May Throws Coed Living Back Into Committee's Lap

Dean May's unofficial plan-announced last Spring-to make all Harvard Houses coed has apparently been dropped in favor of a new subcommittee investigation.

The format of co-residency will now not be decided until the end of January, when a yet unelected CHUL subcommittee headed by Dean May will make its final recommendations.

The Four-Year Plan, suggested by May last spring, would have allowed Radcliffe sophomores the option of applying to any of a group of six specified Harvard Houses per year. The Houses would rotate annually, so that each of the nine would have women within two years.

Under no obligation to continue with the plan, the sub-committee is now free to endorse any approach to coed living: continuing the Four-Year Plan as it stands, freezing the situation as it now exists, or proposing an entirely different system.

"I think most of us on the Committee on Houses agree that some sort of rotational plan should be proposed," Mark Jacobs '71 said Thursday. A rotational plan, such as the Four-Year Plan, would eventually introduce women to all the Houses. "Without some kind of rotating system, the character of individual Houses is likely to be affected strongly," Jacobs added.

Genevieve Austin, Radcliffe dean of residence, said that it will not be possible to increase the number of Radcliffe women living in the Houses to more than 100, because of the need to maintain a "favorable balance" of upper-class women living in the Quad. "Spreading 400 women thinly among nine Houses averages to 44 women per House-not a very healthy balance," Austin said.

According to Austin, Dean May's Committee on Co-residency last spring was aware of the impracticability of placing so few women in each House, although May's Four-Year Plan would have eventually entailed that distribution.

More Women Needed

"The only way a full co-residential system will really work is to increase the number of Radcliffe women, which I would like," Austin said.

The sub-committee has the dual purpose of transmitting the CHUL's recommendation that co-residence continue, and of working out suggestions for improving co-residence.

"I think Dean May's Four-Year Plan was designed to appease those of us whose Houses did not go co-ed," one student said. "I doubt Dean May ever intended to carry his plan through."