The Housing Question

House selections are completed, and the gentle moans of Senior Tutors and Masters have subsided. As the Masters themselves are well aware, it is about time for this masochistic ritual to stop.

Unfortunately, the cries for change generally issue from those dissatisfied with the results of the present system, not those who oppose the system itself. But an increasingly vocal minority is now prepared to junk a tiring method of assignment that consistently produces inequitable distributions and unsatisfactory results.

They are not so clear on an appropriate substitute. Proposals for an arbitrary assignment by computers (a la Yale) seem a little drastic. The need for a simplified method that will eliminate the gross imbalance of some houses does not dictate a flight to the caprice of the random number table.

What is needed is a set of controls, such as an equal number of Freshman letter winners, geniuses, and preppies in every House. But beyond this, the extension of arbitrariness would destroy existing house solidarity and increase the sense that the House was merely a dorm to which the student owned no allegiance or personal commitment.

A computer can be employed to do the drudge work; it can be programmed to try a very large number of different assignments and to choose the combination that gives the largest number of students the House of their choice while maintaining an equal distribution within whatever categories the Masters may decide are important.

In large part, this takes decision out of the hands of the Masters. But if necessary even Masters' preference ratings could be incorporated into a computer program. It is simple enough to modernize the house selection system, and without turning the College into North New Haven. Compromise is an easy art, and IBM is equal to the job.