News
Amid Boston Overdose Crisis, a Pair of Harvard Students Are Bringing Narcan to the Red Line
News
At First Cambridge City Council Election Forum, Candidates Clash Over Building Emissions
News
Harvard’s Updated Sustainability Plan Garners Optimistic Responses from Student Climate Activists
News
‘Sunroof’ Singer Nicky Youre Lights Up Harvard Yard at Crimson Jam
News
‘The Architect of the Whole Plan’: Harvard Law Graduate Ken Chesebro’s Path to Jan. 6
DEAN FOX'S PLAN for the housing system, while hardly convincing in its argument for eliminating freshmen from the Quad, is at least a consistent document. It shows that Fox knows his efforts to make the House system more uniform--and in his view, more equitable--cannot go halfway. By moving freshmen out of the Quad and reducing or eliminating the student choice factor in housing assignments, Fox's plan has a chance--in theory, at least--of making the Houses more equal in students' minds.
But The Crimson's majority position is inconsistent. On one hand, it correctly presents diversity in House styles as a desirable goal. The Quad has shown that four-year Houses offer several advantages for both freshmen and upperclassmen. These advantages argue persuasively for keeping the Quad Houses as four-year Houses, in part to let these advantages compensate for any perceived disadvantages of living at the Quad.
The majority position contradicts itself by advocating a House assignment system that ignores student preferences. The advantages that a diverse housing system offers can be fully realized only when students are allowed to choose among alternatives or at least to express a preference. By not giving incoming freshmen a choice of living at the Quad with upperclassmen or offering upperclassmen the choice of living at the Quad with freshmen, the supposed alternative becomes meaningless.
If a "no-choice system" would work differently in practice, fine. But so far, no clear description of how the system would work has been offered by anyone in the administration. If "no-choice" means what it says, however, both that system and the Fox plan should be scrapped. Harvard certainly can do better.
Want to keep up with breaking news? Subscribe to our email newsletter.