Blocked Out

Nearly two weeks have passed since the Class of 2009 arrived on campus. And despite a fortnight of polite small talk, mandatory meetings, placement tests, auditions, seminar applications, and course selection, most freshmen have begun to settle in.

For older students, move-in has always been decidedly less exciting. With their roommates known well in advance, upperclassmen arrive at their Houses knowing exactly with whom they will eat and spend their time: their blockmates. Despite living in an incredibly diverse House community among the most brilliant young people on earth, most upperclassmen will not have met a single new person in the last two weeks. The reason is a simple one; Harvards system of blocking divides its student body in a way that makes it all but impossible for Houses to do their job.

In April 2004, the Harvard College Curricular Review (HCCR) recommended that freshmen be assigned to their upperclass Houses before their arrival at the College. Freshman entryways would be configured along House lines and freshmen would be included in House life as soon as they arrived on campus. The response from many, including this page, was dismay. Calls for what was has become known as Yale-style housing were ridiculed as foolish and counterproductive. The scheme, many claimed, would deprive freshmen of their right to choose the group of friends with whom they would live as upperclassmen. Class unity would be jeopardized, and those freshmen assigned to Quad houses would spend their entire first years in a state of profound depression, dreading the move up Garden Sreet.

There is no denying that moving to a Yale-style system would have its drawbacks. But given the way that the present system of blocking squanders the community-building potential of Harvards houses, there really is no other choice.

Harvards houses are uniquely positioned to play the role of social mixer and equalizer on this campus. Students from a remarkable diversity of backgrounds live in close contact with one another. They share a library, a dining hall, and common spaces. Why then is it that Harvard allows its student body to segregate itself into small, insular groups even before arriving in its Houses? Upperclassmen have no reason or incentive to venture out of their blocking groups to interact with their Housemates and, as a consequence, few do. As a result, Houses remain divided among blocking group lines and the diverse communities, which could be such a crucial part of the Harvard College experience, go to waste.

Blocking groups are also problematic because of their inherent exclusivity. Beyond keeping upperclassmen from getting the most out of their House communities, they can be extremely dangerous to their own members over time, as they ostracize individual members, split in two, or disintegrate all together. How can any upperclassman expect to find his or her place in a House once the group on whom he or she has relied for companionship and friendship disappears? Considering how potentially devastating the insularity of blocking groups can be, it really is a marvel that this veritable make-work project for Harvards thinly stretched counseling resources is tolerated by the College.

So what would residential life at Harvard look like under a Yale-style housing system? Freshmen would receive their House affiliations along with their rooming assignments over the summer. Upon their arrival at Harvard, they would be welcomed into their Houses, in whose activities they would participate throughout the year. Instead of waiting to meet upperclassmen through extracurricular activities and classes, freshmen would find communities of their elders in which they would immediately be eligible to participate.

The one part of the HCCRs prescription that ought to be left unfulfilled is its recommendation about advising. By no means should the responsibility to freshman advising be shifted to the Houses. Rather, the existing network of freshman advisors should be complemented by an enlarged prefect program able to profit from prefects and their prefectees common house affiliations.

So what of the usual objections to Yale-style housing? According to its critics, the system would undermine the unity of the freshman class by dividing it into Houses before the start of the school year. But is this kind of class unity really a significant part of the undergraduate experience at Harvard? With students sprinkled along the River and as far away as the Quad, class unity ceases to exist after freshman year, anyway. And since freshman dorms would remain in the Yard and freshmen would still eat together in Annenberg, there would be ample opportunity to preserve some kind of class identity within a Yale-style system, even as freshmen are able to take advantage of the House communities of which they would also be part.

A further objection is to assigning freshmen to the Quad houses before their arrival, which would apparently condemn them to a miserable year of dread and anxiety. In reality, however, a year of being involved in the vibrant communities of the Quad houses is possibly the best way to attempt to alleviate the stigma of being Quad-ed. The adjustments that most Quad sophomores make in their first semester could be made gradually over a whole year, easing the transition to Harvards most remote Houses.

As for the right to choose ones roommates, it is foolish to demand such a right from the College when freshman rooming assignments are already made randomly and students have no choice when it comes to room and board options. Besides, there is no reason that sophomore rooming arrangements would not remain the choice of individual students; that choice would merely be limited by earlier Housing assignments. Considering the benefits to House life of these earlier assignments, such a limitations of students rights can surely be justified.

Harvards system of Houses would benefit tremendously from the reinvention of the Housing lottery. Shorn of their pre-randomization era characters, Houses are presently prevented from serving their purpose as effective campus communities. By giving freshmen a place to call home even before they arrive, by breaking down the intra-house barriers imposed by blocking groups insularity, and by making participation in House life a fundamental part of all four years at Harvard, the introduction of Yale-style housing would give Houses the chance to realize their potential.

Adam Goldenberg 08, a Crimson editorial editor, is a social studies concentrator in Winthrop House.