Live With Harvard Housing

We’re better than our peers in New Haven. But according to Harvard administrators, our housing system may not be.

The Harvard College housing system is only one of the many things that sets Harvard apart from peer institutions. As freshmen receive their housing assignments for the remainder of their time at Harvard this morning, it is necessary to reiterate our support for the current system.

The Harvard College Curricular Review (HCCR) Report, released in April 2004, recommended “that freshmen be assigned to a House before the start of freshman year and be housed together in dormitory entries affiliated with their House.” We strongly oppose this suggestion. The benefits of Yale-style housing are insufficient to justify switching from the current system. Furthermore, many of the benefits promised under Yale-style housing, including better advising, evaporate under scrutiny. These areas of improvement should be addressed independent of the housing system.

Harvard-style housing has many distinct advantages. First off, it does not divide the freshman class before they even arrive on campus. Currently, first-year students can potentially be assigned to the same house as any member of their class. However, under the Yale-style system, first-year students would only live with other members of their House. This would divide the class into Houses before they have a chance to cohere as a class. The current system values class cohesion over House cohesion, a tradeoff we support. The result of the system is that Harvard first-year students know people in many different Houses sophomore year. The House system, as a result, does not emerge as a barrier to meeting and befriending new people, but rather as an additional community for students to enjoy.

The current Harvard housing system also allows students to enjoy the majority of their first year without comparing it to what next year will bring. What if, under a Yale-style system, students knew they had been assigned to the Quad before arriving at Harvard? Given the Quad’s poor, though undeserved, reputation, most of these students would spend their first year dreading the move to the Quad—regardless of how good or bad the Quad really is.

Harvard is also unique because Harvard first-years can choose their roommates and blockmates from the entire class. In spite of the pain and stress the blocking system can cause, it still gives Harvard first-years the freedom of association that is denied to their Yale peers. Not everyone blocks with the people in their freshman dorms. The importance of the right to choose one’s own roommate cannot be underestimated.

Why, then, is Harvard even considering Yale-style housing? The main argument is that Yale-style housing would improve the currently deplorable first-year advising system at the College. Yale-style housing would also, theoretically, improve first-year social life by allowing freshman more access to their upperclassmen peers.

However, these arguments are misguided. Yale-style housing would neither improve first-year advising nor the first-year social experience. Advising within the Houses is not perfect. Concentrations have shifted much of their advising duties to a limited amount of resident and non-resident tutors, leaving many students in a lurch. Integrating first-year students into the already strained system would yield no tangible positive results. In addition, those students assigned to the Quad would have a harder time accessing advising resources than their counterparts assigned to the River.

We also find no evidence that the switch to the Yale-style housing system would strengthen the relationship between first-year students and upperclassmen. First-year students would still eat in Annenberg, limiting interaction in the dining halls and continuing to separate first-years from upperclassmen. In addition, one of the reasons the Yale-style housing system works so well at Yale is the high-level of enthusiasm for College life (at Yale, Houses are called Colleges). This pride plays a large part in Yalie freshmen’s wholehearted participation in College life. Harvard sports a less frenzied House environment, and any strong, Yale-style House ties would take years to nurture. At the end of the day, it’s doubtful that Harvard freshmen pre-assigned to Houses would actually take an interest in life at the Houses, or in the upperclassmen who call them home.

Yale-style housing is not the simple solution to freshman advising and freshman social life. It is unproductive to paint the housing system as such. Rather, the Curricular Review Committee and the administration should instead seek to fix advising and first-year student life without switching to Yale-style housing. There is no reason why the necessary improvements cannot take place within the current Harvard system.

To help fix advising, the prefect program should be enlarged to assign each student to an informal prefect advisor in his/her proposed field of concentration. This proposal would help increase interaction between freshmen and upperclassmen, and provide students with yet another advising resource. Concentrations should also begin to shoulder more of the advising burden, instead of dumping the responsibility on House tutors. Additionally, in all likelihood the HCCR will change the date when students declare their concentrations. If students declare their concentrations earlier, they will already have access to faculty concentration advisors during their first year. If concentrations are declared in the sophomore year or later, students will already be a part of the House system and the issue of separate concentration advising for freshman students will become irrelevant.

The Yale-style House system is not the “one-size-fits-all” solution it is intended to be. Instead of holding up Harvard’s current House system as the culprit, the Curricular Review Committee and the administration should instead focus on fixing the actual problems and improving both the first-year advising system and first-year social life within the boundaries of the current system.