HOUSING

To the Editors of the Crimson:

We are writing to register our strong protest against the recently proposed housing plan A, which would create freshman dormitories in the Radcliffe Quad. We object to the plan for the following reasons:

1) It is impossible to establish an equitable housing plan until an overall one-to-one ratio of women to men has been established in the university. Until that equality has been created, any housing plan must give special consideration to the problems of housing women, in order to create a supportive living situation in a predominantly male university.

2) This plan would destroy South House in total disregard of its autonomy and house unity. It will require 131 present inhabitants of Briggs. Bertram and Barnard to leave their House, which is contrary to the underlying spirit of the House system. Moveover, it will require the conversion of some common living spaces in South House into bedrooms, thereby further crippling the House.

3) This would never be done to a River House. We feel that this represents an assumption that the Radcliffe Houses are less important than the River Houses. The integrity of the Radcliffe Houses should be respected as is the integrity of the River Houses.

4) We object to the isolation of freshmen, both men and women, from upperclass men and women--that is, to the imposition of the Harvard freshman year pattern on Radcliffe, Mixing with upperclass men and women aids the freshmen in adapting to college life, both academically and socially. Isolation of freshmen with the same problems only exacerbates those problems.

5) The reasons usually advanced in support of the separate freshman year do not seem valid to us:

a. Freshmen living with upperclass men and women will still "share experiences" with each other, out will have the opportunity to mix with others as well.

b. "Life long friendships" among members of a class can be formed in a mixed house as well as in the Yard; many Radcliffe women find that their closest friends are in their own class.

c. Alumni support is not dependent on the class spirit theoretically created by the separate freshman year. Dartmouth and Princeton both have a higher percentage of alumni support although they do not have the separate freshman year.

d. Freshman advising can be done as effectively in the Houses as in the Yard, as the experience of the Radcliffe Houses shows.

e. Freshman intramural activities can continue to exist even if freshmen are not housed together.

6) We feel that much of the furor over this issue could have been avoided had the decision-making process been more democratic.

In the long run, we believe that the separate freshman year should be abolished and that all freshmen, men and women, should be integrated into the Houses. Therefore, experimentation next year should be in the direction of integrating freshmen men and women into the Houses, rather than toward further segregating them. To this end, we support either Plan B, which would put freshmen men and women into the three Radcliffe Houses as full House members and would integrate the Yard; or Plan C which extends the integrated four-class House system by putting fifty freshmen women and fifty upperclass women in Winthrop with appropriate support staff, and by housing fifty freshman men, fifty freshman women and sixty upperclass men and women in the Continental.

We urge you to reconsider and reflect the current proposal in favor of Plan B or Plan C. The members of the Currier House   Committee, the South House Committee   and the North House Committee