The Fox Trot

THE REALITIES of Cambridge geography have not been kind to Harvard. The half mile of asphalt and brownstones separating the Quad and the Yard seemed insignificant enough when coed housing and other integrating moves were made. But it was big enough to produce one of the first campus issues of recent years to arouse more than a dinner conversation--the chronic housing problem.

The problem is simply explained: fewer people care to live at the Quad than would fill its rooms. Even those who choose to live there often do so to take advantage of the Quad's unique social environment, but end up dissatisfied with its physical resources. Last year, 60 per cent of the freshmen assigned to live at the Quad had expressed a strong preference for the River Houses. Unwilling residents from that class put on a display worthy of the greatest of draft dodgers. One then-freshman asked a psychiatrist to certify that she would be unable to study while living at the Quad; others had alumni parents plead their cases to the housing office. All told, about 60 Quad residents have transferred so far this year and many more hope to follow them. Nor is the trend abating: in a housing poll released today more than half of the freshmen polled listed Quad Houses among the two Houses in which they would least like to live.

What to do with the Quad: the question has plagued almost everyone connected with the University since the "non-merger" merger of 1971 and perhaps as far back as the inception of co-educational classes in 1943. The Committee on Houses and Undergraduate Life has debated it for five years. The suggestions that float around have ranged from the mundane to the absurd. Some have proposed housing all sophomores in the Yard, and all freshmen in the Quad (or the reverse) and switching the River Houses into two-class residences. Others suggested converting to four-class housing University-wide by refurbishing the Yard into three Houses. Quad people have pointed out that with a major construction effort the Quadrangle would achieve rough parity with the River Houses. At the extremes, proposals to sell the Quad to Lesley and develop the Commons have yet to be laughed out of existence.

BUT ALL DEBATE became academic two weeks ago when Dean Rosovsky approved his version of the Fox plan; it will probably stay academic until the plan comes up for review again in 1982. The plan, which Dean Fox, an assistant to Rosovsky, publicly proposed in January, ended four year housing at the Quad by moving to house all of next year's freshmen in the Yard. In addition, Rosovsky ordered the construction of an addition to the South House dining hall, new tutor and student suites in North House, the transfer of the Social Studies Department to Hilles, and numerous other minor Quad improvements.

Delving into University Hall's motivation for this particular bag of changes is no easy task. While this plan is clearly not University Hall's final solution to the housing problem, Fox billed his plan as "comprehensive" and said this week he was "reasonably optimistic that the Quad will be competitive in five years." For the next year or so, however, this prediction seems based on shaky grounds. Present Quad residents made clear their opposition to the plan last January when they collected about 900 signatures on a petition protesting the plan.

In fact, some parts of the plan seem tailor-made to lessen the Quad's attractiveness. Four-year housing, for one, has long been seen as one of the Quad's strong points. Quad freshmen, in contact with more mature and experienced upperclassmen, benefit from a network of course and personal advising superior to that of the Yard. For their part, upperclassmen at the Quadrangle enjoyed the vitality that freshmen bring to hall life.

As was obvious to college administrators, four-year housing was hardly a sufficient selling point for increasing the Quad's popularity. But oddly, in witnessing this, University Hall officials seem to have taken the opposite tack entirely, and assumed it to be a drawback. In his plan, Fox identified the Quad's "difference" of class structure as one of the reasons for its lack of popularity. Fox's plan remedies the difference, but this alone seems unlikely to raise the esteem of the Quad Houses among freshmen--Fox's original goal; it may even reduce it.

MOST LIKELY, administrators considered this fact in creating the revised plan. The new construction efforts which will accompany the plan's inception later this year may thus be the only part of the plan that will draw rising sophomores to Radcliffe. But these new building efforts, to cost about half a million dollars, stand in the shadow of the $30 million fundraising drive under way for the new Soldier's Field athletic complex. It is unclear whether the Observatory Hill athletic complex, which would sit mere yards away from the Quad Houses, will ever be built, No formal fundraising efforts for the complex have begun. Fox said he thought "the bulk of our energies have to be devoted toward the Quad for these years," but he added that "at this time the [Observatory Hill] athletic complex is not a realistic possibility, for lack of money."

Then the mystery remains: why the Fox plan? One possible answer lies in the realities of interest group politics around the University. Side-taking on the plan roughly split along geographical lines. Student opposition to the plan was based at the Quad. Although River House upperclassmen had no opportunity to present their opinions on the plan, they were far less vocal than Quad residents and the majority of River House CHUL representatives apparently voted to abolish four-class Houses when CHUL voted by secret ballot on the issue. The only House masters to publicly oppose the Fox plan were the Hastings, still in their first year as masters of North House.

It is not difficult to decipher which segments of the University community the Fox plan, as approved, benefits. Filling Canaday Hall entries has long been an unpleasant responsibility for masters of over-crowded River Houses. The Vorenbergs, masters of Dunster House, have had but one volunteer roommate group to fill their 20-person Canaday entry in two years. And understandably so: Canaday has become an artificial mini-Quad; many Canaday upperclassmen must walk as far for dinner at their assigned Houses as Quad people must walk to some classes. Only six River House masters face the no-win task of assigning students to Canaday; but the prospect of having to do so must have lingered in the minds of the other three as long as Canaday housed the 190 upperclassmen it did this year.

At the same time, the lone headache the Fox plan will bring to River House masters has been far overestimated. So that fewer sophomores would have to be sent to the Quad and Quad density could be reduced, the Fox plan foresaw an increase in River House crowding. However, Ann B. Spence, assistant to the dean, estimated recently that the overall increase will probably be in the 40 to 80 range for all nine River Houses combined.

THE BIG LOSERS in the shuffle seem to have been the Quad masters. The Hastings recognized this and registered their opposition. Barbara G. Rosencrantz '44, master of Currier House, apparently concurred until last year when she and Oleg Grabar, then-master of North House, agreed not to oppose the end of four-year Houses if certain major renovations were instituted at the Quad.

In spite of the Fox plan's noble intentions, it seems likely that, for the next few years at least, Quad unpopularity will continue. If today's housing survey is any indicator, growing Quad unpopularity of the past few years is continuing unabated, even though Rosovsky approved the package weeks ago.

Freshmen are presumably aware of the alterations and improvements the revised package will bestow upon the Quad. But this year the housing office will have to assign from 40 to 60 more unwilling sophomores to the Quad than last year. The other empty spaces opened up as Quad freshmen move out will be partly filled by transfer students; in fact a plan to house all transfer students at the Quad is now under consideration.

As it ultimately emerged, the goals of the revised Fox plan are at best overly optimistic and at worst unresponsive to the Quad's needs. Despite what the plan does for Canaday upperclassmen, Fox has said many times that the primary goal of the plan was to improve the Quad's popularity by equalizing its living quality with that of the River Houses. Unfortunately, the plan equalizes the two in the area of one of the Quad's lone advantages-four-class housing-and does little to bring Quad physical standards in line with the rest of Harvard.