The Choice System

THE SERIOUS PROBLEM that is evident when 130 freshmen receive their bottom three House choices is one that cannot be solved by a simple change in the choice system.

Many members of the Committee on Houses and Undergraduate Life have already decided to assign the blame to the choice system, and will make motions today that may lead to adoption of the Yale plan, which assigns students to Houses when they enter the college.

However, the problem is not with how students select Houses, but with the Houses themselves. The Yale plan is simply an easier way to force unsuspecting freshmen to go up to the Quadrangle, as most of the freshmen receiving their bottom choices will be, made to do next year.

Rather than using the Yale plan as excuse to order people into surroundings they might not choose, the CHUL should recommend changes to make the Quad Houses more attractive. It should insist that Harvard build the planned Observatory Hill athletic facilities, that there be an increase in the number of shuttle buses to make the Quad more accessible, that Quad Houses and Hilles be utilized for more classes, and that Harvard fix bathrooms, re-plaster walls, and make other badly needed rennovations in North and South House.

And if the CHUL decides to enact the Yale plan, students should be allowed to transfer out of Houses they do not like.