Coed Plan Eases House Transfers

To help accommodate any students who become dissatisfied with their living arrangements under the coed plan, Dean May has asked Masters to lift the traditional ban on inter-House movement temporarily among all Houses at Harvard and Radcliffe and to leave room assignments flexible until next Spring.

May's request is designed primarily to give participants in next year's coed exchange a chance to reconsider anytime next Fall and move back to Harvard or Radcliffe.

However, May's plan might conceivably allow any student to transfer to any Harvard or Radcliffe House during the liberalized period.

In particular, the plan will allow any men in coed Houses to transfer to all-male Houses. Their rooms will then be filled by men moving from the all-male Houses. Also, men from any House will be allowed to move to Radcliffe. Arrangements for these transfers would be completed this Spring, May said.

But May stressed that transfers can occur only as rooms are made available by other transfers-as yet an unpredictable factor.

"We're trying to give students who move a chance to change their minds, but we can't guarantee anything," May said yesterday.

Men who wish to return to Harvard from Radcliffe will move into rooms vacated either by other men who decide to move to Radcliffe in the course of the Fall term, or by Cliffies wishing to return to Radcliffe. In the unlikely event that more Cliffies wish to return to Radcliffe than men to Harvard, other Cliffies-those with the lowest room lottery numbers-will be allowed to move to Harvard.

All room assignments will become permanent by the beginning of the Spring term next year.

Musical Chairs

"During the remainder of this Spring and during the Fall term, 1970-71, Masters in all Harvard and Radcliffe Houses should make every effort to accommodate applications for individual and group transfers from House to House," May said. The Masters will consider this proposal at the next meeting of the Committee on House and Undergraduate Life, May added.

Variations in House enrollment will be made up by their accepting more or fewer freshmen this year and with variable placement of upperclassmen who transfer from other colleges, May said.

Radcliffe-bound men were asked today to sign a statement binding them to the coed move with the understanding that they can transfer back only if there is room for them and only during the Fall.

May said the results of the poll to decide which Harvard Houses become coed will not be released until later in the week.