CHL Unanimous on Blocking Revision

The Committee on House Life (CHL) unanimously approved a proposal to change the current blocking system yesterday. The House Neighborhood and Blocking Alignment System, proposed to the CHL by the Undergraduate Council (UC), would allow for two blocking groups to align with one another and be placed in nearby Houses.

The legislation, passed by the UC on May 1 and CHL yesterday, will now be considered by the Council of Masters. There was little to no opposition to this bill among CHL members.

“This will answer a lot of questions freshmen have about blocking and significantly de-stress the blocking process,” said John S. Haddock ’07, who is a co-sponsor of the bill. “This is really a way to help freshmen have the flexibility they need to maintain relationships.”

“Votes in this Committee, when they are taken on issues of this magnitude, are usually more divided,” UC Student Affairs Committee (SAC) Chair Aaron Chadbourne, who also co-sponsored the bill, wrote in an e-mail. “At Harvard it is difficult to get a group this large to agree on everything. The approval by all of the members of the committee is truly exciting.”

Under the new system, the Houses would be divided into four color-coded “neighborhoods.” Quad houses would comprise the orange neighborhood Lowell, Quincy, and Adams, the blue; Kirkland, Eliot, and Winthrop, the red; and Leverett, Dunster, and Mather, the green. The two blocking groups that wish to live near each other would still consist of up to eight members each, and would be placed in different houses in the same neighborhood.

“Relationships are a reality; the social stress of choosing people to live with is a reality, and we’re trying to respond in a way in which students will benefit,” said Ryan A. Petersen ’08, who co-sponsored the bill with Haddock and Chadbourne.

According to Haddock, the proposal attempts to address five issues: to promote and maintain friendships, to increase blocking flexibility, to encourage students to choose compatible roommates, to reduce House transfers, and to provide an alternative for students in relationships.

Reflecting upon personal experience, Petersen said, “as a freshman going through the blocking process, there were definitely people in my entryway I would like to be near, but it is difficult to maintain social relationships just because of the sheer distance.”

The proposal addresses these issues by allowing friends or a significant other to be closer, he said.

Also presented at the meeting was a proposal to revise the current interhouse transfer system.

The bill pushed for a “linking fates” system, in which one transfer group can link itself to another and opt out of the transfer if the linked group does not get accepted. The bill also asked for Houses to provide specific numbers of places available for transfers.

Haddock said that while the UC is not pushing forward with the “linking fates” proposal, it will continue working with the administration and house assistants to improve the transfer system for students.

—Staff writer Jessica C. Chiu can be reached at jcchiu@fas.harvard.edu.