Ford to Seek Student View On Selection

Dean Ford said this week that he would be interested in hearing students' opinions on the House election system.

He revealed that the Masters had again been considering a change in the system, which has been in use for at least 20 years. A confidential memorandum from Ford has been given to the Committee on Houses--a group that includes the nine Masters, four deans and one administrative vice-president--urging it to evaluate alternative methods.

Ford pointed out that the Committee has been debating this question for years, but hinted that some change was under serious consideration. Last spring, a special Faculty committee, chaired by J. Petersen Elder, dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, evaluated the present system at length.

The Elder committee finally recommended that the element of student choice be preserved, but that the degree to which the Masters of the Houses were involved in the process be reduced. It recommended that Dean Watson's office handle most of the assignment procedure.

Elder's proposal would, however, have permitted a Master to intervene in favor of any undergraduate he particularly wanted to have in his House. After some discussion, the Committee on Houses decided not to implement the scheme. Reportedly, it was the opposition of only two Masters that blocked the proposal.

Yale uses a computer to assign freshmen to the upper-class Colleges, permitting the preference of neither students or Masters to figure in the final decision.