Five House Ratios to Remain Fixed; Upperclass Women Can Leave Quad

The five Harvard Houses with the most women and the three Radcliffe Houses will maintain about the same rations of men and women next year as a result of a housing plan the Committee on Houses and Undergraduate Life (CHUL) passed yesterday.

CHUL also approved a proposal by Mary I. Bunting president of Radcliffe, to allow sophomores and juniors who have lived in the same House since the beginning of freshman year to move.

Dean Whitlock said at the CHUL meeting yesterday that the Administration would follow the guidelines set up by CHUL, according to Merrick Garland '74, CHUL representative from Quincy House. Whitlock could not be reached for comment. However, Genevieve Austin, assistant dean of Students, said last night the only way that the housing office would not stick to the CHUL plan would be if not enough women applied to the House to fill the House quotas.

The CHUL plan manages to add from 14 to 26 women to each of the four "poor ratio" Houses--Eliot, Kirkland, Leverett and Mather Houses--by slightly decreasing the number of women in seven other Houses.

According to the CHUL plan. Adams, Dunster, Lowell and Quincy Houses will have from three to seven fewer women next year. Winthrop will retain the same number of women. The Radcliffe Houses will also lose a few women, but the ratio will still be around one to one.

The Bunting proposal gives students who live in a House freshman year the option of changing Houses only once, but at any time during their undergraduate careers.

Sophomores or juniors who wish to move will enter the room-drawing pool "subject to the same rules as freshmen." These rules stipulate that students list their first five House preferences, but "must agree to live wherever they are assigned."

For the past week, groups of students from the "poor ratio" Houses have been playing tug-of-war with students from the "good ratio" Houses to pull women into their Houses. Both sides have circulated petitions this week supporting their positions.