Faculty Approves Coed Living For Three Houses Next Spring

The Faculty yesterday approved three experimental coed housing exchanges for next semester, establishing the first official coed housing in the history of the College.

The proposals still need official approval by the Radeliffe Council and the Harvard Corporation before they can go into effect, but Presidents Pusey and Bunting said yesterday that approval is certain.

The exchanges-between Winthrop and North Houses. Adams and South, and Lowell and East-would involve 50 students from each House. The students in the exchanges will be chosen by processes decided upon in each House.

Jerome Kagan, professor of Developmental Psychology and head of the Faculty Committee on Residential Living, proposed the exchanges only ten minutes before the scheduled close of yesterday's meeting. After fewer than five minutes of debate, the motion passed overwhelmingly.

The proposed exchanges probably will continue only through Spring. The Harvard-Radcliffe merger is scheduled for completion over the summer, and long-range coed housing will probably be instituted next Fall.

Four major aspects of the exchanges approved yesterday are:

No freshmen will take part;

No one who does not wish to move from his present room will have to do so:

Harvard, Houses will be integrated by suite, and Radeliffe by floor;

Academic and disciplinary responsibility for those in the exchanges will remain with the House of origin.

Before the exchange proposals came to the floor, one-and-one-half hours of the Faculty meeting were devoted to interim reports from the chairmen of four Faculty committees-including Kagan's-which have been studying the problems of merger.

Kagan said that the male-female ratio in future coed housing should be more evenly balanced than the four-to-one ratio in the undergraduate student body. His committee probably will recommend that each coed House have a two-to-one ratio. This ratio would be possible, he said, if four Harvard Houses and two-and-one-half Radcliffe Houses (i. e.. all but two or three dorms) are made coeducational.

The Kagan Committee has not yet decided which Houses will be coed. That decision will be based largely on student responses to a poll circulating in the Harvard and Radcliffe Houses this week.

Richard G Leahy, assistant dean for Resources and Planning, outlined to the Faculty yesterday the Budget Committee's proposals for changing the Radeliffe Quad because of the merger.

Under Leahy's plan. East and South Houses would merge into one House Since Currier House is scheduled for completion by next Fall, this would keep the number of Radeliffe Houses at three. The Budget Committee also suggested that Radcline dorms be remodeled to resemble Harvard Houses.

Two other proposals under consideration for merger are a new gymnasium-across Garden Street from the Radeliffe Quad-and an underground parking garage beneath the Quad. Radcliffe rejected the garage plan last year but it would be required under the Cambridge Building Code if the other improvements were made.