College to Provide Permanent Housing For 20 Commuters

An unexpectedly high "drop-off rate" among undergraduates has enabled the College to offer permanent residence in University housing to 20 students, admitted to Harvard as commuters, who last year secured only temporary, one-year spaces in Harvard housing, Dean Whitlock said yesterday.

Whitlock said last year's projection for the 1975-76 drop-off rate, approximately 5 per cent, was too low for the University to guarantee rooms last spring to the temporarily-housed students.

The drop-off rate is a measure of the decline from preliminary anticipated enrollment calculated in the spring before the academic year to actual enrollment in early October, Bruce Coller, assistant dean of the College said yesterday.

The drop-off in enrollment has already reached 8 per cent, providing sufficient space both to eliminate House overcrowding and to admit the commuters to University housing, Whitlock said.

Collier said a drop-off rate of 6 per cent has been typical for the past 2 years.

Whitlock said it is too early to determine if enough rooms will eventually become available to accommodate all freshmen commuters, new transfer students and special students desiring to move on campus.

Eleanor C. Marshall, assistant to the deans of Harvard and Radcliffe for housing, said yesterday she is sending the offer by letter today to the commuters who lived on campus last year, as well as to about 15 commuters who last year declined to live on campus.

Marshall said she expects most of the invited commuters to accept the offer.

The empty rooms are in the Radcliffe Quad, especially in North and South Houses, where there are presently many vacancies, Marshall said.

The vacancies have been created by the transfer of students for whom the Quad was tenth or lower choice housing to the River Houses. Whitlock said yesterday that all such students have already been transferred to higher choice housing.

Whitlock said that if empty spaces remain after the invited commuters are housed, the CHUL will determine in what order to offer the spaces to the new transfer students, special students and the "four or five" commuting freshmen Whitlock says desire on-campus housing.

Collier said that in past years all students desiring to live on campus have obtained rooms by Spring