geared toward silencing student protest. Rather than facing a series of potentially escalating protests, the dean watches as his opponents leave for the summer two weeks later. When they return, tensions have cooled and there are new concerns at hand. And a new dean.

Jewett's impending retirement suggests another wrinkle for conspiracy theorists to latch onto. Incoming Dean Harry R. Lewis '68 favors randomization of the housing lottery process. In fact, he endorsed it as co-chair of a faculty committee that reopened the debate on the housing lottery last fall. Isn't it just possible that the outgoing Jewett made the decision so that the incoming Lewis would not have to anger his students in the first year of his term? It's a classic maxim of The Prince for the ruler to separate himself from the executors of unpopular policies.

I'm not saying that this conspiracy theory is any more true than one of Oliver Stone's, but in political disputes the appearance is often as significant as the reality. Dean Jewett's claim that he delayed the decision until the end of the semester in order to listen to as many voices as possible may be entirely true. But that won't help relations with students who feel that the administration deliberately suckered them.

This is Steven A. Engel's last column of the semester.