PLAYING THE HOUSING LOTTERY

It's finally over. Dartboard heaved a sigh of relief this week as our housing lottery came to its epic, grinding conclusion. After weeks of perplexing dining hall conversations, Dartboard had grown frustrated. The things we heard went so far as actually sitting down and going through the entire house facebook in an attempt to place each person in a rooming group and thus figure out the total number of rooming groups of every size, so as to compare this figure with the number of available rooms.

Not having completed advanced coursework in game theory and graduate level probability ourselves, Dartboard was left to flounder amongst the infinite permutations of the lottery's potential outcomes. In the end, we threw up our hands to leave this decision, at least, to fate.

On the positive side, Dartboard wishes to note what a useful exercise the lottery has been in building house spirit. We feel distinctly closer to the residents of our house now that approximately half of them have trooped through our room to inspect it. The room tour spiel quickly became a routine--windows are slightly drafty, fraternity across the street which is not too loud except on weekends, knock on the next door to see the bedroom.

At the end of the day, though, Dartboard remains unconvinced that all the planning and elaborate scheming that went into it made a significant difference in the quality of life conditions for next year. In a place like Harvard where people are apt to micromanage their every option, perhaps the lottery provides one more extracurricular lesson in the value of the vagaries of chance.